God's "Generals," Man's Criminals: IHOPKC Lawsuits

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Jed Hartley, son of a prophet and former member of the International House of Prayer. Jed it's good to be back and to talk all things I hop KCE and now we're diving into some of the legal aspects of I hop KCE and I'll never forget when I first began digging into Branhamism I knew nothing about this entire world that would soon become my

life but I knew basically that Branham was an offshoot of Pentecostalism of some sort. So my journey actually began digging slightly into Pentecostalism just enough to skin the surface and I went back in time it was probably I want to say I went back to the early 1900s maybe late 1800s and because of John Alexander Dauy who is a name at that time I didn't know but he would become a big name in this because of him there were so many faith healers these stage acts that would rise up I hesitate to call them faith healers because they're really not

but all of these guys the snake oil salesmen I'll say it like that these guys would pop them up everywhere right and they would tell people you don't need your medicine and the doctor of Dauy was actually you shouldn't use your medicine because if you do you're citing with the devil it was demonic so that doctrine kind of spread because he made so many millions of dollars off of it people were doing it and people were dying as you can imagine because without the medicines they there are people who die but the the legal aspects got really

weird because in my mind I wanted to understand well what happened why all the lawsuits and why you don't hear about this anymore and I started studying just case laws on religion and I came across this United States I think it was a Supreme Court case either either that it was a higher court where they were going after that the going after this medicinal company this religious medicinal company because this company was selling the Pentecostal movement little vials of this poison that they could take in the snake handling and poison drinking churches.

And it was literally religious poison. They were putting arsenic or something like this into these little vials so that the Pentecostus could go into church and drink it and fulfill the end of the book of Mark where you can drink deadly things and handle snakes. And this company was making money, profiting off of this, and literally poisoning half of the Pentecostus sex that, you know, practiced this stuff. So the legal aspects just astound me to think that in today's world that this can even exist. And I have recently, as of just last month, I had a conversation with a guy

who's either father or uncle who was real big in the snake handling sex of Pentecostalism. And this thing still exists today. So yeah, very curious to get into what you have to say about IHOPKC and all the legal issues. Yeah, it's, so your, your pursuit of looking in the historical 1900s to Dauy and all that and all the research that you have done is almost exactly what I started to do too in the same sort of similar process of being like, hey, what, what was the history of the world that I grew up in, which is how I found you initially,

and thank goodness that you did all of that great research because I probably would have hit a lot of dead ends and whatnot. But I also too was kind of looking back and being like, how much is my history rooted in some of this snake oil salesman stuff, which because you don't think of it, or at least I didn't think of it growing up, I knew about con artists, I knew about faith healers who were pretending and who were just, you know, charlatans and con artists.

And I always thought that that was just other groups of individuals or that was other denominations or like I never really put it together that that's like the direct ancestry of my spiritual lineage and what created birth to ihop and what created the letter reign movement and all of that was these people like Dauy and the historical context of how they really created a lot of stories and fabrications in order to still money from people to harm individuals to keep them from getting proper medication like Jack Coe was another example of someone who did this in the more recent times. He was a faith healer

who was there was a case brought against him because of what actually happened is he has this performance that Jack Coe was doing and for those who don't know Jack Coe, like Jack Coe was a pretty famous evangelist and a pretty prominent evangelist who traveled in like the 1960s and who would lead very big healing revivals. If I'm not mistaken, he used to boast about having the largest tent revival in human history because he went and he measured. I can't remember who else it was. It might have been, it might have been Brandon. I can't remember who it was,

but he measured someone else's tent like he actually went and walked the length of the tent and then ordered a tent that was like two feet bigger so that he could have the largest tent in revival history or whatever. So he was putting on these like really big spectacles and

and during his sort of performance, he would proclaim that people would be healed. So people would come up and he would say that they were healed whether or not they were, but like let's say that you come up and you say that you have a bad back. He would like put his hand over your back and say in the name of Jesus, you are healed. Go forth and he wouldn't wait for them to be like to check. It was sort of like you are healed. Walk forth with understanding that you're healed. If you're still feeling pain, you know, it's just a part of the process. Keep walking

and eventually that you will be totally healed, but it was sort of this like faith act. So he was able to collect a lot of testimonies that weren't based in any actual evidence. It was just like we're saying that you're healed. So therefore you are healed and look, this person got healed and it's a way to rack up numbers pretty quickly. But one thing that he did specifically, and this is a story that people can look up, but there was a young boy who was like three years, four years old, and his mother, the boy's mother, brought him to one of these

one of Kho's healing revivals. And at the meeting, Kho did the same thing where he kind of proclaims that the boy is healed and the boy had polio. And he couldn't walk. So he had these big braces that like the force gump braces. I don't know if force gump had polio, but that sort of like those braces and Kho instructed the mother to remove the braces because the boy was healed.

And that in like an act of faith that she would remove the braces, have him walk, and he would walk free of these braces and be healed. Well, she does. She removes the braces. She has him walk. If there's like a week goes by, and the boy is clearly in a ton of pain, she reaches out to co again, and again, co says to have him walk in an active faith. And I think basically she does it for a little while and then realizes that the boy is not getting better and that he has not been healed.

And he in fact was damaged by removing the leg braces because like they're there for a reason, you know, and they're there to support him. And so that this boy is walking with polio and and is harming his spine and his ability to walk because they're doing this to act faith.

And so she brings, or the her and the father of the boy, bring a suit against co for

what he had done. And in a lot of these different instances when faith healers are brought to any sort of like public trial or any any sort of a criminal or civil trial, usually what they're charged with is practicing medicine without license because you can't you can't charge someone with fraud in the American judicial system because well, you can't you can't charge a faith healer with fraud because that is freedom of religion, freedom of religious expression. Like it's just because we have so robust defenses of any sort of expression of religion, co was never going to be

able to like be held accountable for saying fraudulent things or having people come up and pretending like they were healed when they weren't healed. At least from what I know, there's never been any sort of indication that any of these faith healers have ever been held accountable for actually deceiving the masses. It's always this got to find a way to hold them accountable and the ways that it's done are by charging them with practicing medicine without a license. And so anyway, long story, short co like gets booked and I can't remember exactly all the details, but he goes to like a jail,

he's not in jail, he's not in prison, he never did any time, but he had a photo op where he stood behind bars and got basically in the newspaper, the picture of him kind of very infamously looking like ending behind bars looking towards the camera as if this was, as if he was being persecuted, as if he was the one who the law was like coming after just because he had an act of faith.

And that's the way that it was taught in the way that I grew up. Like I remember hearing about Co and about these other faith healers and how if you demonstrate the power of God too much, there are going to be people who come after you and Co was an example of that that he was healing so many people that he was put into prison.

There's actually a video of a woman saying exactly this where she was like, that's her sort of legacy that she's telling about Jack Co is that he was so, he healed so many people that he was put in prison.

Well, he was never put in prison and it wasn't because he was healing people. It was because he was not healing people. He was pretending to heal people and that they weren't getting healed.

And I think that they're ended up being a some sort of settlement that happened but typically any sense of justice that I've seen in these, like historically in this world is usually like civil cases where the family get paid some measure of damages and it's negotiated outside of court.

So one, we don't have a whole lot of like history and precedent to even talk about these things and make sense that there's like those stories get buried.

Anyway, I went on a huge tangent there but just the point being is the criminal cases, the interaction of these faith healers and these abusers and these con artists with like being held accountable to actually like legally being held accountable is something that very, very rarely happens.

So yeah, I was gonna say more but I should let you actually get a word in here, John. Sorry. You don't want me to start talking because when I do, I never stop, man.

You know, everybody likes a good martyr story and that's what the, you know, they spend these things like that and they spend it into such a way that the cult leaders, the authoritarian figures, they're made out to be martyrs and these guys are not and they're far from it.

I remember when I was doing my research when I finally got to researching Dauy and I wrote a published a book on it,

it got crazy because the lawsuits against him were in the hundreds, not tens, not, I mean, there were, I think at one point, he had in process, I think it was like 300 lawsuits in process at that moment.

So he was fighting a large number of them and the way that, His, when Dowie created his empire, his financial empire, he had these makeshift healing homes that if you had a lot of money and you contacted Dowie's team and displayed that you had a lot of money, then you could send your sick loved one or yourself into these healing homes.

And when they got there, these things were, I'm laughing, it's absurd, it's really sad, it shouldn't be funny. But they had these little shanties that were so poorly constructed that probably one patient's money could have purchased the whole shanty.

And they get in here and people with very deadly diseases are in these cots with no separation of them and the other person with the disease. So you're sitting literally next to some death case that could infect you and get take your life.

And it did. People that this would happen to and they would go through strenuous exercises to heal them. Some of it very painful. And if a person didn't display their healing, if they, in other words, if they didn't get healed, then they were made a spectacle of for the other sick patients in the room.

This person doesn't have enough faith, he's not getting healed. And they would forcibly jack them from the buildings, sometimes in the cold, sometimes with nothing, but the little hospital gowns or whatever. And the neighbors would come take these poor victims from the streets and try to get them some medical care.

So there were numerous lawsuits being filed. And there came a point at which some of them stuck because he was legitimately operating a hospital, but he started to separate himself from this and the court cases got really weird.

That in the book a little bit, all the while he's telling people come to the healing homes, give me your money, you can be healed and don't go, don't go to the doctors, the doctors are the devil's tools, he himself is going to physicians for, and there was a physician on staff, there were people who were helping him medically, especially towards the end of his life whenever he started into his health decline.

But this was the basis for what became modern pedocostalism. When Charles Vox Parham created his sect, he modeled it after John Alexander Dowey, which is the biggest of the con artist, and also he modeled it after Frank Sanford's sect, which had the same kind of scheme going on.

And that really started this big ball rolling. Well Dowey set the precedent for the faith healers, they all wanted to be the, I think there was like ten million dollars he made in just a year, it was crazy.

Everybody wanted that, so they started modeling after that pattern. But Dowey also set the precedent for... or the legal aspect, because in the end, after these hundreds of lawsuits were flung at him, in the end, he was able to claim separation of church and state.

You can't attack him, I can believe whatever I want. And the con artist eventually got away with it. Well, and Parham had similar things like this too. But didn't he have a case where he was working with someone about turning metal into gold?

There was some, do you remember what I'm talking about? I mentioned that, I can't remember where I mentioned that, but it's the reverse. So the scam artist, the scam artist got scammed. Oh, he got it.

Somebody came along and said, Hey man, if you invest in our company, we can take this literally a liquor and you can put it on ordinary rocks and then it'll turn it into gold from God.

And Parham started investing in it. Now, personally, I think Parham did not get duped, but the newspapers make it out like he did. I thought Parham saw it as an opportunity to make a lot of money by duping other people, but that's my opinion.

Gotcha, gotcha. So he was, yeah, he bought into it, whether he knew what was going on or whether he was duped. Now he did get into some legal trouble, a lot of legal trouble, because he, everybody who studied Parham knows this.

He got into trouble because he, in his sleep, sexually got involved with one of his students. And that story, if you do a search on Parham, you can find that. I was choosing my words carefully, so I don't get it.

Yes, yeah. But going beyond that, Parham admitted it and he said, yes, I did, but I did it in my sleep and you can't hold me accountable for what I do when I sleep, which is weird.

That's what he admitted. But what you don't find written about very much during the course of this lawsuit with between him and the young man, Parham, the reason why this existed, Parham was getting involved in the student ministry and it was widespread.

He was holding these student conventions where the parents would drop off their children and Parham was praying upon the children apparently because there were numerous letters and statements and testimonies in this trial that emerged where Parham, there were enough voices that in the mouth of two or three witnesses, Parham should have gone to prison.

How he got out of it, I don't know. Well, I mean, that's a pretty perfect segue into some of what is going on today because what two different things, one, when you're talking about the con, the snake oil stuff, again, it's easy to think of this as something that was happening in the sort of wild west of the early 1900s in the very lawless.

days before the, you know, food and drug administration and before these things were

regulated as much. But you see a lot of this happening today with like Jimmy Baker, just there was a case in 2020 or 2021 where he had, I think it was literally called Silver Bullet, but it was this thing that Jimmy Baker was selling to a lot of people as a cure to COVID, or there was like kind of very fuzzy language around it, whether he was claiming it was a cure, it wasn't a cure, and so he had to, I think the state of Missouri sued him and he had to like pay back some of some of the money like there was a suit against him. But it was the same idea is

we found this sort of miracle cure that God has, that's going to, you know, you take it, you don't have to worry about COVID, selling this, there's, um, Russell Brand is doing similar stuff with this with like Amulets and selling spiritual, you know, crystals and Amulets, which Russell Brand just started working with them, Sean Foyt, which I don't know if you know Sean Foyt, but he's, he's a very famous, he became famous because he was, um, he was fighting against the COVID restrictions in California and he is tied up with, um, with Bethel and he is like a worship leader

and he was like very, very vocal, um, he like purposely held events during COVID lockdowns, um, in order to like prove the sort of defiance against the government and whatnot. That's a whole can of words, but anyway, he's now partnering with Russell Brands, um, doing just like, just some really shady fraudulent stuff and it's, it's kind of crazy how much the world of the charismatic Pentecostal, whenever I say that or whenever you say there's plenty of people who will be like, not all Pentecostals are like this. No, and that's not what I'm saying, but the history of Pentecostalism and the charismatic church is just, you can't, you cannot

tell the story of care, uh, uh, the charismatic church or the Pentecostal church without telling the story of all of these different con artists. Like, for better or worse, well, for worse, the story of, of those denominations are shaped by these different individuals who, um, committed all these sorts of fraud and so going with, with Parham and with abuse because obviously with iHOP and a lot of the situations, was less situations of just fraud and stealing people's money and more of like actual, whether it be sexual or whether it be prophetic or different types of abuse happening.

And so of course there was this whole last two, three years there's been this huge exposure on Mike Bickle and not just Mike Bickle, but an entire culture of abuse at the International House Prayer.

We've had previous videos where we've kind of gone into some of the investigations and some of the information that's been revealed about how Mike Bickle was a predator, how there were other individuals on staff who were also praying on people.

And one of the cases, one of the cases that was reported in the Kansas City star was a man named the abuser alleged abuser. I got to be careful in the way that I say some of this language because there's lawsuits going on now.

And but the alleged abuser was a man named Larry Lucky or Lawrence Lucky, I grew up, I knew this man and I knew about him. And I heard tell that he was like, I'm just telling growing up in the IHOP community, I was warned against spending time with Larry Lucky because they were questionable.

He was having questionable behavior with young men. That was common knowledge of young men in my group. Like I remember talking with some of my friends about this and whether it was rumors or not, like there was a lot of sort of hesitancy about this man Larry Lucky who was in, when I was a teenager, he was in his 30s or so give or take.

So anyway, there was a very specific story that the Casey Star wrote about that there was a alleged victim

who came forward whose name was Justin or is Justin and he's about my age, he's a little bit younger, he's a couple years younger than me. And he alleged that Larry who was involved in IHOP

and was kind of seen as a mentor in the community at IHOP, he was a bass player, he was on a lot of the different worship leader sets and we previously talked about how much worship was like an important aspect in the International House of Prayer community, like the worship leaders were many celebrities in our world, like they were very important, prominent.

whatnot. So just to summarize and I encourage people to read the articles that are about this to get the specifics but just in a ledge that Larry took advantage of him when he was 16 years old and to that they had relations which when you are 16 years old you aren't not at the legal age of consent and so this was non-consensual because he wasn't old enough Larry was in his 30s at the time and and allegedly Justin was 16 when this happened. Now the age of consent in Missouri is not 18 but 17 in other states it's 18 but in Missouri it's 17 and so basically the Kansas City

star along with Justin's testimony allegedly there were other victims who corroborated Justin's story who were stating their story anonymously but anyway Kansas City star wrote about this and wrote about it as one of the other like it was a part of a larger story about the abuse that was going on at the international house prayer and how there were abusers on staff at different times and that or a part of the leadership at the international house prayer and it was addressing some of these like systemic issues and Justin was kind of you know Justin was a really important victim

I mean every victim is important and their story is all important but his story was important because it also was the first indication a first testimony from a male and I can tell you there was a lot of abuse that was happening against young men in the international house prayer community that isn't spoken out as much I mean for both men and women like there's a lot of women who haven't spoken out either but it can be very difficult if you're a young man speaking out about abuse is like a very a very terrifying thing because not only will your character be called

into question but a lot of times if you talk about abuse that happened to you your sexuality is going to be brought to the table and people are going to talk about your sexuality so if you either are not comfortable with having that conversation a lot of a lot of young men just don't say anything about it and I know several individuals who were abused at the international house prayer and or victimized in some respect who just they don't talk about it because it's there's not a whole lot of good in speaking up about it. So Justin speaks out and then now Larry is accusing both the Kansas City

star and Justin of definite defamation because there's just a lot of quibbles on whether what they said was true. They painted Larry and his lawyer painted as a miscontrol of facts. I don't know what is going to happen in this report, but it's definitely scary because victims who are speaking out are now being kind of targeted. The lawyer that's defending Larry. Her name is, let me pull it up in that. Karen, it's actually stated wrong in the article as Karen Wigart, but it's Swigart, but Karen Swigart who represented or is currently representing Donald Trump in a, what's the central park five cases? There's different defamation

suits and there's different suits that are involving that and that have to do with freedom of speech and whatnot. And she's defending Trump in these are representing Trump in these different cases. And so I mean, she's a serious lawyer and she is now defending this

Larry Lucky and is is suing both the Kansas City star and suing Justin. And I'm not sure what's going to happen here. And this is a, I think a really important instance in analyzing like, what is, what is going to be the legal repercussions? And it's not thought just on one side. Like it's not just, you know, victims trying to find their way of justice. It's also individuals fighting back. And like, you know, I want to be careful in how I talk about it. But like, I think it's really a frightening thing that's happening. Have you ever wondered how the

Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transition 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, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.

If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.

On behalf of William Brannem Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. You know, this case is such a big deal, not just for IHOP KC, but there are national implications of this case.

Because everything from advocacy groups to just protection of your speech and your freedom to protection of the victims, it's a big deal. And the timing of it is a little bit interesting. I recently published on Twitter and my Facebook feeds that there was a Brannemite group in Arizona that they're also investigating sexual abuse that happened in that church.

And where it gets really interesting is under Arizona laws, which is where this Brannemite sect was, the priests and the clergy members are it's mandatory that they report any sexual abuse that's fine. It's mandatory.

Now, that's not the case in all states as I understand it, although I'm no legal expert. But cases like this could blow the whole lid open on this thing because not just in IHOP KC, but also the Brannemite groups, many people who have contacted me from different splinter groups that emerged out of Laterane, it seems to be a widespread problem.

I don't understand why it is. It's not like the religion advocates for this kind of thing to happen, but they do advocate for a authoritarian structure in many of these groups. And so the structure really doesn't permit the ability to protect the victims because if you do, and you're in this group that is claiming that you are divinely inspired by God, this is the perfect movement.

Come to us, we're happy, we're peaceful, we're blissful, you're protected with us. Right. It really breaks that narrative. And so there's a reason why the groups try to cover it up. Maybe that's why they do, I don't know why it's like this.

I do know that the abuse happens in any religion. It's, you know, people are people, and they're good people and they're bad people and people who need help. But the fact that it's being covered up is a big deal.

This court case that you're describing could hope, and hopefully it will. Hopefully it blows the lid off of this whole thing and the government steps in and says, no, you can't do this. It's mandatory that you do not cover up these abuse cases and you're going to be suffering penalties of the law if you do.

Yeah, and I think that especially with this one, I mean, obviously this is, in this particular case, you have someone who's trying to silence someone who spoke out and deal with defamation. I would love to see this.

Like, I think that it's scary on both ends because, or it's just important on both ends, because this could lead to counter-suits and situations in which there's a lot of new kind of understanding of what that victims, new protections for victims who do speak out and to tell their story.

Or there could be, on the flip side, if there is, if the courts side with lucky and in this case, there could be even more reason for victims to not speak out because if they do, they could be penalized and this could, this could be the case, is that Justin and the Kansas City Star could have, could be sued because of, or they are being sued, they could lose their suit because, when you speak out,

and you speak against abuse that happened, you have to be super, super precise with your language and the things that you claim because if you don't, they're gonna tear it apart and a lot of what this specific situation is about, it's about whether or not Justin was 16 or 17.

I mean, it really comes down to like a, Larry is not claiming that he never had any relations with Justin, but that he's claiming that it was consensual and that Justin was old enough to do it and that it wasn't a sort of mental or a mentee relationship trying to paint it more as peers, which just, from a non-legal standpoint, just from a human standpoint, so this is very much my opinion, I think that that is absolute,

pardon my language here, but that's absolute bullshit. I just think that it is absolutely ridiculous that like a teenager, whether 17 or 16 or even 18 or 19, having relations with a 30-year-old who is like a mentor

in that community, whether he was officially on staff at IHOP or not, it's just like that is a, that is, in my opinion, a abusive relationship, no matter how you cut it, whether or not it meets the legal definition of abuse is something that we're going to see in the courts.

Here, and I think that it's a dicey situation to see this played out in the courts, but one big thing that struck me and the reason why I really wanted to talk about this, John was, in the law, suit that and you can find a copy of the suit that Larry kind of petitions and that as lawyers authored against Justin and against the Kansas City Star. He's of course it's a suit so he's seeking damages and he's seeking compensation for the damages brought about by the Tarnishing of his name. And in it he talks about how his businesses have been affected and he talks about

how he is a teacher and he's a bass player and so a lot of what his occupation is is that he plays music at different churches and that he's in these church communities and he wants to you know teach lessons and like his reputation being slandered according to him is is damaging his sort of occupation and his and his personal reputation. And I was reading it because it struck me as so like I just I had a moment where I felt unravel for a very brief second because it just struck me that like the damages that Larry is wanting to have financial compensation for is literally

something that every single individual who has ever had to leave these church communities or these cult communities has had to experience. Larry's upset because he suddenly has had his reputation tarnished among the people that he cares about and he loves and that he can no longer play bass at these different churches and that he can't be a part of these communities and that his reputation was hurt. You know who also can't play music at any of these church communities? Me, you, anybody who's spoken out against any of this like that's exactly what happens that we're

supposed to feel sorry for these abusers like the same with Mike Bickel people are like what won't you think of Mike Bickel and it's like what has happened to him? He's still living his life.

He's not had any he's not had to pay any like he's not in prison. He's not had any of his autonomy restricted. If anything he just can't be a pastor in these church communities again and honestly he probably will try and he probably will succeed at some point because people listen to him you know and so it's like what is what is being done? Like Mike Bickel go and restart a church right now and he would have a larger congregation than if I would ever do that because like I left the church, you know, it's just these sort of things where the cost, the worst case scenario

for these abusers is that they just have to live a life like anybody, any single member of their community who had to, had to step away. Like this is just the reality that all of us face.

Also, Larry is never claiming that he did not have homosexual relations with a young man. That in of itself, regardless of whether this is fair or true, like do you know how many people I grew up with who are ex-communicated from their community because of their sexual identity, but if it happens all the time, do we have, did they have legal recourse to like talk to the pastors who preach, you know, homophobic stuff from the pulpit who then it relates to them being like ex-communicated from their entire community.

Like it's just baffling to me and I feel very passionately like I feel angry that we are supposed to feel sorry for these abusers who are experiencing just a shred of what so many members of their community feel on a daily basis like it's just, it's just, it's hard for me to wrap my head around it.

We become so accustomed to the everyday pains and abuses the individuals who grew up in these grow up in these communities or who are part of these communities suffer when they step even marginally outside of the like condones region, you know, if you suddenly believe something that's just a little bit off.

If you have just a little different politics or God forbid, you have a different sexual orientation and that's suddenly you lose loved ones, you lose your occupation, I mean so many people who have zero money are their entire, you know, their entire income is based off of being a pastor in this church, being a youth leader in this church, being a volunteer or whatever, being even a part of on staff there, they get very small stipends to begin with and then suddenly that stipend is removed.

Like this is just the everyday experiences of people who are live in co-communities like this and I am where, I don't know, I'm just repeating the same thing but like we're supposed to feel, why are we supposed to feel sorry for Mike Bickle?

Why is the, why is sudden? The law coming to the defense of Larry Lucky, like which hopefully it will not, but it's just it makes me feel very pessimistic about the state of the world that we are in when these abusers can seek legal recourse against victims who are speaking out, which that seems to be the case in this particular situation, and I think that that's awfully frightening.

It is frightening, and you know, I've mentioned this before, but the biggest problem that I have with the hero worship that's in the Pentecostal Charismatic NAR movements is that many of the heroes were in fact villains.

And many of whether the people who are supporting them are good guys or not, they cover up the fact that they were villains. And if you have a wolf that's among the sheep, and it becomes a pattern, there is a pattern established of abuse, and you can trace it all the way back to Parham, likely before that, but there weren't too many records.

But you see this pattern of abuse that goes through time, and many of these people are declared gods generals. And I recently just had, you mentioned the homosexual aspect, I recently had a person who was in the guy who wrote God's Generous Books.

He was in his church, and this guy claimed that even the guy that wrote the book was abusive in many ways. So you've got this pattern that's established, and they don't really offer protection for the sheep.

The people who are attending the church and the congregations, if there's a pattern established, I mean honestly, I'm no preacher, but if it was my church, I would be like warning the people, hey, look out, we have this very, very bad pattern, and it seems to continue happening.

Here's what you watch out for, and quite frankly, every sermon would be focused on that until the problem was eradicated. But instead, these guys appear to just cover it up, sweep it under the rug.

Let's pretend that it never happened, but when it does happen again, we're going to shame the victims. Yeah, and I think that one of the things that adds to the issue, and it's kind of what we've been talking about, is that there's just not a whole lot of legal recourse.

Obviously, we have talked extensively about how there is in a whole lot of recourse within the communities, and how these communities are structured to make it really difficult for victims to find any sense of accountability.

But it's also the case, obviously, that there just is not a whole lot of legal recourse. And one good example of this is there is a law in Missouri that you cannot pursue. through civil charges against a abuser, in cases of child sexual misconduct or abuse,

you can't, there's a statute limitations that goes from 10 years after the individual is 18. So by the time they're 28 or whatever, they cannot pursue any sort of civil recourse because it's beyond the statute of limitations.

And a lot of people are asking the question of why is there a statute of limitations for these things? Like the perfect example is Mike Bechel and the International House Prayer and Tammy Woods and Deborah and my mom didn't come forward and speak out against their abuse until they were in their 50s and 60s.

And it makes sense. Sometimes the abuse is so pervasive and systemic that it is difficult for an individual to even recognize that they were abused until much, much later. And this is coming up in the case with Justin as well.

There is not legal recourse for Justin to pursue damages in regards to Larry because it was right on that edge of being more than a decade ago. And that is a huge problem. Like that just frankly is a huge problem.

There shouldn't be this sort of like up 10 years. It's up, therefore you can't do anything about it. Which fortunately there is a bill that is being, that actually just passed its first level, I believe.

I don't, I'm not totally sure all of the sort of legal course that this bill will take but in Missouri, there's a Senate bill that was being debated and the several of the women who have been involved in the international house prayer scandal including a good friend of mine Graysha who has experienced abuse and she spoke very eloquently at the sort of hearing where the bill was brought forth to the Missouri state senators and Tammy and Deborah were there along with other individuals who were involved with all of this IHOP scandal to kind of testify of, hey, this Statue of Limitations

is really inhibiting victims from having a sense of legal accountability for some of the things that they suffered even though it was 10, 20, 30 years ago that they still deserve justice. And what's crazy is that they came and they spoke.

But there are people who are speaking against them. There are lobbyists who are hired to give the sort of counterpoint so they're saying, hey, this bill, which this bill was, If this bill isn't acted, it would remove this sort of 10-year limitation.

And there were activists who were arguing against it saying that it would be bad for business for insurance adjusters and insurance companies because now these individuals who committed abuse decades ago would now be held accountable.

Well, that's not actually because it would take, it's just future. It's not going to be retroactively like what is done for, I mean, this is what's heartbreaking. What's done for Tammy and for Deborah, I mean, what's done is done that they're not going even if this bill is passed, it's just going to be from this point sort of forward accountability.

And I just, I don't understand why this isn't a cut and drag situation. It's just like that every individual should be able to pursue justice for their abuse. And the fact that there's this sort of 10-year window on it is ridiculous.

But anyway, all of this sort of depressing stuff that we've been addressing, I will say that there is work that's being done. And this instance, like, I do believe that this bill is going to pass.

And it's something that I think people should follow because I think it's really important. And hopefully there's a cascading effect. Starts in Missouri, but I would love to see something widespread throughout the nation that there are systems of accountability for those who have been abused to have sort of legal recourse and justice in the future.

And there's a long way to go in this fight, but it's good to know that there are people like Tammy and Deborah and Gratia and the lawyers who have been working on their end to fight against this.

It's good to know that people are fighting the good fight and that hopefully in the future there will be change. It's so hard to believe, man. It's like 10 years ago you robbed a bank.

The bank teller saw you, but they feared for the life, so they didn't say anything, but that happened 10 years ago. You're not in trouble for it. We're just going to let you walk.

That's really what it feels like. Anyway, hopefully this does blow the lid open and some of these people can get justice. So thank you for coming on and talking about this. Yeah, my 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 William-Branham.org. From more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.