Resurrecting the Fallen: The Bickle Family Cult Psychology

You Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research, at William-Brannum.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Bob Scott, former co-founder of the Kansas City Fellowship, and author of three books.

The latest is, some say they blundered, breaking my decades of silence on Mike Bickle, the Kansas City Profits, and the International House of Prayer. Well, Bob, it's a good day for you to further break your decades of silence.

I'll just go ahead. So I've had people email me and send me messages and all kinds of stuff about this. I hate to use the word sermon, but it was framed like a sermon and framed with divine authority.

But we'll get into talking about that, but this, this mess that was created by Mike Bickle's sister. We have to talk about it. I know other people are already talking about it and they're diving into the theological issues, and some of them just get back and forth because of the controversy that's there, but you have a lot of the backstory that I think none of the others are going to be able to give.

So today we're going to dive into this, and I will preface this conversation with this. I'm not big into controversy. That's why I actually stick with the history. I prefer things that aren't the heat of the moment.

So this isn't me going after, you know, what is the current hot topic, but I really want to dive deeper into some of the things behind what is being said. Because as I listen to this, to the audience who doesn't know me, I escaped a cult that was the Brannamites, the cult falling of William Brannam, which was essentially the foundation for what, everything that was being said in that sermon, for IHOP KC. IHOP KC was Brannamism 2.0.

And when I listen to this woman speaking, interestingly, it sounds like a thousand different sermons that I can remember growing up. This is the same loaded language with different theologies. It's the same exact thing, and whenever the central figure gets angry at something, it comes out as a divine reprimand of the whole, the city, the nation, the people involved, even right down to the pews, there are statements in there, you people, you're doing this, and it was like a good tongue lashing.

I can remember several sermons when I left the building, the men outside would literally tell each other, boy, we sure got a good tongue lashing today, didn't we, brothers? And that's how I feel about this.

So we're going to talk about it, and I'll let you kick it off. Well, for people who may not know what we're talking about, you might want to put up a link, because she actually got annihilated publicly over this sermon, and she took it down.

But I guess you found it on the Roy's report, so some people may not be familiar with what happened. For those of you that are catching up, my pickles, youngest sister, whose name is Lisa Stribbling, Lisa Bickle Stribbling, got up at her inner city church, what was it Sunday last Sunday?

And basically excoriated everyone for their holding her brother accountable for his misdeeds, and it created quite a buzz. As with most things like that, there's a myriad of different reactions, right? For me, I was actually, I've been out of town spending time with the family, so I sort of got teabonged with this, and so I listened to it as I was driving, and my initial reaction like 30 seconds in was just cringe, and my spirit's pretty sensitive, you know, so I kind of pick up attitudes or vibes or whatever you want to call it.

And that thing, just, I mean, 30 seconds into it, I was just cringing, then I felt sad. And I have a unique perspective on this, because this is, I'm not detached from this story, just a little background, I've known Lisa since she was in junior high, I mean, because of my relationship with the family, and being involved since 1975, I kind of know the whole back story, so I had very mixed emotions on the one hand because of the fact that there's history there.

There was a side of me that was mourning, okay, it's hard to explain it, but it's like I felt bad, like no, no, no, no, please don't do this. You know what I mean?

It's like despite the way my relationship with that whole group of people ended, I still have affection, right? We have history, we have in the midst of a lot of bad stuff, there was a lot of...

a good stuff, right? So I have an attachment. It's like family, you know what I mean? It's like you love them and hate them. And so I have these mixed emotions about it. What particularly made me sad was that for those that don't know, a listener husband have a really rough background. I mean, we're talking about prison, robbery, drugs. I mean, it's a rough history. She's a tough woman, you know. She kind of reminds me of what's that? That preacher from, you know, female preacher from East St. Louis, Joyce Meyer. She's very much like Joyce Meyer. But I was always very proud of her

because they went into the other city, which I felt was very prophetic. And when I mean by prophetic, I mean, living your life as a living message, speaking God's heart. And so they went into the inner city and have been in there for years, helping, you know, the people that are really struggling. And I just devolves really admired her and her husband Ray. Then this happened.

And I'm like, what? You know, it's like suddenly she shifted from the prophetic being the love for the poor and distant franchise to being prophetic by excruciating and back handing the whole church. Right? So I'm looking at this, going, okay, these things don't mix. Right?

It's like this. And the two things are like paradoxical. So I'm driving at, you know, trying to ponder all this. What's going on here? Right? It's like, you forged your life out for the poor. You've done this incredible thing. You've got this ministry called Hope City. You know, it's everyone admires it. And then suddenly out of left field comes this energy and this anger and this rage and this condemnation and this shaming, right? And I'm like, what in the heck is this? Right? Because it's like the two things don't seem to add up. So the question I've been asking myself, what's

driving this? I don't know her at all. And other than this, I've never actually heard her speak. So I'm going to direct all my comments to generalizations of the cult mindset instead. And also some representation of what I had in my head. Because when I listen to it, it's interesting. What you're describing, I would have had if I was in your shoes, if I knew them, I have had the same feelings. Without having had the same feelings, it's very much like there were ministers that I was not really in the inner circle with in randomism.

and why I would attend their churches and they were having one of their bad days, I guess you'd call it, and they just completely scolded the congregation. I was on the congregation side and those said scenarios and you walk out of there feeling lower than dirt because that's what they're wanting you to do. But what I have came to understand afterwards, after leaving this and understanding the cult psychology, the cult mentality, what is happening from what I see? When I call leader or somebody who's in the cult elite, they see themselves as at this higher plane. So you're down here, they're up here at the top.

They see themselves in this higher plane. There are things inside of them that they want to say that they're bottling up. They realize that it's not the time to say them, but they're bottling them up like any human. And there comes a point when they have convinced themselves that they are actually a divine authority that God is actually speaking through their lips. It's not, I know that some of the others out there have said she's lying, she doesn't feel this way.

When you're in the cult mentality, which she appears to be, you actually believe this stuff, you believe that God is speaking through you. So she comes out there and from what I can see, it's very much like the other cult leaders who bottled this stuff up. I've got this divine authority, I'm suppressing my emotions, my feelings, all of my anger against what has happened to whoever is the person who got exposed. Well, suddenly, there comes a point when the human can't bottle it up anymore. And when it comes out, I use the phrase and it's probably rude,

but I say it's basically constipation of the brain and diarrhea of the mouth. It just comes out, the people, the people get the raw emotion that's inside of them with the filter of trying to be God's spokesperson or God's voice, God's mouth. I think she even, if I remember correctly in this thing that's called a sermon, I think she even used the phrase, thus say at the Lord.

She basically said, this is God speaking through my mouth. And what's interesting is, I believe her, I believe that she believes this because that's the cult mentality. I know others may disagree with me, but I think she does. But what's really sad for me, I did have the sad emotion you shared, but in a different way. I was one of the people in those pews in certain scenarios. And I know what it was like to be scolded for an entire hour for something that I didn't do. I have no control over.

It has nothing to do with me. Somebody else got exposed. Somebody's brother should probably be in prison. All of this, all of this is bottling up inside of the person on stage, but me sitting there, I didn't bring my children to come sit, listen through this. I came to hear about Jesus, not this.

So my question is, what's going on here? So if I can speculate, I'm going to be careful here because we're just having a conversation here and I'm going to share some perspectives that I have that go back historically in the book, in my book, one of the things I talk about, which I think was a seminal point of revelation or understanding from most of the eye-hoppers who read the book, which was a conversation I had had early on with a psychologist who asked me a question about what I thought my pickle's greatest fear was. And I went down the typical road of things, you know, spiders, snakes, you know, other

things, you know what I mean? And he came back and said, no, my pickle's greatest fear is that he's ordinary. That moment was an epiphany for me because what it did is it contextualized the whole lot of behaviors that I witnessed for the next six years that made sense that we're kind of like, what is this, right? Well, let's go then. You got Mike who has this need to be extraordinary, right? This need to be seen as you talk about as on a higher plane. You know what I mean? He separates himself out all the way through the years. We were together by prophetic words. So he, you know,

not only is he using what he claims his prophetic revelation that God gave him, but then he's got, you know, a group of prophetic eyes that are reaffirming his specialness, right? And it's the transaction that I talk about in the book is that he sells, like all cult leaders do, his significance by saying, look at me. I'm holy. I'm unique. I'm distinct. I've been to the third heavens. I have open revelation for God. I have understanding and insight into things you don't.

But if you want to feel special, come follow me because by linking yourself with me, by association, now you become special. That drove I up there. I've had so many of the I hop kids and young adults who are the second reiteration because the case he offers, the Kansas City Fellowsingers went through this 20 years before and all walked through this process, right? Which was, we're all young and insecure and we want God to see us and love us and God to acknowledge that we're in this wholeheartedly and we love them with all our heart and we're special too, right?

And you're so vulnerable. You're absolutely so vulnerable because you want to be affirmed. You want to be liked, you want to be loved, you want to be respected. I mean, all the things that the human soul craves, but you want God to give you that affirmation more than anyone else and Mike's coming along and selling that saying, well, look at me, I'm that guy.

And so, you know, link up with me and you can have this special destiny. And I think that was the kind of crash for a lot of the eye happers going to animate. I'm not special, I'm just ordinary, and that was, that's hard.

You know, I mean, it's hard to, you know, most of us hit that at about 30, right? You get married, start having kids and like, okay, reality check here. I got to get a job, you know, I got to pay bills and, you know, so you see all that.

Now, in the Bickel family, and this is one of the things that I also tried to unpack in the book, is the cultic mindset, didn't start at KCF, the family operated that way. Right?

In other words, there was no shift. This was just Mike being Mike, right? You know, the way things are raised. So there are seven kids in the family, so I'll break this down. There are seven kids in the family.

The oldest is a girl, and then right under Mike is another boy, Pat. Those two were what I call the truth tellers in the family. They called Mike on his BS. They would all, you know, if you ever sat in the conversations with me, Mike, and Pat.

I mean, Pat would just, no holes barred. Like it was like, you know, WWE wrestling, I mean, those two brothers would just go out and Pat was just, you know, he just wasn't one to miss words.

He would just let Mike have it, right? Then there's a set of twins who sort of aren't really on the grid. They've, you know, they've stayed very quiet. And then you have the two younger sisters, Tracy and Lisa.

Those two were so young when their dad died. That Mike sort of became the surrogate dad, and they became the cheerleaders for Mike. And they have the sync of that relationship with Mike, and they bought into this.

And this is what I began to notice as the 80s went on, is it started out that Mike was the special one, right? Mike had the special destiny. What it started evolving to with the two younger sisters was, no, the Bickel family has a special destiny, right?

In other words, you know, they sort of hooked on to Mike, but it was bigger than Mike. You know, we all have it. The Bickel family is chosen. Now what's interesting about this, for me, again, kind of unpacking.

mess, and I think this is something you've noticed in your world as well, this sort of worldview or mentality often comes from very broken people and very broken families, right? Alcoholic appearance, drug abuse, abandonment, right?

In other words, the people that sort of fall into this trap, right, of, I'm a lead, I'm very special, are people who grew up not being special, right? It's like, you know, they've, they come into the church world and suddenly, you know, they, you know, they want to change the narrative.

And so they create this false narrative around themselves, right, that they're special. It's almost like they're fighting the demons of their childhood, right? All the shame, you know, I mean, the, the vehicle kids barely lived in the same house more than one year in a row.

They were constantly moving, dirty clothes, you know, parents that were both alcoholics, you know, disgusting things going on, bad stuff, right? But then circle the wagon, create this false narrative at school because we're all embarrassed about our family and that whole dynamic got carried right into the church world, you know, spinning, you know, the circling the wagons as we talk about creating this false narrative, hiding the fact that, you know, our dads are drunk, our moms are drunk, you know, we're poor, you know, we can barely eat, you know, we're living, you know, nasty.

And so we go to school and whatever. So that all got spun into the church world. So my take, all that to say this, my gut feeling is that Lisa's struggling immensely with the fact that the family and Mike are no longer special.

They've been dethroned. Right. And I think she's having a very hard time with this. Now she won't admit that, right, because when you're delusional or whatever, right, you don't want to deal with your own stuff.

But how many times at our age have we looked back and seen and realized how preachers preached at their own demons? You know, I'm going with this, right? It's like as you're talking about, you go to church and, wow, you know what I mean?

You're getting punched, you know what I mean? How shall not and all these extreme statements and, you know, it's just this energy, right? And I never understood it. I kind of thought it was cool at first, like, wow, they're on fire for God, right?

Then I got behind the curtain. And realize that they're preaching about what they're struggling with, right? And in some ways, I mean, I don't know if this is true, but that's what I imagine is the energy, the intense energy that you feel sitting in the pew is because the preachers preaching through their own demons or staining in front of them, pointing fingers at them, right?

Like they're yelling through the little, you know, their own internal demons and it comes out at you like, oh my God, what is this? You know what I mean? I mean, this is just so intense, but it's because they're fighting their own inner stuff.

That was my takeaway. When I listened to her talk, I went, this poor girl or woman is really struggling, right? So this is the, I believe it was as much about her as it was about Mike.

Does that make sense? Absolutely. Okay. What's funny is whenever you're talking, my mind, I'm like deeply in tune with what you're saying and I'm trying to picture the audience who was never in that, in that upper tier.

They would never understand. So as you were talking, I was trying to think of a good way to explain this. I am one of these great red neck, do it yourself or I'll do, I'll do anything, I'll fix the car, I'll work on the electricity, I'll do anything.

My wife will tell you, I fix everything, but whenever I started doing some of the things to fix the house or whatever, my wife was the one who was basically my, my guardrails of safety.

One of the things that I would do when I would change a receptacle in the wall, receptacles goes bad. I don't shut the power off. Yes, exactly. I'd wire it live, man. Now I have a cousin who is a certified electrician who went to another family member and was doing 220 with it live and the family member said, you know, that's dangerous, right?

And he says, yeah, but you know, unless it goes through your heart, it won't kill you. Watch this. And he grabbed on two prongs with his thumb and index finger. It hurt his hand a little bit, but he didn't die.

So 220, anyway, when I, when I got married, my wife was my, my anchor. She started saying, yes, but John, it's not just you that you have to think about. You have children that you need to provide for.

If you die because you did this stupid thing, yeah, don't do this, John. She was running the chair on top of the table to get up to exactly the melody. Now that's a simple example of me having somebody who's grounding me, yeah.

Take these people who are in the upper tiers of a cult. They believe that they are the spiritual elite. And as the spiritual elite, they don't have the same guardrails of everybody. the else, then combine that into a elite family.

One person says, hey, I can do this electrical thing without shutting the power off. The other one's saying, well, that's a great idea. You ought to do more of these. I mean, they're spiraling out of control because they have nobody to say, do you realize that's not quite right?

Right. And that's how it works in the families. It isn't so much that one person comes up with this divine hair brain scheme. It's that they think as a unit and they're complementing each other's spiritual divine authority.

One person rises to the top and he's the central figure. The other people are saying, oh, yeah, well, if you had that thought of spiritual, I wonder if that means something else. And then they go off into what they think it means.

Well, the divine authority isn't hearing from God so much as he is hearing from the group think of the inner circle. And that's how this works. People who are near to William Brannum, and I'm using Brannum as my example because that's my frame of mind.

I have heard stories of people of the inner circle talking about their experience for something that was allegedly supernatural. And what they describe is something that is so explainable. But the cult leader, Brannum, started hearing what they said and started thinking, oh, well, that must be this wonderful thing God is doing.

It's fully explainable, but it spirals out of control because there's nobody to say, do you really think God's telling you to do that stupid thing? Well, and then there's this other dynamic, which is not unique to the church world, right?

Which is family members milking the, what do you call it, the prominence, the exposure of one of their siblings or parents? I mean, how many presidents do we know that had brothers?

Or in the case of the last president, family members, like brothers and sons, all taking advantage of the one siblings' status and stuff, right? And it's like, we're gonna take advantage of this whether it is to gain status ourselves or to gain stuff ourselves.

I've seen it in the church world, right? It's like you have the pastor's family and then suddenly all the siblings, right? And everybody around it has elite status. Even though they're, it's the one guy or the one woman, that's the, you know, that's sort of the drawing power.

Everybody else latches on. I watched, I was in the music business for years. I mean, it was incredible, you know, how many people were leeches and lived off the star, right? So proximity becomes a thing.

And so you see this, you know, you saw it with the brand name, you know? Well, why did Billy brand him? Well, I was Billy Brown and I'm a something right In other words, would he have been a something if he didn't have a famous dad?

Like would have anybody ever heard of him or would he been a pastor of 50 people in a little country church somewhere and nobody would have ever heard of him? Right, that's what I'm saying. There's this thing that happens with either Primarily with families though, right. It's like there's this you know, but it's It may be him, but it's really a wee and so I'm special by You know, by virtual blood or something. I mean So that's where where it gets a little little dicey, but it's again not unique to the church role It's just a human dynamic

That because what drives it? We all have this need You know to be valued. We all want some sense of self-worth, right and in our culture We get self-worth from status and stuff, you know, and so it's it's an addiction in a way but it's it's sad In in the case of of Mike's two youngest sisters They're nothing without him the whole hope city dynamic happens because of iHOP and iHOPs able to fund it, right?

So you take the iHOP financial machine away from hope city. They start struggling financially, right? None of them have the dynamic preaching capacity or drawing power that Mike did So suddenly now it's a reality check You know, it's like you know, and this is what's painful. I have man I tell you I deal with I've dealt with this for 40 years with especially in music and athletics is When your run is done and you suddenly become nobody Yeah, it's it's it's it's it's a it's a problem. I have had to walk a lot of people off of a lot of dark

Cliffs, you know what I mean? Because of the fact that they started off very young and very famous and by 40 were done or even in some places in football You're done and three and a half years. So you're gone by 30, right? It's like You know you're on TV one minute and in your next major a Walmart Nobody even knows who you are, right? I was at Walmart the other day and in the guys shaking my hand were the chiefs players from the 70s, you know what I mean that are greaders at Walmart and they have to tell you who they are

Oh, hi, I might care it. I was an all pro running back for the chiefs. Wow nice to meet you Mike I would have never known nobody would they were all walking past him, right?

And so it's like that in the ministry world as well, right? And so you have these two sisters who outside of Mike

No one knows their name and so they end up developing this identity the sense of self-worth, the sense of, you know, special calling, special status, you know, the sister above Lisa, she's been selling herself as the link to Mike, right? She's she's gotten so many, you know, you know, one of the big complaints I've heard for years is that the men at a wealthier prominent person walked into Iop.

She was the first one over there introducing herself, you know, basically selling access to Mike. Well, I'm the favorite sister and, you know, and you know, because if they were all living off of donations, you know what I mean? And it was like, well, you know, help support me and you know, me and Mike were like this, right? And you see this thing and people were like, yeah, you know what I mean?

This is, yeah, but nobody ever calls anybody on it, right? Because they don't want to be rejected. So you see all this, right? I'm sure you watched it all, but you know, the hierarchies, the groveling, you know, the backstabbing behind the scenes, they're all to, you know, to climb this little ladder to get close to the chosen one.

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So I see this from a different perspective, however. I actually feel sorry for her when I listen to this. For this reason, yes, everything that we have said about the upper tier of the cult is true.

And the cult royalty mindset, that is all true. But remember within the family unit, you have a central figure, you have all of the family that's supportive. Those family members are under the mind control of the central figure, whether they realize it or not, they are. And even though they have this ambition to remain in the divine royalty. And now being ousted from that royalty, there's this human nature to try to get back into it. The cult mindset plays another factor that's sad to me. It really is sad. So this is a cult that proclaimed that there would be this coming end of days revival, they're the ones

to bring it in, all of the cult mindset and theology that came with Ihoz Casey, which was very similar to Brannemism. And then, suddenly, with the fall of Mike Bickel, the possibility of everything that had been prophesied that Bickel would lead, all of that crumbled with him.

So there is no way in which the roots of the theology can come to its fruition. Yet in the cult mindset, the cult programmed mind doesn't realize that now the success of the prophecies of all of our history are now failures.

They don't realize that. Instead, the brain through cognitive dissonance tries to reconcile it. So how do you reconcile the unreconcilable? The leader has fallen from grace. He should never ever be back into his place.

How do you reconcile it? Well, if I understand it right, after Brannem died, didn't people think he was going to resurrect? That's exactly it. So that's the brain trying to reconcile. Every prophecy that he had that required him to be alive for it to happen, the brain tries to reconcile, well, how do you do this?

He must have to rise from the grave. That's what's going to happen. So would you say, because I'm tracking with you here, in some ways, this was an attempted resurrection. In many ways. So that's just basically trying to resurrect Mike back into the position.

Absolutely. Yeah. That's why I sympathize with this. I feel so sorry for not just her, but all of the people, because I was in that frame of mind. We had to have a resurrected Brannem to fulfill what would have failed with him.

The same thing is happening in IHOP KC. IHOP KC cannot go through with the rest of its end of day's predictions without Mike Bickle. How do you do this? You're going to have people, not just her, you're going to have others that stand up and say, God has spoken to me.

We need Mike Bickle back, because how else can we have this, all of this being fulfilled? You know, Rick Jr. came out a month ago and said that. Yeah. Right. So this is interesting because back in October of 12, 2023, when this all broke, you know, there was all this discussion about what Mike would do.

And I told the people close to me, I say, two years. And they said, what do you mean? I said, just watch. I would bet he stays underground for 24 months, because he'll feel that sort of I didn't my punishment him out for 24 months, but he can't not, right?

It's like he's addicted to the, you know, he needs people to follow him. If you know where I'm going with this, right? He needs that group around. on him that idolizes him, you know, that, whatever.

So I didn't think it was possible for him to stay silent. Well, then Rick says this thing a month ago. Then, now we say here on Sunday and I'm like, okay, what's going on here, right?

It's like, well, that's a regular at Mike, right? We need Mike back. You know, there's all these prophecies out there like you're saying, right? You know, you know, it's all this stuff out there.

We need Mike for the end time revival to happen. And you're like, wow, what happened to God? You know, what happened to the Holy Spirit here? I thought they were in charge of all this.

You know, it's just this thing where we're so focused on humans. You know, and that's something this, again, I don't want to slam on the Panacostals, but that's a very Panacostal mindset, which we will talk about them.

We call it the Man of God mindset, right? Everything happens through the Man of God. Yeah. Which is, you know, a lot of Old Testament stories, right? The David's, the moat, right? There's this singular figure.

Who's the Man of God, the Man of the Moment, the Man of Divine Purpose, and they're the ones that are gonna bring this thing. Well, and there's also the issue. I know, I haven't listened to everybody who said anything about this speech, but I know other people have been talking about the fact that there's this pardon that she said came from God.

And if you really think about what's happening here, whenever somebody is that level of spiritual elite, and something so horrific has happened and they have been exposed for it, the natural human can't put up with this.

Inwardly, if this person is a leadership, in a leadership position, and it may come in contact with other young females, I would say, heck, no, you're not going to let my daughter near this person, right?

So what you have to do is you have to put it into the spiritual realm, and once something has entered into the quote unquote spiritual realm by these groups, it's untouchable. God has issued the pardon.

You'll notice that there's no repentance at all. There is no method for repenting for something like this. Bickel, as a cult leader, a central figure, he's never going to come forward and say, yes, I did all of these things, I'm sorry, I'm going to go through a period of being completely isolated, stripped from power, and I'm going to sit alone because I did a bad thing.

Nobody's going to watch this happen, it just won't. But once they put it into the spiritual realm, now everything that comes as a consequence can happen spiritually. Well, he went through spiritual isolation, and now he's been restored by God, or whatever is the spiritual thing.

And what saddens me is the rank and fall member. Deep inside, they know it's wrong. Deep inside. side. Every human wants to do the right thing. But once you put it into the spiritual realm, and you mentioned it, this Pentecostal style thing, he's the man of God, you can't touch him, he's untouchable. That needs to stop. Yeah, that's dangerous. Let me throw something else out at you. I tell you the thing that was triggered me if you want, I guess that's kind of the word of the hour these days, I got triggered. Like I said, I initially cringed right, I was just like,

oh no, right. But the one thing that got me because to me, it's emblematic or symbolic of the cult person's mindset. I haven't listened to the accusations, and I don't want to know, right? So here you are with somebody who's getting ready to slap everyone around that opposes her brother who doesn't even know what the issues are. You know what it reminded me of, you know, when your kids are little and they don't want to listen to you and they stick their fingers in there and they go, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, right? I mean, that sounds terrible,

but like I'm driving and it's like leases thucker fingers in her ears and like, nah, nah, nah, I'm not listening, right? But again, that you find that same mindset with people who follow cult leaders, right? They don't want to listen. Don't bring me facts. I don't want to know. I just want my bias confirmed, right? You know, don't challenge me, right? Don't tell me the truth.

Because I'm not going to listen. And she completely shut herself off. So it was that, that bothered me. I'm like, wait a minute. You are now going to go on the offensive and you're going to start attacking and you don't even know what the playing field is. You don't even know what the issues are here.

And even worse, you don't want to know. Like you're telling everyone, I don't want to know. Well, that's cultic. Like if there isn't more of a glaring cultic, you know, I'm a, you know, you know, I'm a, I'm a member of a cult. That's it. Well, ironically, that's the one thing that she said that made me start to feel sorry for her specifically. Because I truly believe that.

I truly believe that she has ignored all of the stories. Whenever you're in the cult mindset, one of the things, if you've never been in this, you don't understand. If you read Dr. Stephen Hassan's combating cult mind control, he explains this a little bit. But I'll use myself as an example. I had never heard rock and roll until I had, until I was 39 years old, 37 years old.

Because I was in the cult. We weren't allowed to listen to it and I listened to it for the first time 39 years I have had friends who asked me who called me out on this they said John That's impossible you go to the store you hear it you go to the mall you hear everywhere you go You're gonna hear it. How did you not hear it? Well, there's this mental technique of mental blocking Chanting there's different routines for different cults and different Ways of programmed heads in my head whenever I would go into a place that had this

There was a specific song that I would just tune in my head and I'd literally tuned it out So I literally did not hear this music until I was 37 years old There are people who are programs so deeply that they do actually tune everything out. Yeah, I believe her I believe that that is the case The problem with her being in a position of leadership and doing this however is that it is setting up the stage where What if and this is hypothetical? I'm not accusing anybody of anything But what if another leader steps in there that is literally starting to kill people right the same exact rule is apply

He's got a divine forgiveness. Yes. He's killing people But he has a divine forgiveness. This is allowable by God I'm not going to look at it the church is never supposed to investigate it the rules that was laid down in this speech Which I did listen to every single one of them She laid out the groundwork for a leader who has absolutely no accountability and that for me That is the biggest issue of this whole thing it is There was little accountability before but after this everybody who stayed with her and believes that this is this divine thing from God

Now the accountability is actually less than it was before Mike Bickle was ousted now. I've been

I want to be careful because I don't want a name drop but yet at the same time I I think I probably need to say this person's name. I've had a bit of a conflict with a guy here in Kansas City named Malachi Malachi, O'Brien Malachi is very Social media savvy, you know, and he was in the Southern Baptist thing He's been probably the most outspoken voice

Saying that there's a spirit of accusation That's entered the church world, right? And so he's actually just come out with a book basically condemning everyone and anyone who brings up Anything negative about a leader, right?

And he calls it the spirit of accusation, right? And because all these various scandals are coming out right now And his mind a spirit of accusation has been unleashed, right? It's a devil. It's a demon and it's came to destroy the church and we have to fight against it, and I said to, I've tried to communicate to him that it's interesting to me that that's how he thinks. I was explaining to him, I said, you know, I've spent 40 years working with people in the NFL and every Monday after a game winner lose, everybody does

the same thing. They break down in their position groups and they watch film. And what do they do when they watch film? They analyze every play, right? Now, the two words that I'd like to kind of compare critique and criticism, right? In my mind, and again, I'm generalizing here, criticism has an intent to tear people down. You know, Jesus talked about the power of life and death and the tongue. That's death. I'm criticizing you, John, because I want to put you in your place. I want to tear you down. I want to make you feel bad. I don't think that's Jesus' heart at all. critique on

the other hand, which is what happens in the NFL in your position groups. We could treat, we could critique our blocking, our routes, our timing, right? Why? Because in critique, your focus is on what do we do to get better? Right? How do we improve? In the business world, we have a phrase called a post-bortum, you know, a sales process, you know, that we worked three months trying to get somebody's business and we failed. What do we do? We sit down and we do a post-bortum and we critique everything that we did. Where did we fail? Right? It's the same thing with product

or implementations, right? Whether you're building something or you're repairing something and you aren't successful, you fail. What do you do? You critique it. You analyze it. The whole focus is on how do we do better? And I think these guys in the ministry want, I think they got soft skin.

You know what I mean? I think we got a bunch of voices in the ministry world that if they were in the business world or the athletic world or just about any other sector would be critiqued all the time, right? Because it's all about performance. Every company does it, every organization does it, every team does it, but in the church we can't do that. That's not biblical.

And I'm like, wait a minute. Do you don't think Jesus was critiquing people? He called the Pharisees whitewash sepulchers. Oh, but did Jesus have a spirit of accusation? Right? You see where the, it's just, we're in this really weird absurd Third place right now.

So I've tried to challenge Malachi, and of course, he just put his fingers in his ears. He doesn't want to hear another perspective on this, but I think critique is absolutely vital for the success of the church, right?

You know, whether it's how we run our church or our community, or we deal with leaders, and Mike got critiqued, was in a spirit of accusation. Mike got critiqued. This is what you said.

This is, you know, this was the goal. You said you wanted this kind of thing. You didn't live up to your own message here, right? We're critiquing you, Mike. You fell short. Now, if Mike has got a right heart, which I haven't seen yet, he would say, you know what?

You've confronted me. I've seen the air of my ways. I'm gone and got help here, you know what I mean? I'm working on this, and I will do better, right? This is something, again, you know, you and I talk about cultural things, you know, the shift, our parents' generation.

We had a president from Kansas City, Harry Truman, right? World War II mindset, you know what it was? His famous phrase, buck stops here. Yeah.

It's on me. That used to be the standard of manhood, right? That used to be what made you a real man. A real man was, you know what? I own up to that. I'll do better.

Now, it's their fault. I'm a victim. They did it to me, right? It's always everyone else's fault, and that's seeped into the church world now. And so now it's not only, it's not my fault, I didn't do it.

And you have a spirit of accusation. So the way we shut down critique is we call you an accuser of the brethren. And to me, that's dangerous, right? In other words, if we fall into that, we are going to go down a road of other deception because we will never critique ourselves, right?

Absolutely. You know, I've read through the comments and people get upset whenever I show my sympathy for leaders in IHOP KC or other cults. And you know, if you understand the basics of Christianity, you understand that there is a path to restoration.

There is a path for forgiveness. That's what made Christianity so different from the other religions. However, that path is different when you're in a leadership role. Does restoration mean that you're restored as a leader who could potentially commit?

same crimes? No, absolutely not. But there is a path to restoration. The difference in a cult, whenever you're in that cult mindset and you've been manipulated to think that this human is above the other humans, they give a different path for restoration than what is biblical. This person can be restored exactly to where they were with the money, power, sex, glamour, whatever it is that they're after. They can be restored to that exact position because they are the spiritual supreme. And it's the true definition of a cult. Whenever you see a person who's acting like

this, this is the part where I'll go a little bit against what I heard in the speech. It is setting up the stage for something bad to happen again. Although I feel sorry for the person, I feel like I truly believe what she said. I truly believe that she believes what she said. But her head was not in the place of a normal human. This was a programmed cult mind. Well, she needs to believe that.

That's where I'm trying to go with this. I cannot deal with what's going on. And so part, it's like an addict and a what, right? It's like, so that's the energy that's underneath. In other words, it appears on the surface she's defending her brother. What's actually going on underneath is she's desperately trying to recapture something that she lost two years ago. Does that make sense?

That's what I feel anyways. Yeah, I feel that too. I just, I have this complex, complicated massive emotions when I hear this. I actually should not have listened to this. This was quite hidden. This was quite triggering it. Yeah, message. Yeah, because it's, I wondered about this because to me, it's the quintessential, as we said, cult mindset, which if there's anybody that I know that's familiar with it inside out, it's you, right? And so in your mind, it's like, oh my God, I know this. Well, I have lived this already, you know? Yeah, it's like, you know, if you were,

if you were on a boat and you watched several people drown and then you are in another situation where people aren't drowning, but they're almost drowning, you're not going to want to be near it, you're not going to want to look at it. I see a drowning person when I watch this, watch her speaking. This is a drowning person. She can't do that. There's so much energy on it, right? In other words, there's this intense thing you can feel it underneath. Like there's all this energy because there's desperation in it. That's, that's the sad part of it, right? It's like this person's

desperate. And yeah, I'm going to just leave it there. There's this thing, this person psyche is, you know, very fragile. So this is desperate. Yeah, and that's so valuable. That's in her mind. That's survival motive. People can understand that it appears that she's, you know, this tough prophetess, but actually what's driving it is her trying to survive. Yeah, absolutely.

So that's very sad, actually. Absolutely. That's why I say, you know, I'm not a person who goes after the, you know, the latest controversy because everybody wants to click on to it. I actually feel really sorry for her. I did want to get your perspective because historically this has historical value. This is something that in the future people can look back what my hope is that she escapes this cult. She escapes the cult mindset. This was her frame of mind and this is a milestone in history of what a cult programmed mindset looks like. And then after you escape,

you can go back and I never want to go back there. I never want to go to that drowning thing again. That's what I'm hoping happens, but it'll be interesting to see where all this goes because

here's the reality. The reality is if Mike does attempt to come back, right? There will always be a group of people who will follow him. I mean, look at all the other guys that are out there that, I mean, did some really bizarre things. There's always a group of people to your point earlier who see him as the man of God, a chosen vessel, a unique destiny, has a spiritual power. And despite his human failures, he's mission critical to what God wants to do. And so we're going to overlook all that and latch onto this because he's going to take us to the other side is Jim Morrison used

to sing, right? Mike's going to take us to the promised land, right? Then there's the majority of people who, which is typically very American, which is they just disappear. It's just like, you know what?

I just, I'm done. Like, I don't really want to know about this anymore. I've moved on. I'm in a different segment of the church world and it's that's the majority of people. Then on the other side is, I don't know if it's larger or smaller than the first group, the syncopates, but there are people that if Mike comes back and is in a pulpit, it's going to get nasty. They will protest. They will show up at church like Mike, it will be hunted everywhere it goes because of the nature of the offense, right? There are people out there that want to castrate him. Like they're angry.

They believe he should be in prison and that's, you know, that's why I said in my book that best. Best, I can see him maybe disappearing and writing books, but any sort of public anything. He's just going to get annihilated. Just annihilated. I mean, it's just the fantasy of trying to come back. Even guys like, you know, as I told you, you know, months ago, I was right in the middle of the whole Jimmy Swagger, Marvin Gorman Mass, right? And you're talking about the star evangelist for the assemblies of God. I mean, he is the Elvis Presley of the AOG.

But once that happened, he never came back, right? He never, ever came back to that stature. You know, I spent time talking with Jim Baker after he fell, right? And same thing. You'll never come back. Mike Bickle will never have the stature that he did. It's over like that.

You know, you know, that whole fantasy about him coming back and leading this end time movement, that's done. Nobody's going to follow him. Oh, I shouldn't take nobody, but it's just going to be a small, you know, little ragtag group of people. So it's it's sad. It's it's very sad. But I just, I just get really concerned when I start seeing these other leaders come up with this spirit of accusation mess because I I don't know if they realize how dangerous that is, right? They think they're being godly, right? And there it's that same thing again in my mind, you know what I mean?

This is God's heart, you know what I mean? There's a spirit here and I'm, you know, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to fight against this, not realizing that what they're doing is literally opening the door for more abuse, right? Opening that shutting people down who have discernment, have insight, right? Who can hold leaders accountable? Which all leaders are required to be?

And by, you know, suddenly labeling everything as the spirit of accusation, now suddenly there's no accountability, right? Anything you say that in any way holds a leader accountable, now you have a spirit of accusation brother. Or, you know what I mean? And that whole thing Satan is the accuser of the brother and you're siding with Satan himself. Well, and the other thing too, this is probably the last thing that I'll say, I don't know how much you've studied mental health, but there when somebody is spiraling out of control, many of them who are in episodes will get

God complex as God speaking through me. God has told me this. God is doing this. And how do you, how do you wade through this in the Pentecostal world? Because in the Pentecostal world, everything is God said, you can, you know, you go find a parking spot. I had a person do this. God gave me that parking spot. That's how that's the world you live in. But if you study just the mental health, which is aggravated by the cult mindset.

Once a person reaches to the level of insanity where they're claiming that God is speaking through them and believing it, it's one step from needing to be in a padded cell. So that's the other thing that makes me really sorry for this person.

I wonder, you know, that phrase reading the room. That was interesting to me because it's likely to read the room here because she got annihilated. I mean annihilated. So I don't know, it's like, did you not understand, like is your head, you know, have you been doing the ostrich thing for the last two years?

Well, she admitted it. I haven't read anything, I don't know, right? It's like she basically buried her head. Therefore, she's not reading the room and she comes out thinking she's going to get on this whole box and delivered this prophetic word from God, right?

And gets absolutely crushed to the point where she takes it down within 24 hours. I mean, she got annihilated. And that was, I felt bad. It was like, oh my God, it's like she just got crushed.

And I'm thinking what was going or not going on in your head that you did not read the room and understand what's going on out there. Did you not understand what was coming if you did this?

Right? It's like, it's like she just, again, either naive or to your point, like disconnected, like mentally delusional to where she wouldn't figure this out because it's obvious. That's why I cringe. It's like, oh my God.

I mean, you could tell 30 seconds in addition. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, right? It's like, you know, it's like you just walked out into the middle of a freeway, right? It's like you're going to get run over here.

Like what are you doing? And that's just it. You know, if you've ever been around people who have mental health issues, you kind of get a sense for it. And I feel sorry, I'm not going to go further than that.

I feel sorry for her. And this was spiritual suicide, what she did. Yeah. It's like, oh my God, what are you doing? You know, it's like, so that's where I felt bad. It's like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

So we'll see where it goes, you know what I mean? I just, I just feel bad. I hate seeing that. I mean, I don't know. Maybe I'm a kind of a softie. I just, I have a hard time watching people embarrass themselves.

Have you done it? Like I, like I can't even stay in the room. Like I got to get up and walk out. Like I can't just sit there and watch. You know what I mean?

It's just too painful. So. Well, it's like I said, I have trouble watching other people drowning and that's what I saw. So again, I hesitated to even do this, but I'm glad that you did.

I wanted to have some of the insight behind some of the things that you were saying. And I think we hopefully pulled that out. Yeah, because I know our audience is connected into that.

I have a role. And so I'm sure a lot of people are commenting on it. So those are our thoughts. You know, again, there are their perspectives. You know, there are, you know, from years of living through this, you know, as we're just unpacking this, trying to bring understanding of what may have been the motivation and what's driving it and maybe some warnings about why this is so dangerous.

And, you know, if you see this kind of behavior in other situations, it should be a red flag like morning, you know, or as the robot used to say, I'm, what was that show with the robot?

Warning, warning. Danger will raven some day. Exactly. See, we're dating ourselves now, but I get the robot warning, warning, warning, Bob Scott. Warning. And now I've got my afternoon watching lined up. That's what we're going to see.

Thank you so much for doing this. All right, brother. 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.

For 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. And for more about Mike Bickle and IHOPKC, you can read some said they blundered, breaking my decades of silence on Mike Bickle, the Kansas City Prophets, and the International House of Prayer, also available on Amazon.

Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Bye.