The Mythmakers: Paul Cain, Bob Jones, Augustine Acala and the Stagecraft of IHOPKC - David Fish

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-Brandom.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, David Fish, Pastor and Researcher.

David is good to be back. We got an overwhelming positive response for your first one. So many people wanted to hear more, and the topic that you've picked for today, believe it or not, I've had many, many people ask through you, the comment feeds or email.

Some people have called me. They want to know how we got where we are, and kind of whenever I throw these names out, John Alexander Dowie or some of the more modern people, who are these guys?

You know, I don't, I do have the research published so people can go find it, but a lot of people listening just want to know, okay, show me the roadmap. How did we get into this big mess that we got today?

You sent me an idea and we're going to run with it and see what happens. Let's do it. Yeah, I saw the same thing. I saw some comments, some people reach out to me.

You and I who have studied these things for years have a really nasty habit of name-dropping tons of people without clarifying who they are. So even last time we were going three or four names deep and I had people say, you know, the way I described it to you when we were talking before this was, it's almost helpful to think about many of these movements, almost like a play, which is apt because there really is, especially we'll talk about some of these figures today.

Many of them actually were effectively trained in the healing revivals as play actors. That's effectively the training that they received was how to get on a stage and play act. And so, you know, when you go to see a player and musical, you see the bill of the characters and the cast.

And it basically just gives you a short description of it. Here's all the characters that are going to appear. And so I thought, you know, for this play that is the, you know, later neo-charismatic movement, the Kansas City Fellowship, the IHOPKC movement, it helped, it probably helped people to have a cast of characters.

And so obviously people can begin and we can stretch this all the way back to montanism in the second century, you know, so we could have 20 episodes, you know, 100 episodes, going through every revival movement.

And just to give a very basic summary, there's a pattern throughout church history. And I would say it's... either good nor bad, but it has good and bad aspects of it, which is institutional movements and renewal movements.

And there's the push and pull between movements that want to tighten things down. We need to have people who know what they're doing, who know what they're preaching, who have good theology, who, you know, are actually qualified to be doing what they're doing.

And so what does that mean? That means more rules. Well, then when people see more rules, there's a human tendency to say, well, that means we're going to quench the spirit. And sometimes it's true.

So sometimes there is a legitimate kind of over institutionalizing of the church. So then renewal movements come and they correct this. And almost every time they over-correct. And so what happens is that's why you keep getting these splinters and splinters and splinters.

And so the penicostal movement splinters into the assemblies of God. And then the assemblies of God becomes the religious denomination and the latter reign begins to split off from that. And then, you know, you have splinter after splinter after splinter.

And so eventually, you know, we get to the healing revivals. And it really is, this is what's most fascinating, at least two of our main characters in the IHOP KC prophetic history are directly trained in the healing revivals.

And those two would be Paul Cain, excuse me, and Augustine Alcala. And so these are the two big ones. I figured I'd start with Augustine because Augustine always seems to be the one that's kind of left out.

And that's on purpose, you know, I'd encourage people to read Bob Scott's book because I think what Bob does really well is show how Mike uses these men and then discards them. And so one of the key themes of anyone who is at IHOP KC, they would always notice that these men were talked about nonstop, but they never appeared.

Mike hid them off in back rooms because he needed them to be myths. He didn't need them to be human beings. And that's one of the number one things that people said about Paul Cain is he was this giant in the prophetic history and on stage, but he was basically a weak, frail, fearful man in private, you know, and so the myth had to be upheld.

And so Augustine Alcala, Bob Scott mentions this in his book, so credit to him, we're going to find that each of the main prophets in the Kansas City prophetic history have a childhood prophet narrative.

So a childhood prophet narrative, we know that William Brannum had one. We know that Dowie and many of these other people, they all had a narrative that as a young child, they had angelic visitations and visions and dreams and, you know, miracles and things happening.

This is not strange, but Augustine very much falls into this category and he's the son of a Pentecostal preacher. And according to Bob Scott, his father put him in the revival circuit at the age of four.

And so think about, what is a four-year-old have any business doing, being foisted up in front of people in a revival barely talk at that age? I mean, it's just crazy. And then sadly, of course, Augustine is abused by the ministry managers.

He's abused by his handlers. And I don't know if we'll ever really know, but I think if we were to look into this, it was probably nine out of 10 of these guys were abused by their ministry managers.

I think if people think Hollywood has some kind of hidden ring of some sort, I think this early healing revival world in particular was much the same way. So Augustine has this childhood narrative.

He begins to be trained in how to do the parlor tricks that he needs to do. He's abused by his ministry managers. And so of course, we know that throughout Augustine's life, he's a very flamboyant guy, very well dressed.

It's kind of funny, to be honest, and ironic, because Augustine and Bob Jones, who we'll talk about, I'm sure, are Yin and Yang, total antithesis. I mean, Bob Jones, military guy, tough guy, alcohol abuse, no education, no flair, no sense of style.

He's one of the worst dressed guys. Just watch any video of him. He just barely knows how to put himself together. And then Augustine is perfectly quaffed, hair perfect, very flamboyant. His prophecies are very, again, demonstrative in that way.

And then of course, and I'm not gonna try to psychoanalyze, but whatever connection all of the abuse and his childhood and all of that had, whatever the case may be, he's clearly living a homosexual lifestyle throughout his ministry and his work, and eventually tragically dies of AIDS.

Augustine is influential in giving many of the most important prophetic words in the prophetic history. And I'll say one more thing about him, and then you can point us wherever we need to go next.

But Augustine sees the angel in an open vision that relates to him what's called the black horse prophecy. This is important because this is a prophecy about a demonic attack that would come against Mike and his ministry in the form of a black horse.

And it would come according to the prophecy as soon as Mike moves east. Now, this is gonna become a huge deal because this is interpreted and reinterpreted throughout the years. But the interesting thing is once Augustine's ceases to be useful to Mike, And once Mike effectively memory holds him and kind of shoves him in the closet, so to speak.

What do you know? In the last few times Mike tells the story, it's changed and now Mike is the one who saw the angel, not Augustine. And tragically, the last time that Mike utilizes this black horse narrative, he uses it specifically to combat the allegations coming from Jane Doe 1 of Sexual Abuse.

And so again, this is a pattern we see from many of these ministries. The second, there's a credible allegation of abuse. Well, this just confirms the prophecy that was said that people were going to come against me and accuse me and Satan's the accuser of the brethren.

And so Mike utilizes and manipulates this on the platform to kind of get ahead of things because many of the things weren't even released yet, of course, when Mike was preaching. So he was effectively forming this barrier to people saying, don't come at me with this.

But I'll say one more thing about this. And that's the black horse is supposed to attack Mike when he moves to the east. Well, you can read several stories about this in all of the histories that are in existence.

They see this fulfilled first in the 80s when Kansas City Fellowship plants a campus further east. And they say, this is the fulfillment. And then there's an attack that comes against the ministry in the form of Ernie Groen and others.

And they say, see, we moved to the east. Well, Mike, again, memory holds that. And now it's because we went to the east, meaning we started praying for Israel. So we went to the east. And that's why now Jane Doe is attacking the ministry. And that's the black horse.

And so again, we have multiple fulfillments in prophecies that were clearly intended to just be a one and done type thing. So anyways, that's the intro to the character that is Augustine Alcala. It's such a crazy character too. I've read some studies on him. And it is, it's not unique. That's the odd thing.

Whenever people today hear a four-year-old child is entering into the ministry, it seems foreign to us. But if you go back into the laterane years, there were multiple children who had experiences such as going into heaven for five minutes in heaven or something like this.

There's some weird stuff behind it. And there's so much to unpack with what you said. But one of the things I really want to hone in on psychology fascinates me. And I think you use the term yin and yang, which will have some feedback for.

But I used it metaphorically, everyone metaphorically. Exactly. Well, what's interesting about all of this? I randomly name drop because there's probably, I don't know how many, at this point, 200 characters on my website that I'm...

easing all these trails and maps of people together. And the way that I see them, it isn't really the person, the fame, the personality, the stage persona. I just see another node in this big schematic of people doing the same exact things.

And the Yinn and the Yang, as you described it, comes perfectly to understand how all of this works because it takes both sides. And I think that's what people miss a lot of times.

So for one of my clients, I had to take a personality test. I've mentioned this before. And whenever I took the test, the, and I was in a leadership role. So going into this client, they looked at this and I'm like the opposite of that person.

And so I had to sit down with the psychologist and she was going through this. And the empathy side, there were like seven to 12, I think 12 categories I had to go through.

The empathy side was so far off of the charts. She said, John, I don't understand how you got into a leadership role, but your empathy is so high, you will literally kill yourself to try to help another person.

And there was another category. I can't remember what she called it, but she said this category used to be called faith or religion. And you're off the scale, the other direction. You have to, for you to understand something, you can't take a leap of faith.

You have to understand it fully. You have to dissect it. You have to understand the architect. I mean, she's describing me to a T, right? I have critical thinking is off the charts. Well, that's my personality.

There are other personalities that are the opposite of mine. There are people who can take a leap of faith and they can't understand critical thinking. Well, now broadness to the scale of the revivals.

You have some person who's coming up, who's an authoritarian figure who creates an authoritarian cult. Then you have a group of people who are of the mentality that they're seeking to find such a leader.

It takes both sides and for a revival to spark, you have to have both. Then, as you said, now take it a step further before it gets destructive. You have men and women who are trying to control the doctrine and keep the herd on course.

Then you have the herd that is rising up in numbers and they're not of the same mentality. They don't understand it in the same way. So you have both sides growing up. Well, what happens is it comes a point where there's this explosion and both sides go different directions and you start to see problems and patterns exist.

Then that creates a mess. Then another one comes to try to steady the scale, right? So when I'm examining a lot of the people that I examine, I'm actually neutral on the person itself.

It's more about how did that connect to what we have today and through them, what... what information, what doctrines, et cetera, how did it channel through today? So I'm fascinated with all of that.

And getting back into the IHOP KC realm, I started seeing some of the same patterns in the leadership as it's going into IHOP KC, that's really what drove me towards digging deeper into Mike Bickel, et cetera.

Especially when I saw that Paul Cain was William Brandham's protege. Sure, sure. And that's probably a helpful segue. And I won't talk as much about Paul's early life because you'd really be more the expert about that because of how directly it connects to William Brandham into the healing revivals.

And again, just a clarification, I'm not a huge expert on this, just someone who grew up and has read a lot of the material. So I'm happy if people in the comments, if you say, hey, I was Paul Cain's daughter's best friend and went to his house, you know, whatever Paul Cain has no children.

So that's a fictional thing as we will see. But whatever the case for any of these people, I know you're the same way. We're always looking for people who have first hand accounts. So feel free to correct anything that's incorrect here.

But William Brandham has his childhood prophetic narrative. Augustine Alcala has his childhood prophetic narrative. Well, Paul Cain of course has his childhood prophetic narrative. And Paul Cain grows up and, you know, there's all of these different signs and wonders connected to his birth and his childhood and all of that.

And then there's the famous 418 prophecy, which we can get to when his mother dies, which we've historically deemed to also be false. But he preaches in the healing revivals and then the great conspiracy theory, you know, the ultimate food for conspiracy theory when it comes to Paul Cain is the post healing revival period, which I know everybody's just dying to figure out because he basically just disappears.

And he goes to Phoenix and I know John you and others have pointed out, of course, that Phoenix is one of the hotbeds for the message. And so how interesting that this guy who grows up knowing William Brandham and preaches for William Brandham happens to kind of take his hideaway period in one of the strongholds for William Brandham.

It's actually my understanding, and you can confirm this, yes or no, that Paul Cain continued preaching at certain message churches concurrently to when he was ministering in Kansas City. Is that correct? Right. So of course, even Mike Bickle, you know, with all of his craziness and flaws, would have said that the message churches were heretical and cult-like, even at that time, Mike would have said that.

And yet here's Paul effectively playing both sides. So he still has the connections, and it is very interesting. Everyone in the charismatic... movement who didn't know William Brannum was obsessed with talking about him all the time, but Paul Cain who did talked very little about him later on in his ministry.

You don't see him coming on stage every time and saying, William Brannum, this, William Brannum, that, William Brannum, this, William Brannum, that, which is very interesting. Now once Paul Cain enters into the Kansas City realm, he starts wowing and wooing all of these different leaders.

There's the famous story that Mike walks into in McDonald's and, you know, he's really wanting to meet this Paul Cain guy and he runs into Reed Graphke, who's Paul's assistant at the time and Reed says, hey, are y'all talking about Paul Cain?

Let me give you his number and then famously Mike rips it up and throws it away because he wants it to be God who connects him to Paul Cain and not a person, which if you think to yourself, you'd go, you just met in a random McDonald's and a guy overheard you talking about Paul Cain and gave you his number.

Would you not think that's God? Anyways, it's a, it's a strange thing and so of course, I won't get into all the specific prophecies that Paul Cain gives. He gives many specific prophecies and eventually everybody who meets Paul Cain wants to grab Paul Cain and put him into their movement and so eventually Paul Cain also gets into the vineyard and, you know, ministers alongside John Wimber and others and Jack Deere.

And of course, we know getting to the moral issues so we have Augustine Alcala who had a homosexual lifestyle through much of his life. Well Paul Cain, this is the great controversy, comes out in 2005 and admits that he has lived a homosexual lifestyle.

Well, a funny story that I thought I'd share is you can, you can watch this, these clips on YouTube when what's called the Lakeland Revival starts in about 2008 in Lakeland, Florida through Todd Bentley and we could do a whole video about Todd Bentley and that would be a long, sorted tale.

But Paul Cain is invited. Now Paul Cain is persona non grata in every major charismatic movement at this point because all of the major leaders have pushed him aside and again, some people would say it was wrong that they did that, some people would say it was right that they did that.

But Jack Deere, Rick Joyner and Mike Pickle, three significant leaders all come out and say Paul is no longer qualified for ministry, he's not repentant and therefore we don't want anything to do with him visibly.

Now of course, we know Mike was still walking behind the buildings that I hop KC where he had effectively moved witness protection programmed Paul Cain in Kansas City to kind of keep him close and you see this with Mike, he likes to keep people close.

So when he abuses Jane Doe, he gets an apartment, he wants her to be right near him. So he does this with Paul Cane, he wants to keep him close, but he will not put him on platform.

He doesn't want people to see the true person in all of his flaws and foibles and brokenness. And so Paul admits in 2005 to a homosexual lifestyle, three of the main leaders in the charismatic movement, also corroborate this and say he's confessed this and they step him down from their ministries.

Well, then all of a sudden, Todd Bentley invites Paul Cane to come on stage and minister in the Lakeland revival, which is a healing revival that begins in Florida. And he comes on stage and the first thing he says in front of probably, I think there was probably 10,000 people there, is he says on the microphone, I'm a lifelong celibate.

And so, I mean, unprompted, nobody, you know, no one's asking about this, no one is bringing this up here on stage in front of 10,000 people, but unprompted after a full confession in charisma news in 2005, Paul Cane says, I'm a celibate.

And then, even worse, he begins to prophesy over one of Todd Bentley's interns. And he says, I have the quote here, as he's prophesying over him, he says, just about every one of Todd's interns, both male and female, I've discerned a lot of purity in them.

Well, the scandal that comes out of Lakeland is that Todd has been both spiritual abusing and manipulating, but also engaging in sexual relationships with his interns. And so, the one thing that Paul sees fit to say is, Todd, you and your interns are so pure.

And then he says, and you'll enjoy this, this is ladder rain language directly in 2008. At the Lakeland revival, he says, as he meets Todd, and this always says, I have a quote, I have met the new breed.

I have absolutely met the new breed. And when you brought Todd Bentley and I together, the angel of the Lord said, you found what you're looking for. This, my favorite quote here, this is a man without guile.

Well, of course, Todd Bentley was one of the most notorious abusers, bullies, I mean, all you gotta do is one Google search and you'll find out all about who Todd Bentley is, and even all neo-carrismatic leaders that I know of would totally renounce Todd in his ministry.

But the great stain upon this entire section of the neo-carrismatic movement, is that not just Paul Cain, but many, many, many other leaders stood on stage and effectively said what he said that Todd Bentley was actually, he was the new breed.

He was the new thing that God was raising up. And so I find it very interesting that Paul Cain, he does this and you can tell me, you know, if you want to share anything on your end, but he frequently admits to things and then walks them back and admits to things and then walks them back and then says this thing to one person and says another thing to another person and ministers in Kansas City with kind of more, again, quote unquote, theologically orthodox.

Of course, there was issues in Kansas City, but and then also mess, you know, also ministers to the vineyard and also has potential secret CIA connections. And so Paul is playing all sides. He's playing every side of the coin and you can tell that he's intentionally creating confusion to try to hide whatever it is and we might not ever truly know that was going on.

You know, whenever I had my last conversation with Bob Scott, which I think will come out after this one if I remember the order correctly, I said something that's going to generate lots of hate mail which I do often and I said that I felt somewhat sorry for Mike Bickle and take this all the way back to what I said previously.

I'm forever an empath, but more than that, if you are a Christian, you have to believe that God can change the hearts and God can forgive the sinners. So it really shouldn't be that out of place, but because of what it is, I know I'll receive a little bit of hate mail but also compare it to what we said earlier about the two sides of people and their personalities and remember that many of these people who create these stage acts, they get themselves into positions that they should never be in the first place.

Like the psychologist who's examining me because I'm in this leadership role and my personality doesn't fit, many of these in business that's okay. You can kind of pull it off, but in a religious setting where you're mentoring and guiding people, it's not okay.

There are people who should never be in the ministry and that's the point I tried to make with Bob. If Mike Bickle had just been a parishioner and had a God help early, this could have been cut off right from the beginning.

This would have never exploded to what it is. But now, think about Paul Cane. So in the message movement, there's this concept that I think a lot of people outside struggle to grasp and that's that everybody wants to be something.

You are under the indoctrination of an authoritarian figure, William Brannum, who's teaching you to become more than you are, manifest sons of God, and you too can be just like me. You can speak a squirrel into existence was one of the things that they taught in Latter-Rain.

Everybody wants to do it. And so whenever when you describe Paul Cane, I was struggling a little bit not to laugh because he's this big name and he's got this power and this fame, we in the message would have viewed him as just simply.

leech. This is a man who wants to start a ministry, who has nothing, who will, will your Brannum truly, even though he became the protege in some ways, I don't think will your Brannum would have given him the time of day, because that's Brannum's personality, not Kane's personality.

What happened was, and I've had conversations with Paul Kane about this, what he said confirms also what the researchers say out there. Brannum needed a person to go into Germany, because interestingly there, enough, there was a situation that seemed to involved homosexuality that happened in Germany, while Brannum was touring with several homosexual men in Germany, and Brannum was not permitted to go back for whatever reason. I have my ideas, but I'll let the audience say what it would. So he calls Paul Kane and he says, Paul Kane, can you go to Germany for me?

So Paul Kane ended up going to Germany. Paul Kane tells this all for the rest of his life, that's his connection to Brannum. If you really examine all of the many things that he says about his connection to Brannum, it all goes back to that one point, and there's not much more than that.

And when you look at the newspapers, you find in his advertisements, he's advertising himself as another William Brannum. You don't find many places where William Brannum is saying, oh, this is Paul Kane, come here him, right? So you have these leeches out there. So the problem is, many of these leeches, as I said, their personalities are for people who should never be in Christian leadership, and they have critical flaws. When I talk to Paul Kane about many, many things, there's some things I still can't talk about. But I'm sitting here talking to him on the phone,

and I've got multiple monitors. So in this monitor, I've got the Charisma Magazine article that you're talking about where he confessed. I've got his research over here, and I just casually mentioned it because I wanted to hear what he would say. And he shut me off instantly, know that never happened. And I'm looking at his confession, right? But there's another aspect of this, which I don't fully entertain because I can't prove it, but I understand what happens.

Also with the leeches, you have people who are fighting for control and power, which Paul Kane was. And those who do keep a very meticulous record of every conversation that they ever have with every person. Paul Kane did this, right? Because they want to have you have to have dirt on your enemies, and all of this movement, instead of creating this unified body of Christ, it created several different men who wanted to fight for their own power. It's a power struggle, right? So Paul Kane is doing this. He's fighting for power.

And the thing where it gets really weird is, as these men are fighting for power, the, and their personalities don't really match the positions that they're getting themselves into, they start to create the stage persona and psychologically, they're creating a fictional character for the stage.

And after you do this so long, you start to get invent new ways in which you can appeal to the crowd. You start to say things and those things are boisterous and you may take some event and you may make it sound so spiritual when you know it's not, but you make, you overemphasize the position, right?

Well, after you say it so many times, mentally, you can't help but start to believe what it is that you've said, even though it wasn't true. Mentally, you start to believe it and then you overemphasize that.

And so these stories grow into, like a snowball going down. Right, Hill. So psychologically, we're Paul Cain ended up with this great big ministry that you're talking about, right? I remember looking through the research of this little man who's a leech who's trying to, basically trying to become William Brannum.

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org.

On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Steven Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

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When people hear that some of these men embellished their stories or invented stories or exaggerated miracles. I think for some people within the charismatic movement or in other places, they might think that that's not really that big of a deal, right?

So when we talk about sexual abuse and moral scandals, that can feel way more important. And of course, in some ways it is. I would never want to equivocate the two. But what I would say is don't discount how big of a deal it is when someone claims to have done something that they didn't do.

And then, tells you- that you can do what they did but never actually did. Because what does that do? It shipwrecks people's faith. People have entirely rejected Jesus and Christianity and faith altogether because they were told they can do certain things that the people telling them that did not even do.

And so I would just say, even if, you know, so for the people who maybe had a blend, you know, if you believe in true prophetic ministry, then maybe you believe that there were some legitimate things that happened and I would be one of those people.

I think something happened in some of these ministries not necessarily Paul Cain and the ones we've mentioned. But the second you start inventing things, I would tell people you effectively have the grounds to cancel out almost all of the true stuff.

If there was any, because it's so difficult to tell the mixture. And so, you know, I think it's, you know, so for example, maybe briefly I can get into Bob Jones because this is a helpful segue.

Bob Jones, of course, has a childhood prophetic narrative. So now we have Paul Cain, Augustine Alcala, Bob Jones, the three biggest figures in the Kansas City prophetic history all have divine childhoods. They're all seeing visions, they're all whatever, which as we can get to, and this is what you're pointing out, is probably related to their personality more than it is anything that truly occurred as a child.

Because when you think about the way the Bible works, the Bible's so big about confirmation and discernment of prophecies and prophetic words. And who was helping these five year old, six year old, seven year olds?

What was their parents who were alcoholics? And, you know, all of these issues, they're the only ones that ever heard these stories if they even heard them at all. So, Bob Jones claims to have these divine angelic visitations.

He first sees the angel Gabriel at age nine, right? And at the age of 13, he hears the audible voice of God calling to him at age 15, he claims to have been taken out of his body and brought before God's throne.

By the way, per Bob's own testimony, he is not a Christian. So, how are you being taken up before the throne of God if you don't even know Jesus? Because according to, even Bob Jones and Mike Bickel's theology, if you're an unregenerate sinner, you couldn't stand in the presence of God.

And yet here are these children and Bob's gonna say that he doesn't get saved until much later, but he's been taken up before the throne of God. How does that work? Yeah. So, of course, Bob famously, and I want to say this with a lot of, again, a lot of compassion, I think it is possible to...

who believe that these men really destroyed a lot of people and also see the fact that they were manipulated, abused and destroyed by the people who came before them. And that doesn't justify anything.

It just is what it is. So Bob ends up in a mental institution. He struggles with heavy drinking and gambling. And so he ends up hospitalized in a mental ward of the VA and he begins seeing demons.

So he's seeing all of these demons. So again, he's confessing to being demonized and tormented. But yet at age 15, he's already been to the throne of God and seen the angel Gabriel and heard the audible voice of God.

And then basically by the time we get to the prophetic history, both Bob Jones and Mike Bickle claim that Bob would normally get five to 10 visions a night and he would see angels 10 to 15 times a week.

And that had been happening since 1974. So thanks to Ernie Groen, who did the math for us, he says, if accurate, this translates to anywhere from 27,375 to 54,000 to 54,750 visions, in addition, 7800 to 11,700 angelic visitations.

So we're talking, by the time it gets to the 90s, or they're on the 90s, close to 100,000, either angelic visitations or open visions of heaven, which of course is far more than anyone in the Bible or anyone else in church history.

And in fact, this is a funny part about Mike. In order to offset this, here's what Mike does. He tells you repeatedly that Bob Jones saw five to 10 visions a night and angels 10 to 15 times a week.

And then Mike says, but I've only heard the audible voice of God three times. This is what he says. He loved to say that because why? Because that thin offsets Bob's craziness with his credibility.

But then, and I would encourage anybody, go back and listen to Mike from the 1980s on and you will find that he claims at least 10 to 15 times to have heard the audible voice of the Lord.

Repeat it. So what he's doing is he'll claim it in the moment to give it more authority. And then he'll backtrack it later on to make him seem more normal. And so this is the, I would say it's even gaslighting, right?

If we know, again, I know that term is thrown around loosely now, but I think that's what it is where you know you heard Mike say just a month ago that he heard the audible voice of the Lord.

And you know a couple months earlier, he also said he heard the audible voice of the Lord. And now he's telling you, but I've only heard it three times and it doesn't happen to me a lot.

I'm just a normal guy like you. So there's this gaslighting happening. And Bob Jones, unlike Augustine and Paul Cain, he doesn't have a... racked connection that I know of to the healing revivals so he wasn't you know a childhood evangelist in the healing revivals but there's no way that Bob was not deeply entrenched in the latter rain because he's clear about the manifested sons of God he's clear about the billion soul harvest he's clear about Joel's army we were all raised thinking that Bob Jones received that out of nowhere out of the clear blue sky he's talking about Joel's

army and the billion soul harvest which of course you know I don't know if you know it be an interesting project the billion soul harvest goes way back it goes way further than Bob Jones this is you know a thing and so to to cap off Bob Jones just to recap we've got Paul Cain, childhood prophetic narrative moral issues crashes out Augustine I'll call a childhood prophetic narrative moral issues crashes out Bob Jones childhood prophetic narrative well of course the famous thing that happens with Bob Jones is he uses prophecy to manipulate several women to take their clothes off so that he can prophesy

over them and there's a whole it's disgusting I don't even want to say the language that he used because it's so manipulative and gross I just can't even utter it here but then that gives Mike I almost I can't prove this of course but I almost think Mike was thrilled every time these guys disqualified themselves from ministry because he was always if they didn't he would have to do what he did to Bob Scott and others he'd have to find a way to get them out and so I think he's just happy and by the way to round off Bob Jones Bob

Jones gives a famous prophecy to Kansas City Fellowship speaking to the leaders of the movement and he says if you have even one case of sexual immorality you're disqualified forever and I can I could show anybody who wants to see the the clip of him saying that he says in front of everybody the Lord's so serious about it that even one time and you're gone for good well all of those guys would have been completely disqualified according to his own his own word later on he rewrites that as this happens frequently again with Bob Jones

because for example with Mike's brother Pat who was a quadriplegic the famous prophecy that really I would say is the hinge of the entire prophetic history it all rises or falls on this one story well Bob Jones is clearly saying and everybody hears him say it that Pat's gonna get up and that's gonna start the revival well in the late 90s Bob starts to get cold feet and he starts to say I never said he would be healed I said he would get up you know again there's the gas lining again so it then again it's it's

reinterpreted yet again. So Bob reinterpreted his word by saying, well, I'm only talking about the in-depth act that occurs in the context of a man and a woman in a bedroom, and I'll leave it at that.

He's saying there has to be that act that takes place or it's not sexual morality. So again, we have this constant rewriting, this constant memory holding. And then again, I say gaslighting intentionally. Many people left this movement because they were tired of being told that they didn't hear what they heard.

And I know that's the same. You've mentioned this with the message and you can elaborate on that. But I would say that's significant. When people tell you that you didn't hear what you know you heard, that eventually just becomes a crisis and you have to deal with it.

I know this episode is a who's who episode, but I'm going to hijack it for just a minute and go to a what's what? Because I've seen this in the comment feeds too and I've seen it in some of the forums and groups that I'm a member of.

But whenever people who were never part of this and you've got all these heresy hunters and these other people that are fighting it, when they see that these guys are telling stories that aren't true and how their prophecies change and evolve over time, they instantly say, well, these people are liars.

They're habitual liars, nothing more. But you have to understand it's much more complex than that and people are more complex than that. When I was going through the depths of depression coming out of this thing, I've mentioned this a few times.

I had a cousin who talked to me through basically saved my life, kept me from being becoming suicidal and I kept asking him, why were you not part of the religion we were in?

And he's, you know, we're followers of William Brannum and he said, John, I believe the cowboy religion and I said, what's that Marcus? And he says, love God, love your neighbors that aren't trying to kill you and be kind to animals.

And he went on to tell me why he left the church and Marcus was, sadly, he died during COVID. He was my best friend, but he was this big, strong karate guy. He was a black belt and karate.

He was probably a whole head taller than me and he was built like Jason Memoa. And in fact, when I see Jason Memoa, I always think of Marcus because he looked exactly like him.

And he was on a canoeing trip and the rapids apparently was, it was a little bit more swift than the other people from the church could take. And one of them, I think, could have drowned it possibly had he not been there.

Marcus basically saved the people that was there and he did it through his own strength. He was just a, he was that strong of a person. Well, the people that he saved, one of them gets on and gives it, gets on the stage during church.

I said stage instead of platform, but. It becomes like a stage act. He gets up there and he starts telling this over-spiritualized story how the demons were out to get him and God came down and in his power and awe and, you know, God may have been involved, but it was through Marcus and Marcus knew what was happening, right?

And he said, I left. I never came back because the story they told, while, you know, God may have used me. That's not what happened in the way that they told it. So he left, he never came back.

When you're in this type of movement, you are trained to believe that it's okay to embellish stories for the sake of a holy end. And you do it and when you embellish it, if you say it verbally, you begin to believe your embellishments.

So the people, this is the weird part, psychologically speaking, as you're effectively lying, the lie becomes truth in your head and people do this over and over and over. And if you're a speaker who's doing this, by the end of your ministry, you're going to believe everything that you said that was complete nonsense.

That's how it works, right? So as these guys are telling these fables, they start to believe them. We in the Brannum movement, when we, when I first came across Bob Jones telling the story of how, how he was a sinner and he's walking with God and he's angel of this visitations, all this weird stuff.

And all these other guys that are doing it, they're repeating the stage act of Brannum. Brannum did the same thing. He had these whole series of sermons. He would say gifts and callings are without repentance.

And he would talk about how immoral his lifestyle was early on, how the angels of visiting him, how he didn't, he was a sinner until, I can't remember what year, 33, he claimed. The amount of the story was true, but he probably believed it by the end of his life.

So as they're telling these stories, they start to believe it. And I've studied just that, you know, beyond the psychology, just from a religious standpoint, it's wrong to do that. Like you said, you're going to drive people away from the faith.

But where did it begin? And the earliest I can find it is in the Nostics. There was a Nostic group that truly believed that you could tell lies for the sake of a holy end, as long as you convince the person to God, you're doing a holy thing.

Yeah, I mean, it really is. And I've been someone who's done public speaking for much of my life, which is not very good for you. So in the sense of, unless you have tremendous, tremendous support, which thankfully I have had, and not just tremendous support, unless you have consistent people telling you, knock it off, that's not true.

who don't twist this, I was there. Because the shameful part is, once someone starts believing their own lie about a story, what really pains you is thinking about all of the people who were there.

And this is why, and I don't recommend the book, okay, with no disrespect to the guy who wrote it as a person. I don't know him, but the book by Daniel Falls about the Kansas City prophets and Pat Bickel.

I think Daniel's not an unbiased source and many of his comments in support of Bob Hartley and others, I think are reprehensible. So I would just say that up front. But even he, as he tells this narrative, even he has to note at many points in his own experience of the history of the Kansas City prophets, you'll see him say something like, I know later on they would say this, but that's not the way it happened, I was there.

And Bob Scott, who's a more reliable source, I think, would say the same thing. So the question becomes, if you're the other person who was present during that story, and you know it's false, it's also your responsibility.

If that person will listen, which if they're a narcissist, they won't. And you've done your part and that's all you can do. But to say, hey, I know you twisted that. I was there, it wasn't like that.

You know, and so what happens is all of these people, and here's what happens, these prophetic guys would come to your church and they would tell these crazy stories. I mean, crazy stories, but none of them would ever happen when they were at your church.

Right. So you start to think, wait a second. Are we the problem? And so this is the classic thing. And I would say one more thing about prophecy. And this is my opinion, my theological take as a pastor, but I also think it's within the best of the charismatic Pentecostal movement over the last 100 years in its best manifestations and its most thoughtful manifestations, is that prophecy does not operate the way that all of these men said it operates.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12, well, the word gift is not in that chapter. The word gift doesn't appear. It's, I had to study Greek for five years, I was trained in classical Greek.

So the phrase in 1 Corinthians 12 is top nomatica, which literally means the spirit things or the spiritual things. Now most translations say gifts there. So the problem there is that we view prophecy or at least those men and many others in the charismatic movement, view prophecy as, if you say it's a...

gift, right? We think of gifts as something that once we have them, we possess them. Their mind, I own them. Absolutely. But in 1 Corinthians 12, the word that's used is manifestation. So if you're someone like me who still remains open to these things, the theological key there is that these are things that God can sovereignly do through anyone at any time, they are not things that we possess internally. So when we think of gifts, we think he's a gifted musician. And that's just something you're born with. Well, in the New Testament, no one is born, and even in the Old Testament, by the way, in the Old Testament, prophets

prophesy when the Spirit of God comes upon them, it is not something they can do at will. And in fact, at will prophecy is called divination. It's called sooth saying. That is not the same thing. And so really, that's where I think the argument can be made that many of these men were involved in divination, that these, some of these things were coming from other sources. And so if you, if you come to the understanding that these are manifestations, God enables you to say, God, I am open to be used in these things, but I do not believe

that I can do them at will. So this also answers our cessationist friends. And again, love and respect, many cessationist friends. But they would say, well, if anyone can, if healing still happens today, then go to the hospital and empty it out. Well, according to, I think the best theology of the gifts of the Spirit, I don't possess the gift of healing. All I can do is pray for someone, if God sovereignly chooses to manifest that ability in the moment, he's free to do so. And so I think that's where things got so off. And that's what attached

the gift to the men. And they wanted it to be that way. The gift comes when I'm here. And so anyways, it's funny because even with William Brandon and others, there was also kind of a contradiction because at one point they'd claim they've had this gift from the childhood, but then he would come to a meeting and say he can only do it when the angel of the Lord comes. So it's like, which one is it? You know, right. Yeah. I was cheering you on, man. I have waited for somebody else to say that besides me because that's exactly

it. What this did. So in the ancient world, you also had the, what basically became the modern plays of today. But back in the ancient world, it was all about religion and politics were merged one and the same. So they would have these stage acts that were about the mythologies.

And then they would refine the mythologies. That's why you see some mythologies morph into an entirely new thing because through the plays and the stage acts, it became something different. I think in the cults of Dionysus is the one that I studied the most had what was it for per season something like this. Anyway, they're creating and they were finding their stage acts and the stage act that was created in Laterane, which all of these guys have modeled themselves after.

It included the same aspects that you said. I was seeing these things. I was a prophet since I was a kid. William Brandham said, I had my first prophecy. I think he said six months older.

Some ridiculous thing, right? And later he revised it to two because people realized, no, that's not quite possible, man. And so these things, they're pattering themselves after Brandham. Well, Brandham was not pattering, patterning himself off of some new invention. He was meant word by other names that I could drop. I won't because that we're doing a who's who. But the big one was John Alexander Dowey, which I will explain. He was one of the biggest cult leaders and prototypes in the world today. Go to Wikipedia, type in John Alexander Dowey. You'll see exactly what I'm talking about. He was a con artist, a criminal. I've written an entire book on

his shenanigans, but he was modeling after this. And he was one in the long light of men who tried to take through British Israelism and Christian identity in the early form of Christian identity.

The notion that we're bringing back an old Testament style prophet. And so therefore, the gifts of the spirit mentioned in the New Testament apply in this way to me. I'm your cult leader who has a gift of being your prophet. But if you read the verse that they always omit in every one of these cults is Luke 1616. The law on the prophets were until John. And since then the, I can't remember the last phrase, but it's something to the effect that the gifts of the the kingdom of God is preached or something to that. That's right. That's right. So it's a

clear separation. We had prophets of old under the old covenant. Now we have a new covenant, which has the Holy Spirit. Who leads you and guides you? You no longer need this prophet figure.

But these authoritarian cults wanted to reestablish that. And because of that word, like you said, the gifts, because that word exists, they were able to sway the entire religion in a new direction. Yeah. Yeah. And it's helpful to note, and this is just the most basic connection. Because again, I think, I think some people are, you know, you could draw some form of historical connection between almost anybody, right? If you were a card enough, you can find a way to link. But I want people to see how specific this is. John Alexander Dowie claimed that the end of Malachi about God sending Elijah was about him. William Branum claimed that the

last passage in Malachi a guy about God sending Elijah was about him. By the way, they all thought that there would only be one, just so you know. So they're all actually giving each other the middle finger in doing this, by the way. Exactly. So Yahweh says Malachi, the prophecy about Elijah is about me. Brandon says the prophecy about Elijah, it's about me. Well, if you read Jack Deer's article about Paul Cain, Paul Cain's Bible opens to the book of Malachi, I don't remember the way Jack words it, but he basically says Paul winks at me and clearly

says this is about me. Yeah. And so exactly what you said. And by the way, this is where without I'm not a psychologist, but one thing I do know from having some experience with certain individuals, when people start to have clinical delusions, the first thing they do is claim to be a famous or sacred figure. So schizophrenic people will often tell you, I am Jesus Christ. They pick some kind of lofty figure. And in that moment, that's the thing about schizophrenic people. It's kind of like what you were saying earlier, they're not lying. They just have an illness.

There's something is wrong inside of them. They think they are Jesus Christ, like in that moment. And so people who are somewhere on that spectrum, I don't think that any of these men were so cold and calculating that they were like, I'm going to invent an Elijah narrative to try.

I think they started to believe that they really were. And they really were the fulfillment of these things. And so and it's crazy too, because this is how they go about rewriting things. And even with the prophetic history to add one more piece, all of the prophetic history is given to Kansas City Fellowship, which would later become Metro Vineyard. Okay. Read the prophecies. They are all specific to Kansas City Fellowship, Metro Vineyard. Read the blueprint prophecy, prophecies, excuse me, which is supposed to be the most important prophecy for IHOP. It's about Kansas City Fellowship. It specifically talks about the different campuses that will come to

Kansas City Fellowship. Well, Kansas City Fellowship becomes Metro Vineyard. Mike Bickle separates from Metro Vineyard. He leaves Metro Vineyard. He starts a brand new thing that by the way destroys many lives in Metro Vineyard and completely decimates what was from many accounts I've heard of very beautiful church that really loved people.

What do you know? He leaves the church the prophecies were made about. And now the prophecies leave with him. Isn't that interesting. If you were to be consistent, once he separated permanently from Metro Vineyard and started his own thing, and he's very clear, he's not claiming our church is Metro Vineyard now. He's not saying, we are the continuation of Kansas City Fellowship. He's not saying that overtly, but he takes all the prophecies that all of these men specifically said are for this church and apply them to IHOP KC because ultimately, the prophecies weren't about Kansas City Fellowship. They weren't about Metro Vineyard. They weren't even about

IHOP KC. They were about Mike Pickle. It all centered around him to the point where if he re-emerges in five years with a totally new ministry other than IHOP, all those same prophecies are going to be about him all over again.

And therein lies the problem in the dilemma. His Mike Pickle at this point, whenever he's creating all of this, does he have some sort of a mental issue that's causing delusions? Is he creating a stage act and has a mythology or is a combination of all of it? And we may never know, but it's fascinating stuff. I can't wait to get deeper into all of this history.

So thank you so much for doing this. Absolutely, John. It's always a pleasure. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at www.William-Branum.org. For more about the dark side of the laterane movement, you can read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Branum and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Hottomall.