Tag: healing

The Full Stadiums Revival Prophecy by Paul Cain

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Prophecy: Stadiums full of people in a revival

Prophet: Paul Cain

The attribution for who made this prophecy is undisputed as is its basic idea. Paul Cain said he had recurring visions of the stadiums. One rumor is he saw the vision “over one hundred times.” This number may have been estimated or inflated. His own website summarized the visions as “ongoing, recurring.”

Cain’s own detailed account was:

 

In February 1989, at the Anaheim Vineyard during a conference, I prophesied a time when athletic stadiums and arenas would be filled with God’s people preaching the gospel and healing the sick in extraordinary fashion.

In my vision I saw ambulances bringing in the worst medical cases, the local hospitals being emptied to deliver their patients to these events, and the dead (dead people!) being raised by an army of nameless and faceless Christians releasing a wave of miraculous healings and conversions.

GodTV, in its eulogy after he passed away in 2019, said: “Paul lived to see the start of the mass stadium revivals he prophesied.” This is a very liberal interpretation of history. They said it happened at Azusa Now when 60,000 people gathered on April 9, 2016 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. But these were Christians. How many were healed? Who was raised from the dead? Were there ambulances?

It is a very optimistic prophecy. It is basically a best-case scenario prophecy. This type is always suspect. Cain made his already-fantastic prophecy even more fantastic:

This vision encompassed multiple venues over an extended period and spoke of God’s glory being released in an unprecedented manner and on a scale that had not been witnessed before….

In my vision, the international media were reporting the amazing events as they took place. This was the news of the day: every channel, every station, and every nation.

This was not an isolated Christian event, the kind that is well known and publicized in the Christian community, yet even the immediate neighbors of the event have no clue what is happening inside; rather, this was a series of events that would affect the world and the communities around the stadiums and arenas.

A History of Revival Prophecies

It must be noted that Paul Cain gave another revival prophecy around the same time he made the 1989 stadiums prophecy. In either 1989 and/or 1990 he prophesied revival was about to start in England. It never happened, much to John Wimber’s regret.

About thirty years later it still had not happened. Not too long before he died, Cain returned to the UK, and people thought it might happen then, including Cain. It did not.

Was the stadiums revival word true while the UK revival one was false? Or were they both false?

A closer look at Cain’s revival prophecy record shows he also prophesied a healing revival for 1996. It also never happened.

Believers

It seems like a lot of people believe the Cain stadiums prophecy because they want to believe it. It would be a dream come true. There is a bias to trust it by those who want to see it happen. Peter Vandever, the blogger at Azusa Report who is steeped in Kansas City dreams, confidently declares Stadium Christianity is my Eschatology.

Recurring

The disclaimer here as always is we don’t know if Cain had the vision as he claimed and/or if he had it several times. He has been accused of lying by leaders so it’s possible. Assuming for the sake of discussion his claimed spiritual experiences did happen, the essential component of the prophecy in terms of credibility is they happened more than once.

To some people seeing a vision once is enough to believe it. To others it needs to be more than once to be credible. But the idea that it happened many times or even 100 times should push it past the realm of any doubt whatsoever.

The problem with this belief is that re-occurrence of any spiritual experience, whether it is a vision or anything else, in and of itself is not infallible proof something is from God according to the Bible.

One person could have one vision once and it be from God. Another person could have one vision 1,000 times and it not be from God. Frequency is just not the standard. You could fairly argue that having the same vision more than once makes it more likely it is from God than having it only once, but it’s not foolproof.

Significance

The stadiums prophecy is fairly innocuous. It makes little difference to most people whether they believe it or not. It is unlikely to affect any decision-making. It is mostly a cheer-leading prophecy to wind up a crowd and get people excited.

Conditions

It is a very strong word in some ways because it forecasts extreme power, but at the same time it is also very weak, because it says nothing about personal cost or special method. It is not clear if it is just going to happen as a sovereign move of God, or God’s people actually need to do something special to get something special. If Cain really believed it was from God why didn’t he find out and tell us?

 

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].

 

The Healing Revival Prophecy by Paul Cain

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In 1996, about 50 years after the healing revival that started in the 1940s began, Paul Cain prophesied another one. The record of his word was made by a colleague, Rick Joyner, and published on his website:

PROPHECY FROM PAUL CAIN: A healing revival will begin this year.

INTERPRETATION: This is a word that we have heard from a number of different prophetic ministries. Revival implies bringing something back to life. The last true healing revival began in 1948 and had a sweeping world wide impact. Even though the Lord seldom moves in exactly the same way twice, we can expect healing to become a much greater emphasis in the times ahead.[1]

The “interpretation” was by Joyner. It is included because he claimed it was corroborated. The prophecy was a complete failure. There was no healing revival in 1996 and there has been no healing revival since then. No record was found of Paul Cain apologizing or explaining why he failed, nor Joyner doing so on Cain’s behalf.

The prophecy had more weight than many prophecies because it came from Cain, supposedly a prophet, who was called “a high-level prophet” (prophesying with a high degree of accuracy), and because he had himself previously been part of a healing revival.

This wasn’t Cain’s first revival prophecy or first false revival prophecy. It is not as well known as his UK revival prophecy around 1990. That also failed to happen the year he prophesied it would and hasn’t happened since, either.

Paul Cain’s history is not fully discussed often and to this day in some circles he is still widely considered to have been infallible. He has another outstanding revival prophecy which had no date on it that people still believe is going to be fulfilled.

It becomes obvious after studying Cain’s life that he was burdened to see revival. This in part undoubtedly was because he had experienced it at the beginning of his life as a minister, but then had nothing for decades. He had probably been not only hoping for revival but also praying for it for decades. Burdens can lead to prophesying from natural frustration or human hope instead of divine inspiration. This could explain Cain giving multiple revival prophecies which failed and lower the probability that any that are left over which lacked specific timing definition were actually inspired.

Cain’s famous unfulfilled stadium revival prophecy would be more credible if he hadn’t already made false revival prophecies for the England Revival of 1990 that never happened and the Healing Revival of 1996 that failed to materialize.

End notes
  1. Rick Joyner, “MorningStar Prophetic Bulletin #17 ,” 1996.  https://old.morningstarministries.org/resources/prophetic-bulletins/1996/strategic-dreams-visions [Apr. 26, 2020].