Like some of you, I’ve been following the painfully unfolding Mike Bickle story and the recent IHOPKC events. It’s really heartbreaking and grievous to watch a man’s entire life and ministry unravel due to moral failures. Although there is still hope that his personal life can be restored through genuine repentance, it is becoming increasingly doubtful if his ministry can ever be.
I don’t know Mike personally, and I’ve never really been led to follow the KC prophets such as Bob Jones, and Paul Cain or even Lou Engle, and such names that have been associated in any way with Mike or his ministry. I’ve always been a foundational guy. I inspect how foundations are laid because we all know if the foundation of any work or ministry is not strong it will inevitably crumble and eventually fall. It should cause some discomfort to any mature believer’s spirit when an inordinate measure of adulation and exaltation is given to any leader.
THE BROWNSVILLE “SPLIT”
Concerning foundations, for example, before the infamous “split” happened in the Brownsville revival in Pensacola where we spent 5 years laboring together with other leaders, my wife had a dream of me swimming in a large body of water around concrete slabs just inspecting the entire foundation. She had a few other dreams before we even moved down there. Most of the dreams were revelatory in nature and a warning of what was to come. We knew in five years something would dramatically change in the revival.
This was all before the “ split” even happened (if you’re interested in reading the details of it you can refer to a book I wrote recently, THE COMING RESTORATION). Faulty foundations usually occur when there is no relational accountability and men’s egos are not kept in check. When there is a heavy and ungodly preeminence in one or more individuals it’s only a matter of time before there is trouble. Just read Paul’s sober warning to the elders at Ephesus (Acts 20), and you can see the beginnings of how, even with a plurality eldership rule, the institutional church and denominations were birthed. In that light, here’s a compelling quote by A.W. Tozer:
“It is time for us to seek again the leadership of the Holy Spirit. Man’s lordship has cost us too much.”
If you are also interested in foundations and how church government and leadership is to be set up, you can refer to another recent book I wrote called, DIVINE ORDER & THE GLORY OF THE LOCAL CHURCH.
Finally, here is an enlightening prophetic utterance outlining how denominations and factions in the body of Christ occur:
“As pure light enters and comes through a prism and is refracted, you will see the colors of the rainbow (interestingly, there are seven primary colors in the rainbow), so I send My Word into the earth. It comes into the earth as pure light and I refract it and distribute it to different groups and people. The problem is they build a tabernacle around their one color when My intent is that their colors would come together in unity, and they would see the fullness of that truth from many facets.”
This is how eldership is also supposed to work. A team of high-character leaders are to yield to one another’s graces and colors and revelation to form the fulness of truth instead of building one tabernacle around one man’s grace or color. This is the sad story of Brownsville and now IHOP. History is littered with such. We really need a reformation.
Mike Bickle was exalted above measure and this exposure of his double life is not a messenger of Satan sent to buffet him, but a failure in Mike to buffet his own body and measure up to the character qualifications in accountability to other leaders.
LET’S EVALUATE OUR OWN PERSONAL LIVES AND MINISTRIES IN THE LIGHT OF ETERNITY
These events have caused me to evaluate my own private life in a far deeper way because all great men have feet of clay. Neither I nor any leader wants to arrive at the back end of his life with these same dire consequences that Bickle is facing right now. I have imagined what he and his family are going through a thousand times over in my mind, and it has deepened my fear of God to please Him, especially in my private life. I am now standing and living more consciously before the judgment seat of Christ every single day.
I hope all of us will do the same.
Bert Farias’ books are forerunners to personal holiness, the move of God, and the return of the Lord. They also combat the departure from the faith and the turning away from the truth we are seeing in our day. The Real Salvation, The Real Gospel, and The Real Jesus are such books that deal with the falsehood and deception in modern Christendom today.
Comments