Support the show:
https://www.patreon.com/branham
Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
This episode focuses on a discussion between John Collins and Jed Hartley, exploring the deeper connections between various fringe religious movements, particularly the International House of Prayer Kansas City (IHOP-KC) and the broader New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). Jed Hartley, a former IHOP-KC member, shares his personal insights into the problematic histories behind the leadership of these movements. The conversation reveals patterns of abuse, manipulation, and exploitation that have shaped the operations of these religious groups, often stemming from the same roots as the Latter Rain movement. Both speakers highlight how these leaders repackage old heresies, like the Latter Rain, under new names to manipulate followers while concealing the darker aspects of their pasts.
John Collins and Jed Hartley analyze how the figures within these movements, including prominent leaders like Bob Jones, Mike Bickle, and others, operate under the guise of prophetic authority. They describe how these figures have often engaged in fraudulent activities, using vague prophecies, selective testimonies, and outright deceit to exploit their followers. They also dive into how this system enables these leaders to protect each other from accountability, perpetuating an ongoing cycle of abuse and deception. The discussion illustrates the broader impact on followers, many of whom are left disillusioned as they grapple with the false promises and manipulative practices within these communities.
00:00 Introduction
05:07 The Origins of IHOP-KC and Connections to the Latter Rain
10:27 Manipulation Through Prophecy and Testimonies
15:46 Bob Jones and Prophetic Manipulations
21:00 Jed's Father's Role in the Prophetic Community
29:03 The Broader Network of Prophetic Leaders
36:02 Paul Cain's Influence and Tactics
42:07 Gaslighting in the Leadership and Community
48:04 The Consequences of Ignoring Accountability
52:21 The Repackaging of the Latter Rain Movement
56:31 Conclusion and Encouragement to Ex-Community Members
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
https://www.patreon.com/branham
Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
This episode focuses on a discussion between John Collins and Jed Hartley, exploring the deeper connections between various fringe religious movements, particularly the International House of Prayer Kansas City (IHOP-KC) and the broader New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). Jed Hartley, a former IHOP-KC member, shares his personal insights into the problematic histories behind the leadership of these movements. The conversation reveals patterns of abuse, manipulation, and exploitation that have shaped the operations of these religious groups, often stemming from the same roots as the Latter Rain movement. Both speakers highlight how these leaders repackage old heresies, like the Latter Rain, under new names to manipulate followers while concealing the darker aspects of their pasts.
John Collins and Jed Hartley analyze how the figures within these movements, including prominent leaders like Bob Jones, Mike Bickle, and others, operate under the guise of prophetic authority. They describe how these figures have often engaged in fraudulent activities, using vague prophecies, selective testimonies, and outright deceit to exploit their followers. They also dive into how this system enables these leaders to protect each other from accountability, perpetuating an ongoing cycle of abuse and deception. The discussion illustrates the broader impact on followers, many of whom are left disillusioned as they grapple with the false promises and manipulative practices within these communities.
00:00 Introduction
05:07 The Origins of IHOP-KC and Connections to the Latter Rain
10:27 Manipulation Through Prophecy and Testimonies
15:46 Bob Jones and Prophetic Manipulations
21:00 Jed's Father's Role in the Prophetic Community
29:03 The Broader Network of Prophetic Leaders
36:02 Paul Cain's Influence and Tactics
42:07 Gaslighting in the Leadership and Community
48:04 The Consequences of Ignoring Accountability
52:21 The Repackaging of the Latter Rain Movement
56:31 Conclusion and Encouragement to Ex-Community Members
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00You
00:30Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham historical research podcast.
00:37I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham historical research
00:42at william-branham.org. And with me, I have my very special guest, Jed Hartley, former
00:48member of IHOPKC. Jed, so good to have you on here. I have, I've actually had people
00:55telling me that I had to have you on here for some time now, and we've tried to connect,
00:59so it's finally happening. And right now, as you can probably tell with the research
01:05on the website, all of my research into the background of IHOPKC is exploding because
01:11I'm starting to learn that, you know, I've studied all these different offshoots of Branhamism
01:16and they're all, you know, they all kind of go their own way. And usually it's somebody
01:22who realizes that this thing is a scam and so they want to scam people further and it's
01:27usually a single man show. But I'm looking at this thing and this is just so odd because
01:32it's like they literally tried to recreate the latter rain part of Branhamism and pulled
01:38out all of the very bad aspects and ran with the bad stuff. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
01:45And as someone who has been reading a bunch of your work and just on the history before
01:53IHOPKC and like the history of the movement of where I came from, I've been learning sort
01:59of the same thing of just seeing the same threads of like, oh, this person taught the
02:05same, you know, Joel's Army stuff, like all of the key phrases. It's interesting to sort
02:12of follow the line and see the different iterations of this that's been in the past.
02:19So I really appreciate your research that you've done and having me on here. I'm super
02:24excited to be on here to talk with you about all of it. Awesome. Yeah, when you start to
02:30realize the trails of history and where they lead. Yeah. And whenever these guys tell you
02:36about their trails of history and their religious past and the people that built the platforms
02:41that they stand on, they paint them with this great picture. So you're thinking these
02:45are great holy men. And you start peeling, peeling up the rocks and looking under the
02:49rocks of what these guys were standing for. And oh, my gosh, man. And you've done some
02:54of this, right? You've been digging into some of these guys. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's I've
03:00been trying to find a way to articulate it. But essentially, you have these heroes of
03:08the faith, or at least individuals who I grew up considering heroes of the faith, who
03:13had these really, frankly, horrific pasts of just using not just like separate from
03:22their ministries or separate from their prophetic, you know, giftings. They used a lot of their
03:29ministry and giftings to abuse, coerce, you know, grift, get weathered money, whatever
03:37it whatever they were after, you know, there's a lot of this continual pattern of people
03:42abusing power. And it's just so interesting to see here, or to think about how I was taught
03:49about those individuals. And it's if they could do a miracle, all of the negative things
03:57in their past suddenly disappeared, right? If they could heal the sick, if they could
04:01prophesy, if they, you know, some, that was all that was talked about. It was just talked
04:07about Wigglesworth's, you know, ability to heal the sick. And it was just talked about,
04:12you know, Branham's ability to heal the sick and didn't, didn't hear about their
04:20association with the KKK didn't hear about their serpent seed doctrines didn't hear about,
04:25you know, these things, although some of those, some of those doctrines at different times
04:30would come up in conversations like it, like, it's so it's, it's uncanny, because I hear
04:39a lot of the, you know, things that you've been producing, read a lot about the previous
04:45individuals who've kind of led to IHOPKC and all of it is, is familiar, all of it seems
04:54like it's never what I was taught explicitly, but it all is familiar, because it's just
05:00a reiteration of the same, same thing. At least that's what it seems like to me.
05:04Darrell Bock Yeah, history repeating itself.
05:07Chris Yeah.
05:08Darrell Bock You know, the other thing that's funny, I've
05:11loved history anyway, so all of this kind of fits me, but the world we live in today
05:16is so much different than the world that existed in the days gone by. And people today, it's
05:22not that they're smarter, but they have a lot more street smarts. They're not going
05:27to be fooled as easy as somebody back in the day, right? But then compound that with the
05:33fact that people are, humans are complex. We were manipulated to think it's good versus
05:40evil, you're either good or you're bad. But there are bad people that do good things,
05:45and good people that, you know, there's this mix, right? I was reading years ago, I want
05:51to say I was maybe 16, I was reading some studies on Jesse James, and, you know, he
05:56was this outlaw, but yet people loved him, because he was kind of a great guy, he just
06:01did some bad things, and, you know, he's not a person you'd want to model your life after,
06:07but that's the way it is. People are like this. But these religious figures, what they
06:13have done is they have taken, and it seems like the worst of the worst, because I examine
06:18the bad side, but they've taken only the good and brought it forward and said, these
06:24people did all of these good things, and they don't tell you the people problems that they
06:29had. Some of them were just outright scoundrels. Dowie was a con artist from start to finish,
06:36right? They don't tell you that part. Some of the men that I examine, they did bad things,
06:40and some of them had maybe good intentions to start with, but if you don't bring that
06:46balance to the people, you're really telling only the side of the story that suits your
06:51agenda, and then you make yourself look worse when people find out.
06:55Yeah, yeah, yeah, because you've hidden all of these things. I find the same goes for
07:03just testimonies, not even of the heroes, but just of the community and culture in general.
07:10I grew up at IHOP, KC. My dad was instrumental in the foundation of it. He actually owned
07:20the building that the first International House of Prayer was, so I grew up living in
07:25the House of Prayer and running around, and a lot of my formative years were spent there
07:32when IHOP was just getting started, but I've also been involved with Bethel and with YWAM,
07:41and throughout all of these, the way that testimonies are handled, and it's not even,
07:49I wouldn't even call it insidious or anything like that, but there's just this propensity
07:53to always tell the good testimonies, always tell the times people were healed, the prophecies
08:00that were accurate, and it's very exhausting if you grow up in there or if you live in
08:06there for several decades or whatever, because you see a lot of the, you know, hey, we prayed
08:12for this person. They didn't get healed, and then they died. We prayed for a young child
08:18to be raised from the dead, and she didn't. I have some memories of experiences when I
08:27fully believed in healing, believed in prophecy, believed in all of it, and yet I would see
08:34things, you know, we would seem to have all the faith in the world, and yet the prophecy
08:41wouldn't come true, or someone wouldn't get healed, and when you wanted to talk about
08:47it, there just, no one was talking about it, because it's only the testimonies of the good
08:52and not the testimonies of the bad, so they created this false world that didn't exist,
08:59and then eventually, you know, I grew up old enough and was like, hey, this just isn't
09:04real, you know?
09:06You know, I look back at some of the things. I believed all of this hook, line, and sinker,
09:11but I was there whenever some of these things, before they came to fruition, and I'm just
09:19going to throw generic examples, because, you know, I don't want to call out names,
09:23but you've got a guy who claims that he's a prophet, and he goes into this place, like
09:27say he goes to Los Angeles and says, and I see that God has told me there's going to
09:32be an earthquake, and a building will fall, and well, this is a place where there's hundreds
09:37of earthquakes per year, right?
09:39And so when a building falls, then people say, oh, that's because that prophecy. The
09:45guy doesn't even have to be a prophet to make this, right? But the way it works to
09:49the people that are being indoctrinated, it enters into a mythology, because the person
09:55who is supportive of said prophet will take the people to this building that fell, whether
10:02it was part of the prophecy or not, and say, look, here is the fulfillment of the prophecy,
10:07and then as it enters legend, they'll say, and this guy predicted that that building
10:12would fall, because they're connecting all of the dots. Well, towards the end of it,
10:17everybody has connected all of the dots, and they don't really think about the vague thing
10:22that was initially said that could mean anything, right?
10:26And that's a bad example. I've seen this happen multiple times, but also with the
10:33healings, you know, this person's going to get better. We've prayed to God that they're
10:38going to get better. Well, if they do get better, they claim that it was because of
10:42the prayer, and not they distracted the focus from it's because God healed them, or
10:48sometimes it's just because they decided to start taking their meds again, you know?
10:52So many plausible explanations for a lot of it.
10:57Yeah, yeah, 100%. And I, you know, I respect you not wanting to name names. I have no
11:06problem naming some names, too. But, you know, you let me know if I should be more,
11:13keep more anonymity of this. But I mean, I, so my father, Bob Hartley, is a prophetic
11:20figure, and was a very prominent prophetic figure in the IHOP, Bethel, YWAM world. And
11:33he would go and I would travel with him. So I saw the behind the scenes of how this sort
11:39of prophetic, frankly, this prophetic grift would work. There are different types of how
11:49different prophets speak, just like you're saying, like, someone goes into a place that
11:53has a lot of earthquakes and says, there's going to be a great shaking. And then, you
11:57know, two months later, there's an earthquake. And it's low and behold, and it's like,
12:00well, this is Los Angeles, we get earthquakes all the time, you know. But Bob Jones was
12:07a little bit like that. Bob Jones would just say, a bunch of, a bunch of random things
12:14and you never really understood. It was always very, when I was young, it felt mysterious.
12:21It felt very intriguing, because it was, he was speaking in riddles and stuff like that.
12:29But he would just, frankly, throw stuff up against the wall and see what would stick
12:34and then had so many people who absolutely adored him that people would pick out things
12:42and remember and detail everything and then say, oh, look, Bob Jones prophesied this.
12:47And it's like, well, he prophesied 40 different things during that time. There's an instance
12:55where Bob Jones went into a church and he started prophesying that there was going to
13:02be deaths in the community. I don't know if you've read or written about this at all.
13:08It was in the, do you know the Ernie Gruen report on Bob Jones?
13:11Yeah, yeah.
13:12So this was in that report about him. So during the, I think it was early 80s,
13:21he's traveling with Mike Bickle. And this is when all of the prophecy about
13:29the International House of Prayer is starting to take shape and take form.
13:34This is the time in which all of these, the birthing place of these movements is happening.
13:42And it was very much the critical figures in that were really Mike Bickle and Bob Jones
13:48and Paul Cain to some extent, but mainly Mike Bickle and Bob Jones.
13:53And Bob Jones is going to these different churches. And so he goes into this one church
13:58and there had just been some, a young couple in that community had died in a motorcycle accident.
14:07And he used that as like a example of God releasing his judgment and talked about how,
14:17like he prophesied that there was going to be more deaths if this church didn't turn towards him.
14:26And then later he, you know, five years later him and Mike Bickle were talking about it
14:32and they kind of gave this testimony of,
14:36I prophesied that there was going to be deaths at this church.
14:39There were a bunch of deaths that happened and they didn't turn from the Lord.
14:43And then you get the testimony of the pastor who is like,
14:50first of all, Bob Jones didn't prophesy that the two young children or the two who died on the motorcycle,
14:57he didn't prophesy, he came after they had already died.
15:00And then he prophesied and we're a congregation and we have some old people in our congregation.
15:05And, you know, a few people passed away. That's not unusual or whatever.
15:12And so I remember reading about that when I was like, a long time ago,
15:18when I was like 15, I got a hold of the earning report.
15:21And that was the first time I was like, hey, some of these things look like they don't add up.
15:26First of all, why are you prophesying death at all?
15:29You know, that's just not can't at all think of a good reason why you would want to do that.
15:37And yeah, so Bob Jones had that tendency to kind of tell the story one way
15:43and then fill in the details to make it seem much more miraculous afterwards.
15:49And when when in reality, it wasn't miraculous at all.
15:53It wasn't, you know, you mentioned, why are you prophesying this anyway?
15:58And that's one of the things that hit me whenever we left the movement that we were in.
16:03Most of the prophecies weren't intended to help the people or even give them spiritual guidance.
16:09It was more to make them realize that the Joker was a prophet.
16:13And so what's the purpose of this?
16:16Why would God do this?
16:17Why would God pick up this man?
16:19Right.
16:20So I wrestled with that for a long time.
16:22And people don't know this.
16:24When I first left this, I still thought William Branham was a prophet.
16:27I just I thought one of the prophecies had failed.
16:30And we have been manipulated in such a way that we didn't care if there was a failure.
16:36Yet the Bible is one strike and you're out kind of deal for a profit.
16:40Either you're a fraud or you're not a fraud.
16:42And so none of it really hit me.
16:45But the thing that did hit me was, why would I care about some of these things?
16:50And so I began to examine the movements that spawned off of this.
16:54And I find that there's so many people that just clone that.
16:58And in fact, there was here in Shepherdsville, Kentucky.
17:03It's about, I want to say it's like 30 minutes south of here.
17:07They had a school of the prophets where this joker was teaching people how to do this.
17:11And it's exactly like you said.
17:13All these vague sayings.
17:15They'll use metaphors a lot.
17:18Basically, they're saying a lot of words to see what sticks.
17:23And they themselves won't even claim that it's a prophecy in most cases.
17:27Because if it fails, they're bound to it.
17:30But the people listening will hear it and they'll pick up and they'll say,
17:33Oh, well that green light that you saw, that looks exactly like this light over here.
17:39Whatever it is.
17:41They take something that's very vague and pick it and run with it and say that was a prophecy.
17:46And I'm leading up to a point.
17:49All of this to say, as I began reading through the transcripts of Branham
17:53and how he was training these other guys to become quote unquote prophets,
17:58there's one statement that hit me.
18:00He said, I never said I was a prophet.
18:02You, the people, said this.
18:05And then it suddenly clicked what's going on.
18:08They're just, like you said, they're throwing things out there.
18:10Throw darts to see what sticks.
18:12But they themselves aren't even producing a real prophecy.
18:17They're just producing a lot of words that people will think are prophecies.
18:21And then they call them prophets.
18:25Yeah.
18:28The Branham saying, well, I never called myself a prophet,
18:35hits home so much to me because all Bob Jones, Mike Bickle, and Bob Hartley,
18:45I mean, those were the three who I obviously grew up.
18:49One being my literal father and the other two being my spiritual fathers.
18:54All have had some similar defenses of themselves of being like, no, I'm not.
19:02I never called myself a prophet.
19:05Mike Bickle has talked about the Kansas City prophets.
19:08And he's like, we didn't give ourselves that name.
19:10Someone else gave us that name.
19:12And meanwhile, it's so gaslighting because I grew up going to prophetic conferences.
19:21They were called prophetic conferences.
19:24I was in the and where my dad would be like, okay, we're going to go into a prophetic time.
19:34It's so bizarre because these men were operating within this sort of prophetic authority.
19:45And oftentimes, too, would label themselves prophetic and say, maybe they wouldn't be like, I'm a prophet, but they would be like, well, my prophetic gifting or whatever.
19:58But again, we would go to prophetic conferences like the conference was called here in God's heart, prophetic conference.
20:07And it's like, it's so bizarre to then have the defenses be like, well, I never really called myself a prophet.
20:14And it's like, my entire childhood was that entire thing.
20:19But with my dad, specifically, and some other major contemporary prophets, there's more than just the say, vague, large prophecies and that or very generic, sort of like cold reading.
20:43And you go to a psychic or something like that.
20:46And they're like, I see someone in your life who is sick and that they need healing and stuff.
20:51And you're like, okay, well, everybody has a sick family member or whatnot.
20:56There is also a pattern in the community that I was raised in, where there would be information that they would get from non divine means in the last, you know, 10, 15 years, it's been primarily through we now have Facebook and Instagram and have a wealth of information about specific individuals.
21:24All you need is their name.
21:25And then, you know, if I have your name, I can look you up and I can find all the books that you've written and I can find your publisher and I can find the name of, you know, your editor or whoever.
21:37And if I'm prophesying to you, I can say, I see, I actually haven't done this, so I don't know what your editor's name is.
21:43But, you know, I could say, I see another John in your life who is helping you do these things and, you know, give a specific word where you're like, oh, this isn't generic.
21:55Now, this is very specific and like, oh, God must be actually speaking to this person.
22:03And I can't with total certainty speak of the prevalence of this in, you know, a great number of the prophetic individuals, but I know that that was what my dad did.
22:23And my dad would do, he would get a lot of information.
22:25He would use me and my sisters sometimes when we were young to do research about people before these prophetic conferences.
22:33And we would get a list of names of everybody who was coming to the prophetic conference.
22:38And so, we would get some information.
22:41And we just thought that we were helping him when we were young.
22:44We didn't realize that we were doing anything wrong.
22:48It felt kind of icky, but like, you know, we're kids.
22:51We didn't know.
22:52And we would put him on these, he would bring in these big notebooks, and he would go then to the pastors of the community.
23:00And he would ask questions to the pastors.
23:02And he'd be like, tell me about your worship leader.
23:04And they would give him specific information.
23:06They would be like, oh, well, our worship leader's name is Craig.
23:10And, you know, he just got in a big car accident or something like that.
23:15And we've been praying for him.
23:17And his wife is in the hospital because of this.
23:19And he would just write down, right in front of the pastor, just write down that information.
23:24And he had a pretty good memory and could recall, and he had a flair for the dramatic, too.
23:33And so, when he would prophesy, he would have his notebooks there, and then he would call it out.
23:40He would sometimes call their phone numbers out, you know, and work that into a prophecy somehow.
23:46You're the 813 man, Psalms 813.
23:50Does the number 813 mean anything to you?
23:53And they're like, oh, that's the last three digits of my phone number.
23:56That's my street address or something like that.
24:00And so, it was all, it was like, it was the next step up from going from that large sort of cold reading or these grand, you know, prophecies about the, you know, future of America that are kind of big and like what Bob Jones would do.
24:21It got into way more specific stuff about people with very specific information.
24:26I've probably seen, I mean, literally thousands, if not tens of thousands of people be moved by prophecies that my dad, I mean, he would go to these conferences and it would be 10, 15 people.
24:42And every single night, it would just be a line of people in and out, in and out.
24:46And we would go to the leaders.
24:50I mean, the leader of YWAM, Lauren Cunningham, he like prophesied to Lauren Cunningham.
24:55We were really close with Lauren Cunningham.
24:57We were really close to Bill Johnson.
24:58We were really close to Cheyenne of Morningstar, or not Morningstar, of H-Rock.
25:05Really close to Rick Joyner of Morningstar.
25:10And he would prophesy to all of these different leaders.
25:14And when I got older, I was like, uh-oh, dad, they're going to find you out.
25:20Like, this isn't going to work, you know.
25:24And I was so concerned for him because I thought he was the fraud in the midst of a lot of honest people.
25:34And that was very difficult for me to deal with my own father.
25:40I knew it was wrong, and I wanted him to change.
25:43And he would promise me that he would stop doing it and stuff like that.
25:46And he would just tell stories and not do prophecy and whatnot.
25:50But then, even in the last year, there's a lot of the scandal with Mike Bickle came out.
25:59There was a lot of information that came out about my own father.
26:02And I'm not sure how much you know about all of this stuff.
26:06But basically, just everything hit the fan within this last year.
26:17And I've been talking with different religious leaders in this community and trying to inform them, hey, this really was going on.
26:26It was a grift.
26:27Like, it was not genuine.
26:29And it's dangerous now.
26:31Now we see that these men were not just using it to, you know, trick people and boost their conference numbers.
26:38They were using it to sexually exploit, you know, young and vulnerable people.
26:44And this is like, this is a dangerous thing.
26:46Like, this is criminally dangerous.
26:48And spoke with a bunch of leaders.
26:50And I have just been absolutely shocked by how little they care.
26:58Like, it just wasn't a big revelation to a lot of people that, you know, either they don't believe me or a lot of them do believe me.
27:08And it's just like, well, I'm so hungry for what God is doing.
27:12I'm not going to focus on what God is not doing.
27:15And it's like, how does this not corrupt everything?
27:19You just let people come into your midst and use outright deception.
27:25You have to fight against that.
27:27And, like, this doesn't seem like this is the first time you're hearing about some of this.
27:33So how many of the prophetic individuals in the past were also doing the same thing?
27:39And, you know, if you're ‑‑ I feel for me and for other, especially young adults who either grow up or get kind of grafted into those communities at a young age.
27:54I mean, you hear all these good testimonies.
27:57It goes back to, like, hearing all the positive testimonies.
28:00Hearing, oh, my goodness, Bob Hartley gave this prophetic word that absolutely no one possibly could have known.
28:07And you change your entire view of the world based off of this information that is just explicitly false.
28:15Not even, you know, gray area.
28:20Like, this is explicit lies.
28:23And you let so many people in the community build their faith off of these explicit lies.
28:30It just is inherently deceptive.
28:33It's awful.
28:36You know, the one thing that I've learned about con artists is that they like to surround themselves with other con artists.
28:43Because if they surround themselves with people who have moral code and moral values, they're going to figure them out.
28:50And then they're suddenly going to separate.
28:52And so they're going to lose the people closest to them.
28:54So they like to gather, you know, birds of a feather flock together, that kind of thing.
28:59So I have a hard time.
29:02In fact, I've got e-mails in my inbox today talking about some of these IHOP guys and people connected to IHOP.
29:08And they want to defend.
29:10They want to say, yes, this was bad, but let's defend figure A.
29:14Because he was in the group, and you can't single him out because these other guys were bad.
29:19Well, they all knew, man.
29:21If you work with these guys long enough, you know the bad ones.
29:25You know that you're in a set of bad apples.
29:27And then you have the moral decision, do I continue with the bad people if I'm a good person, or do I leave?
29:34And those that stay are clearly, at least in my opinion, these are not good people if they knowingly stay.
29:42So you've got that going on.
29:44But then at the same time, they kind of lift each other up.
29:48So when one is about to fall, they either create their own prophetic versions of whatever is the agenda for the group to make it less impactful whenever something goes bad.
30:03And I see a lot of that going on, not just in IHOP, but many of these movements that spring up from Branhamism.
30:10You've got leaders who are maybe not even in the same ministries, but they're kind of networked together.
30:16Honestly, that's what drove me to studying the NAR as a whole, because once I realized that it's this labyrinth of networks of men, many of which are con artists helping other con artists to survive,
30:29then suddenly it becomes like, this is the criminal underworld, man.
30:33This is not religion.
30:34What is this mess?
30:35And it just fascinates me to no end.
30:38Oh, 100%.
30:40I was talking with a good friend of mine when some of this first, sort of the first wave of the revelations on Mike Bickle and his sexual assault and just that whole scandal when that was first breaking.
31:05I remember talking with my friend and being like, was this like the mafia?
31:13Like, was this less of a church organization and more of like a crime family?
31:23Because you just basically what happened during that time, I started looking into how previous scandals had been handled.
31:33So same thing with Bob Jones and Paul Cain, both had their sexual scandals where they were using prophecy to exploit young vulnerable people.
31:47And seeing how Mike Bickle handled Bob Jones scandal and seeing how Bob Hartley handled Bob Jones scandal and all of these different things.
31:59It's like they really are just protecting each other.
32:02And when, I don't know if you've read, I'm trying to find more information on this, but when Paul Cain was confronted about his sexual sin, there's been mentioned, like my dad has mentioned it.
32:24I haven't been able to find like good research on it.
32:27But apparently in this meeting, Paul Cain went off and was like, if you come after me, I'm coming after all of you.
32:35And he pointed at the other big, very prominent NAR figures in that time and was like, I have dirt on all of you.
32:45And I remember my dad telling me about that incident.
32:49And I've been wanting to find out, was it successful?
32:55Like, was he able to successfully manipulate those individuals?
33:01Like there's so much gray.
33:03So there's just this veil over all of the behind the scenes dealings.
33:09So it's really hard to understand.
33:11Did he actually have information about each one of them?
33:14Did he then successfully use that to his own advantage?
33:19What was the fallout from that?
33:22What was he talking about?
33:23Did he know about Mike Pickles?
33:25What was going on?
33:27Because some of the stuff that we found out about Mike Pickle was going on back at that time.
33:34Yeah, Paul Cain was the fixer and he was trained under Branhamism.
33:39Although I wasn't there, I can't speak to that event.
33:42But what I can say, in the Branham cults, the ministers all have dirt on each other.
33:48In fact, I have sat through sermons where the minister goes off against one of the other ministers and says,
33:54and I've got a file in my cabinet in that office, and starts talking about all this dirt that he has on the guys.
34:00That's the way it is.
34:02In the podcast that I do with Charles Paisley, he goes into that a bit.
34:06Because he got access to one of those file cabinets.
34:09So he knows specifically the dirt that was in there.
34:12And I've had high-ranking members of some of the offshoots tell me that their cult leaders,
34:20they had access to their file cabinets.
34:22So it's not just one or two.
34:24This was a widespread thing.
34:26And the fact that Paul Cain came from Branhamism, he would have been trained to do this.
34:32They apparently all trained each other to be, if one falls, then you've got 100 fixers.
34:38Because everybody's got dirt on everybody.
34:40And what it does, it's like a den of thieves, man.
34:44If you all know that you're all thieves and you've all got all the dirt to confront one of them,
34:49if anyone steps out of line, you just raise the risk of the thief getting caught.
34:54And that's essentially what's happening here.
34:56But Paul Cain, I mentioned he called me a few times.
35:01Whenever I started publishing all the Klan stuff, that's when he began contacting me.
35:07And they were trying to dig into my life.
35:10I think they're trying to fix me, basically.
35:13They're trying to dig.
35:15And I knew a little bit about Paul Cain, but not a lot.
35:18And like I do these podcasts, I've got monitors everywhere.
35:22So as I'm talking to this guy on the phone, I'm pulling up, who is Paul Cain?
35:26What do I know about him?
35:27What can I see?
35:28And oh, my gosh, that was the first time I came across the allegations of him molesting small boys.
35:37And then I dove into that deeper to find his apology.
35:41And so he was trying to dig into me.
35:45And so I threw him off guard by asking his opinion of what happened and what they were talking about.
35:54And he denied the whole thing.
35:56And as he's denying it, I've got his apology for it right here on my screen.
36:00And so that's the type of mentality of these guys.
36:04If they don't think that you know the facts, they'll deny the facts until you know the facts.
36:11And then they'll call the fixer.
36:13And the fixer comes in and makes everything better.
36:16Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started,
36:19or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign,
36:24Charismatic and other fringe movements, into the New Apostolic Reformation?
36:29You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,
36:34william-branham.org.
36:36On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins,
36:41Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others,
36:46with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.
36:50You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.
36:57If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the top.
37:03And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.
37:10On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
37:15Yeah, that rings so true with many of my own experiences,
37:21even in the last year of trying to call out certain...
37:28I spoke with one of the leaders of IHOP during this whole Mike Bickle saga.
37:38I spoke with the interim pastor and someone who I had grown up with.
37:46I mean, he's 15 years older than me or something,
37:50but I grew up with him and his family and I called him and I was like,
37:56hey, a lot of people are saying that what is going on with Mike Bickle isn't true,
38:04that these accusations are false and whatnot.
38:07And I just want to let you know, they are absolutely true.
38:12My dad confirmed some of this from back in 1983 of some of his early knowing about Mike Bickle,
38:24specifically Mike Bickle, I don't know how much you've gotten into it yet or not,
38:29but Mike Bickle was regularly prophesying to different young women, very young women,
38:36that his own wife, Diane Bickle, was going to die.
38:42And the prophetic message was that when Diane died,
38:47which he believed was going to happen in an earthquake in St. Louis,
38:52a place that doesn't have a whole lot of earthquakes and hasn't had.
38:56So that one, he missed on that one.
39:00So he prophesied that she was going to die and that these young women, when she died,
39:07that they would then have a place to pursue a relationship with him.
39:13And then he kind of groomed them using that as the sort of excuse to condone
39:19why a man who's married with two children can develop this sort of relationship with a young woman.
39:28Very, if you're familiar with Mike Bickle's teaching,
39:30very similar to his prepare the bridegroom teachings about preparing the bride for the return of the king.
39:40Very similar reasoning of let me prepare this young woman for when my wife is going to die
39:51and it'll open up a door for us to have a relationship.
39:55So anyway, I knew about that instance for quite a while.
40:00My father knew about it because one of the one of the core women who have come forward about Mike Bickle,
40:11who was one of the victims of this, was very close to my family.
40:16And she is still remaining anonymous right now.
40:21But I knew I knew from her and I knew from my dad, too, before even any of these accusations came about.
40:29I knew of that story.
40:30So when the accusations came about and there was other women saying the same thing,
40:34you know, I have absolute certainty that this happened, you know, that there was no way that they were talking to each other.
40:40These accusations, you know, independently, three women all saying the same story.
40:48That is very specific and very bizarre without talking with each other.
40:52You know, you can you can just know it's true.
40:55You can just know it's true.
40:56Plus, these women are very like honest individuals, very well-respected individuals.
41:04Like they're not lying.
41:05They're not trying to conspire to bring down Mike Bickle.
41:09And so anyway, when all of that information came about,
41:14I called up the leader of or the de facto pastor at the time of IHOPKC
41:24and I was talking to him about it and he he acted like he didn't know any of it.
41:28He didn't know about Bob Jones.
41:31I told him, hey, Bob Jones did something similar where young young women,
41:36he used prophecy to to get them into a vulnerable position and sexually assault them.
41:42That's the same case with him.
41:44And I don't know if he you know, and that's that really frustrating thing where they just play ignorant about it,
41:52either about their own.
41:54No, that didn't happen.
41:56Or no, I've never heard about it.
41:58I didn't know.
41:59And it's just this very confusing situation where you don't know if you're being gaslit the entire time.
42:07And there's just this pattern of people can be able to deny it.
42:11And there's no proof.
42:12There's no I don't that never happened.
42:15You don't know this.
42:16And then when you do have all of the information,
42:19they pretend like they didn't know it or it was something different.
42:22And it's just so frankly insidious.
42:26Like it's just bizarre.
42:28And it's hard to it's hard to have any accountability in a community where there just is no clarity on what is happening behind the scenes.
42:42And there's no no one who's trying to bring clarity like they are all in it together.
42:48To try to.
42:52They try to.
42:53Yeah, that one.
42:55I'm a writer, not a speaker.
42:59I get what you're saying.
43:00Yeah, they're all.
43:01It's like they're trying to keep everything unclear.
43:04And so to be able to cut through there and bring any sense of clarity or certainty is a near impossible task.
43:13And then if you do, you totally get exiled from the community.
43:17You're labeled a backslider or whatever it is.
43:23Yeah, I'm fascinated with studies and books and even fiction of criminal minds.
43:29In fact, there's a show Criminal Minds, which is a great show if you've seen it.
43:32But I like to see how those people think because it's not the way that the rest of us think.
43:39And why do they do the things that they do?
43:41I'm fascinated by this.
43:42But one of the things that you find, especially in the organized crime, organized crime is just simply there's an organization and there's a hierarchy of the criminals.
43:53And the guy at the top likes a middle tier of people that he has dirt on.
43:59And so I look at the structure for the criminal minds and organized crime.
44:04And I look at this and I can't say that this is the mob.
44:08Maybe it's the Christian mafia, if you want to call it that.
44:10But the structure is so similar because the guys at the top knew the dirt on the other guys.
44:17And I think that's why they chose them, because it's easier to control a guy that you've got dirt on or a girl that you've got dirt on.
44:25But so these guys perfectly chose people that they could control and manipulate.
44:31And if one steps out of line, well, it's blackmail.
44:35I'm going to release all of your dirty laundries going to the public.
44:39But then they twist also the biblical mouth of two or three witnesses.
44:46That no longer matters in these groups because now you've got these two or three witnesses who say that they've been abused by Mike Bickle.
44:54Well, that's the biblical mouth of two or three witnesses.
44:58But you find that the whole group that's staying in it, they're totally ignoring the biblical mouth of two or three witnesses because they've been manipulated to do that.
45:07Yeah, absolutely.
45:08And they have I mean, the Bible.
45:11I have never seen biblical principles ever used to hold leaders accountable.
45:18I've only seen biblical principles used to help get them away from any sense of accountability.
45:28You know, there's the whole Matthew 18 process of the way that you need to if you want to confront a leader, you first there's honestly, I don't even know what it is anymore.
45:43Because it never made sense to me, even when I was within the world, and it still doesn't make sense to me.
45:49But it's this process in which, hey, there's a biblical way to go about correcting a leader who has sinned against you.
46:03And surprise, surprise, it involves going to that very leader and other leaders.
46:09It's not going outside.
46:10It's not if going to the police, and if that's necessary, you know, and it provides them with an opportunity to control the situation.
46:22If you have an entire community who are beholden to this Matthew 18 process, where they have to go back to the leader in order to address any, you know, wrongdoing.
46:34They can't go public, they can't, you know, talk to the police, they can't talk to other pastors of other communities or something like that.
46:43You have built in this sort of failsafe process that you will always be able to know and anticipate when a scandal is coming, because the entire community is always going to feed it back through the channels.
46:58And then, like you said, when then, okay, well, now we do have biblical principles of like, they went through the Matthew 18 process.
47:08All of this has been, you know, done according to the way that you're supposed to do it.
47:14And there's the more, you know, two or three witnesses.
47:19There's so much.
47:21You can look at the Bible and give so much precedent for correcting or not more than just correcting for exposing and addressing the abuse of Mike Bickle.
47:33And yet, it's just not happening.
47:36And still to this day, IHOPKC is like not investigating.
47:40It absolutely baffles me what they're doing.
47:44I mean, it's just completely bizarre.
47:47There's just no accountability.
47:51And they're slowly, like, dying as a church.
47:54And they're going to get smaller and smaller.
47:56And eventually, it's just going to become not a thing anymore.
47:59Because in, you know, it's kind of like go down with the ship sort of situation.
48:06Is that there's a hole in the ship instead of pretending, trying to fix it, trying to address, okay, what was Mike Bickle doing?
48:14What is the prophetic history?
48:15Have we been manipulated by some of this prophetic history doing all of this?
48:20What is the truth, you know?
48:21They're like this is too big of a hole.
48:24We can't fix it.
48:26So might as well just sink and pretend like it didn't happen.
48:29While telling their community to not get on Facebook, not get on Twitter, to not look at these things.
48:38Like everybody, just look at me, and we'll all sink together sort of thing.
48:42And it's very sad, too, because as much as I really do believe that many of these leaders are some sinister people,
48:55the community members, like a lot of my friends and family members that I grew up with, genuine people who really believed.
49:04I really believe that there's a lot of good-hearted, compassionate people within these communities who just believed everything that their leaders were saying
49:13and really thought that they were a part of the End Times Church and that they were helping ushering in God's final kingdom,
49:19that they were a part of a healing revival that was going to sweep the land,
49:24that they were a part of this young Joel's generation, this Joel's army of people who were going to be blessed 10 times more than that,
49:34which happened in Acts, where they were going to have gifts of the spirit of healing and prophecy.
49:38And what Mike Bickle and Bob Jones and Bob Hartley did, we were going to do 10 times more.
49:43I understand the appeal. I mean, I was in it.
49:46That's what I felt even into my mid-20s.
49:49I thought that that was going to be my future, my life.
49:53And so I just feel so, so bad for the people who are currently at IHOP who are being told not to look,
50:03that everything's okay around them while the building burns or the ship is sinking.
50:13They are just told it's all good, that this is just a tax from Satan and we're still on the straight and narrow.
50:21We're still doing the good things, and it's pretty tragic.
50:26Yeah, these guys, they like to go down with a sinking ship because that's the ship that made them all the money, basically.
50:32Right.
50:33There's no question about it.
50:35And what's really odd to me is, you know, the fact it's not just that they tried to recreate a new revival or new passion for Christianity or anything like this.
50:46They literally tried to clone Lateran, which had already been denounced as heresy by many Christian leaders.
50:54It's like they chose the worst possible thing to recreate and said, let's recreate this.
50:59But then they didn't tell anybody where it came from.
51:03Like all of the people I've talked with at IHOP, nobody had a clue that this came from the Lateran and it was rebirthing Lateran revival.
51:12I have felt the same thing.
51:14I knew about it because I traveled with my dad with Bob Jones.
51:21And Bob Jones has like, he was more explicit.
51:28Like Bob Jones wasn't trying to repackage and rebrand.
51:32He was just pretty straightforward Lateran, you know, talking about all of those different things.
51:38So I remember hearing about and gleaning some of this.
51:44And even when I've been talking to some individuals who went to IHOP school of ministry, I've talked with them now and they're like, oh, no, we didn't actually have involvement with Lateran.
51:54And I was like, that is just not true.
51:58That's just like my Pickle picked Bob Jones in to be that sort of prophetic visionary because of a lot of the Lateran ideology, which I agree with you.
52:16If you're picking something, I don't know why you would pick that.
52:19Like pick something that hasn't been just recently exposed as fraudulent and sinister.
52:26But the only thing I can think of is that was the first you look at what Dowie did and Dowie made a heck of a lot of money for you for his day.
52:35But you look at what Lateran created and it was a platform for people like Dowie to make money.
52:42They were basically generating a new platform where lots of men could join in.
52:46And the argument it wasn't like Lateran.
52:49Well, you chose Paul Cain.
52:51He's the direct connection.
52:52He's Branham's protege, man.
52:54Definitely, definitely recreating Lateran.
52:58But, yeah, the whole thing is just so odd.
53:00And, you know, having experienced myself, it really messes you up when you're in this type of religion.
53:08It's not at all Christianity, but you're told that it is.
53:11And the God that you're given is like a rabbit's foot God.
53:14Rub it a little bit and we'll give you a healing.
53:16Or rub it a little bit, we'll give you a money or whatever it is.
53:19And the whole thing is just awful.
53:23It wreaks havoc on the lives.
53:25If you could say one thing to encourage the people that have been in this and have went through the horrors of IHOP, Casey, what would you tell them?
53:34Yeah, I mean, for people who if you've done the hard work of just allowing yourself to ask the questions, which, I mean, that's always the first step of it.
53:45Like if there's that terrible, awful feeling in the back of your head or thought in the back of your head of, hey, what if these men aren't prophets?
53:57What if these aren't men inspired by God?
54:00Or what if, you know, there is a lot of sinister stuff going on behind the scenes.
54:07Like I have seen in my own life and in a lot of others who are close to me, I've seen that that's that huge first step.
54:17Just being able to like kind of recognize and allow yourself to ask questions of that community.
54:24And then once you do that, like it takes time.
54:27But I've seen so many people, their lives have totally turned around because at the end of the day, it's not a good gospel.
54:40It's not like none of it's you don't want any of it to be true.
54:45It's intense.
54:47Sure, there might be healings, but at the same time, there's a lot of fear, a lot of like hatred, a lot of, you know, guilt and shame.
55:02Especially like at places like the International House of Prayer, where if you don't get healed, then it's your fault.
55:07You did something wrong.
55:08And so I've seen so many people, my life and my sister's and my mother's life included, like where once you got out of the wilderness,
55:23once you got out of that sort of terrifying, whatever it is that kept you in there to begin with, once you were able to sort of step out,
55:35there's so much freedom on the other end.
55:38There's so much, you know, self-worth.
55:41There's so much curiosity.
55:44There's so much to be discovered and found once you're on the other side.
55:48It's just really difficult getting there.
55:50Like it's going to be a process and it'll take some time, but it's worth it.
55:56Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, the early Christians, as they were experiencing the freedom of not being under the Mosaic law,
56:03they were like, it's free, the burdens are lifting.
56:06What you're describing is what they felt.
56:08And the word gospel just simply means good news.
56:11It's the good news that you can have this freedom.
56:13But what these guys taught was the antithesis of this.
56:17So it was literally the bad news.
56:19The bad news is coming, and therefore get in with us.
56:22And so you can really say that it was the direct opposite of the gospel.
56:26It was the bad news that this group was bringing.
56:29But thank you so much for doing this with us.
56:31My pleasure.
56:32I know that there's a lot of people wanting to hear more from you and more about the insights of somebody who grew up in this thing
56:39and was close to the leadership.
56:41So thank you for doing this.
56:43Yeah, my pleasure.
56:44Anytime.
56:45Awesome.
56:46Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
56:50You can find us at william-branham.org.
56:53For more about the dark side of the NAR, read Weaponize Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR,
56:59available on Amazon, Kindle, and soon, Audible.