Tag: Bob Jones

The Carolina Panthers Will Win The Super Bowl Before Revival Starts Prophecy by Bob Jones

Posted on by Prophecy Reviews

In February 2016, Rick Joyner spoke from Heritage International Headquarters in Fort Mill, South Carolina, on his TV show, “Prophetic Perspectives on Current Events with Rick Joyner.”

Joyner said Bob Jones was “a prophetic friend of ours who lived here for over 20 years.” Jones had already passed away, so he shared his prophecy as best he remembered it:

When our Carolina Panthers win the Super Bowl . . . this is a time when . . . major revival awakening moves of God are going to break out in America.

“When they went to the Super Bowl once over ten years ago,” said Joyner, “we thought: This is it where . . . revival is [going to] break out in America.”

“Well, they didn’t win.”

On February 1, 2004, the Carolina Panthers, despite a great regular season, and scoring 19 points in the 4th quarter in the 38th Super Bowl, lost to the New England Patriots, 32–29.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX6vioW7SZc

“Listen,” said Joyner, “I’m doing this program before the [50th] Super Bowl. They haven’t won it yet, but if they do, to me it is a very definite marker of something remarkable breaking out.

“Now Bob saw it breaking out in Charlotte,” he explained, “but it’s about to happen here. . . we said, ‘Okay, now, if the Panthers win this year, we know it’s all hands on deck, and we are going to see the outbreak of, I believe, the third Great Awakening in America.’

“I think we’re going to see not just one but many revivals. . . . I think you’re going to see something major breaking out in Kansas City and there’s also a major outbreak on the west coast that is coming . . . .

“I mean all these supporting tents are lining up and I think something spectacular is going to happen there. You’re going to see an outbreak in Charlotte. You’re going to see an outbreak in Kansas City and I believe [in] many other places if the Panthers win the Superbowl. . . . Start getting prepared for revival.”1

Five days later, on February 7, 2016, at Super Bowl 50, the Denver Broncos defeated the Carolina Panthers, 24–10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR0qOk_pcyg

Joyner was heavily criticized on YouTube. Viewers believed he had prophesied the Panthers were going to win and they saw it as an epic fail. They missed the little two-letter word “if,” but it is still unclear why Joyner didn’t wait until after the game to see if the Panthers won.

End notes
  1. “Rick Joyner on Revival and Panthers’ Super Bowl Win,” MorningStar Ministries, YouTube, Feb. 2, 2016.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx8hhaQ3ZzM [Apr. 29, 2020].

The Billion-Soul Harvest Prophecy by Bob Jones

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Prophecy: A billion people will become Christians

Prophet: Bob Jones

Status: Unfulfilled

This prophecy was made by a person who had a long history of making the most fantastic and oversized prophecies you could imagine (and he could imagine). It is inline with or an extension of his megalomaniac eschatology of Christian superheroes who will take control of the world with their super powers. It is “comic book Christianity” that started either when Bob Jones started reading comics or when he heard about and fell in love with Latter Rain (LR) theories.

It is part of a raft of LR ideas and really the easily predicted end result. The basic dream is that Christians of the future will have special spiritual powers and be able to perform special miracles. With all this extra power they will be able to get all these extra people persuaded to become believers in Jesus Christ. Because their power will be so great, a billion conversions is within the realm of possibility. It is logical but only if the underlying assumption is correct.

Presupposition

The base assumption is an unorthodox and controversial interpretation of Scripture by a boy who worked in a mail room during a revival in Canada and felt he was anointed. He wrote a book. The rest is history (or in this case the future). It is even crazier in some ways than the Mormon history of an adult who claimed he angelic experience. It is so cringe-worthy when you deep dive into its history.

So, anyway, of course people wanted to believe they would become extremely powerful, so they took the idea and ran with it. But when they never got the power they dreamed, the movement lost its appeal; it pretty much died down and everybody went home. It stayed in the background until enough people who were good at hype revived it. Bob Jones was one of the Latter Rain hype revivalists who revived it in the 1980s.

In his eschatology or imagination — it is usually impossible to tell which it is — future Christians will become perfect (sinless) and virtually as powerful as Jesus. This came from the guy who was caught in sin and banned from ministry.

New breed

The superhero element of Jones’ view of the future was encapsulated in his associated New Breed prophecy. The new superheroes he called the “New Breed.” He said Todd Bentley was the first of a new breed. He said this publicly in Lakeland, Florida in 2008 just before Bentley’s ministry collapsed in spectacular fashion. If the billion souls are supposed to get saved by the New Breed, don’t hold your breath.

Percentage

The whole idea that a billion people (out of world population of over 7.5 billion) will become Christians is a total pipe dream!

“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matt. 7:13-14).

Value

This word has value for cheerleaders. It is good for rallying the troops. What could be more positive and exciting for those who want to see souls saved than to hear a billion will? But it is hype.

Endorsements

Various leaders including Che Ahn use it to get people excited. It has also been repeated on the Charisma website in 2016 (Che Ahn), 2019 (Patricia Bootsma) and 2020 (Holly Watson) with no critical consideration on whether it was invalidated.

Blind eye

You have to be more than your average eternal optimist to believe this prophecy. You also have to deliberately ignore every false prophecy Bob Jones ever made.

Conditions

There is no wisdom with the word to say how anybody could get more power to become more effective at evangelism. This makes it very weak if not powerless.

The Bottom line

Extremely unlikely to happen.

When a prophecy sounds too good to be true it probably is.

The Pat Bickle Healing Precedes Kansas City Revival Prophecy by Augustine Alcala

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Andrew Strom, author of a few books and webmaster of RevivalSchool.com, used to live in Kansas City, a hub of a “prophetic movement.” He wrote the following after Pat Bickle passed away:

On a similarly tragic note [as the passing of Jill Austin], for those familiar with the “Kansas City prophets” movement, there is an important aspect of it that came to a similar sad ending not long ago.

Mike Bickle – who heads up that movement (and also IHOP) – had a paralyzed brother named Pat Bickle – and one of the major prophecies over the entire movement was that he would one day be dramatically healed, and this would spark off the big revival that everyone has been waiting for. This prophecy was at the very center of the whole Kansas City movement.

But tragically, in May 2007, Pat Bickle passed away – after years of battling his disability. It really is a tragedy, because I understand that Pat was a strong advocate of real Revival and “clean heart” holiness preaching. (He had distanced himself from the movement over the lack of this).

Again, it is distasteful and awful to have to speak of such things, but don’t these tragedies ever make Mike Bickle stop and wonder whether his entire movement is off on the wrong track and mired in deception? Doesn’t it ever give him pause?[1]

The claim that this prophecy is fake, made up and posted online only to discredit the Kansas City Prophets and the IHOP movement would be false. It was actually recorded by a reliable source in a book:

In August 1984 Bob Jones came up to Mike [Bickle].

‘Oh, by the way, I have a prediction for you. A young man is going to have a vision very soon. It will lift you high off the ground. You will hold on to him and not let go!’

What young man could be going to have a vision that could cause Mike to leap up like that, he wondered. He went home rejoicing.

Once in the house the phone rang. It was Agustine [Acala].

‘Mike, God is going to visit your brother Pat [Bickle] tonight! He will show him that he will heal him!’

The Lord did indeed visit Pat during the night. It was at 4.03 a.m. on the Friday. Pat was wide awake when in what seemed like a trance (cf. Acts 10: 10) the Lord appeared and he was terrified.

‘I have come. For eleven years I have not dealt with you,’ said the Lord.

It seemed slightly enigmatic. Pat came out of his trance and lay on his bed still in great fear. He had clearly not been healed.

That morning he called Mike and asked him what it meant. Whilst Pat was still on the line, Agustine (who only knew directly from the Lord what had happened to Pat that morning) called Mike on another line…

Unable to reach him, Agustine left a message: ‘Regarding Pat’s visitation last night, look at Acts 3 where you will see that the key miracle that opened up the city of Jerusalem was the healing of a cripple, and then at Acts 14 where another cripple was healed and this second miracle opened the door for the gospel to enter at Lystra.

‘The Lord has called Pat and told him that he is going to heal him and this will be the key for the gospel to the whole of Kansas City.’

Mike was thinking fast. God had made Pat to be a sign to this city. Most people would have forgotten the story of his accident and subsequent testimony by then, but it seemed they would soon have cause to remember it.[2]

The account is uncontested. David Pytches personally visited Kansas City and wrote a sympathetic book — so sympathetic it could be considered promotional material. Much of what he wrote shows he did not question the stories he was told and actually believed Pat Bickle would get healed.

Note the involvement of Bob Jones which helped set up or prime Mike Bickle for deception from Agustine Acala. Also note the fact Bickle had zero spiritual discernment that Jones was setting him up and Acala was giving him a false prophecy.

One of the most interesting aspects of the story is it looks as if three demons conspired to affect three people at around the same time (or one demon may have targeted all three): Jones, Bickle and Acala. It also appears as if both Jones and Acala were operating by a divination spirit (knowledge provided by demons). God would not have given Jones knowledge that would be used to deceive Bickle the way it was used. It is extremely difficult to believe Jones got the knowledge from his own imagination. The only other rational explanation is the knowledge came from an evil spirit.

Significance

The fact the prophecy failed raises questions about whether there will ever be a revival in Kansas City, or if it will ever come through IHOP, or anything associated with Bickle. None of their best leaders and prophets from Paul Cain to Bob Jones to Agustine Acala to Mike Bickle himself, despite many years of trying — teaching, preaching, fasting, praying, etc. — produced a revival. They are not spiritual enough. They are not powerful enough. Anyone connected to them because they are expecting revival because they prophesied revival needs to get their prophecy examined.

There is another account of the Pat Bickle story posted online from a person who claims she knew him. It is very similar to what Pytches and Strom wrote. It includes the comment that IHOP scrubbed the story from their prophetic history. Acala and Jones both passed away before being asked to justify or apologize for their false prophecies.

Pat Bickle

To be clear, Pat Bickle never prophesied his healing would be a sign of revival to follow. He never said or did anything deceptive or misleading. He was a victim of the deceiving or deceived people around him. By all accounts Pat was a godly man who believed until the day he died he would be healed and a revival would follow.

Augustine Alcala

Mike Bickle made a funny comment about his trusted prophet:

In October 1982, while I was pastoring in St. Louis, Augustine Alcala, a man with a proven prophetic ministry, gave me four words related to starting a new young adult church in Kansas City.[3]

What exactly was “proven” about Alcala before 1982? What did Bickle know about proving prophecy before 1982?

End Notes
  1. Andrew Strom, “Jill Austin Dies — and Also Pat Bickle,” www.prayway.com/prayer/topic/48615-jill-austin-dies-and-also-pat-bickle-by-andrew-strom/ (reposted) [Apr. 28, 2020].
  2. David Pytches, Some Said It Thundered: A Personal Encounter with The Kansas City Prophets, 1990, pp. 102-103.
  3. Mike Bickle, “Key Events in 1983 and 1999.” www.ihopkc.org.edgesuite.net/platform/IHOP/1020/202/PH01-IHOPKC_Key_Events_in_1983_and_1999.kd.pdf [May 1, 2020].