Tag: Kansas City Prophets

The Single Presbytery Church Government Prophecy by Rick Joyner

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In the 1980s and/or 1990s Rick Joyner was associated with a controversial Kansas City church movement tied to Mike Bickle, Bob Jones and Paul Cain. He and others were making all kinds of prophecies some of which were related to their new eschatology and false teachings on church government. His prophecy collapsed after the church collapsed.

The Kansas City Metro Vineyard published a newsletter in the early 90s which promoted their church as a model of the newly emerging church. This church had been closely associated with the signs and wonders movement of John Wimber and officially was absorbed into the Vineyard until Wimber discovered how crooked it was. KC “Prophet” Rick Joyner prophesied:

Single presbyteries will form over cities and localities. These will be made up of pastors and leaders from all backgrounds. Their unity and harmony in purpose, as well as that of the various congregations, will become a marvel to the world. . . .

Some leaders will actually disband their organizations as they realize they are no longer relevant to what God is doing. Others will leave them behind to disband by themselves. Ultimately, all circles of ministry or influence with individual identities will dissolve into a single identity of simply being Christian for all who become part of this harvest.[1]

Update: original source

Single presbytery claim source

This was a ridiculous prophecy and unsurprisingly it failed. The disturbing thing, however, is it was believed by the Kansas City Prophets and the people who followed them. They actually tried to shut down churches in Kansas City and some closed. They would prophesy that God was telling pastors to close their churches and join their church.

One pastor, Ernie Gruen, was so outraged he took a public stand against them, preaching against their corruption. His activism led to the KCP church getting shut down.

The presbytery prophecy failed for the model church in their ‘model city,’ and it has never been accepted as sound doctrine, either. Until it gains credibility (don’t hold your breath), it is unlikely this prophecy will ever be fulfilled. It is a very tough sell. Joyner himself doesn’t spend a lot of time promoting it, so the conclusion is he now agrees he made a false prophecy.

[1] KC newsletter, p. 3, cited by Sarah Leslie, “Research Notes: Analyzing The ‘Cell Church’ Model,” Christian Conscience, 1999. http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/cellcurch.html [Apr. 26, 2020].

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

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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 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 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].

 

The Spiritually Powerful Men Prophecy by Bob Jones

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The heavens now are declaring His timing… He’s beginning to raise up the eternal church, built on the foundation government, and He’s beginning to mature that.

And within another 4-5½ years, somewhere in there… You’re going to begin to see anointed men of God begin to move with the Holy Spirit in power… You will see the glorious church begin to come in and you will begin to birth it. It will take probably another 15 to 20 years to get some of you into some level of maturity…

First, He will bring the five… there is a ministry after the fivefold, called the ministry of perfection: the Melchizedek priesthood. You that are children will be moving into the ministries of perfection… coming into that divine nature of Jesus Christ—not having to come out of the wilderness, but being birthed natural into the Spirit.

All their days movin’ with the Spirit… You’re in the warfare. Start to take the promised land. And then you raise up the generation to possess it. Well, the children that are coming forth are to possess the promises of God. It is the last-day generation.”

—Bob Jones, 1988

“Visions & Revelations,” Mike Bickle with Bob Jones, Fall 1988, KCMO, pp. 49-50.

Quoted by Ernie Gruen, Documentation of the Aberrant Practices and Teachings of Kansas City Fellowship, 1990.

www.banner.org.uk/kcp/Abberent%20Practises.pdf

Authenticity

The prophecy’s authenticity as far as whether Bob Jones actually said it is uncontested. It may have been prophesied at Mike Bickle’s church in Kansas City. Jones was known as one of the Kansas City Prophets and was often interviewed by Bickle.

The transcription was published by Ernie Gruen, senior pastor of a church near Kansas City, in his Aberration report which was distributed across America in early 1990. His source was a cassette recording; this was the standard for teaching distribution at the time; tapes were offered for sale to the public through a tape catalog.

Timing

Jones’ prophecy has time parameters. It was dated 1988 (Gruen’s report used the F88 tag). It may have been recorded earlier than 1988 but first distributed in 1988. But it seems fair to say it was recorded no later than 1988. When you add the 4 to 5.5 years to 1988, it’s 1992 to mid-1993.

Review

There was nothing special or significant that happened between 1988 and 1993 which could indicate let alone prove the fulfillment of “You’re going to begin to see anointed men of God begin to move with the Holy Spirit in power” either in terms of existing ministries suddenly demonstrating the power of the Holy Spirit — or new ministries starting to show it — and certainly not by Jones.

Jones said: “It will take probably another 15 to 20 years to get some of you into some level of maturity.” This was not a prophecy; it was an opinion. The word “probably” obviously is opinion. Any “prophecy” with the word “probably” is immediately suspect; it undermines the entire prophecy. It makes the audience wonder if not just the sentence with “probably” but the entire prophecy is speculation.

Even if you discount the word “probably” as an inadvertent mistake, a slip of the tongue, and then add 15 to 20 years from 1988, you get a prophecy saying powerful men will be demonstrating the Holy Spirit by 2003 to 2008. But, again, there was nothing significant during this time frame, either, to prove or validate the prophecy — including by Jones himself.

The most significant part of the prophecy is the final sentence: “It is the last-day generation.”  This shows Bob Jones believed the generation that would be demonstrating God’s power starting between 2003 and 2008 (or between 1992 and 1993) would be the last generation. We have been in the “last days” since the Day of Pentecost because the Joel 2 last days prophecy was fulfilled on that day according to Peter’s sermon. Jones must have been talking about literally the last generation.

That is a really hard sell! What respected Christian leaders if any today believe the end is near?!

The Church as a whole, and with very few exceptions, operates at very low levels of spiritual power. This is true of any kind of spiritual power you can imagine from prophecy to miracles, signs, wonders, or any gifts of the Holy Spirit. There is really no evidence of a rising tide of spiritual power as if an entire generation is more mature or more spiritual than any previous generation.

Besides lack of accuracy, lack of power is another reason why Bob Jones prophecies have been so difficult to believe. He did not have a healing ministry. He did not demonstrate what he prophesied. “If we are supposed to grow in power,” somebody should have asked him, “why aren’t you!?”

Conclusion

False prophecy

Comments

The entire prophecy is not clean and clear. It seems like rambling with a few ideas cobbled together with some opinions on eschatology thrown in as if he made it up as he went along. Its value would have been considered very limited because it provided no guidance on how to get the power it promised. It completely lacked wisdom and responsibility. It had no associated miracles or signs for confirmation.