John Wimber Research Page:
https://william-branham.org/site/research/people/john_wimber
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 podcast episode delves into the entangled connections between the International House of Prayer Kansas City (IHOPKC), the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), and figures like William Branham, John Wimber, and Bob Jones. The discussion kicks off with an exploration of the complex history and the difficulties in separating truth from deception in these movements. The hosts, John Collins and Brantley Smith, emphasize the challenges of discerning individuals’ intentions—whether they were misguided, manipulated, or predators—while also addressing their contributions to the movement. They offer insight into the cult-like behavior that pervades these organizations, particularly focusing on spiritual abuse and its correlation with more egregious misconduct.
A key segment of the episode scrutinizes the roles of John Wimber, Mike Bickle, Paul Cain, and Bob Jones, discussing their influence on the charismatic movement and the controversial behaviors that were often shielded or overlooked. The episode highlights Wimber’s role in addressing Bob Jones’ abuse, illustrating Wimber’s transparent and strict approach to discipline in comparison to other leaders. Ultimately, the podcast paints a picture of a religious landscape rife with abuse of power, secrecy, and the gray areas between genuine faith and manipulation.
00:00 Introduction
05:00 Detangling IHOPKC and the NAR
10:00 Historical connections to William Branham and adjacent movements
15:00 John Wimber’s revolutionary role and mistakes
23:00 Addressing the abusive culture in IHOP and the cult-like behaviors
30:00 Bob Jones, his rise to power, and connections to Mike Bickle
38:00 The Kansas City Prophets and questionable prophetic practices
45:00 John Wimber’s discipline of Bob Jones and transparency
50:00 Power abuse in charismatic movements and spiritual manipulation
55:00 Reflections on leadership, accountability, and healing
1:00:05 Closing remarks on learning from history
______________________
– 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://william-branham.org/site/research/people/john_wimber
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 podcast episode delves into the entangled connections between the International House of Prayer Kansas City (IHOPKC), the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), and figures like William Branham, John Wimber, and Bob Jones. The discussion kicks off with an exploration of the complex history and the difficulties in separating truth from deception in these movements. The hosts, John Collins and Brantley Smith, emphasize the challenges of discerning individuals’ intentions—whether they were misguided, manipulated, or predators—while also addressing their contributions to the movement. They offer insight into the cult-like behavior that pervades these organizations, particularly focusing on spiritual abuse and its correlation with more egregious misconduct.
A key segment of the episode scrutinizes the roles of John Wimber, Mike Bickle, Paul Cain, and Bob Jones, discussing their influence on the charismatic movement and the controversial behaviors that were often shielded or overlooked. The episode highlights Wimber’s role in addressing Bob Jones’ abuse, illustrating Wimber’s transparent and strict approach to discipline in comparison to other leaders. Ultimately, the podcast paints a picture of a religious landscape rife with abuse of power, secrecy, and the gray areas between genuine faith and manipulation.
00:00 Introduction
05:00 Detangling IHOPKC and the NAR
10:00 Historical connections to William Branham and adjacent movements
15:00 John Wimber’s revolutionary role and mistakes
23:00 Addressing the abusive culture in IHOP and the cult-like behaviors
30:00 Bob Jones, his rise to power, and connections to Mike Bickle
38:00 The Kansas City Prophets and questionable prophetic practices
45:00 John Wimber’s discipline of Bob Jones and transparency
50:00 Power abuse in charismatic movements and spiritual manipulation
55:00 Reflections on leadership, accountability, and healing
1:00:05 Closing remarks on learning from history
______________________
– 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
00:00:00You
00:00:31Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:00:36I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:00:41at william-branham.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Brantley Smith,
00:00:47former member of the International House of Prayer.
00:00:50And together we are detangling IHOP-KC and the New Apostolic Reformation.
00:00:56I just love that word detangling. It's not a word that I use very often.
00:01:02When you mentioned it and spun off this series, it's perfect, man.
00:01:06We're detangling this mess, and what I have learned is from this mess
00:01:11there are several other messes that have happened that are connected to it,
00:01:14both forward in history and backward in history,
00:01:18and now I'm trying to detangle some of those so I can better understand
00:01:22what is this mess called International House of Prayer.
00:01:25I think it's what's been so fun about it is our world's coming together,
00:01:30and you've done a whole lot of past research with Branham and stuff in the past,
00:01:36and I've been knee-deep in all the current stuff that's been popping off
00:01:40and trying to work in advocacy spaces and stuff,
00:01:43and so everywhere you look, man, it's like every door you open there's a mess somewhere,
00:01:50and it seems like it ties back to if it's not Branham, it's Branham adjacent
00:01:55or somebody who was around Branham or these guys.
00:02:00Man, it's just deep. It's deep.
00:02:03Darrell Bock It is deep, and the part that's very difficult for me,
00:02:07I see the scoundrels, and there's a lot of scoundrels.
00:02:10Mixed in this mess are these really good people who have good hearts,
00:02:14and they're there because they want to get closer to God, a lot of them,
00:02:18and they get caught up into it and don't realize it.
00:02:21So it's also hard to detangle, for me, trying to understand which people had bad intent
00:02:29and which people joined into it and then got so wrapped up that they transitioned into having bad intent
00:02:37versus some people who just simply were not.
00:02:40They were good people. There are a lot of good people.
00:02:43Yeah, it never gets easier, it seems, to detangle that.
00:02:51You have the ones like Mike and Paul Kane and Bob that we now know are predators,
00:03:00which is like a totally different category than some of these people.
00:03:05I think some of these leaders may have been misguided, influenced by other leaders,
00:03:11made mistakes.
00:03:13We've seen it in the IHOP circles all year in that the advocacy group is what they call themselves,
00:03:22the AG, who's the group of former leaders that brought the allegations against Mike to IHOP leadership,
00:03:30current IHOP leadership.
00:03:31All those guys were part of that system for decades.
00:03:35Alan Hood was the assistant associate director for nearly 20 years, ran the Bible college,
00:03:44and Dwayne Roberts was there for decades, these different leaders.
00:03:49And I think most of those guys are trying to do the best they can.
00:03:55I think they're kind of like us but had a little bit more power in these circles
00:04:00and probably need to take responsibility for harm and stuff that was committed,
00:04:05but I don't think that they are the level that Branham and Bickle and all these guys are on.
00:04:14I know you've ventured recently into the Wimber territory, and people have opinions about that.
00:04:19Oh, that was a can of worms.
00:04:23And I think Wimber's a tough character because Wimber was, I think, and I'm not well educated.
00:04:32I'm not a Wimber expert by any means, but I hear stories from my friends.
00:04:37I heard stories about him at IHOP.
00:04:39And Wimber was very revolutionary specifically in helping eliminate that clergy-laity divide that existed.
00:04:47And I think that gave a whole lot of hope for people that being a Christian and, as Wimber said,
00:04:54doing the stuff wasn't just for the pastors and the preachers and the people in the pulpits,
00:04:58which was what we saw with the healing revivals and stuff, right?
00:05:01You got the guy running around and doing his sideshow thing.
00:05:05And with Wimber, he was trying to get the people involved, and I think he had a total different kind of essence about him.
00:05:13And he made some mistakes, and what I respect about Wimber,
00:05:16and specifically like one of the biggest mistakes that come to my mind is platforming the prophets and Mike
00:05:21and the tours that happened in the UK and all that kind of stuff.
00:05:24But then multiple times in Wimber's life, you see Wimber renounce and apologize for that stuff and condemn it.
00:05:34Even this past week, I learned that he wrote a letter in response to see Peter Wagner and the NAR
00:05:41and how, you know, the strong feelings he had about that.
00:05:44Even though some of his ideology has contributed, some of his theological influence has probably contributed to the NAR circles,
00:05:53it seems like, at this point in time, it seems like John was a good guy and people have fond memories of him.
00:06:01And I've never had anybody have anything bad to say except about these public mistakes.
00:06:07And I'm sure we'll talk about him a little bit later, too, with our topic we're going to be talking about today.
00:06:13Darrell Bock Yeah, I'm hoping we actually eventually get to do a whole episode because I'm fascinated by the whole Wimber thing.
00:06:19And, you know, I want to give a little bit of grace to the people who are, like you mentioned, the Abbasid group.
00:06:26There's a lot of people who I myself was in similar situations.
00:06:31I probably, you know, I wasn't so highly influential as they may have been.
00:06:36But when you leave, there's this point in time in which you're trying to detangle what happened to you.
00:06:44And there are different categories of people.
00:06:46Some people were connected to the upper tiers of a cult, and that's just the way a cult hierarchy works.
00:06:53I was in the upper tiers.
00:06:55And then there are the rank and file members, right?
00:06:58So even though I wasn't an influencer, I had the potential to be one of those.
00:07:03So I understand a little bit of where they're coming from.
00:07:08And when I first left, there's a problem that exists.
00:07:12When you're in a cult, they teach you a very black or white, right or wrong, us or the world, us versus them mentality.
00:07:21And there's no gray areas, and there's no room for gray areas.
00:07:27And this is especially the case when there's a conflict of opinion, especially if it's a doctrinal opinion.
00:07:33And that's why, that's one of the main reasons why my website and the podcast, I sort of, I try as much as possible to separate the doctrine from the history.
00:07:44Although there are cases where you have to have, there's a historical intersection where a doctrine makes a historical change.
00:07:53And so for me, that's my fascination with Wimber.
00:07:56It's not that, you know, I'm not anti-Wimber.
00:07:58He's probably, like you said, he's probably a great guy.
00:08:01He was a musician, so I would have connected with him immediately, right?
00:08:06I've got nothing for him or against him is what I'm trying to say.
00:08:10But whenever I left the Branham cult, I became hypersensitive to people who were against, we called it, Wimber had a different word for it.
00:08:22But we called it cold formal religion, which meant basically in Branham's fake Kentucky Hillbilly way of saying it, he was saying that you're not doing the stuff.
00:08:32The platform was almost the same.
00:08:35We want to have signs and wonders and miracles.
00:08:37And whenever you look at it from that aspect, it wasn't a clone, but there were many similarities is what I'm trying to say.
00:08:47And it's in the variance between the similarities and what other Christians believe.
00:08:53And I realize the other Christians, you know, you can get down to extremes the other direction, too.
00:08:58But it's in that variance where the intersection in history is, and that's really why I did it.
00:09:05Honestly, my intent was just to do one video and move on, and one research page that is in the process of being developed.
00:09:14But I got so many emails and a phone call.
00:09:18I got like one guy that texted me, bombarded me with text until I was like ready to just block him from the phone.
00:09:25Because there's so much misunderstanding of the intersection point in history.
00:09:33So I realized I didn't communicate the page.
00:09:36I didn't express the thought well.
00:09:38So I realized I've got to build it out further, and that led to some more research.
00:09:43All this to say, whenever you leave a cult, there is that strong opposition to anybody who doesn't share the same opinions on you.
00:09:55And if that opinion lies in doctrine, if you're in a cult, then it's good versus evil.
00:10:01And so instantly I've become the bad guy.
00:10:04And this is one of, I don't know how many hundreds of different cults I've got on my website now.
00:10:11It happens almost every single time I publish a cult leader, which that was probably the most surprising thing to me.
00:10:18Because I didn't, based off of everything that I had read of Wimber, I didn't picture it to be in that level of a personality group.
00:10:30And that's really what surprised me and made me go further.
00:10:34But I believe that there are a lot of people who, once they get past the point where they're in the black or white realm,
00:10:43I believe many of those people will help me flesh out the details in that page.
00:10:48But I can't do it while they're wrapped up in it so tightly, if you know what I mean.
00:10:53Yeah, I think the cult word definitely gets scary for people.
00:10:57And I think I understand where you're coming from.
00:10:59I don't know if everybody else does.
00:11:00But with the cult of personality, I think the cult of like IHOP and brandomism is very different because of the abuse and stuff that went on.
00:11:07And we don't know that necessarily about the Vineyard.
00:11:10But that there's just an allegiance to figurehead, rightly or wrongly, it's not really, it's kind of neutral in that sense in my mind.
00:11:19Like the cult of Justin Bieber, right?
00:11:21It doesn't have to be necessarily a destructive cult.
00:11:25It's not a Jim Jones group.
00:11:27Swifties.
00:11:28Yeah, Swifties.
00:11:29Swifties.
00:11:30Well, that may be destructive, honestly.
00:11:32We won't go there.
00:11:34Don't tell my daughters.
00:11:36But yeah, you're right.
00:11:38Maybe that's the hang up.
00:11:40See, for me, that's not a dirty word.
00:11:42You've got the cult following of Jesus Christ in the early days.
00:11:46I think I had a conversation recently, which I shared with you, but the word is basically the same as culture and men create cultures.
00:11:55And that's really where it came from.
00:11:57People like Jim Jones, who was connected to Branham, created this negative view of the word that a cult is a dangerous thing.
00:12:05But that's just the extremist version of a cult.
00:12:09Yeah.
00:12:10Yeah, for sure.
00:12:11And I think the other piece of context that I just want to verbalize just so people know that, aware of it, is I realize the Wimber stuff touches in a sensitive spot because there's active stuff going on in those circles right now.
00:12:25With Wimber's old church at what's now known as Dwelling Place Anaheim, the old vineyard Anaheim.
00:12:33I'm not an expert on the timeline or the narrative there, but the leader came in and pretty much removed them from the vineyard.
00:12:40And I reckon took all the assets with them, including a lot of Wimber's IP, if you will.
00:12:47A lot of his recordings and tapes and things like that that they refused to release to the family.
00:12:52And there's also been allegations of spiritual abuse from that leader.
00:12:56And there's recordings all over Twitter that you can hear the guy, Alan Scott, of meetings.
00:13:02Because I guess the guy recorded all of his meetings and never guessed that that would come back to bite him in the butt.
00:13:07But said some very abusive and harmful things to people, to his staff and to different volunteers and stuff.
00:13:14And I want to be sensitive to that, even with my own experience.
00:13:20And I really don't.
00:13:22Deep down, I don't think Wimber, we're going to find out someday that Wimber was a bad guy.
00:13:26But I will say, two years ago, I was sitting having a conversation with a friend, and I never thought Mike would be a bad guy.
00:13:33I didn't.
00:13:34I could call IHOP a cult at that point, and I could see the harm that was happening to my friend's lives as they were a part of it and after they left.
00:13:43And it took the whole world blowing up this past October, and the allegations going public for me to be able to go,
00:13:49Oh my gosh, Mike was an awful guy.
00:13:51And so, all of us are on journeys of detangling, and it's a process.
00:13:59I don't know if you've ever had a big ball of yarn or something that's all in knots, and you're trying to get it apart.
00:14:06One of the most frustrating things.
00:14:07The worst are little gold chain necklaces.
00:14:09I don't know if you've ever gotten one of those.
00:14:11And they get in those knots, man, and it's so hard to get them apart.
00:14:14And as you pull one piece loose, another thing comes loose.
00:14:17And it's easier to see how this thing connects to this part and that you can pull it through here.
00:14:22And as you're doing that work, I think some of these things become clearer, and I think you hit on about gray stuff.
00:14:32I think losing our boxes of things have to be either good or bad, but they can't be both.
00:14:40And I think a lot of that exists in these spaces.
00:14:43I think there's a lot.
00:14:45I mean, I'm sure we could do a whole episode, and we would probably love talking about the music of these movements and stuff.
00:14:50But the Vineyard stuff, the Vineyard had huge influence with their music.
00:14:54And there's one of their songs that I got in my current rotation on Sundays.
00:14:58If you don't know, I lead worship at a church on Sundays.
00:15:00But that song is just scripture is what it is.
00:15:04It's straight.
00:15:05It's the Lord is gracious and compassionate.
00:15:06He's slow to anger and rich in love.
00:15:08And so it's not anything super ethereal.
00:15:12And some of that stuff's just so—there was probably some bad stuff they put out, but there's also some good stuff.
00:15:18And it is what it is.
00:15:20It's its body of work.
00:15:22And it had its pros.
00:15:23It's had its cons.
00:15:24And we get to figure out what we do with it.
00:15:28Well, just to give you some comfort, even if I were to—and I'm like you.
00:15:33I don't think that we're going to find any—what people are afraid of is they think that I'm going to be publishing dirt on Wimber.
00:15:40I don't think I'll ever find anything like they're thinking that I'm headed at.
00:15:45He appears to be a good guy.
00:15:47I just can't say that he is or isn't.
00:15:49I don't know him.
00:15:50But even if I were to find this and you were to not believe me, I'm—the platform that I've created isn't one where everybody has to share my opinion.
00:16:00Charles and I disagree on several things, and we did—I don't know how many podcasts we've done so far.
00:16:06But I like the healthy discussion.
00:16:09In fact, if you—I would actually appreciate it if you had a hardcore opinion so you could convince me of it.
00:16:16But because neither one of us really have any hard—I've got no agenda or opinion.
00:16:21So I don't think we'll ever butt heads over it is the funny part.
00:16:25But all of that said, the purpose is to learn, and we learn from each other.
00:16:33Where it gets really problematic, and you've probably seen it.
00:16:38I don't pay attention to a lot of it.
00:16:41I really just simply don't have time.
00:16:43But somebody shared some statements in a podcast and some of the comments.
00:16:47But when it turns to insulting and denigrating my research and things like that, that's not the way to convince me that your opinion is right.
00:16:59Your opinion may be right, but that's not helpful.
00:17:02That doesn't—it really doesn't do anything for me.
00:17:05Instead, that matches the pattern of what happens with a destructive cult.
00:17:10And I will use the word destructive there.
00:17:12I'm not saying they are, but that's the pattern that I see every time I publish critical information.
00:17:20The insults start flying, and then I realize, okay, there's something wrong here.
00:17:24So eventually, like I said, the page will be fleshed out further.
00:17:29I have had several people review the content that's there.
00:17:32And I think I did have one—I had one reference that was incorrect.
00:17:36I pasted the wrong one.
00:17:38But other than that, the page has been reviewed.
00:17:41There is the matter of difference of opinion in theology, and I think that's where most of the issue lies.
00:17:48And even that will probably be fleshed out, because my goal honestly isn't to have theology in it.
00:17:54I just need the historical intersection point of how the theology transitions.
00:17:59And really that's the purpose of the page.
00:18:02Yeah. I didn't get to tell you about my good news.
00:18:04I received communication back from Regent, and I'm going to get to look at the Wimber Special Collection.
00:18:09Awesome.
00:18:10I just have to schedule a date.
00:18:12I'm excited to look at that, because Regent has like 900 and some documents, I think, on Wimber.
00:18:17But a lot of them are personal correspondence letters and stuff that he wrote between leaders.
00:18:21I don't know if you're familiar with Randy Clark.
00:18:23He was kind of in the Toronto stuff and such.
00:18:26And there's letters between them and people in Kansas City.
00:18:30And so I think it'll be interesting just to be able to get a personal glimpse into the conversations he was having with these other leaders.
00:18:37It'll be good.
00:18:38Yeah. Charles and I just did a full podcast episode on deliverance training, and somebody asked what it was.
00:18:46I got my hands on the instruction manual of how to train people to become Hogwarts wizards.
00:18:54And honestly, we skim some of the weird topics.
00:19:00But if you read through this, this is – I have read Harry Potter.
00:19:07I've read Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, this kind of stuff.
00:19:10This is on par with that.
00:19:12And it's not – I think if people were to see this and the –
00:19:17Oh, that's from Randy Clark.
00:19:19That's from Randy Clark, yeah.
00:19:21If people were to see this Randy Clark ministry training manual, it would demystify all of these people with the so-called title of deliverance ministers.
00:19:32And I get backlash from it.
00:19:34You're against deliverance.
00:19:35You're against exorcisms and this kind of – I don't know what all they said.
00:19:38But it's not that.
00:19:40But when I see something like this that is pure and utter nonsense, I'm going to call it out because this is pure and utter nonsense.
00:19:47Can't wait to take a look at that.
00:19:50We had stuff like that.
00:19:52We had a – they turned IHOPU during the IHOPU student awakening into a deliverance model where it was an acronym.
00:20:00I think it was interview was the first one.
00:20:02I can't remember all the other ones.
00:20:04But it was – and you walk it out.
00:20:06That was the you is now you have to walk out your deliverance in faith.
00:20:10I think I held up – we had a copy of the IHOP version too.
00:20:14So I think I used it.
00:20:16Charles and I published that a couple weeks back.
00:20:18It's deliverance ministers exposed.
00:20:20But anyway, talking about Wimber.
00:20:23So unfortunately even with all the chaos of the Wimber controversy that's happening right now, there is another intersection point that we're getting into.
00:20:34And this one's interesting.
00:20:36I'll preface by there's no way I believe that Wimber is involved or even similar to this.
00:20:44But he was contacted because of the situation, which we'll get into that.
00:20:51But we're going to try to detangle Bob Jones.
00:20:54And I think this is going to turn into a recurring theme because Bob Jones appears to be this black box that nobody has found where he came from, how he emerged.
00:21:06All of the details that created the Bob Jones that was able to connect to Mike Bickle.
00:21:12The mystery that's there fascinates me because I have seen other sinister characters, and you can find them on my research page.
00:21:21Whenever somebody just comes out of the blue like that and suddenly they've gotten power, it's because there are connections that aren't religious that make that power.
00:21:31And I want to find what those are.
00:21:33Hopefully some people will come forward and give me some bread crumbs so I can follow the clues.
00:21:38I hope so, too.
00:21:39And that's what makes me nervous jumping into some of this stuff, too.
00:21:42I think we talked about this last time is there's just not a whole lot of published information on these guys.
00:21:48And so I'm sure if you're listening to this two, three years from now, you probably know a lot more, and half the stuff we say is probably going to be inaccurate.
00:21:56But we've got to start somewhere with these conversations and figuring it out.
00:22:00And so if any of you all have any information on these guys as we're talking about them, please share links and whatever.
00:22:07Either email us or put it in YouTube comments, something like that, to help us paint a picture.
00:22:13I don't know if you heard about it or not, but there was a former leader from Metro, which was the church that predated IHOP, who released a book this past week that detailed some of his interactions with these prophets.
00:22:31And it's the first thing that I've seen that's come from a semi-critical perspective.
00:22:36I think, in my opinion, he was probably a little too gracious to them in some areas and came to some conclusions that I would probably differ on.
00:22:46But hearing those anecdotal stories were very interesting and honestly brought up some possible contradictions in some storylines as well, like with the prophetic history and stuff.
00:22:58As I was looking through some of the resources today from Mike's telling of the prophetic history and comparing it to what this gentleman, his name is Bob Scott, the book called Some Said It Blundered, is what it's called.
00:23:13There's some similar dates of Bob almost having a near-death experience, I think, in 70 years that Mike tells about.
00:23:26It just seems bizarre just to even describe it.
00:23:31It talks about him.
00:23:32I'm scared to say it because of the YouTube censors, but he said he had blood coming out of his mouth like a geyser, I think, is the way that he described it.
00:23:42It had this near-death kind of experience.
00:23:45But then Bob Scott talks about in 76, Bob Jones working on a cabin that him and his wife were trying to build in the Ozarks, and he gets struck by lightning.
00:23:57And that's whenever Bob Scott says that Bob got his special unique abilities.
00:24:07I think he called it acquired savant syndrome is what Bob called it, which I would beg to differ.
00:24:14Darrell Bock Well, for me, I read many of the things that are published, both critical and non-critical of Bob.
00:24:25And what I was looking for specifically were the early years before he became a minister.
00:24:29I want to know about that.
00:24:30And you just simply don't find it.
00:24:32The only thing you find are Bob Jones's own words, which may or may not be trustworthy.
00:24:37I usually take the approach that they're usually not with these guys.
00:24:41But he's talking about barroom brawls and alcohol, and basically he's describing the bar scene.
00:24:48And the thing that caught my eye was really this, because when I discovered that Branham and his father were working with the liquor ring that were supplying the Chicago mob,
00:25:01I started noticing this pattern of many people after 1933 that were getting into the revival scene to hide from their criminal past.
00:25:11I use the word mobsters, but basically they were just transporting liquor and this kind of thing.
00:25:17And the names are just astounding.
00:25:19Like you've got Kenneth Hagen's brother claimed that he was running with Bonnie and Clyde.
00:25:25I've got newspaper.
00:25:26I've got a page on my website.
00:25:28You can go look them up.
00:25:29But he's naming big-time gangsters.
00:25:31He's not naming the small ones.
00:25:33And he was a converted gangster.
00:25:35And Branham mentions that he had converted gangsters following him around in his meetings.
00:25:41And once you really take a step back, I watched this documentary.
00:25:47These people were like the Tom Cruise of their era.
00:25:52When they were able to get you alcohol when you couldn't buy alcohol, they were heroes, man, to the people who wanted alcohol.
00:25:59But when Prohibition ended and you could just go buy liquor in the store, nobody cared about these guys.
00:26:07They were nothing more but petty criminals, right?
00:26:10So they had to go into hiding.
00:26:11And I was watching a documentary on all the various ways that they hid.
00:26:15And it's just fascinating.
00:26:17The revival scene is the one that's most fascinating because they're hiding in plain sight.
00:26:22And I don't think the documentary covered that a whole lot.
00:26:26But I can look back through some of the characters that I've identified in my research.
00:26:31There is this weird connection.
00:26:33What I don't know is Bob and the connection.
00:26:35I don't know.
00:26:36There's no way to know.
00:26:37But here he is.
00:26:39Like you mentioned, when he's talking about his supernatural experiences,
00:26:44there's so many that match the pattern of what Branham used for his own stage persona.
00:26:49So I'm wondering, were they connected or did he just copy it?
00:26:53What's the connection there?
00:26:55Right, right.
00:26:56The story is that we were told very similar things, if memory serves me right.
00:27:01And I think Bob Scott was saying similar stuff in his book of that Bob was a bootlegger running around
00:27:08and supposedly had some kind of breakdown, a nervous breakdown.
00:27:13I think that's what they called it.
00:27:14And where he encountered God, air quotes, and ended up joining the Marine Corps is what the story is.
00:27:25But I never heard the Marine Corps part talked about at IHOP.
00:27:30I mean you see Bob, hear Bob speak, and Marine is not the first thing that comes to mind.
00:27:38No offense to our people who protect our country on a day-in, day-out basis.
00:27:44I noticed that too.
00:27:46That's one of the first things I noticed.
00:27:47I watched the videos, and I heard the Marine story.
00:27:50I know Marines.
00:27:52And there's a way, after you're a Marine, there's a way that you hold yourself, conduct yourself.
00:27:56You are trained to be a Marine.
00:27:59I do not see it, man.
00:28:01I've worked two pastures that are Marines, and nothing like that.
00:28:05Nothing like that.
00:28:07Maybe he was a Marine dishwasher, and he had some, I don't know.
00:28:11But even that though, you've got to go through the training, and you hold yourself differently than he did.
00:28:16Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started,
00:28:20or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign,
00:28:25Charismatic and other fringe movements, into the New Apostolic Reformation?
00:28:30You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,
00:28:35william-branham.org.
00:28:37On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley,
00:28:43Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others,
00:28:47with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.
00:28:51You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.
00:28:58If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top.
00:29:04And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.
00:29:11On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
00:29:16People have some very interesting descriptors.
00:29:19I mean, he was an Arkansas hillbilly.
00:29:22I mean, that's who Bob was.
00:29:24And I say that being somebody who grew up in Appalachia myself in the mountains, and I'm probably a hillbilly too.
00:29:30And so, you get me around the right people, and I start breaking into the country accent as well.
00:29:34But it doesn't give the impression of well-educated.
00:29:38And what have pieced together after that is that Bob, he moved to Kansas City, I guess, after he left the military is the story that's told.
00:29:51And kind of bounced around churches in the area after his lightning strike or whatever origin story we're going to find out someday to be true is, or if we ever do, is that's whenever his special giftings started appearing to where he started getting these revelations and dreams and all this kind of stuff.
00:30:11And from what I've seen is that he ran around all these churches in Kansas City, and they thought he was crazy and ran him off.
00:30:18And somehow, he shows up at Mike's doorstep and is utilized, I guess we'll say.
00:30:26Darrell Bock Yeah.
00:30:27And that whole story too, like if you take a step back, if you were never in this, and you just critically examine the series of events that he's given in this history, it's not a series of events that's plausible.
00:30:40Like some guy's not just going to come out of the street and meet you in an office and, oh my gosh, you're the prophet that's going to start our movement, and you talk like a hillbilly.
00:30:52That's just not the way things happen.
00:30:54There was a connection there prior to that.
00:30:56And I want to learn what that is as well.
00:30:59My suspicion is, and the way that I work is I find something that has happened, which I call the fruit of the ministry or whatever, and then I trace it backwards in time.
00:31:14But usually, you go back so far, and these guys, almost every one of them, they lie about their past so that you can't go back to the origin.
00:31:23And you have to detangle their web of connections and understand the origin.
00:31:29The fact that he was connected to Paul Cain likely tells me that there must have been some sort of a collaboration with those two figures probably before they met Mike Bickle.
00:31:41That's my hunch.
00:31:43So I work on the hunch, and a lot of times the hunch comes out to be incorrect.
00:31:47So I'll preface, if you're listening to the podcast, don't quote me on that.
00:31:51That may not be what happened, but that's the working hunch theory that I'm heading towards.
00:31:56It's a very interesting connection because, especially with the stuff that we've learned in the past year, because we find out whenever Mike leaves St. Louis with what we know now was whenever he was abusing Tammy Woods, who was a minor, who was their babysitter.
00:32:12And then all of a sudden, after that's gone on for a couple years of Mike abusing this girl, now all of a sudden he's getting a prophetic word to move to Kansas City.
00:32:21So it almost makes me wonder, and all that's conjecture is, was Mike about to get caught at that time and realized he had to cut his losses and run?
00:32:29But the figure that stepped in there that's connected to that story, and I'd love to chat about the whole Bob Jones meeting, the lore of meeting Bob Jones, whether it's true or not, I don't know.
00:32:43But the figure Augustine Alcala, which I had no idea was he was a child preacher at one point, which I'm sure we could dig into him at some point.
00:32:54But the story goes is that Augustine gave Mike this word and told him four things.
00:33:02And those four things, I'm trying to remember exactly what all they were, but it was about there would be a young adult movement in Kansas City, and they talked about a false prophet being in the midst, and told him that a great controversy would rise against him.
00:33:17And that's the one that makes my red flags go off right away, now that we know what we know now, and know that Mike was abusing Tammy, is what kind of controversy was he trying to get ahead of?
00:33:30And I realize that that's the pattern that a lot of these guys work off of, is if we prophesy it now, and it doesn't come out until 2023, we'll get to spew all the black horse nonsense and stuff that Mike did back in October.
00:33:44But then what ends up happening, after Mike gets that word in St. Louis, lo and behold, a little bit after showing up in Kansas City, Bob walks into his office, and he always told it in such a—Mike would always tell these stories in ways that made it very humanizing, I guess, in the sense that Mike portrayed himself in the story of meeting Bob, of thinking Bob was insane.
00:34:13He was like, who is this crazy guy walking into my office, and he would talk about the big winter coat that he had on in the middle of April, something like that, and he had a big old winter jacket on.
00:34:23And he would tell the story about Bob looked at him and told him those four things again. Bob looked at him and told him those same four things, and expounded on some about how it was going to be a youth movement, told Mike he was going to be a youth pastor, which is odd things to tell a predator if you're actually communicating with God, that God's telling you that this predator is a youth pastor.
00:34:46But that's a conversation, I guess, for a different day. But he gives this weird cryptic kind of message to Mike of like, on the first day of spring when the snow melts, you'll sit at the communion table and accept me or accept me as your own, something along those lines.
00:35:05And it's this whole lore that's established, and it brings in these other players, and lo and behold, they end up at Mike's house, I guess, one night.
00:35:16And Art Katz, I think, was one of the figures that's mentioned in the story. And Art wasn't talked a whole lot about when I was at IHOP, except he had some books that were talked about some, and I'm not sure how Art connects to the larger movement.
00:35:31I think he might have been Jewish, maybe, Art was. But they're sitting around the table, and I guess Bob tells Mike a secret that only he could have known, which had to do something with a Neil Diamond song about taking care of his brother that Mike had told his dad on his deathbed, and nobody else knew about it, about him being his brother's keeper, making sure he took care of Pat after his dad, Bob, died.
00:35:58And so, he would blow it up as this big story. His wife didn't even know about it, nobody else knew it, and Bob told me the secrets of my heart, and then all of a sudden, Bob's like, well, why are we here, gentlemen?
00:36:10And they look outside, and the snow's melting, it's the first day of spring, and they're accepting him, and it's like this whole crazy story.
00:36:18As I was looking back at it today, I think about those sensational aspects, and it's those big, I'll call them fishing stories, exaggerated stories, those big fishing stories that make it more believable at times, whenever you're hearing that and you're in those environments.
00:36:40It makes you have those thoughts of nobody could have made this happen, this had to be God, and then you find out they've been fudging stuff, and it slowly starts pulling at the threads.
00:36:55Darrell Bock I'll probably get emails about this comment I'm about to make saying, you don't believe in modern day prophets and all this stuff, but there's a problem.
00:37:06And here in Indiana, in my research, I discovered this spiritualist camp, and it was called Camp Chesterfield.
00:37:14It was one of the most, one of the three largest, I think, in the nation back in the day.
00:37:20And I found Branham, and his mentor had actually been there.
00:37:24It's kind of a funny story.
00:37:26But everything that they did was fake, but all the people believed it.
00:37:30And when you had two or three spiritualists who were claiming to do a thing, and then one of the other ones can say yes, and I was there.
00:37:40I watched, when they're affirming each other, the audience sees it as more plausible.
00:37:47And so they convinced the masses that they had like a floating piano that would play itself, and it was on strings.
00:37:54Weird kind of stuff, right?
00:37:57So Branham went there.
00:37:59I've got evidence that he was there.
00:38:01And then I started noticing the patterns with him and some of the other seedy characters.
00:38:07I can't say that they all had ill intent, but some of them I can definitely say did.
00:38:13Those people would affirm each other's prophecies, and they would say things like that.
00:38:18And he didn't even know what I said on my deathbed to my mother or whatever on my mother's deathbed to me.
00:38:25You know, they can make up whatever they want as a stage act, and if they're affirming each other, the people believe it.
00:38:33But that's not enough really for me to draw the line between, okay, these guys are frauds.
00:38:39Where I do is whenever I see those same people who are affirming each other with specific granular details.
00:38:47But then they get up and they prophesy with something so generic that it's almost like you've probably seen these comedy movies
00:38:56where some guy is giving this generic prophecy that really means anything,
00:39:00and the people who are acting in the show, they keep stumbling upon situations and they say,
00:39:07is this it? Is this it? And that's not it. And they go to the next one.
00:39:11Darrell Bock John, I really feel like the Lord's taking you to new places.
00:39:14Pete Stephens Exactly. Or you're going to meet a false prophet.
00:39:19You're in a movement filled with prophets. Of course you're going to meet a false prophet.
00:39:23The one that gets me is, one day the world will come against us, you just watch.
00:39:32And one day there's going to be a mass leaving. People are going to leave this thing.
00:39:37They love that one because that corrals the people.
00:39:40So you've got these men who are affirming each other as prophets,
00:39:44and they're giving granular detail prophecies to each other, but then generic ones to the people.
00:39:52And then you realize that is a stage act.
00:39:55When I saw this was going on with Bob Jones, Paul Cain, Mike Bickle,
00:40:00and then I realized, wait a minute, the Kansas City Prophets,
00:40:03this is a group of men who are affirming each other, and then they're giving generic prophecies.
00:40:08Darrell Bock Yeah. It's real interesting.
00:40:10We've had one guy in the community who's done a lot of work in highlighting the revisions that happen over the years.
00:40:18Pete Stephens Oh, yeah.
00:40:19Darrell Bock And showing how those prophecies evolve.
00:40:22One of the big ones, and which this one's not connected to Bob a whole lot,
00:40:27but is the blueprint prophecy is one of the ones that's talked about.
00:40:31And from best we can tell, it's had at least three iterations,
00:40:35and we don't even know if the first iteration we had was actually the original iteration.
00:40:39The lore goes it was some kind of random letter mailed to Mike from some guy as a prophetic word,
00:40:44and then that was used in a sense to try to do a hostile takeover of Kansas City churches is what ended up happening with that.
00:40:53And it just kind of evolves over time, and we were still talking about it at the,
00:40:57I'm trying to think what it was, probably the 10-year anniversary,
00:41:00I think is probably the first time I heard about it in 2009 when I was at IHOP.
00:41:05And so, I remember us going around, like running around,
00:41:08because I think at that point they handed out a version of the prophecy
00:41:12because Mike printed out everything on notes.
00:41:15And they handed out a version of it, but our leader friends that we knew would be like,
00:41:20yeah, that's not the full thing. Mike has the full thing. He's not sharing the full thing.
00:41:25And they would get little teasers, I guess, from Mike or something,
00:41:30or from somebody close to Mike, and it would kind of turn into this gossip thing of,
00:41:33oh, there's this part of the prophecy that Mike left out.
00:41:36That's going to be really big when that happens, kind of stuff.
00:41:38And it's just really interesting how that stuff evolves.
00:41:43But I'm hung up on reading, because I read that book this week,
00:41:49but one of those stories that got passed around a lot,
00:41:53and this isn't connected to Bob at all, but y'all might enjoy this, I will,
00:41:56is we got told the story about this island of gold.
00:41:59And this leader who was kind of a, I wouldn't say he was a senior leader,
00:42:04but he was a director of a ministry at IHOP.
00:42:06He would tell us a story about this island of gold that Mike had,
00:42:10and how it was going to fund the prayer movement.
00:42:12And there was billions of dollars of gold on this island.
00:42:14This person kind of helped him connect to it.
00:42:17And whenever I read that book this week, I found out it was a Ponzi scheme,
00:42:21and Mike lost tons of money, and donors had to come in
00:42:25and pretty much bail out the debt, is what it was.
00:42:28And I was like, I feel so vindicated.
00:42:30I got so excited about that island of gold.
00:42:32And then to find out that it was a Ponzi scheme that Mike fell for,
00:42:36felt really good.
00:42:38Darrell Bock And there's so many, if you go back to my website
00:42:42and you see all the trails of research, there's so many instances of that.
00:42:46Charles Fox Parr, I'm the founder of Pentecostalism,
00:42:49he got duped into thinking that this elixir could turn ordinary rocks into gold.
00:42:54And he was a stakeholder.
00:42:56He was like going to sell this to the world, right?
00:42:59And this is the guy that literally popularized speaking in tongues.
00:43:02So it's odd that the people who are, you know,
00:43:07there's a lot of controversy about Parham too.
00:43:10I put him in the category as somebody who is a fraudster,
00:43:14and I know I'll get backlash for that.
00:43:16But have you seen this paper of the, I don't know what you call it,
00:43:20I guess you call it writing in tongues?
00:43:22The speaking in tongues, before that emerged, there was writing in tongues.
00:43:27And I swear, if you look at this thing, it's gibberish,
00:43:30literal gibberish.
00:43:32They said it was Chinese, but I know I've got a Chinese type set,
00:43:36I know that that's not Chinese.
00:43:38One little corner of it kind of looks like a tic-tac-toe game, man.
00:43:42That's where that came from, in your flying pyramid episode,
00:43:45that's where that came from.
00:43:47Actually, in the flying pyramid episode,
00:43:49that was an actual perfectly drawn replica of it.
00:43:53I actually superimposed it and I drew the little lines.
00:43:56What you saw in that cartoon was what they were claiming,
00:43:58it was speaking in tongues, writing in tongues.
00:44:01Writing in tongues.
00:44:03That's great, that's great.
00:44:05So we've had way too much fun.
00:44:07I don't think we've even got to the subject matter yet.
00:44:09We're talking about Bob Jones and the intersection point between him and Wimber,
00:44:14which is, for me, even that's fascinating,
00:44:16and I don't yet have that on the website.
00:44:18I'm still, I want to flesh all of the details of that
00:44:21so that I better understand it before I do it.
00:44:23But maybe you can summarize it a little bit.
00:44:25I mean, we've kind of already said that we,
00:44:28it's known that Bob and Paul and Mike and these guys are predators,
00:44:33but Wimber was actually involved in Bob Jones' discipline.
00:44:39So this was still whenever they were part of the vineyard
00:44:43and he had platform then Wimber had.
00:44:47And so he actually came out,
00:44:49and this is one of the reasons, I think,
00:44:50why Wimber is revered by a lot of people
00:44:55who are trying to stay in the charismatic movement
00:44:59and find life in the charismatic movement,
00:45:02is he probably responded really well.
00:45:06And even whenever we were looking at the Mike stuff back in October,
00:45:10the way that Wimber responded,
00:45:12we were looking at that and going,
00:45:14I hop, can't you respond this way?
00:45:16Like Wimber showed you how,
00:45:17like can't you be this clear about it?
00:45:20And it's fun, I pulled up the document in front of me
00:45:23just scrolling through it,
00:45:25but what's fun about it is Wimber actually lays out a full timeline,
00:45:30like a transparent timeline to people
00:45:32as how this information came to light about Bob's abuse.
00:45:38What the alleged, the abuse was,
00:45:42I wouldn't say it's alleged I guess at this point
00:45:44because it was confirmed,
00:45:45but is that he had abused two women
00:45:50and one of them was a minor.
00:45:52It was a mother and a daughter,
00:45:54if I remember the story right,
00:45:56and it's unclear whether Wimber knew
00:45:58that one of the women were a minor.
00:46:01And so because that's not addressed in his statement
00:46:06and we know how those circles of information go
00:46:08and how they protect one another
00:46:10and it seems to be that Bob admitted this stuff to Paul Cain first
00:46:15of all people.
00:46:17And then it went from Paul to Mike to Mike to Wimber
00:46:21and all that's laid out.
00:46:23But Wimber comes firmly against Bob for the abuse
00:46:30and lays out a plan for the people
00:46:32and like lays out, I mean it's a bullet pointed document
00:46:35of the public statements,
00:46:38of the restraints that are going to be placed on Bob.
00:46:41And so I think it was a very good document,
00:46:46but I think if, which you can correct me if you know,
00:46:49I don't feel like that,
00:46:51I don't think that Bob fully submitted himself
00:46:56to everything that happened there
00:46:59and even whenever I was at IHOP,
00:47:01Bob was very distanced from,
00:47:03like we still talked about Bob in the prophetic history,
00:47:05didn't talk about Paul a ton,
00:47:07and I think it was probably because Paul was running around the base
00:47:09and we didn't know it.
00:47:11But Bob was spoken of and he had gone to Morningstar of all places
00:47:16and that's kind of where he was based out of at that point.
00:47:19But all of that was very hush-hush,
00:47:23his abuse that he had committed
00:47:26and that's the big public one that we know about
00:47:30and as we have learned with these characters,
00:47:33it's usually not just a one-time situation at all.
00:47:37Yeah.
00:47:39And I stick with mostly the critical
00:47:42because I think I've mentioned this to you,
00:47:45I look at the world as this balance scale
00:47:48and a lot of the cults have so heavily weighted the positive
00:47:54and hid the negative that people don't really see it.
00:47:57So I try to balance the scale
00:47:59and I'm publishing a lot of critical information
00:48:01that they just simply don't publish.
00:48:03But in this particular case,
00:48:05I give some positive on Wimber
00:48:07because the transparency.
00:48:09Assuming that he gave all of the details,
00:48:12which I've got really no reason to believe he didn't,
00:48:15it was a very transparent way of issuing the discipline
00:48:20and that's the way it should be.
00:48:22If you have a predator in your midst,
00:48:24you should be transparent about it.
00:48:26So I would commend him for that.
00:48:28There is this real gray area
00:48:32where these guys all have dirt on each other
00:48:34and I've seen it in weird situations in the Branham cult
00:48:40and some of the spinoffs
00:48:42where a person will do this sort of thing
00:48:46because they're about to be exposed themselves
00:48:49because somebody else has dirt on them.
00:48:52I don't see any dirt yet on Wimber
00:48:54so I can't say that that's the case with him.
00:48:56If it were Paul Cain doing it, absolutely, man.
00:48:59That was a mess.
00:49:01But you know what I'm saying?
00:49:02So in this particular case,
00:49:04Wimber's hands look really clean
00:49:06and really transparent,
00:49:08which that's the way,
00:49:10if IHOP had been transparent,
00:49:12I don't think it would have developed
00:49:14into the mess that it became.
00:49:16Right. I agree 100%.
00:49:18What was really interesting too
00:49:20that I've had friends pull out in conversations
00:49:22as we've discussed these documents before
00:49:26where Wimber released this stuff
00:49:28is the pastoral care that was even deployed afterwards.
00:49:30That's just stuff you don't see.
00:49:32That their elders were going to home groups,
00:49:35to small groups,
00:49:37to make sure that people were okay
00:49:39because they realized that
00:49:41even though it was Bob abusing someone else,
00:49:43that that was going to have impacts
00:49:45on the rest of the community
00:49:47just based on Bob's position and power.
00:49:49And I think that that's something
00:49:51that a lot of people could learn from.
00:49:53I did appreciate too
00:49:55that Wimber made it very clear
00:49:57when he addressed them
00:49:58in Kansas City about it
00:50:00was that his goal was not
00:50:02the restoration of Bob to ministry,
00:50:05but he made it clear
00:50:07that the restoration was his walk with Christ
00:50:09and that he had no big intentions for that,
00:50:12which is very different
00:50:14than what we hear from Rick Joyner say.
00:50:17Restoration Rick.
00:50:19From other parties that be, you know.
00:50:21And that's the thing.
00:50:23I also,
00:50:25I understand human suffering
00:50:26and also I understand
00:50:28humans have human problems
00:50:30and many of those problems
00:50:32are psychological problems.
00:50:34You have mental health issues.
00:50:36Even the situation with Bob Jones,
00:50:38what he did was absolutely horrific.
00:50:40And it's so bad
00:50:42that if I say it,
00:50:44YouTube will censor this video
00:50:46so I can't even say what he did.
00:50:48But the information's out there.
00:50:50You can go see it.
00:50:52But even that,
00:50:54you know, I don't understand his psyche.
00:50:56His past is a black box.
00:50:58He may have had some issues
00:51:00that caused it.
00:51:02And if we're in Christianity,
00:51:04God can forgive you of this.
00:51:06And there is that grace,
00:51:08but he doesn't forgive you
00:51:10to put you in a position
00:51:12where you can do it again.
00:51:14And more than that,
00:51:16think of the victims.
00:51:18If a victim were to see
00:51:20somebody restored into that position,
00:51:22they're never going to trust them
00:51:24and they're going to tell everybody,
00:51:26and it happens.
00:51:28So why are they restoring the people
00:51:30in these positions?
00:51:32I'm not going to name names,
00:51:34but I've seen some of the current issues.
00:51:36One situation was,
00:51:38well, it was just a text message.
00:51:40Well, no, man,
00:51:42that's how it begins.
00:51:44Just because you got caught in the beginning,
00:51:46no, that's not the way this works.
00:51:48This is not a person who's fit for ministry.
00:51:50Yeah, all of those situations,
00:51:52it's not that they just sexually abused one day.
00:51:54It's been big conversations
00:51:56because we're recording this
00:51:58on September 18th,
00:52:00is what today is,
00:52:02and last week it was announced
00:52:04that they were doing an investigation
00:52:06into IHOP now.
00:52:08And some of the pain points for us
00:52:10is that they've specifically focused
00:52:12on sexual abuse,
00:52:14which gives a great outlet
00:52:16for those who have been sexually abused
00:52:18to be able to tell their stories
00:52:20and tell what happened to them
00:52:22and to have it recorded and documented
00:52:24and then a published report happens
00:52:26that exposes what these leaders did,
00:52:28what these leaders covered up.
00:52:30But sexual abuse
00:52:32is what happens down the line.
00:52:35Almost all of it, it seems,
00:52:37starts with spiritual abuse.
00:52:39Even in the situation
00:52:41that you're referencing
00:52:43with the texts that were published.
00:52:46You see, it starts out with a prophetic word
00:52:48of, I felt like the Lord was saying
00:52:50this about you.
00:52:52And I think that, you know,
00:52:54we need to be very
00:52:56weary of
00:52:58the power that we
00:53:00allow people to have in our lives.
00:53:02And I think that's one of the big,
00:53:04you know, post-cult conversations.
00:53:06And one of our tendencies,
00:53:08like even, I'm speaking for myself,
00:53:11after I left IHOP,
00:53:13is to find another figurehead to latch to.
00:53:15I need somebody else to tell me what to do.
00:53:17I need somebody else to tell me
00:53:19how to live my life.
00:53:21What's my purpose now?
00:53:23I need somebody to tell me these things.
00:53:24And then you have somebody
00:53:26like Bob in his situation
00:53:29from what's been told to me
00:53:31and the abuse of the mom and the daughter.
00:53:34It was a situation where he was
00:53:36prophesying over them.
00:53:38It wasn't like they got a hotel room
00:53:40to shack up with two women or anything.
00:53:42It was not that at all.
00:53:44He brings these vulnerable women into a room,
00:53:46prophesies over them,
00:53:48and sexually abuses them
00:53:50and does it under the mystique of ministry.
00:53:53Like, that's appalling.
00:53:55And those are the things
00:53:57that I think need more clarity
00:53:59and more articulation
00:54:02in the public square
00:54:05is around these things of spiritual abuse.
00:54:08And it's so hard
00:54:10because spiritual abuse isn't a crime.
00:54:13It's not something you can be convicted of.
00:54:16It's not even,
00:54:18I'd say probably hard to have a civil suit
00:54:20of some of those abusive things.
00:54:22And so it's such a gray area,
00:54:25but we see the pattern happen time and time again.
00:54:28You hear the language of grooming,
00:54:30and that's how it starts.
00:54:32It starts with that spiritual abuse.
00:54:34And it can either be a thing of power over someone,
00:54:36and it also happens to where
00:54:38they tear people down over time.
00:54:40And that opens them up
00:54:42to being abused.
00:54:45And it's all sickening.
00:54:48And I think so many times
00:54:50it feels dystopian that we're even
00:54:52allowed to have these conversations,
00:54:54you know, you would think.
00:54:56Darrell Bock About a Christian religion, man.
00:54:58What world is this the subject matter
00:55:00for a Christian religion?
00:55:02For me,
00:55:04it's deeper than that.
00:55:06One of the problems is
00:55:08because what happened at IHOP
00:55:10was so bad,
00:55:13and I'm not railing on the guy
00:55:15with the text messages.
00:55:17It happens to be that that's the best example.
00:55:19So here's this example
00:55:20that seems trivial
00:55:22because it wasn't this explosive,
00:55:24horrendous event, right?
00:55:27But the similarities between the two
00:55:29is that it is abuse of power.
00:55:32And if people could realize
00:55:34that it doesn't,
00:55:36although it's bad,
00:55:38it doesn't matter if it's a sexual issue
00:55:40or if it's spiritual abuse
00:55:42or emotional abuse,
00:55:44that kind of thing.
00:55:46If you understand that the framework
00:55:48that enables that
00:55:50enabling people to have abuse of power,
00:55:53if you can understand that
00:55:55that framework exists
00:55:57and they're feeding on it
00:55:59and they're abusing that power,
00:56:01it doesn't matter if it's, you know,
00:56:03somebody could just go have
00:56:05a casual conversation
00:56:07and it didn't go anywhere.
00:56:09But if they're abusing their power
00:56:11when they do it,
00:56:13that's not a person who should be in leadership.
00:56:15Darrell Bock And that's a lot of what I hear
00:56:17from my friends who have been
00:56:18with Wimber
00:56:20is that Wimber was very mindful.
00:56:23And I think why you have a lot of people
00:56:25who have a lot of affection for Wimber
00:56:27is that Wimber was very mindful
00:56:29of those impacts on people.
00:56:31Whenever they would train people,
00:56:33regardless of how you feel about prophecy and such,
00:56:35but whenever he would train people
00:56:37to do ministry times and prophecy,
00:56:39a big part of that process
00:56:41was consent before it happened.
00:56:44And so he would get them to ask them,
00:56:46is it okay that I pray for you?
00:56:48Is it okay that I prophesy over you?
00:56:50And they trained people
00:56:52that they could say no
00:56:54if they didn't want to be.
00:56:56And that does, you know,
00:56:58that levels that playing field.
00:57:00And, you know,
00:57:02depending on where you followed opinion on that,
00:57:04that might be trying to fix
00:57:06a broken thing to begin with.
00:57:08But I appreciate Wimber's care
00:57:10for that kind of stuff.
00:57:12And I'm sure those corrections
00:57:14and things happen from him seeing
00:57:16what these hoodlums were doing.
00:57:18And all these guys.
00:57:20And, you know,
00:57:22I hope that he didn't know about Mike.
00:57:25And I hope that he didn't know
00:57:27about some of these things.
00:57:29But after a while, man,
00:57:31it's just,
00:57:33you see so many cover for others.
00:57:35And it makes you lose hope
00:57:39is what it makes you do.
00:57:41And it makes it hard to hope again,
00:57:43hard to have faith in leaders.
00:57:45But we're all on the journey.
00:57:48You know, all on the journey,
00:57:50all detangling, trying to figure it out.
00:57:52And just got to be kind to ourselves.
00:57:55Yeah.
00:57:57And it is a mess to detangle.
00:57:59You know, it's that's why I say,
00:58:01you know, I've got nothing against
00:58:03Wimber or, you know, pro or con.
00:58:05In fact, there's a lot of people
00:58:07on my website who did some very,
00:58:09very bad things that
00:58:11the things that they did were bad.
00:58:13But the human I separate the human
00:58:15from the thing.
00:58:16It's not it's a human problem.
00:58:18And, you know, there are people
00:58:20who could find things about me
00:58:22that they don't like.
00:58:24And if you talk through them,
00:58:26you know, if you have a difference of opinion,
00:58:28you talk through it a lot of times,
00:58:30you can come to an understanding.
00:58:32And I think that's the of all
00:58:34of the things that I've gotten right.
00:58:36And I've got a lot of things wrong.
00:58:38One of the things I've gotten right
00:58:40is I enjoy bringing people
00:58:42on with differences of opinion
00:58:44because you can learn from everyone.
00:58:46And if you come in with an insulting tone
00:58:48and try to scorn them
00:58:50because their opinion is different from yours.
00:58:52Well, then both people can learn something
00:58:54and everybody can grow
00:58:56and become better.
00:58:58So hopefully that's what this show
00:59:00is doing for other people.
00:59:02And I'm trying to get there.
00:59:04Hopefully you feel the same.
00:59:06Yeah, I mean, we're all in process
00:59:08and we all, you know,
00:59:10it doesn't happen overnight.
00:59:12It doesn't happen overnight to where
00:59:14you can have conversations
00:59:16but it's worth doing.
00:59:18Like that's been,
00:59:20that's been one of the most helpful things
00:59:22in my journey is talking to people
00:59:24who don't think like me,
00:59:26who don't believe like me,
00:59:28who don't look like me.
00:59:30I think it helps us become better people.
00:59:32Absolutely.
00:59:34Well, if you've enjoyed our show
00:59:36and you want more information,
00:59:38you can check us out on the web.
00:59:40You can find us at
00:59:42william-branham.org.
00:59:44For more about the dark side
00:59:46available on Amazon,
00:59:48Kindle and soon Audible.
01:00:46you