The Bickle Playbook: Forgiveness Without Repentance

Music 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, Jed Hartley, son of a false prophet and former member of the International House of Prayer. Jed, I'm not a big fan of beating dead horses. However, the subject matter, which is already, I think it comes out after the one Bob Camp comes out maybe, but talking about this video where my pickle sister gets up and talk, I know that everybody on the internet and their brothers and sisters have all

talked about this. However, when I talked about it with Bob, we were talking from, I guess you would say, a parallel level, Bob being, you know, close friends with Mike Pickle and he knew, he knew Lisa all of this, but I also wanted to get the perspective of somebody who wasn't in that parallel universe, but with somewhat a tear down, but not yet rank and file member, which interestingly that puts you in that category. So I thought maybe we'd talk about that and I want to get a variety of perspectives. I have a lot of thoughts and as I was talking to Bob, I was a little bit constrained because I was trying

to place myself at his level and discuss as if it were, I don't know, one of William-brannum sons and their siblings or wives or whatever, but I want to talk now a level down because that conversation gets really interesting really quick.

Yeah, 100%. I'm interested in listening to what you and Bob talked about about this because, but I really wanted to talk to you about it too because I think that it is the fulfillment of a lot of things that we've been talking about when Mike Pickle is just been playing from the same playbook that we've been talking about since I first came on here. There's quite clearly a very specific playbook that he is played by and my dad is played by, we've talked about the Darvo playbook of Denai Attack, Reverse Victim and offender playbook and this is just the continuation of that. So I feel like this is just a good

example of a lot of the premises that we have been talking about in the past of things issues. with loose doctrine, with thus say at the Lord prophecies, with the way that people can situate themselves as the cornerstone of ministries, so that if you pull them apart, the whole thing falls apart.

So, you know, I don't wanna be the dead horse either by talking about something that has already been talked about, but I think that this is just such a good salient example of what the playbook is and how it is run and how it's used

to manipulate to silence critics of all kinds, but specifically victims, and it was a big deal. Like, I appreciate that you're wanting to see it from my perspective too, because like, as someone who grew up in the church listening to Mike Preach, listening to more of Bickel's preach.

So, I had heard Lisa preach before. I had heard some of the other Bickel family preached before. Obviously it was primarily Mike, but, you know, that family was so important and was such a authority in the way that I grew up, and even into my 20s,

there was this sense of reverence towards the perspectives that that family held. I mean, again, specifically with Mike, but there was this sort of Bickel legacy, and it held this sort of reverence and importance.

And so I think to hear a Bickel-esque message come from Lisa was really kind of triggering, and I'll just start with there. Like, I know that you listened to it some, but just listening to her speak, which, just to summarize, if people don't know what we're talking about at all, Mike's younger sister, which he has quite a few siblings, but specifically, Lisa, I believe that she's the youngest of the group.

She spoke at a sort of church hope city is, I don't know if you've talked with Bob about hope city, but from my understanding it's a addiction

ministry to help poor and people who have been addicted to various forms, drugs, and that's the sort of like ministry and that's based in sort of downtown Kansas city. It's called hope city because it's about people who have messed up lives that are finding their way back onto the straight narrow, and specifically, through drug and alcohol addictions. So that's the sort of ministry that her Lisa and her husband have run for many years. And she was speaking at their sort of Sunday gathering. And she began talking about Mike. And the first she's talked about it twice. But the first time she talked,

it sounded like she very much was trying to pave the way for a Michael return. For, hey, he's forgiven. These things are over. This is done. Thus, say, if the Lord, I am speaking and saying that Mike, Michael has been forgiven and all of these things are forgotten. And so you guys, you're actually the bad guys now, everyone who is still accusing him because the Lord has already forgave him. And then the second we can all get into it in more details. But just so people understand what we're talking about. She then gave another sort of Sunday

message that we talked all about forgiveness and about what was the word? It wasn't penalty. I'm forgetting what the word was. But she basically gave this whole message about how she was like, I'm not saying that he's going to, I wasn't saying that he's going to start ministry again. That's sort of between him and God. She didn't give that sort of, she kind of walked that back a little bit. But she was like, he's essentially been forgiven.

And then she showed a video of the previous, the person who, Deborah, who first came forward. She was sort of the first person who came forward as a victim of abuse where she was recognizing how Mike Bickle had abused her in the past. She came and spoke forward. And she was just the first of, she was this sort of, she's what kind of broke the dam that rushed forward.

She wasn't the only individual. But she, she was very important in sort of speaking up. And then Tammy and my mother came forward. And then many others have come forward since then. But she was, she was kind of the first individual who spoke up against Mike and his sexual abuse. And she's the first victim who, who sort of came forward publicly. And so Lisa showed a video because Deborah had been involved in IHOP for several decades. And she found a video with her and Alan, Alan Hood, who was a, a very big figure in in the International House of Prayer,

who has since come out and spoken out and led the charge against Mike Bickle and was a very important individual who was sort of bringing accountability to Mike Bickle. Lisa shows this video of them talking about some, it didn't really matter, but it was just them talking about some message.

And she basically used their own voices to sort of warp it into this apologetic that supported sort of the forgiveness of Mike and, so use the voice of the accusers in the past, twisted it to be like, oh, see, they even said it themselves that this is the nature of God.

And therefore, Mike is innocent and needs to be forgiven. And it was super manipulative, but I have thoughts of what it felt like to listen to that, but John, when you listen through it, what were your sort of thoughts?

I don't know if I can explain this spaghetti that went through my head. As I told Bob, with Bob, I was looking at it from the perspective of somebody who's in the inner circle of the upper tier.

When you're looking at that perspective, number one, you feel really sorry for the person because you know what they're going through. Number two, you understand the manipulation techniques that they're doing. I know exactly when I could hear the key phrases, I knew exactly what manipulation technique she was using and why.

And interestingly, when you're in that upper tier and occult, you think that's a good thing. You actually don't realize that manipulating the minds of people is a terrible, terrible thing to do. That's how you're trained.

And interestingly, the training isn't such that we're going to do this awful thing and you have to ignore your inner feelings of how awful it is. It's more of learning the technique by watching others do it and watching others do it for the sake of godliness.

So wrapped in this big ball of mess is somebody who thinks they're doing good, who is destroying the minds of the people. So with Bob, I talked at that level. When I listened to it, the spaghetti is going through my head, man.

I was triggered from all angles because I was triggered from the top level, just like that. I have been in situations where people I knew were doing something similar for various reasons and I would be on their side, even though inwardly, I realized that yeah, it's probably not right what they're doing, but I get why they're doing it and it's for a good cause.

We're all going to further the kingdom of god, whatever it was. But I've also been on the outer circle, the middle tier, I guess you would say, in occult. In occult, you have, The central figure, you have this pyramid where the very top or the inner circle, the, you know, the not just rank and fall, but the elite of the cult.

There's usually this middle tier of people who are like enforcers, and then you rank and fall members. I also was triggered from the perspective of a rank and fall member, because I knew the manipulation techniques, but they were the same ones that were used in sermons that I've heard, I've sat through.

So I'm listening to this, and the spaghetti mess that's going through my head, one of the things that I was thinking was, this sounds exactly like, and I could name off two or three pastors that I had heard growing up.

But at the same time, the thought of a woman speaking in church and brannemism was completely taboo. And so I'm thinking, I don't know about this, I don't know what to do about this.

And I no longer, you know, I no longer believe that way. However, all that was going through my head, it was a triggering experience. But I knew, from the get-go, I knew immediately from the tone that was being used, I put myself in the congregation when I listened to it.

From the tone that was being used, I knew I was about to get reprimanded. That's the tone that came across. And I'm certain that everybody who's in the building knew that a reprimand was coming.

That's exactly how it felt. And then there was a biblical analogy, I think she used David or some biblical figure, I think it was David, and goes into talking about some Bible experience. But in the tone like, my reprimand is going to now be exiled against me using some theme from the Bible.

So I need to pay close attention to, how should I be ashamed? That's the first thought that goes through your head. How should I be ashamed? And then very almost instantly, I did write this phrase down.

She said, after she gets into the speech talking about the Bible figure, she says something to the effect that social media was mocking God. I think that's the phrase she used, mocking God. And I knew when I heard that, she was going to be applying God to the central figure.

So she's going to give a biblical example of somebody doing something good for God in the Bible. And then those around mocking God. And then going to use that in the reprimand against me, my church.

And as I listened to it and continued, the sad part is, it suddenly hit me how many times that I had been through this and never really recognized it when I was in it.

I had no control, putting myself in in IHOPKC's congregation. As an IHOPPER, I have no control what the outside world is saying about Mike Bickle. It's completely beyond my control. But yet I'm going to take a verbal beating for it.

And that's to quickly summarize what always in my head. That was the first thing. and it came through my head. So many of the things that you were saying are also things that were going through my head too.

In, now I didn't feel like, I didn't have to empathize with the group to feel like I was being reprimanded because I literally was being reprimanded by her because she was talking about social media accusers and like in some respects, that was a lot of, especially early, so just to give a little, I think I've probably talked to you about this before, but to give a sort of detailed breakdown of how the first wave of momentum was built against Mike Bickel.

So Deborah comes forward behind the scenes. She gets connected with some of the IHOP leaders. They're sort of the advocacy group that has formed, that comes to support her. They pull in my mom because the testimony of Deborah, so specifically Mike had been giving.

I repeat this all the time on this, but it's not talked about enough publicly, I think, but Mike Bickel gave Deborah a word about how when a prophetic word, about how when, about how his wife, so Mike Bickel is married to Diane Bickel, and the prophecy was that one day Diane is going to die in an earthquake.

So the prophesied the death of his own wife to Deborah in order to say, hey, give her a timeline of like, we can be, because he's grooming Deborah at the time, and he wants to give her an idea of hope of like, we will one day be able to be together, because one day my wife is going to be swallowed by the earth in an earthquake.

And I know I talk about that, like this is probably the 15th time that I have talked about that prophecy, but that was his line. He said that to that, and he said it to my mom too, my mom also, he attempted to groom my mom by doing that.

He also said it to Tammy, and he just said it to others. And so this is sort of a thread that kind of proved all of these individuals' testimonies, because they all sort of were giving the same account of things without talking with one another.

And so this sort of validated, oh, he's really saying this, like it'd be very wild for them all to make up this same exact bizarre story. So that happens early, and at the very beginning, it's only that I was aware of.

There was only two tests. the testimonies that it was the testimony of Deborah and the testimony of my mom. And there was this sort of backlash against, especially on social media, against anybody who was speaking up against Mike.

There was this demonic sort of, there was all of these crazy things that were going on about demonizing the people who were speaking up, demonizing Deborah. She was just named Jane Doe, but there wasn't a whole lot of names out there because she was anonymous.

My mom was anonymous. There weren't a whole lot of people who were speaking up with their names. The people who were, were Alan Hood, Samuel Hood, who's Alan's son, and some of the AG groups of some of the ex-i-hoppers.

But I was in that initial group of people who was speaking up because I knew behind the scenes like who Jane Doe was, and I knew my mom's testimony. So I was going into social media, repeating several times.

It's so funny to even see my tweets because now people know to take what I'm saying seriously because they understand the context of that. But I would like tweet out Mike Bickle

was grooming young women and he was using prophecies about the death of his own wife to groom. Women, we know this for a fact, and the amount of hate that I was getting from the Bickle cohorts, like it was from sort of the Bickle Mafia.

There was a lot of people who were close to Bickle. Like Luke Bickle moved in with my dad during, so Mike Bickle's son moved in with my dad during this time too. And it really felt very like Mafia, mob, ask of like, if you keep speaking up, we're going to come get you.

And so, okay, so bringing it back to when, what Lisa was talking about. So Lisa has this tone of anger and this sort of righteous indignation when she's talking and she's talking about the social media people.

Well, that was me. Like she was talking about me among others. It's not like I was the only individual. But this is sort of like how dare you just the scum of the earth sort of like, you don't know Mike, you don't know this world.

Why are you talking about it? You're talking on social media. What a silly, ridiculous thing to do to think. And it's like, well, I would have talked about it within the context of the church.

However, everybody who tried to bring it up within the church was like ex-communicated because Mike Bickle, you know, the Stuart Greaves and the Isaac Bennett's and the individuals who are underneath. Mike during this time, we're all protecting Mike at all costs, like there was zero way to have accountability within the context of the church. And so what's the next step? It's like, okay, well, public accountability. Plus, like, even if there's accountability within the church, because Mike was using prophecy and it opened up the whole can of worms. So, well, what about all of the prophetic narratives of I hop? What about all of this? What, you know, there's the sexual

abuse, but what about the prophetic abuse? What about the spiritual abuse? What about the false prophecy, the false doctrines that have affected so many individuals? And then someone who, like, literally grew up in that community was a son of that community. Mike Bickle was the only person who was at my birth other than direct family. Like, it was my mom, my dad, my aunt, and Mike Bickle.

That was who was there when I was born. And like, I was born into this world, given a prophetic name as my identity. Like, this was, this is so part of my identity. And the only real method for me to be able to speak up about these things was via social media and was the Roy's report and was the sort of news outlets because their just was total control of the community so that no one could speak out. And it's so baffling to me because, like, Lisa gave me listening to her. It reminded me of what was happening in those early times when, like, the early times as in just a few years ago,

but when that sort of first wave came out where I was genuinely like, man, Mike Bickle is a sexual predator. No one's going to know about this because I thought they were going to win.

I thought that the Bickle cohort was going to successfully silence Deborah and my mom. I knew my mom didn't really want to speak about it that much. So my mom wasn't going to fight for herself that much. I didn't know if Deborah was still not using her name, which I totally understand why she wasn't and she was going by Jane Doe. And there was all these sort of tactics that were being used to silence them. And I thought, this is going to be, you know, at best, it's going to be the Bob Jones situation in 1991 where it's like, oh, something bad happened. Maybe for a couple

years, people kind of talk about it in hush tones. And then he's restored to ministry two years later and everyone forgets about it. And his name is a part of the larger legacy of this movement.

accountability that happens. Because of any of this, and it's so fascinating because from a public perspective, something switched when Tammy Woods came forward and shared her story. And she was like, I was 14. Mike Bickle was in his mid-20s. He pursued me. He gave me those same prophecies. I was his babysitter throughout decades. I have like defended Mike Bickle, but now I'm even seeing how horrible it was. And Tammy's testimony, something tipped. And then everyone was like, even like the people who like Rick Joyner is a good example. Rick Joyner is the pastor at Morningstar for people who don't know. He was that sort of same voice of like,

when I was speaking up and when the others were speaking up, he said it was a nothing burger. It happened 20 years ago. It didn't use super dismissive. And I took it very personally because it felt very dismissive of my mother and her testimony. And having people like Rick Joyner and other ministry leaders who know my mom personally and who like knew my dad and had him come and perform his church to be like, what Terry is saying is just such a nothing burger is felt very personal.

But then Tammy Woods comes and it goes from a nothing burger to, okay, Mike messed up. And that was this sort of, that's been for the last year and a half or however long it's been since Tammy spoke the individuals, even like the Chris Valetins, the Bill Johnson. I don't think Bill Johnson has spoken about it publicly, but all of these different individuals are like, yeah, okay, okay. So Mike messed up. Mike messed up. And it's, we know he did something. And

to hear Lisa talking, it was like, it reminded me of that sort of first battle where it was like, Mike may have messed up a little bit, but really, you know who the bad guys are. The bad guys are the victims. The bad guys are all of these individuals who are speaking up. It's Deborah.

It's Terry. It's Jed. It's, it's these social media warriors who think that they're going to take down the prophetic movement and are inspired by the demonic, you know. And it just this, it's so personal. Like, she goes and she speaks up, one of the things that she said in the first, in her first sermon, she was like, these accusations, she was like, I haven't even heard the accusations. I haven't even looked in or read through them. I can't remember what she said, whether it was heard or, but she doesn't even know what the accusations are.

And that was just so inferior to be like, how do you not know? And like I know she knows my mom, like and she knows Deborah, like it's not, it's not, there's not this sort of separation of like, like she literally grew up with my mom because she's younger and my mom was a little bit older than her and like she grew up in that community and my mom was close friends with one of the other Bickel sisters in high school and to not even, to be able to speak angrily and with conviction about accusations

that she hasn't even done the due diligence of like listening to, not even given it the time of day to listen through it, is so revolting and it gives this, so I understand that you probably, and Bob maybe came from this empathetic perspective of where you're like, man, I know what it was like to be on the inside and she's probably being manipulated by Mike and she's being told to say these things and she's just coming in the defense of her brother and she's trying to like reaffirm the sort of boundaries of the community that she is a part of.

I understand all of that and I understand coming from an empathetic perspective that is not my perspective because like I have zero empathy for Lisa because like I had to speak up against my dad like you don't get to claim ignorance

or claim sort of like famed familial allegiance in situations of sexual abuse. You just don't, like I don't get to do that with my dad and she doesn't get it to do that with her brother.

You are accountable for coming to terms with reality, especially if you're going to speak up, like it would be different if she was like, you know, in her own home and not speaking from pulpit but one thing that she's doing is that by speaking at a pulpit, not only is she like making, she's grafting in her hope community,

like the hope church community, she's grafting them into the IHOP legacy. So she's making their identity now a part of the IHOP identity where they could have stayed separate, they could have been something where it was like, okay, well, the integrity and identity of this community can live on regardless of whatever happens with Mike Bickel.

But now that's not the case. Like now she's making that church, like everyone within that community has to pay. side and it's sort of like you're either for us or against us. And so members of that community who are like, I was just here because I wanted to help individuals get clean and because I struggle with drug addiction myself in the past, I now have to assume the sort of like religious perspective and historical identity of Mike Bickle and the International House prayer into sort of my own community and culture. And if clearly by the way that Lisa was speaking, if I disagree,

I'm going to be absent from the community. Like if you're someone in there who's like, man, like say you're a woman who's experienced sexual abuse and you have also experienced drug addiction. And you're in there and you're like, man, this this this ministry really helped me get clean. But the person on the pulpit is normalizing and contextualized and sexual abuse. And this is something that I have experienced in the past. You now have to decide, I either have to leave the community that I found support in or I have to let go of a genuine and real conviction against the like evils of sexual abuse that I personally

have experienced. Like I say that as hypothetical, there's just knowing especially because people who deal with drug addiction are more vulnerable to sexual abuse. Like I know for a fact there are members of that very community who have experienced that and there's people who are dealing with that right now. So yeah, I like I'm not saying that you you and Bob were like super empathetic or you know, of her and I'm not disagreeing with any of that from you. But I'm just saying like it's so I just from my perspective, I just feel like it's so rotten. What's going on and it

undoes a lot of the victory that happened after Tammy came forward and this sort of like rhetorical um victory of people being like, no, you know what? We can kind of all agree what Mike Pickle did. He did do and it is horrible and that there is still this very um fervent attempt to deny attack reverse victim and offender and pretend like Mike isn't the bad guy and that Tammy and my mom and Debra and me and Alan and others are the actual villains of this situation.

is just really corrupt. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new Apostolic Reformation?

You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen McCummery, 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 Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

So I mentioned I listened to this from different levels and perspectives and a lot of mess was going through my head. We'll also listen to it from the perspective of an outsider, somebody who had no clue what's going on, outside looking in.

I did have some clue because I obviously know about Mike Bickle. But according to the situation, you know, I could easily put myself in that angle. And it kind of reminded me, I hate to use the example.

I've used it already once before in another podcast that's coming out, but I'll go there later. But it kind of reminds me if, say, some car sales company, some used car sales company had a used car salesman that kept promising that this great big event was going to happen and all of these cars would suddenly be sold and we're marketing for it and it never comes.

It just never comes. And for some reason, the guy gets caught harassing some young lady and then, you know, gets kicked out of the car a lot. Well, the future salesman aren't going to look back and say, well, we need to welcome this guy back with open arms because he's going to suddenly sell a bunch of cars.

Right. And that's kind of what, I mean, I hate to say it, but that's what it felt like. And again, I hate to use the analogy, but if you put the name Jeffrey Epstein on that used car salesman, everybody would just be abhorred.

Well, no, he's not coming back. That's awful what this guy did. Well, compare apples to apples. It's pretty close to the same, maybe not to the same level, but it is close to the same.

And so me outside looking in, I'm thinking, oh my gosh, how can this person even say this? I don't care if it is the brother. I don't care if it's the sister of Jeffrey Epstein, you know, right, right.

You just don't say something like that. Then take it a step from... Further, you don't say it to people who have been hurt and who were potentially targets. If all the other salesmen was a potential target for whoever was kicked out, you don't do this, man.

So all of that's going through my head. At the same time, I'm thinking through the indoctrination, well, she has so indoctrinated to believe that this coming revival event or brother has tricked her into believing that this is happening and Charles mentioned it recently.

He said the irony of the chiefs winning the Super Bowl after all of this happens is just, it's really unbelievable if you think about it because of the details of that prophecy. And me being a chiefs fan, then squirrel, I started thinking about the chiefs and how they're going, they're going to win again this year.

So yeah, that's, I'm with you. I will second that prophecy. Yeah. So I've got all this going through my head, but just taking a step back and from the outside looking in, oh my gosh, I can't believe somebody did this.

Yeah, I love everything that you're saying. And because it's still trying to use Mike Pickle's

prophetic legacy to undo the legacy of abuse, right? And it doesn't work because those are intertwined. His legacy of his prophetic legacy, which he all, like, first of all, he always constructed it to be this way from the very beginning because he has had, he's been abusing people since he was 20 years old, but he was, and he was using his sort of spiritual authority even when he was with my mom, this was before he got married to Diane.

He was 20, my mom was 15. I've told this story before, but that was the first time that he started dating my mom or pursuing my mom. And he was a, he was a spiritual, he was the youth pastor for the church that she was part of.

And so like even at the very beginning, there was this sort of like immediate spiritual authority when he was a young man. I'm very young man in 20s. He like, he recognized and used this sort of authority for sexual purposes.

Now it's a little bit grayer area because, you know, 2015, there's a very huge, you know, there's a big gap there. Is it as extreme as when, you know, Tammy was 14, he was in his late 20s and had two kids and was married.

No, it's not, it's not as extreme as that, but you can see the sort of like pattern that was being built. And then of course later, after he had gotten married, he tried to pursue my mom again and tried to do the same thing.

So there's an interesting tactic, a very, it shouldn't work. I hate that it works on some people, but Lisa did this where she was like, this is something that happened decades ago. That shouldn't be something that lessons the issue with my end of anything.

That should make it more serious. I think that she's kind of saying like this happened decades ago. He messed up, you know, when he was 21, but now he's not that man. And maybe that would be a legitimate thing to say if he had like repented when he was 23 and then changed his behaviors.

But he started that behavior when he was 20 and he has not stopped that behavior. Like there are other victims each decade and like the most focal and public victims are victims that happened in the eighties, but there has been victims in the 90s, 2000s, 2010s.

Maybe even 2020s, like maybe even as recently within the last few years. But I know for a fact every decade since the eighties, there's been something that he's been doing. But the idea that he has been doing it forever shapes the way that you should think about his prophecy because what was one of the first prophetic words that he was giving?

It wasn't about IHOP. Before he was giving prophecies about songbirds and IHOP and the 24 hour house prayer, he was giving prophecies about earthquakes and about his wife being swallowed by the earth so that he could marry other women.

Like so prophecy to him is and always has been about his own agenda and his own

sexual desires. And that has continued throughout his entire life. So the idea that he would be excavated by saying,

like your analogy of this like the Toyota thought that's coming, you know, whatever big event that's happening, that he's always been talking about and that has never happened. The idea that the promise of that would make people dismiss and ignore the abuse that he had done was always the plan.

I gave an announcement a while ago on, I believe on here, but I'll give it again quickly. Imagine that you have of a house and in your small house and in the kitchen, you find that there's black mold in the cabinets and you're like, oh my goodness, this mold has absolutely taken over the cabinets.

And then you're trying to invite people over to your house, you host people over at your house all the time, but like if they come in and they open up the cabinets, they're going to see the black mold.

Well, so what do you do? Well, if you don't, you know, you paint over the black mold, you try to pretend it's not there, and maybe you build an extension to the house. You build another kitchen so that people can come into that one.

And it's sort of like, oh, okay, well, I'm just not gonna address what's going on over there because I just build it bigger over here. Well, then after years, the mold spreads and it goes from this place into the other room.

Well, now you have it in two different rooms. Okay, well, I'll just build another extension and then another extension. And I'll just build the house bigger and bigger and bigger. And by the time that I've reached my seventies, like Mike has, my house is an absolute mansion.

And I am bringing people in and I'm showing them and everybody looks and they're like, oh my goodness, this person, look at the size of that house. Well, the reason I built the house bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger was to hide the ever spreading mold that was corrupting and taking all of the house with it.

So instead of bulldozing and tearing out all the cabinets and addressing the issue, you just build bigger and bigger so that to distract people from what's going on. And I absolutely think, like even just talking psychology wise, I think the reason Mike Bickle was so enticed by prophetic spectacle, the reason why he gravitated to End Times rhetoric, why he didn't become a Methodist pastor who just like was like, oh, I'm an preaching, you know, wasn't just that he liked speaking up front and having people adore him and all that sort of stuff.

I mean, I think that there is the sort of narcissistic like I enjoy people listening and hanging on everywhere. I also think he knew from the very beginning he had mold in his cabinets.

I, he had pedophilic desires where he, I mean, he wasn't pedophilic, he wanted to, he liked that he was attracted to having the dominating sort of leverage of being with a young, vulnerable, fragile woman.

And he was not satiated with marriage, you know, he was not, he was not, He needed, he had this deeper logging for intimacy, intimacy with teenage girls that was a compelling aspect of his character.

And I think even for his own psychology, he needed the larger prophecy to excuse his own, like he knew it was wrong. He absolutely knew it was wrong and horrible. So he needed this like, it's okay because God has called me to these big grander things.

And even though I have this terrible, horrible thing where I'm taking a 14-year-old out on dates while my wife is taking care of my two kids, it's okay because you know what, God wants this of me.

God wants me to be great. This is, I'm just like, Paul, this is the thorn in my side, like this is just the small little thing that I have that is inconvenient, but it's okay because my house is so big, my prophecies are so grand and the world is going to end and the God is going to split the sky and there is going to be rivers of blood that raise to the level of a horse's bridal.

It's like, who cares whether or not I'm a pedophile, like who cares about these things? And to see Lisa repeating that same, like it's just the same playbook. It's like how big and how grand is his house?

One of the things that she said in her first sermon, she was like, do you know how many people Mike has spoken to throughout the years and how many he's ministered and the intention that it wasn't just like people, it was like important people.

So she was like, do you know how important he's been? This sort of like, you couldn't be this influential and I think your comparison to Jeffrey Epstein brings true in this sort of thing, too, of like, can you imagine Epstein's sister being like, do you know how many important people he's been around?

And it's like that isn't doing the work you think it's doing, but it's this idea of like, look how grand my house is, look how big and prominent I couldn't be this successful. It goes into sort of the prosperity gospel stuff, too, of like, I have been so successful, so wealthy, so prominent, I must be blessed by God.

And if God blesses me, I can't really be doing any wrong. And the wrong that I am doing can't really be that important because, you know, it all pales in comparison. to what God is doing with me.

And that was the whole tone of her second message. It was this idea of, like, God forgives. And God has a bigger and better plan, which is so corrupt because that is something that is like a really core part of Christianity.

And like the people that she's speaking to, she had someone come up on in the second one. And he was wearing a shirt that said, oh, shoot, I can't remember what it was like, but like, you wouldn't believe what God has forgiven me of or I can't remember what his shirt said.

I could look it up and say it for sure, but it was this idea of like, if I was held to the sins of my past, I would be so in trouble. And it's a ministry, again, hope city is a ministry built around helping individuals who have been addicted to drugs and alcohol.

So a lot of individuals who have destroyed their life. And as someone who is on, you know, addicted to drugs, like often probably character behavior, it's not just like you destroyed your life, you also can, like if you have ever known anyone who's struggled with addiction, like they can do really terrible things, but that later you're like, oh my goodness, this was just so not of this person's character.

And that group of individuals needs to be able to resonate with this message of like God forgives and redeems. And like, they need to believe that God is a good forgiving or deptive God.

And I think in a way that's very like genuine and real. I used to go, I was a part of a prison ministry and I would speak to people who were in prison and witnessed to them.

And like genuinely, I have, like I've had a complicated history with Christianity where I've wondered what is good and what is bad about Christianity and done like all sorts of deconstruction. But one thing that I've never ever questioned is that Christianity, the belief in God and the belief in Jesus and the belief in like this Christianity has genuinely redeemed many lives.

And like I've never questioned whether or not Christianity was good for many of these people who were in prison because they had to deal with the idea of like when I was 20, I like was robbing and doing all of these behaviors that maybe even murder.

Like, you know, I took the life of someone and I think that in prison, there's this sort of thing. of, I'm paying my, like, what I did was wrong. There isn't this sort of, they, they, at least the ones that I interacted with. They weren't using that rhetoric of God has forgiven my past to excuse and diminish the sins or atrocities that they committed when they were younger. They held that, you know, it was this sort of paradox of being like, oh my goodness, I really did hold this fact that like I really harmed people and I will live that for the

rest of my life. Yet I can look forward and think about the things that I'm going to do positive, like I can bring about change. I can help people and it's the sort of redemptive arc of like even though I was a villain, I have repented, I've done, I am in prison, I'm serving my time and I'm spent 10, 15, 20 years in prison to pay for the, you know, evil deeds that I have done. There's this sort of positive and redemptive progression of penance. And Mike is just trying to piggyback on this and I think it's so corrupt how it's being used and how Lisa was using it

and attaching it to the sort of narrative structure that is used in this, this redemptive

healing ministry of like being healed of drugs and addiction and stuff like that by, by, you know, earmarking Mike into this sort of narrative. I think it's so corrupt because it's like he hasn't done anything to repent for it. He genuinely is so unrepentant of the things that he has done.

Never once has Mike Pickle ever genuinely repented to my mother for the things that he did. Never once has he repented to Deborah or to Tammy. Never once has he owned up to it like the only things he's kind of like waffled of like, well, I did do some things that were not good. But like

it really is no big deal. You know, it's this sense of just like zero sense of accountability. And yet we're trying to then talk about redemption. When there is no, there's no repentance. And even from a biblical perspective, there's no precedent for that. Like there's no forgiveness without like repent or sort of restoration without repentance is ridiculous. And like you got to make right. You got to, you got to be accountable for the things that you have done, and it's not just the sexual abuse, it's all a prophetic abuse, and it's all of these different things.

Has he actually ever spoke in saliently with his wife about the fact that he spoke about her death? Now, obviously that's private between them too, like I might never know about that, but I would venture a guess that he has not ever like taken the accountability of that to his very own wife.

And he certainly hasn't talked with his family about that because Lisa doesn't even know what happens. Like she doesn't even know what the accusations are. And if he had done any sense of repentance, she would know everything because he would have said, hey, this is what I said about my own wife.

This is how I manipulated Terry. This is how I manipulated Debra. This is how I sexually exploited these women. And this is what I did. This is how I baked it into all the prophetic history and identity of Christianity or of I hop in order

that I would never really be able to like be forced to be accountable for these things. But clearly he has never done these things. And the fact that you have all of these leaders and these not just Lisa, but like Rachoyner,

Luingle, all of these justice people. These, this is the last thing I've been going on so many tangents, but this is the last thought that I really wanted to get out today.

Like Lisa is such a good example where she is so angry. She, she preaches angry. All the biggies preach angry regardless of whatever they're talking about. It's this very like intense message that they always bring.

And Luingle is very similar to this. And these are this prototype of the people who I would, when I was younger and in this world, we would have called these individuals, individuals with a justice chip.

That's what like, oh, they just care so much about justice. And that sort of validated their righteous indignation and the reason, because otherwise, if they didn't have the justice chip, you're like, man, these kinds of asses, like they're so intense and so demanding and so scary, but like it's righteous because God is calling them to do it.

And I think Lu is such a good example of this. Like he literally is so, and he talks about all of the evil in America that usually has to do with abortion, homosexuality and sexual abuse, but not sexual abuse, but like sexual trafficking.

And it's this sort of like, oh my God, God is going to cleanse the world. world of everything that is going wrong in America. We are going to take back America and revival is going to happen.

And we are going to repent of all the sins that America is doing. And I always like saw him as this person who just like held such an intense chip of justice. Where the hell has he been?

He literally, one of his main partners throughout all of history, it was exposed as a sexual abuser. This man who has this justice trip, who's intense, who brings such a righteous indignation into everything he does, literally one of the closest family friends and individual, like the closest ministry partner that he has ever had, was exposed for using prophecy to sexually abuse teenage girls.

And he has not said a word about it. How can these individuals be just this chip if they don't care about the justice that's going on in their own world? This is the same, Sean Foy is like a great example of this too.

I it's so disingenuous when people are angry about all the problems of the world, except for the problems that are happening right in their own community. Because guess what? Those are the ones that they actually can change.

Lou Ingol is not going to shape the the future of American politics. He's just isn't like he's not as important as he pretends to be. What he could have done and what he always could have done is that he could have changed whether or not I hop was an abusive community.

Like he could have changed the actual impact of whether or not like Bickel was sexually abusing different individuals. And when people are like, oh, he couldn't have known. He absolutely could have known like he absolutely could have figured this out and seen because there were so many red flags that were going on.

But even if it was like, like, Alan Hood and others, like, even if he wasn't only it took him and tell like late to see it. Now he could make it like when I was talking about earlier about when my mom and people were talking when it's for first blew up.

Lou Ingol could have gotten in there and been like, hey, I did the investigation. And this is wrong. And he could have used his justice chip to speak against the actual abuse that's going on that he actually could have affected.

And he didn't and makes you ask this question like, okay, the leases of the world, the, the Lou Ingol's of the world, the Sean Foyce of the world. Do they care about justice or do they care about power?

And it quite clearly is the latter because They're not fighting for justice in their community. They just want to use that righteous indignation to maintain a position of power. To quote a minister who should have instead been a comedian, you have to have a repentance burger and an apology burger before it becomes a nothing burger.

Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much for doing this. I was interested to get your perspective and I'm sure the audience will be too. Yeah, well, I appreciate you letting me just get on my soapbox and get angry for an hour here.

No problem. It was fun. Yeah. If you've enjoyed a show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.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.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you guys next time. Bye. Bye. Bye.