Touch Not God's Anointed: The Weaponization of Holiness

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 false prophet and former member of the International House of Prayer. Jed it's good to be back and after me having spent a one-week podcast as a lone gunman which has a I don't know if you were familiar with the X-Files but there was this group of IT guys that were the lone gunman. That actually is a term of pride for

me and everybody else it may not be but we you know there's this thing of holiness. I know you probably haven't heard the podcast yet but there's this aspect of holiness that we talk about often and I have people ask me well what is holiness because we were taught it was one thing the Bible says something else what is your opinion and I've actually wanted to do something by myself on that for a long time for two reasons. By myself as I mentioned in the podcast I avoid things that open people up to attack and if I talk about holiness every

single cult that every single one of the people who are working with me came out of they will attack them you're unholy you're unclean you left because you are unclean there's this variety of insults that ironically every single cult is programmed with the same exact insult and they just it's a barrage that comes so I figured I would take the heat on that one and interestingly was such a big topic I thought you know there's probably 20 30 minutes how can I fill an hour with it I actually only got through about a third of what I had to

get into but the summary which I'm bringing this up because it relates a little bit to what we're talking about today the summary if you study all of the different aspects of what is holiness in all of these varieties of cults that have emerged holiness really equates to two things number one if you support the leader you are holy and number two if you remain within the group and you never ever criticize the group you are holy neither of which of those two things are biblical so you can't say that is biblical holiness but that is the

standards that have been set where it comes into play with what we're talking about today the especially with regards to supporting the leader what happens is when the leader falls Even though they're falling outside of what is biblical holiness, the group has this false sense of what is holiness.

So there is this naturally programmed and doctorated nonsense in their head that we must lift up the fallen, even though he is unclean and unholy. And in many cases, like we will discuss today, maybe unfit to be a leader, that aspect of holiness, which is totally unbiblical, is what the group uses to bring the person back into power. So what we're seeing today is literally what you and I are going to talk about is literally an example of failed holiness, which is unscriptural holiness.

It's interesting that you, the word holiness, as soon as you started talking about it, I thought very similarly, like along the lines of the two qualifications, are you supporting the leader and you're you staying within the group?

And that being the sort of boundaries of what holiness is, and it's interesting because there are a lot of other virtues talked about in every community, I mean every community, every form of moral language, you need to sort of use these virtues to talk about what is good behavior and what is bad behavior.

That's just how language works, but there are terms that are much more fungible than other terms. If you talk about patience, people know what patience looks like, and there's this sort of universal characteristic.

Of course, all of these in any community are going to be a little bit fungible based off of who is talking about it. Like honesty is a good example in politics. There's going to be a whole lot of people who talk about dishonesty, but that's sort of always dishonesty is only sort of who looked at the other group and not my group.

People can be inconsistent about a way that they uphold these particular virtues, but I think largely there's a lot of virtues like honesty, patience, compassion, even, these are things that are tied to specific types of behavior.

And you can look at these types of behavior and whether it's the leader who's doing it or whether it's the follower, the lowest in sort of the social standing, there's this sort of conceptual accountability that you can hold to different individuals by appealing to these virtues.

But something like holiness isn't, it's not tied to anything. When I say holiness, As soon as I started thinking about that, when you said holiness, I was like, man, that has meant so many different things for so many different, um, religious communities that I've been a part of. Um, and outside of a religious community, it is pretty meaningless if I went and was talking at, you know, my work. And I was like, okay, we want this work.

In atmosphere, we want our teachers to always be patient, kind and holy. People would be like, what? Okay, that clearly that last one doesn't fit in the group because holiness is very specific than to, um, religion, um, and religious communities. And as you point it out, like it is clearly used to sort of, um, give reverence not to God, but reverence towards the community leaders and the community itself. And then I think it's very fascinating.

I think this is totally determined to what we'll be talking about today because, um, we are now in a situation where Mike Bickel has been, again, very clearly, um, a way measured and found a lot of things, um, according to, so there was just a, a new, um, to kind of report or a firefighter or, um, that was done by, um, several different, uh, religious communities and, uh, religious leaders.

And this has been a long time coming. There was investigation. That's been, uh, they, they didn't initial report of this back. Oh, I want to say back in January. Um, and we, we talked about this report back in January and that sort of gave the first glimpse.

There were some problems, um, with that first report. And so, um, they worked on it and now have released. I think this was a few weeks ago. They released, um, this report that says in no uncertain terms that, um, Mike Bickel, um, was a, uh, chronic sexual, uh, predator and, um, kind of just confirm a lot of things that we have been talking about on, um, this, um, this podcast about, um, so this isn't going to be new news to anybody who's been following this, uh, this podcast or this series. Um, but it is, it is nice to have a more salient, um,

sort of confirmation of, of what has been, what has been said. Um, so two different things. I wanted to summarize that and I can go into that in more detail. Um, and two, I wanted to also talk about I have, because I not still exist. It's like, it's still going. They didn't, they didn't shut down. There's a new leader who, talking about vision and casting vision for the future with it. And I think that this idea of

holiness is going to be very germane to the sort of attitude that IHOP is presenting in the wake of this microgull scandal. Absolutely. And the parts that I really didn't get a chance to go deep with because it literally would turn into a masterclass on holiness to go really far with this. But Pentecostalism, if you study the history of how Pentecostalism progressed, it introduced the false notion of what holiness means. There was a period of time in which if you could speak in tongues that was considered holy. You had to have, you had to be filled with the

Holy Ghost, which they said was, if you spoke in tongues, you either did or you did not. Then some people realized that that's not quite biblical. So Pentecostalism split over this notion and continued to grow and split. But in the end, there's two things that play here. Pentecostalism trained charismatic leaders, which I gave that history in the podcast on the notion that a leader inside of one of the Pentecostal type groups and later the charismatic groups, the leader is more of a Moses model figure. He has to be the Moses who led God's people out. And you find people like

Chuck Smith, who whenever there are sexual problems going on, Chuck Smith says, you guys cannot judge this person. He's outside of your judgment. He's to be judged by God because we follow the Moses model. And for me, that model, it was not new to Chuck Smith. It was carried forward by others, John Wimber and others, even though I know the Wimber group will deny that. If you look through history by his own statements, he's carrying the same model forward. But you go to today and look at the extreme examples that we have of this because of leaders who are abusing their power. And it all

comes back to this. There's a verse in 1 Peter that says, for the pastors, be shepherds of God's flock that's under your care watching over them, not lording over it, over those who are entrusted to you, but being instead examples for the flock. In other words, lead by leading, don't lead by governing, lead by teaching others to lead themselves. But what we have is the model was flipped upside down because they could not get correct the views of holiness. And so after the speaking in tongues, this developed and it transitioned into, you can tell if somebody's holy by whether they're wearing

long skirts, if they're a woman, long pants, if they're a man. And it's in defiance of first Samuel, man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. And they just totally reject this.

The irony is, when you look at the fruits of the spirit, and there's this big debate, are you cessationist, are you not? I see the whole debate is irrelevant because each time you talk to people on either sides of the debate, they're specifically talking about speaking in tongues and visions, they're not really talking about the fruits of the spirit.

One of the fruits of the spirit, for example, is serventhood. How many of them are going to argue, I just really want to serve somebody else, and I am not a continuous, I want to serve, and I want to always serve others.

You don't find that as one of the gifts of the spirit that they're arguing over. So once you set up the false idea of what is holiness, you've eliminated the fruits of the spirit, you have flipped upside down the leadership model for the pastor.

Well, now what happens when the pastor has severe personal issues or mental health issues that are causing them to do things that are dangerous and harmful to others? Regardless of, you know, in Mike Bickel's case, I realized the nature of the allegations.

I understand what that is, but take it further than that. You have people who are either praying upon the emotions, praying some of them physically abusive. We've seen it all kinds of examples, and it all comes back to the fact that a false foundation of holiness was set up, a false set of leadership was set up where people are to be followers, not trained to be leaders themselves, and people were given full power and control over the body of Christians.

Well, and I think that if you look at it, what is being prioritized too? So you talk about the fruits of the spirit, and similar to what I was talking about at the beginning

of there are virtues. I mean, the fruits of the spirit, I'm trying to remember, I'm sure I'm forgetting, but kindness, patience, peace, goodness, gentleness, joy, self-control. I know that generosity, these are all ones that I'm pretty sure are, I know that I'm missing a few.

But those are sort of like the characteristics and virtues of this is something you know the tree by its fruit. When people are demonstrating these versus spirit, there's, they're demonstrating these sort of virtues that are universal, that are both something that leaders do and something followers do, and if it's something the leaders are not doing, it's just as big of a deal as those who are following like everybody is accountable to demonstrating these sort of fruits of the spirit and maintaining these virtues.

But when you get flipped upside down, and I think that this is what I'm hearing from... what you're talking about with term holiness is when you basically, you have this sort of nebulous virtue that gets to supersede all of these other ones. And now

that everything comes after that. So whether you're being peaceful, whether you're being patient, whether you're being gentle, whether you're demonstrating charity and generosity, obviously all of these probably co-leaders would say, hey, those are all good things.

But it's sort of secondary to the larger sort of virtue of holiness, which is or reverence for the community and for the leader, which is totally dependent on the individual. And I think that this is a really good explanation for why, in particular settings, with someone, particularly a leader, is called out for either

poor character, ranging to like outright abuse, there can be this defense that rises up against whoever is calling them out, where the individual who's calling them out suddenly becomes the one who is committing the wrong and not the leader who is being criticized.

So a good specific example of this is, which I know that I've mentioned on this podcast before, but in 2000, I believe it was in 2015, there was a man who was a part of the board of directors on my father's ministry team. My dad had like appointed this man, like he was, it's not like this was just some random guy, but this man was like very a ministry sort of partner with my father and worked for my father in conjunction with my father for quite some time. And he, along with other individuals, it wasn't just him. This man started seeing a lot of the abusive and

deceptive and immoral behaviors that my father was demonstrating. This was just right at the beginning of when he was starting to demonstrate some like sexual, what was called at that time as sexual indiscretion. It is unclear exactly what my dad was doing, but there were red flags, basically there were red flags in during that period of time. And then there was massive red flags about

in relation to how my dad was deceiving people. And that was something that was well known. To me at that time, I loved none to other individuals who had interacted with my father and at this time.

This is well before some of the more egregious things that happened with my father, but this was sort of in the lead up to it. And so this man, who I'm not naming him because I don't think that he wants his name out there.

And but I've spoken to him about this story even quite recently. And he contacted, he sent out a letter to Mike Pickle and to Bill Johnson. And basically Bethel, I hopped, and then some of the other churches that my dad was ministering towards.

And I've read this letter, and it was clear. It was probably a little bit understated because he was wanting to still protect and respect my dad. He is sort of that tension of trying to not break this holiness or reverence for the leader while also being like, hey, these are all of these things that he's doing that are not acceptable, I'm not OK.

And basically, so he, well, he first confronted my dad about it. And my dad did not repent from these things. And blew them off. And then so then he went to the leaders about this.

And I've talked with this man. And he told me that he immediately started getting phone calls from people he didn't know who were like these foresters. There was this church in Florida where some high up leaders were calling him and doing some pretty intimidating stuff, talking about like how he was coming against God's chosen and sort of the repercussions that would happen for speaking against God's chosen and the consequences that might incur both for this sort of whistleblower and for my father.

And so rather it being my dad's behaviors leading to the consequences of his own actions it's suddenly the whistleblower's responsibility. Like, look, how you could destroy this man's life rather than, well, he's the one who's doing these horrible behaviors.

And he basically got, I don't know if I shouldn't say this for sure because I mean, he spoke up, he did, I think that he spoke up, he was clear, he sort of watched his humans of the situation.

He resigned from being on my dad's board or my dad kicked him off one of the other, I can't remember. But nothing really came out of it. about a bit from it, because he warned several different leaders, but if these leaders don't care, then nothing is going to happen.

And then, of course, some of the more egregious behaviors of my father, especially when it comes to sexual abuse, in the following five, six, seven years, a really went off the rails after that.

I think in part, some of that was because my dad, there was, like he, a lot of his failures suddenly did come to the surface. A lot of accountability was brought to him where it was like, hey, these are all the things that you're doing, you can't, you shouldn't do this.

And then basically, no consequences happen. And I do believe that that led to my father becoming way more egregious in his behaviors because it was sort of like, well, if there's going to be no consequences, why not just keep going with it?

But I give that all as sort of an example of this flipping when you have a sense of holiness. And that is very much the language that these enforcers and intimidators use, and it's been nothing that was directed towards me to, I've heard it firsthand, of basically, like, how dare you speak against God's choice.

This is the same thing that Lisa Stribling is saying about Mike Bickle and this sort of about Deborah and Tammy and my mom and other individuals who are coming forward and speaking about Mike.

It's this sense in which it doesn't even matter if what they're saying is true because it's breaking this holiness construction and it's, it's disrupting the sort of reverence of the community. And so therefore, it doesn't matter everything else.

All that matters is that you're violating this sort of artificial construction of holiness that was created very much for the purpose of empowering the cult leader and the boundaries of the cult community. One of the real problems is that whenever a leader falls to sex, it usually makes bigger news.

That's really one of the problems because, yes, the leader did something awful and yes, it's horrific and probably should be broadcast so that there are no further victims, but that's not usually the only area in which they fail because, so if I'm, if I have a carpenter crew and we're doing trim carpentry and I find this one guy who can carry nails like nobody's business, he's got big old arms and he can carry a whole bucket of nails.

And I want to teach others how to be a trim carpenter and I choose him because only his only saving grace of being a carpenter is he can carry nails. Well, when he gets up and teaches them to hammer and he's breaking through drywall and destroying the house, I've chosen the wrong person for the job because I focused on one single area that he's good at and ignored everything else.

And a lot of these leaders, the people will focus on what he had a vision. He can see a vision. So therefore, he's immediately a teacher, a mentor, a spiritual guide. In many cases, a mediator between God and man, the leader, he's the all-in-one.

He's the Swiss army knife of a pastor because he can have a vision. And frequently we find that the visions themselves also aren't really true. And so they try to defend them in other ways.

And it turns into this mess because they've chosen the wrong person for the job. But nobody is willing to admit it. It becomes another analogy, the one Bob uses, the Emperor of New Clothes.

Once everybody starts to see the person's naked, they just continue in the nakedness rather than, wait a minute, let's get this guy some clothes, we don't like this. And it turns, you know, it turns devastating for the victims who are wanting a better life, but they're being led by a person who's really incapable of giving them the better life.

Well, and I think that you're totally right, where sex scandals are the moment where it sort of kind of all falls apart, unfortunately not even that can show the Emperor has no clothes at times, like what we've talked about, Bob Jones and other people where there were sex scandals.

And then two years later he's back within the prophesied and doing everything. So clearly it's something that even when these sex scandals happen, that in of itself doesn't always jar the community loose to ask questions about the leaders.

I mean, with Michael specifically and with others, there are a hundred different red flags that happen before the sort of sexual indiscretion to. And because people don't want to speak up and don't feel the freedom to speak up, only in instances where there's like really over, really extreme abuse, do have I personally seen people within the church communities have the sort of freedom and authority to speak out and for change to actually happen.

One example of this that's happening right now and happening. with people that I know, there is the Denver House of Prayer. I think it's just called Denver House now, but the leaders of it are Brian Kim and Cory Russell.

These are former international House of Prayer ministers who sort of migrated to Denver. They had some questions about their behaviors and some ethics that was going on with leadership about making decisions that ruling the group specifically Brian was ruling the group and making decisions that without consulting the rest of the board and team, there's some discussion about just abusives or verbally abusive and tense behaviors.

And there was a lot of questions that were rising up about them back in 2023 and ironically and perhaps legally, they had Mike Bickle on their board of like they put together a board of basically like an oversight council.

It might have been oversight as the term. And Mike Bickle was of course one of the members of the oversight team in 2023, which at the end of 2023 is when the Mike Bickle scandal surfaced itself.

So that's not great, but then in, I think it was 2024, there was an online petition that had 200 different signatures for people for transparency and for accountability with the Denver House, this church about basically just about abuse and about sort of character.

And I've seen this too with, I don't know with Brian, but with Corey, I remember seeing just like the disregard that Corey had for volunteers and there was a couple instances that I remember seeing specifically of him being extremely like demeaning to staff members and to volunteers.

And this is like, this is something that is a huge red flag, but you're not going to see any change. And from what I understand, I looked this up over the last week, I wanted to check back in about this.

I don't think that anything has ever come about. There was like these 200 signatures about, hey, we need to have sort of an investigation about the procedures and the behaviors of this leadership team.

And I'm pretty sure nothing has ever happened from it because there isn't a sex scandal involved. There isn't. know, the smoking gun, you're not going to have people outside of the church take notice to, if there isn't a sex scandal, this is another huge problem with the IHOP stuff, is that everyone has hyperfocus, especially news organizations and media outside of the internationals per have obviously hyperfixated on the sex scandal aspect of them.

But that's just one symptom, obviously a very huge symptom, but of a larger underlying disease that has a lot of different symptoms of prophetic abuse, of verbal abuse, of coercion, manipulation, of demeaning behavior, like a lot of really domineering, I should say, domineering behavior that was demonstrated with a lot of the leadership, and that I still see demonstrated with all of these leaders, like I tell this as a dress, this is going to be something that continues, you're going to continue having leaders who speak to their staff with like outright contempt and disregard, and I don't know a whole lot of people who

are really talking about that, because it doesn't grab headlines, of course, but it's one of these things where it's like it's violating all the sort of fruits of the spirit, and in a Christian community, especially, you should all be red flags, and hopefully if people are paying attention to those red flags, you are going to cut off some of the worst behaviors before they become these horrible behaviors, you're going to see the red flags in an IHOP or a Michael or a forerunner Christian fellowship, and it's never going to become this big cult that it became, because people are going to say, hey, this is not good,

I mean, it should have happened way back with Bob Jones, Bob Jones should have never been a prophetic leader of multiple religious communities, because he was abusing his wife, he was physically abusing his wife during all of this different time, and he was kind of open about it, a lot of people knew about it, and not just that, but prophetic abuse and all these different things, and if you say that, of course, people are going to say, well, you can't question God's chosen, and God used Moses, God used David, God used this individual, this individual

who are all fallen and fell short of glory to God, just because they're broken, or just because they've done these bad behaviors, doesn't mean that God won't use them. Totally discreet, let's have a higher standard for these individuals, just in general, and to how do you know they're God's chosen, why it would take just be liars. And a big indication that their liars is because they continually lie and abuse their staff. Like that is a big red flag. 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 Brandham Historical Research's website, William-Brandham.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-Brandham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. You know, I grew up under the same type of mentality, touch not gods anointed. That was the phrase that we always used, and to find that it's used today, we were stuck in the 50s and 60s in the Brandham cult to find out that here in 2025, they're still using that same phrase. It's a little bit unbelievable. And they do exactly what you do.

Whenever somebody who is great falls to either sex, money, power, or any form of abuse, they say, well, look at all of the bad examples in the Bible. And the real problem comes with the, as I mentioned, they've twisted the meaning of the fruits of the Spirit.

Well, they've also twisted the meaning of the passages, because if you read and understand the Bible for the very examples they gave, like you mentioned King David. They'll say, King David had his issues, yes, but look, our King David has the same kind of issues. He's falling to whatever is the case.

But because the people aren't taught the context of the Bible, their very seldom will mention the consequences of what King David did impacted the entire nation of Israel. This was a big deal. This was not something small. And yes, he did continue, but was it the right choice?

We don't know. The Bible doesn't necessarily mean that it was the right choice. It's an example of this very bad thing happened, and it impacted everyone. That was the example given in the Bible.

Well, in today's world, the people have the same impact on their churches. They can do something devastating that impacts the entire church. And in many cases, that whatever it happened, whatever situation it was, could have been avoided had they not had full control and authority over their church. In the mainstream churches, there are usually sets of checks and balances which prevent things like this from happening.

Yeah. You know, the power is shared among several people. So when a leader gets steps out of line or has some sort of a mental health issue, other people recognize it and say, hey, you probably need to step down.

Let's correct this. And the very sad part about this, as it relates to not just Bickel, but many of the others, had some of these things been taken care of early on by the people.

Had those checks and balances been in place, he might have remained fit. This whole thing that we're talking about today may have never happened. He could have corrected himself. And I'm talking very early stages because once you turn into a predator, you're unfit forever, in my opinion.

But there were some very early signs, warning signs that I think could have been caught and weren't by some of the leadership. Where it gets really problematic is that as the leadership starts to turn like this and it turns into a defense, you can watch it come out into their sermons.

They're defending themselves in the sermons. They're issuing new prophecies. You and I have talked through some of those before. So the spiritual nature of the group actually molds itself to fit the defense arguments against the person who is a predator.

And that molds the whole culture, just like the consequences of King David, the culture in the church has a consequence that comes with uplifting these leaders and putting them into authority and to defending them afterwards.

Yeah, and so this segway as well into what's happening at IHOP now because International Osprear is still cooking. So just to take one step back, I just want to read very quickly the Firefly report.

I know I mentioned it at the beginning and before I forget to sort of conclude that thought, I'm just gonna read directly.

The Firefly report provided testimony, findings, establishing, concluding that Mike Bickle is a long-term and chronic sexual predator who used the power inherent in his leadership position to control, groom, manipulate, and intimidate people so that he could sexually abuse them for his personal gratification.

This abuse included victims who are minors, his tactics included spiritual and emotional abuse as well as explicit sexual abuse. The Firefly report further notes that Bickle conspired to keep these abuses hidden for many years.

It appears Bickle's ongoing sin and behavior during and before his time at IHOP KC was influential in the spread of a... abusive behavior through other staff members who then victimize more unsuspecting victims. While Mike Biggle has admitted to some of these actions, we note that the mission lacks genuine marks for confession, including that the confessions were not far from voluntary, complete, or to date a company named by any signs of genuine repentance.

So that's sort of their concluding paragraph, there's much more to this document. But that was sort of the overall summary of the document, which that should be the end all, be all of this conversation surrounding Mike.

If anything, this investigation might be, I don't actually think that it was particularly lenient on Mike, but this is a lot of individuals who are in this sort of same Christian circle as Mike, and I think that there's no doubt this is a true and accurate conclusion, and I believe that some of these could have been even stated more veracity, especially the focus was on Mike Biggle, but the sort of systemic nature that this was pervasive in IHOP leadership and that there was abuses going on that weren't just attated by Mike.

There was a sentence in there about that, but I think that there is still much more to be said about the culture of abuse that was developed at IHOP. So this is the, that is the sort of conclusion that was made of the independent investigation that went on about IHOP Casey.

IHOP Casey has not said anything publicly about this report. From my knowledge, there has been nothing spoken on, hope it, about any of this fallout. From what I can tell too, the name Mike Biggle has not even been mentioned in the last year, or even year and a half, because they are now moving on, and I watched this video by Joseph Taylor, who has now become the, I can't remember what he said, it's not a lead pastor, but he is sort of the lead of IHOP, I don't know if it was the president, I can't remember

what his title was, director, maybe it was director of the International House Prayer. But Joseph Taylor, who I- Never, I don't know, I don't know who is like, I think I'm somewhat familiar with the name, but it wasn't like he was around the International House of Prayer when I was there in the odds of 2010s.

But anyway, I watched this whole video that was released on September 17, so about a month ago, about the visions and values for next season, and he talks about vision for IHOP. And it's really eerie because on one end, there is less of the sort of Mike Pickle prophecy, it leans less of aggressive than what I, I mean, for so many years, IHOP was so aggressive and it stands about everything from whether it be Times to Israel to just prophecy in general and sexuality and all of the sort of points that about revival, all of these things that

Mike Pickle and Bob Jones and others would slam and hit that it is soften quite substantially and Joseph in this video is talking almost like you would see someone talk at a funeral where it's very solemn but hopeful, it's very look forward, not look back, it is very mourning the loss without ever talking about what that loss was.

And I think it's really interesting because you were saying, you know, with these falls, like when David like it affected the whole nation of Israel because of the decisions that he made, like the consequences of those actions were felt not only in his life but within the life of the entire history of Israel and ends the kingdom there, like that there were demonstrable consequences to the horrific behaviors of King David and in this same sense, you have this international house prayer which is clearly a shadow of what it once was, it is far less financially and sort of the community is thinned, the financial backings,

then the people who are on the pulpit are not recognizable are not important figures in the New Epsilon reformation movement, you don't have the same gravitas and authority both in the way that they're seen.

and just who's speaking like it clearly is a church that is limping. Yeah, there is no discussion about why that's the case, which I think is a terrible indication that if the international House of Prayer continues to exist, I do not believe that there is going to be any substantial change, and there is any reason just because you've removed Mike Bickle. Does it mean that in his place, another Mike Bickle will rise up? I mean, if the international House of Prayer gains more authority and recognition in the future, it probably will be because a new cult leader sort of assumes position within the community,

because the vehicle that they built is still there, and they're not tearing out. The building and rebuilding from the ground up, they're not establishing what went wrong. It's this sort of like, oh my goodness, Mike Bickle did this horrible thing, and it's separate to the sole identity of the international House of Prayer. If you go on to their website, the whole thing is scrubbed. There's not a mention of Mike Bickle on the international House of Prayer website, which I understand on one end is good because it's like they're moving him. They're no longer rebearing him. They're not like digging like different

than what Lisa Stribbling is doing, where maintaining that. He is a victim of that Mike Bickle is actually the one who was right and that he was the victim of a smear campaign or something like that. At the very least, IHOP is not doing that, but it very much is trying to scrub them and whitewash everything, all of their history, to sort of ignore all of the negative and horrible things that have happened. In doing so, there's not accountability, there's not healing, there is not opportunity for growth, there's not opportunity for vindication, there isn't like the people who were wrong within the community do not to get to have

any sense of healing from knowing that, okay, these wrongs have been made right and these things that were horrible, these victims either directly of Mike Bickle's abuse or indirectly of Mike Bickle's abuse or other abuse from leadership.

None of that is being communicated and I just think that it's so Yearly how you have this sort of ghost town That is on its early stages of trying to swing back up into a cold again I mean that's it's it's the cold leader has died They're waiting. It's like the king is dead. Long live the king someone. Let's reestablish a new king in the weight of Michael Bickle Let's still talk prophecy in it several times Joseph Taylor talks about what the Lord has been speaking to him which is pretty common in that In the charismatic world in general, so like I don't want to critique that

As something that is uniquely Horrible, but just the the cavalier way in which they use this language around prophecy and about this What God is saying to me about the next chapter of our story Without any sense of like reckoning with reality. It's so and I think that's whether it's just so Disconnected from reality so disconnected from the consequences of Michael's behavior so Disconnected from the consequences of the systemic abusive behavior That was at IHOP senses beginning that was Independent and in conjunction with Mike Bickle Mike Bickle was not the only abuser within that community

And it's hard because like I see individuals like Ed Hackett Ed Hackett is a prophetic leader of IHOP who is still on the board who I grew up with I went to his house when when I was a kid I was friends with his children He was friends with my mom and my dad and the Hackett family was like very close to The hoods and to artles and to all of these sort of Central families that grew up at the center of IHOP and To see him getting up there and acting like nothing has happened if not

Worse acting as if they have had a loss like that there Sort of which I mean to some sense it's it's true But this it's this sort of like languishing in the sort of It's like licking the wounds without realizing that you were the one who wounded yourself sort of thing or without having any sense of accountability of like Well, how did these wounds come about how did how did this happen and?

With no indication that it's not going to happen again because what is what are the policies being changed like I think that?

Ed Hackett and Joseph Taylor like I think that they owe it to their congregation and they owe it to their former for congregation, all of the individuals who used to be a part of the international philosopher to actually deal with the reality that went on for decades at the community that they helped establish and create.

In the sad truth of the matter, because the way that people are indoctrinated and because the leadership has been trained in this method, this Moses model, the sad truth is it really doesn't matter what this report states in the first place.

Nobody's going to really adhere to this report when you're in that type of mentality. When you're being trained that it is a Moses model, the leader cannot fail, the leader is God's appointed, he is beyond question, you cannot question the leader.

Well these people on the outside are questioning his leadership. So the entire mechanism that is trained manipulated into their heads, it is such that they will just deflect anything that comes from the outside.

The change has to come within and how do you do this? How do you break through the minds that have been programmed in this Moses model? It's very difficult because it's not a scriptural model and even you probably had this experience I know that I have when you take somebody who is programmed in the cult and you actually show them what the Bible says in context with regards to whatever this is, whether it's Michael's situation or anything else, they will always go to the leader over the Bible because it is the Moses model, he's the one who's bringing the new fresh word that is

superior to the word that is written. So in the end it's not a New Testament church, this is an Old Testament Moses model law abiding church and in many cases they're not abiding to the laws that are written in the Moses class.

So it turns into a mass of pure chaos and there's a book, I think it's a, I'm drawn a blank, it might be Jude, it says that if you try to uphold the law and you fail in one single point of the law, you have failed the whole law.

So if you're living under that model, you're literally, you're living outside of God's grace and that's what this church model has become. Well, and when you have this sort of broken model, if you're not fixing it, if you're not addressing the things that went wrong with it, you're leaving this sort of vacuum for the character of this cult leader to be replaced with another or I don't think that it is a coincidence that in the lateral range movement and in sort of the worst examples of the Pentecostal movement in general, since Gauy, there have been this sort of clinging

antels. There's been taking on the mantle of Elijah, like that was a huge thing that ran on the Dowie and all of these different individuals sort of tried to walk in a particular authority in spirit. And I saw a lot of that with Bob Jones died. My dad and Bobby Conner and another prophet. So all named Bob's which make it all more confusing. But when Bob Jones died, Bobby Conner and Bob Hartley both started prophesying that Bob Jones was coming and visiting them. And after he died, like his spirit was coming and visiting them in their dreams and in person to like share the mantle of so Bob Jones, the mantle of

Bob Jones was being given to Bob Hartley and Bobby Conner. I don't I don't know if they were in disagreement with each other. I don't know if only one person can can fill that mantle. But like I know very specifically my dad saw the sort of like character that Bob Jones was, how he was able to like hide mental illness. In a very, I mean, this is a very extreme emperor as no close situation where someone is acting in literally insane, not in a, not in a, that's not hyperbolic. Like someone is genuinely detached from reality,

the things that they're doing and things that they're saying do not make sense. And it is still revered and worshiped as prophecy. That's, I mean, that is very much this, this the emperor has no close where it's like a bunch of people are being like, oh, wow, it's so incredible what he's saying where I and my mom and others are like, none of this makes any sense, which both, and I say that both about my dad and Bob Jones and the way that he was able to abuse his wife, Bob Jones and get away with it, the way that he was able

to minister to different churches and he could kind of go around and have this huge prophetic authority without having to like always speak up in front of accommodations and have his name, we're feared by all of the leaders. Like my dad saw the character and persona that Bob Jones developed and was like, I want that, I want to be like that and I want to emulate that. And it's not a coincidence that he starts sexually abusing people within that same The same year that Bob Jones dies, or maybe it was a year after, is when some of those

first accusations of sexual abuse surfaced about my father, or they didn't surfaced, but now, retrospectively, testimonies have now surfaced that lead back to that same time frame. And I think that that's sort of the same thing that's been happening.

I hop is that the identity of Michael Bickle is kind of unsalvidable unless you're in this very fringe world, like Lisa Stribling, where there are people who are still pretending like like Bickle is some holy, anointed individual, despite all of these accusations.

Against them, I think that that is the larger minority of people who

believe about Michael, but there's this sort of preservation of his spiritual legacy and the mantle of Michael. And I hop is very active in that, in which they're trying to sort of remove the name of Michael Bickle while holding all of his prophecies, still using a lot of these prophecies. It's now just like a sort of unnamed prophet behind all of these different things at the International Hospital. Even it's so funny because the title of the sermon that Dr. Taylor did was vision and values for the next season. I know vision values a lot of

like businesses and organizations will talk about visions and values, but Michael Bickle would talk about visions and values all the time. My dad would do it too. My dad added a third one. He would talk about visions, values, and vehicles. It's sort of one of those like terms, you know, in corporate terminology, like if you're a part of a corporation, you'll have everybody within that corporation just like starts using the same lingo and terminology. And it becomes having this true corporations through in like academic circles and stuff like that. People just like adapt their language together. Well, Michael Bickle had this big thing about how he would write out

about the visions and the values. And he would talk about seasons. He would use the phrase in the days to come all the time. And you hear Joseph echoing the sort of same language that might Bickle establish. And he's talking about visions and values. And he's talking about the days to come. And he's talking about the sort of like nebulous, is it the end time? So, or is it just you know, the the the next 10 years that you put in a book?

sort of interpret it both as like apocalyptic or more sort of poetic

description of the future and it just it's very eerie because there is this sort of like slow gradual attempt to

conserve the mantle of Mike Bickle. So what that will look like, I'm sure, you know, I might be probably jumping on this podcast five years from now saying, Hey John, it's it's backup. The International House Prayer has found their new Mike Bickle substitute. Here's how this person is demonstrating all of the same behaviors.

Like right now it's not that, but they're sort of preparing the way for them to resurrect the same sort of cold community that they had established because they're not addressing any of the issues. Well, when you have the Moses model, you've always got the Joshua that follows behind it, right? And what's interesting is why didn't they choose some of the other names in the Bible? Like A. Hab had a successor which was just as evil, A. Hisiah.

It's not always the biblical good successors that these these guys pattern their ministries after. Sometimes it's actually patterned after purely evil, which is in my opinion, whenever there's a predator who is in a ministry that will lift the predator back into power regardless of what has what risks are involved. That is an evil purely evil ministry. So thank you so much for doing this. It's it's unbelievable to think that we're actually having this conversation. If you were in a non-cult church and the minister did something horrific, instantly he would be outed and you would not have this long line of people saying we've got to

get him back. We've got to get this person who did this bad thing back. This is not a conversation that happens outside of a cult group. It only happens within a cult group. I would venture to say also the church would get shut down in most communities when the leader of the community does something horrific and it's not just him but it's like five of the top officials who were working for him. Like all of the leadership team was defending and protecting him during that one. There would be huge lawsuits so they would the place would become bankrupt anyway.

But the fact that the international House of Honor has been able to stay alive through all of this is baffling in of itself because it's like it just it shouldn't. It was built on such clear corrupt foundation in any other setting when that foundation gets exposed.

the whole thing crumbles, but here it's built so that everyone works to support the holiness and structure of the community. Even when the community leader has been exposed and they can't protect, they did everything that they could protect the community leader and still do in in obscene ways. So yeah, yeah, it is it is baffling to think about the situation that we're in.

Absolutely. Well, I look forward to it because we'll probably have the conversation when it comes. There will be a Joshua figure. So that's that's the nature of these types of religions, these cults. So 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-Branum.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.