This is the latest shift from the IHOPPERS. To try and now downplay the movement as being ordinary, so as to keep it afloat. They spent the last 25 years swearing how one of a kind it was and how awesome Mike Bickle was for listening to God and starting it. Now it is commonplace? Right. We see now the true aim of this article was to put forth the notion that the 24-7 prayer thing was entirely of God when it was not. Again, what Brown keeps doing is conflating prayer, which is a very good thing and the 24-7 prayer movement, which was not. It is not that God is less worthy, it's that He did not birth IHOP or grow it. That was entirely Mike Bickle, with the help of two other sexual predators/false prophets. Prayer does not need sparks or to be set on fire. Stop with the hyperbolic Charismatic mysticism! Take close notice of what sleight of hand Brown is using here. He is selling that if we stop the 24-7 movement, that we are allowing Mike Bickle to get in the way of praise and worshipping God! What utter garbage! No one who is rightly calling for the demise of IHOPKC is suggesting people should not pray and worship God, just the opposite! It is even more mindful of God to stand back and watch Him destroy IHOP. It is more worshipful to say that we will not partake in the evil that crushed so many lives and faiths. So please, keep praying but not in prayer rooms set up by a serial sexual abuser. Not within that model. Do not force kids to participate to earn school credits. It just never occurs to Brown that maybe God did not birth and sustain a movement founded by Mike Bickle, while he was actively abusing women.
Let me make an obvious contrast. Mormonism was founded by a 19th century pedophile, bigamist, and insurrectionist, who claimed an angel showed him golden tablets in the woods behind his upstate New York home that written upon them was a new gospel. The key verses today seemed to be written by God specifically about this! Even if an angel should give you a gospel contrary to ours, let them be accursed! Yet despite this, Mormonism grew to the point today that there are 16 million Mormons. Joseph Smith added two books to the canon of scripture, rewrote the bible, and taught that Jesus and Satan were brothers from another planet yet there are now 16 million Mormons today. According to the same logic Brown uses, God must have birthed and grown this right? Of course not. Human success, measured by carnal metrics does not always mean God is somehow to blame. By the way, these 16 million people all pray as well. They all worship as well. They just pray and worship to a false God, much like IHOP did for decades. Both IHOP and Mormonism were birthed by sinful men claiming to have heard from God when they had not. Yes, Mormonism is a cult but what did you think IHOP was? Talk to the victims who escaped and they all tell the same stories of a cult. God has had enough and is destroying it. Dr. Brown is just getting in the way.
"The fact is that God not only calls us to prayer and commands us to pray, but He actually appoints us to pray. He is the one who commissions us! To quote the Lord's words directly, "I have posted watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth" (Isa. 62:6-7). No person appointed you to pray. No church posted you as a watchman on the wall. No organization called you to worship. It is God Himself, the Creator of the universe, who gave you this sacred assignment, and it is to Him that your prayers and worship ascend. The book of Hebrews exhorts us, "Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. 'Make level paths for your feet,' so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed'" (Heb. 12:12-13). Your faithful intercession in prayer is needed more than ever! By God's grace, raise your voices once again." - Dr. Michael Brown
Let's be clear. God does call us all to pray. He does not call us all to pray in a 24-7 live streamed prayer room in Kansas City Missouri. The comparison Brown is making is absurd. What he is trying to do is pull on your heartstrings of bad Bickle theology. Isaiah 62 is not specifically written to you beloved. You may fancy yourself a watchman on the wall and indeed may serve as such through intercession but that intercession does not need to occur in IHOP's prayer room! Stop the insanity! I used to tell my pastor to make the flaggers do their flagging in the rooms behind the sanctuary and you see if you have any left. It is not about God. If it were, it shouldn't matter where you flag, pray or worship. So be a watchman in your bedroom. Or at a church that actually preaches the real gospel of Jesus Christ. Do not let Brown or anyone manipulate you spiritually, which by the way is exactly what Bickle specialized in. You are not as special as you have been led to believe. Nor am I. Only God is and praying to Him or worshipping Him, is actually far more important than your location when doing so.
"I know you are hurting. I know your world has been turned upside down. But there is only one way forward: on our faces and knees before Him, pouring out our hearts, sharing our disorientation and pain, and leaning on Him alone. He will get us through! Let the prayer of Jeremiah, who knew his share of spiritual agony, be yours today: "Heal me, Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I praise" (Jer. 17:14). He remains worthy still." - Dr. Michael Brown
To this point, me and Dr. Brown finally agree. Look, I understand that he is trying to be an encourager but he is doing so in the wrong way. Encouraging people to get in the way of what God is doing in KC is not a good idea. There remains only one proper course right now. IHOP leadership, including General Fuller need to step down. They need to bring in GRACE or another independent investigatory organization to not only examine the victims claims about Bickle but IHOPKC as a whole. The report needs to come out unredacted and the victims need to be helped in whatever ways they need. Then IHOPKC needs to be shuttered, for good. A blight on the history of the church to be maligned in perpetuity. It should serve as a clarion call for discernment in the body of Christ. Those that were caught up in the false teaching of the former cult that was IHOP need godly counsel to hear the gospel for possibly the first time. They need help finding true bible-based churches. They should be encouraged to continue their prayer and worship life with the new understanding that it was never about 24-7, prayer rooms, prayer closets, or the institutions of man. It is ok to take a nap. God understands. I just wish Dr. Brown did. Pray? Yes. Prayer room? No. Worship? Yes again. Live stream it and give kids school credit for it? No. Save our devotion to both? Absolutely. Save IHOP? Absolutely not.
Reverend Anthony Wade - February 18, 2024
