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Prominent GOP-Linked Evangelist: God Will Send Hunters (Like Hitler) to Pursue the Jews

COMMENT: Over the years, we’ve cov­ered the pro­found Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments at the foun­da­tion of the Repub­li­can Par­ty. This extrem­ism con­tin­ues to express itself.

Texas GOP Gov­er­nor Rick Per­ry used “The Response” prayer event to launch his pres­i­den­tial bid. That event promi­nent­ly fea­tured Mike Bick­le, head of the Inter­na­tion­al House of Prayer.

Bick­le recent­ly opined that Jews who did­n’t move to Israel and con­vert to Chris­tian­i­ty would be put in prison camps and pur­sued by hunters sent by God. Bicle cit­ed Adolf Hitler as an exam­ple of one of these God-sent hunters.

Aside from the overt Christian/Nazi nature of the com­ment, it is strik­ing to see the degree of over­lap between Chris­t­ian fas­cism and Islam­ic fas­cism.

In FTR #634, we not­ed that Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-con­nect­ed fig­ures saw Hitler as hav­ing been sent by God to pun­ish the Jews.

One of the promi­nent influ­ences on the Broth­er­hood and Al Qae­da, Sayyid Qutb was one of those.

“. . . In Qutb’s eyes, the Jews are to blame for every­thing they have suf­fered over the cen­turies, and this applies to Hitler and the Shoah too. Thus, in the mod­ern peri­od, ‘the Jews again returned to evil-doing and con­se­quently Allah . . . brought Hitler to rule over them.’ But even the ‘pun­ish­ment’ met­ed out by Hitler was not suf­fi­ciently ter­ri­ble, since ‘once again today the Jews have returned to evil-doing, in the form of ‘Israel’ . . . So let Allah bring down upon the Jew­ish peo­ple . . . the worst kind of pun­ish­ment.’ Qutb’s mes­sage is inter­nally con­sis­tent: the Jew is the source of evil in the world, the Shoah is there­fore no crime and Israel deserves to be erased from the map. . . .”
(Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11; Matthias Kuntzel; Telos Press Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2007 Telos Press Pub­lish­ing; ISBN 10: 0–914386–36–0; p. 84.)

In Cairo to Dam­as­cus, John Roy Carl­son not­ed the the sim­i­lar­i­ty in world-view and rhetoric between Chris­t­ian and Mus­lim fas­cists after inter­view­ing Has­san al-Ban­na, founder of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.

“. . . I asked his views on estab­lish­ing the Caliphate, the com­plete merg­er of Church and State—the Moslem equiv­a­lent of reli­gious total­i­tar­i­an­ism, as in Spain. ‘We want an Ara­bian Unit­ed States with a Caliphate at its head and every Arab state sub­scrib­ing whole­heart­edly to the laws of the Koran. . . . The laws of the Koran are suit­able for all men at all times to the end of the world.’ . . . I could not help mak­ing a men­tal note that the word ‘Chris­t­ian’ has been sim­i­larly used and with sim­i­lar fanati­cism among West­ern expo­nents of author­i­tar­i­an­ism. . . .”
(Cairo to Dam­as­cus, p. 92)

Now, about Bick­le’s com­ments:

“IHOP Head Mike Bick­le Pre­dicts Com­ing Prison Camps for Jews” by Bruce Wil­son; Talk to Action; 10/18/1011.

EXCERPT: Accord­ing to Kansas City-based Inter­na­tion­al House of Prayer founder and evan­ge­list Mike Bickle–who played a major role in the August 6th “The Response” prayer event that served as the de fac­to kick­off event for Rick Per­ry’s pres­i­den­tial bid–in the near future Jews who refuse to con­vert to Chris­tian­i­ty and move to Israel will be pur­sued by “hunters” sent by God and can expect to be thrown into “prison camps” and “death camps” (see embed­ded video footage, from Bick­le ser­mons)

IHOP Kansas head Bick­le says that “the most famous [heav­en-sent] hunter in recent his­to­ry is a man named Adolf Hitler”, and has claimed that Jews col­lec­tive­ly are “under the dis­ci­pline of God because of... per­ver­sion and sin.”

In Mike Bick­le’s view, a lucky one third of the world’s Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion to sur­vive the apoc­a­lyp­tic per­se­cu­tion he pre­dicts will “get rad­i­cal­ly saved and become lovesick wor­shipers of Jesus.” Bick­le has expound­ed these prophe­cies, which he claims are clear­ly described in Bib­li­cal scrip­ture, in mul­ti­ple ser­mons from 2004 through 2009.

As a new­ly released AP News sto­ry acknowl­edges, IHOP head Mike Bick­le played a sub­stan­tial role in Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial hope­ful Rick Per­ry’s August 6th, 2011 The Response Prayer event. . . .

Discussion

9 comments for “Prominent GOP-Linked Evangelist: God Will Send Hunters (Like Hitler) to Pursue the Jews”

  1. Thank you Dave for remind­ing those who tend to for­get these things too often. Being involved myself in a strug­gle against anti-semi­tism in my local area, I can say that it is not always easy to make peo­ple under­stand that it is not only use­less but most­ly stu­pid to scape­goat the Jews for the prob­lems of the world. Evil is uni­ver­sal. No race or eth­nic group or nation­al­i­ty has the copy­right or exclu­siv­i­ty on it.

    You’re right. Chris­t­ian and Mus­lim fas­cists have cer­tain­ly in com­mon their hatred of Jews. Hope­ful­ly, fun­da­men­tal­ists such as the Evan­gel­i­cals have a much more pos­i­tive view of the Jews and it tends to counter-bal­ance the oth­ers. Not enough I should say, but that’s a start.

    Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the day envi­sioned by Mike Bick­le will prob­a­bly hap­pen. In a World War III sce­nario, Fas­cists, both Chris­t­ian and Mus­lims, and prob­a­bly third-posi­tion Left­ists too, will fight against Lib­er­al Democ­rats, both Chris­t­ian and Jew, for the con­trol of the world. The fate of the Jews will depend total­ly on the abil­i­ty of the Lib­er­al Democ­rats and Israel to win the mil­i­tary and gueril­la wars against the Fas­cists and their ter­ror­ist foot­sol­diers. I just hope that we will have the courage and strength to fight to our last breath to save mankind from this ter­ri­ble beast that is com­ing upon us. It is only our resolve in the end that will make us win.

    If it can boost your spir­it, you can watch this doc­u­men­tary on the French Resis­tance (nar­rat­ed in French) on my site:

    http://lys-dor.com/2011/10/19/la-resistance-francaise-ou-comment-repousser-lenvahisseur-pour-proteger-la-civilisation/

    Have a great day.

    Posted by Claude | October 20, 2011, 10:41 pm
  2. @Claude: A lit­tle skep­ti­cal on the WWIII, tbh, giv­en how much fear­mon­ger­ing is out there, but I do believe there could be a day where fas­cists and anti-fas­cists of all stripes are indeed duk­ing it out on the streets of many of the world’s major cities.

    Posted by Steven | October 22, 2011, 1:07 pm
  3. And hope­ful­ly, we’ll have some­one like Dave to help us keep on top of things. =)

    Posted by Steven | October 23, 2011, 1:38 am
  4. Also note Bick­le’s role as a leader of the “Joel’s Army” the­o­log­i­cal move­ment. It’s root­ed in the 1940’s preach­ings of William Bran­ham and there’s no short­age of racial­ist under­tones to the the­ol­o­gy:

    http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2008/fall/arming-for-armageddon


    ...
    Bran­ham was killed in a car acci­dent in 1965, but his Man­i­fest Sons of God move­ment, the direct pre­de­ces­sor of Joel’s Army, lived on with­in a clus­ter of hyper-charis­mat­ic church­es. In the 1980s, Bran­ham’s teach­ings took on new life at the Kansas City Fel­low­ship (KCF), a group of pop­u­lar self-styled apos­tles and prophets who used the Mis­souri church as a launch­ing pad for nation­al careers pro­mot­ing out­right Joel’s Army the­ol­o­gy.

    Ernie Gru­en, a local pas­tor who ini­tial­ly pro­mot­ed and gave city­wide cred­i­bil­i­ty to KCF pas­tors in the ear­ly 1980s, cut his con­nec­tions in 1990. Con­cerned about KCF’s plans to push its teach­ings world­wide, Gru­en pub­lished a 132-page insid­er’s account, based on taped ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions and inter­views with par­ents who had enrolled their kids in KCF’s Domin­ion school.

    Accord­ing to Gru­en’s report, stu­dents at the school were taught that they were a “super-race” of the “elect­ed seed” of all the best blood­lines of all gen­er­a­tions — fore­known, pre­des­tined, and hand-select­ed from bil­lions of oth­ers to be part of the “end-time Omega gen­er­a­tion.”

    Though he’d once pro­mot­ed these doc­trines him­self, Gru­en became con­vinced that the move­ment was turn­ing into an end-times cult, marked by what he sum­ma­rized as “spir­i­tu­al threats, fears, and warn­ings of death,” “warn­ing fol­low­ers to beware of oth­er Chris­tians” and exhibit­ing “a ‘super-race’ men­tal­i­ty toward the train­ing of their chil­dren.”

    When con­tact­ed by the Intel­li­gence Report, Gru­en’s spokesman said that Gru­en stands by every­thing he pub­lished in the report but no longer grants media inter­views.

    The Kansas City Fel­low­ship remains in oper­a­tion and has served as a farm team for many of the all-stars of the Joel’s Army move­ment. Those larg­er-than-life fig­ures include John Wim­ber, the founder of a Cal­i­for­nia megachurch, The Vine­yard, who, before his death in 1997, pro­claimed that Joel’s Army would not only con­quer the earth but defeat death itself. Lou Engle found­ed The Call based on the Joel’s Army visions that KCF “prophet” Bob Jones (not to be con­fused with Bob Jones III of Bob Jones Uni­ver­si­ty) received while at KCF. Mike Bick­le, anoth­er KCF mem­ber, stayed in Kansas City to form the Inter­na­tion­al House of Prayer.
    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 24, 2011, 8:24 pm
  5. @Pterrafractyl: Kin­da scary to think about, but this infor­ma­tion looks to be quite valu­able. Thanks for putting this up. =)

    Posted by Steven L. | November 1, 2011, 10:20 am
  6. It looks like Joel’s Army teamed up with anoth­er army....in Guatemala. Note that the “C. Peter Wag­n­er” ref­er­enced in that arti­cle is like the Joel’s Army God­fa­ther. His Domin­ion­ist plat­form of hav­ing the Chris­t­ian church (one sect in par­tic­u­lar) take over gov­ern­ment might sound famil­iar in oth­er parts of the world.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 28, 2012, 9:57 pm
  7. Part 1 of 2 posts (there seems to be a word lim­it on posts?):

    Note: Per­haps a bet­ter loca­tion for this com­ment would be FTR #697 (Chris­t­ian Fun­da­men­tal­ism & The Under­ground Reich), or FTR #497 (Night­mare), but com­ments are locked (or not respond­ing) for those posts.

    On intel­li­gence-exploit­ed “prophe­cy”, sym­bol­ism, Oba­ma — and the strange “nation­al­ist des­tiny” of “defeat­ing Satan” on July 4, 2012:

    Dave writes (point #5, FTR 497): “Is it pos­si­ble that peo­ple with­in the admin­is­tra­tion seek cat­a­stro­phe in order to ful­fill bib­li­cal prophe­cy?”

    “Reverse-engi­neer­ing” prophe­cies would be a very pow­er­ful tool for intel­li­gence agen­cies (or rogue fac­tions with­in intel­li­gence agen­cies) to ampli­fy the nar­ra­tive pro­pa­gan­da pow­er of assas­si­na­tions & would-be assas­si­na­tions.

    Inter­est­ing­ly, those of us raised in fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian escha­tol­ogy are well-aware of The Book of Daniel’s “anti-Christ” prophe­cy which gives “1260 days” (rough­ly three-and-one-half years) as the length of time that the anti-Christ would be “per­mit­ted” to deceive mankind.

    Oba­ma’s Jan­u­ary 20, 2009 inau­gu­ra­tion was marred by John Roberts’ ille­git­i­ma­cy-bait­ing mis­ap­pli­ca­tion of the Oath of Office. Oba­ma took the Oath again, cor­rect­ly, on Jan­u­ary 21.

    Adding 1260 days to Jan­u­ary 21, the exact date is July 4, 2012.

    Am I say­ing that Barack Oba­ma has a ren­dezvous with “des­tiny” on July 4?

    As you’ll recall, on July 4, 2011 (one year ago), we were treat­ed to an Oba­ma “fore­shad­ow­ing” event that would — (should any­one decide to “force the prophe­cy to come true”) — be looked back upon by many as evi­dence of right-wing con­spir­a­cy ... and it was per­haps inten­tion­al­ly plant­ed to do so, post-mortem:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/jul/04/fox-news-hacked-twitter-obama-dead

    Who was this Twit­ter mes­sage for? Who was its intend­ed audi­ence?

    What effect would it have, post-mortem, on Tea Par­ty reac­tionar­ies?

    Was its intend­ed pur­pose to mis­di­rect — to leave clues that would asso­ciate right-wing factions/Fox News mis­chief-mak­ers with the (hypo­thet­i­cal) assas­si­na­tion?

    Or will it be “framed” (ala George Lakoff) to con­sol­i­date Tea Par­ty reac­tion to a sud­den death that even Tea Partiers would find sus­pi­cious — which could now be framed as “left-wing hack­ers sup­port­ing a Clin­ton con­spir­a­cy to kill Oba­ma” and pre­vent Tea Partiers from hav­ing a cri­sis of con­science?

    Of course, these ques­tions are pre­ma­ture. And, all-the-more murky if there was no assas­si­na­tion, but a “heart attack”:

    Tom Brokaw to Oba­ma: Stop Smok­ing
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/10/tom-brokaw-obama-smoking_n_795210.html

    Physi­cian’s Open Let­ter To Oba­ma: Stop Smok­ing
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-seidman/an-open-letter-to-preside_b_487452.html

    Oba­ma “Cig­a­rette Track­ing” News Page
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/obama-smoking-habit

    2008 con­cerns about Oba­ma’s health seemed bizarre 4 years ago ... but would seem pre­scient on July 4:
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-stier/obamas-health_b_97436.html

    “The Dis­pro­por­tion­ate Cost For African-Amer­i­cans” who smoke:
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19965569

    con­tin­ued in part 2 of post:

    Posted by R. Wilson | May 18, 2012, 12:04 pm
  8. Sad­ly, there’s more than one way to deny the holo­caust. For instance, hor­ri­bly false equiv­a­lences will do the trick:

    TPM Livewire
    Texas GOP Law­mak­er: Sec­u­lar­ism Is Like Nazi ‘Bul­let Through The Throat’

    By Caitlin Mac­Neal
    Pub­lished Octo­ber 1, 2014, 3:35 PM EDT

    Texas state Sen. Charles Per­ry ® on Tues­day com­pared the lack of reli­gious influ­ence in U.S. gov­ern­ment to the Holo­caust dur­ing a speech at his swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny.

    “There were 10,000 peo­ple that were parad­ed into a med­ical office under the guise of a phys­i­cal. As they stood with their back against the wall, they were exe­cut­ed with a bul­let through the throat. Before they left, 10,000 peo­ple met their fate that way,” he said, recall­ing a recent trip to a for­mer Ger­man con­cen­tra­tion camp, accord­ing to the Lub­bock Avalanche-Jour­nal.

    “Is it not the same than when our gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to per­pet­u­ate laws that lead cit­i­zens away from God?” Per­ry then asked. “The only dif­fer­ence is that the fraud of the Ger­mans was more imme­di­ate and where­as the fraud of today’s gov­ern­ment will not be exposed until the final days and will have eter­nal-last­ing effects.”

    Per­ry said that he believes God and reli­gion have a place in gov­ern­ment and that there is a “spir­i­tu­al bat­tle for the spir­it of this nation and the soul of its peo­ple.”

    He added that he will focus on abor­tion and same-sex mar­riage while in office.

    “Roe v. Wade con­demned 55 mil­lion inno­cent and defense­less souls that cried out for right­eous­ness from a God who is just — we will answer for that as a nation,” Per­ry said.

    Regard­ing Per­ry’s state­ment about how “Roe v. Wade con­demned 55 mil­lion inno­cent and defense­less souls that cried out for right­eous­ness from a God who is just — we will answer for that as a nation”, one of Per­ry’s far right fel­low trav­el­ers that hap­pens to have a col­umn at the Nation­al Review already recent­ly shared the ‘nation­al answer’ he has in mind.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 1, 2014, 1:34 pm
  9. Talk­ing Points Memo has a new long­form piece for TPM Prime mem­bers on Mike Bick­le and the Inter­na­tion­al House of Prayer. Here’s a pre­view:

    TPM Long­form
    A TPM Inves­ti­ga­tion: Inside the Inter­na­tion­al House of Prayer
    BySarah Pos­ner­Pub­lishe­dO­c­to­ber 1, 2014, 1:30 PM EDT

    On a Sun­day evening in March 2013, after a late spring snow­storm, sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple braved the weath­er to reach an unas­sum­ing build­ing nes­tled into a for­mer strip mall in the small sub­ur­ban com­mu­ni­ty of Grand­view, Mis­souri, 16 miles south of Kansas City. Their des­ti­na­tion was the Inter­na­tion­al House of Prayer. The prayer room—a non­de­script audi­to­ri­um ringed with small side rooms for proph­esy­ing and faith healing—receives dai­ly vis­i­tors from all over the world who want to expe­ri­ence what IHOP’s founder, the con­tro­ver­sial, and self-titled, “prophet” Mike Bick­le, claims is a recre­ation of the bib­li­cal King David’s taber­na­cle. Bick­le main­tains he is help­ing Chris­tians achieve a greater inti­ma­cy with Jesus through 24/7 music and prayer — a pre­req­ui­site, he says, for Jesus to return to earth, car­ry out God’s bat­tle plan for the end-times, van­quish the Antichrist, and rule the world from his throne in Jerusalem.

    On that snowy night, hun­dreds of fol­low­ers in what is known as the charis­mat­ic Chris­t­ian move­ment descend­ed on Grand­view for a “Trans­form World” prayer sum­mit, a meet­ing that promised 70 con­sec­u­tive hours of prayer to add new hous­es of prayer to the hun­dreds of IHOP imi­ta­tors around the world. Grow­ing the num­ber of hous­es of prayer, the par­tic­i­pants believed, will help “trans­form” com­mu­ni­ties, prepar­ing them for a glob­al revival.

    Through IHOP and its asso­ci­at­ed church, Fore­run­ner Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship, Bick­le claims to be cul­ti­vat­ing an elite class of “fore­run­ners,” or peo­ple who “rep­re­sent God and his inter­ests,” and who “pre­pare the peo­ple to respond right­ly to Jesus by mak­ing known God’s plans so the peo­ple can make sense of what will hap­pen before it actu­al­ly hap­pens.” His vision of the end-times, which is cen­tral to his teach­ing, main­tains that these “redeemed” peo­ple will be rap­tured just as Jesus begins his “roy­al pro­ces­sion” into Jerusalem. Bick­le believes they will return to earth as “res­ur­rect­ed saints” who will “pos­sess super­nat­ur­al abil­i­ties.” When Jesus rules as “King over all domin­ions and spheres of soci­ety,” these res­ur­rect­ed saints will rule with him, “as kings and priests.”

    Bick­le is a major fig­ure in what is known as charis­mat­ic Chris­tian­i­ty, a sprawl­ing move­ment with no clear orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture or hier­ar­chy, led by mag­net­ic and often author­i­tar­i­an fig­ures who pro­claim them­selves to be mod­ern-day prophets and apos­tles. Dri­ven by the pas­sion­ate pro­nounce­ments of these “prophets,” rather than by, say, a denom­i­na­tion­al creed, the move­ment derides main­stream evan­gel­i­cal church­es as mori­bund and dull – and in so doing has forced them to adapt to its pres­ence. Lest you think these move­ments are fringe, just look at Repub­li­can pol­i­tics, which has increas­ing­ly embraced the charis­mat­ic move­ment and its lead­ers in its quest for the evan­gel­i­cal vote. Out­side of politics–but still cru­cial to its ongo­ing and future entan­gle­ment with religion–movements like Bick­le’s entice the very young peo­ple evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers fret are slip­ping away from their faith. In one sense, IHOP, with its het­ero­dox the­ol­o­gy, inhab­its a world of its own. But its draw to young peo­ple has led evan­gel­i­cal, and even main­line Protes­tant church­es, as well as word of mouth and social media net­works, to adver­tise its virtues to par­ents and teenagers who think they want to achieve more “inti­ma­cy” with God.

    Part of the attrac­tion is sheer excite­ment. Charis­mat­ic, or renewal­ist Chris­tian­i­ty – and, by exten­sion, IHOP’s the­ol­o­gy – is made up of born-again adher­ents whose wor­ship prac­tices focus on super­nat­ur­al occur­rences, faith heal­ing, mir­a­cles, prophe­cy, and rev­e­la­tion, many of which devel­oped over the mid-to-late 20th cen­tu­ry as part of a “Third Wave” of charis­mat­ic revival. The first wave was born of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry Pen­te­costal revival launched by the Azusa Street Revival in Los Ange­les; lat­er, a sec­ond wave of charis­mat­ic Chris­tians who did not iden­ti­fy as Pen­te­costal were seen in grow­ing non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al and even main­line church­es. IHOP grew out of the strand late-20th cen­tu­ry, or Third Wave charis­mat­ic Chris­tian­i­ty that empha­sized the role of mod­ern-day prophets and apos­tles who claim to receive author­i­ta­tive, extra-bib­li­cal rev­e­la­tions direct­ly from God.

    Proph­esy and mir­a­cles may sound fringe, but Bickle’s acolytes extend to high places. Bick­le and his IHOP co-founder, the evan­ge­list and anti-abor­tion cru­sad­er Lou Engle, have cap­tured the atten­tion of politi­cians eager reach a reli­gious base increas­ing­ly influ­enced by these move­ments. Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s 2011 prayer ral­ly, The Response, held just before he announced his pres­i­den­tial bid, was bankrolled by the Amer­i­can Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion, direct­ed by IHOP staffer Luis Catal­do, and fea­tured Bick­le in a promi­nent role as a speak­er. Misty Edwards, who leads musi­cal wor­ship at IHOP and is huge­ly pop­u­lar in the Chris­t­ian music world, also led musi­cal inter­ludes at The Response.

    It wasn’t a one-off. Last year, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback—who once shared a Wash­ing­ton, DC apart­ment with Engle—wel­comed IHOP’s annu­al One Thing con­fer­ence, which takes place in Kansas City every Decem­ber and draws tens of thou­sands of young peo­ple to “encounter Jesus, so that we might go forth to do His works and change the world, until the fame of Jesus fills the earth.”

    And on the Nation­al Mall in 2008 Bick­le shared a stage with one-time Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates Mike Huck­abee. That day he preached that prayer and repen­tance, not pol­i­tics, are the answer to America’s prob­lems. Engle, too, has prayed with Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress, includ­ing Reps. Michele Bach­mann and Randy Forbes (co-chair of the 93-mem­ber bipar­ti­san Con­gres­sion­al Prayer Cau­cus) and then-Sens. Brown­back and Jim DeMint (now pres­i­dent of the Her­itage Foun­da­tion), against pas­sage of health care reform. IHOP was a “min­istry part­ner,” along with the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil and the Nation­al Day of Prayer Task Force, for a 2012 “solemn assem­bly” for prayer and meet­ing with mem­bers of Con­gress.

    Yet elect­ed friends or not, Bickle’s 30-year career has been marked as much by his charis­mat­ic attrac­tion to fol­low­ers as by accu­sa­tions of “aber­rant” prac­tices, false prophe­cies — even heresy. Since his affil­i­a­tion with a group called the Kansas City Prophets, a group of self-declared prophets which coa­lesced around Bickle’s church in the 1980s, a legion of critics—theologically con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cals them­selves, includ­ing for­mer IHOP fol­low­ers and staff—say his the­ol­o­gy and prac­tices are a dis­tor­tion of the Bible, and the spir­i­tu­al demands placed on fol­low­ers, includ­ing unques­tion­ing obe­di­ence to Bickle’s ideas, are author­i­tar­i­an and abu­sive.

    ...

    If you aren’t thor­ough­ly per­turbed by all of that, keep in mind that the “Kansas City Prophets” that coa­lesced around Bick­le and Engle’s church in the 80’s is the same group that spawned this:

    South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter
    Intel­li­gence Report, Fall 2008, Issue Num­ber: 131
    Todd Bentley’s Mil­i­tant Joel’s Army Gains Fol­low­ers in Flori­da

    Mil­i­tant Joel’s Army Fol­low­ers Seek Theoc­ra­cy
    By Casey Sanchez

    LAKELAND, Fla. — Todd Bent­ley has a long night ahead of him, res­ur­rect­ing the dead, heal­ing the blind, and explod­ing can­cer­ous tumors. Since April 3, the 32-year-old, heav­i­ly tat­tooed, body-pierced, shaved-head Cana­di­an preach­er has been lead­ing a con­tin­u­ous “super­nat­ur­al heal­ing revival” in cen­tral Flori­da. To con­tain the 10,000-plus crowds flock­ing from around the globe, Bent­ley has rent­ed base­ball sta­di­ums, are­nas and air­port hangars at a cost of up to $15,000 a day. Many in atten­dance are church pas­tors them­selves who believe Bent­ley to be a prophet and don’t bat an eye when he tells them he’s seen King David and spo­ken with the Apos­tle Paul in heav­en. “He was look­ing very Jew­ish,” Bent­ley notes.

    Tat­tooed across his ster­num are mil­i­tary dog tags that read “Joel’s Army.” They’re evi­dence of Bent­ley’s gen­er­al­ship in a rapid­ly grow­ing apoc­a­lyp­tic move­ment that’s gone large­ly unno­ticed by watch­dogs of the theo­crat­ic right. Accord­ing to Bent­ley and a hand­ful of oth­er “hyper-charis­mat­ic” preach­ers advanc­ing the same agen­da, Joel’s Army is proph­e­sied to become an Armaged­don-ready mil­i­tary force of young peo­ple with a divine man­date to phys­i­cal­ly impose Chris­t­ian “domin­ion” on non-believ­ers.

    “An end-time army has one com­mon pur­pose — to aggres­sive­ly take ground for the king­dom of God under the author­i­ty of Jesus Christ, the Dread Cham­pi­on,” Bent­ley declares on the web­site for his min­istry school in British Colum­bia, Cana­da. “The trum­pet is sound­ing, call­ing on-fire, rev­o­lu­tion­ary believ­ers to enlist in Joel’s Army. … Many are now ready to be mobi­lized to estab­lish and advance God’s king­dom on earth.”

    Joel’s Army fol­low­ers, many of them teenagers and young adults who believe they’re mem­bers of the final gen­er­a­tion to come of age before the end of the world, are break­ing away in droves from main­line Pen­te­costal church­es. Num­ber­ing in the tens of thou­sands, they base their beliefs on an eso­teric read­ing of the sec­ond chap­ter of the Old Tes­ta­ment Book of Joel, in which an aveng­ing swarm of locusts attacks Israel. In their view, the locusts are a metaphor for Joel’s Army.

    Despite their overt mil­i­tan­cy, there’s no evi­dence Joel’s Army fol­low­ers have com­mit­ted any acts of vio­lence. But crit­ics warn that actu­al blood­let­ting may only be a mat­ter of time for a move­ment that casts itself as God’s aveng­ing army.

    Those sound­ing the alarm about Joel’s Army are not sec­u­lar foes of the Chris­t­ian Right, few of whom are even aware of the move­ment or how wide­spread it’s become in the past decade. Instead, Joel’s Army crit­ics are most­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians, either neo-Pen­te­costals who left the move­ment in dis­gust or evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians who fear that Joel’s Army preach­ers are steal­ing their flocks, even send­ing spies to infil­trate their own con­gre­ga­tions and sway their young peo­ple to heresy. And they say the move­ment is becom­ing fright­en­ing.

    “The pitch and inten­si­ty of the mil­i­tary rhetoric of this branch of the glob­al Domin­ion­ist move­ment has sub­stan­tial­ly increased since the begin­ning of 2008,” writes The Dis­cern­ment Research Group, a Chris­t­ian watch­dog group that tracks what they call here­sies or cults with­in Chris­tian­i­ty. “One can only won­der how long before this trans­forms into real war­fare with actu­al war­riors.”

    ‘Snort­ing Reli­gion’
    Joel’s Army believ­ers are hard-core Chris­t­ian domin­ion­ists, mean­ing they believe that Amer­i­ca, along with the rest of the world, should be gov­erned by con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians and a con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian inter­pre­ta­tion of bib­li­cal law. There is no room in their doc­trine for democ­ra­cy or plu­ral­ism.

    Domin­ion­is­m’s orig­i­nal branch is Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ism, a grim, Calvin­ist call to theoc­ra­cy that, as Recon­struc­tion­ist writer Gary North describes, wants to “get busy in con­struct­ing a Bible-based social, polit­i­cal and reli­gious order which final­ly denies the reli­gious lib­er­ty of the ene­mies of God.”

    Noto­ri­ous for endors­ing the pub­lic exe­cu­tion by ston­ing of LGBT peo­ple and adul­ter­ers, the Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ist move­ment is far bet­ter known in sec­u­lar Amer­i­ca than Joel’s Army. That’s large­ly because Recon­struc­tion­ists have made sev­er­al seri­ous for­ays into main­stream pol­i­tics and received a fair amount of neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty as a result. Joel’s Army fol­low­ers eschew the polit­i­cal sys­tem, believ­ing the path to world dom­i­na­tion lies in tak­ing over church­es, not elec­tion to pub­lic office.

    Anoth­er key dif­fer­ence between the two branch­es of domin­ion­ism, which main­tain a testy, arms-length rela­tion­ship with one anoth­er, is Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­is­m’s but­toned-down image and heavy empha­sis on Bible study, which con­trasts sharply with Joel’s Army anti-intel­lec­tu­al dis­trust of bib­li­cal schol­ars and its unruly style.

    “Some peo­ple snort cocaine, oth­ers snort reli­gions,” Joel’s Army Pas­tor Roy said while min­is­ter­ing a morn­ing pro­gram at Todd Bent­ley’s Lake­land, Fla., revival in late May.

    ...

    War­rior Nation
    Accord­ing to Joel’s Army doc­trine, the enforcers of the five-fold min­istry will be mem­bers of the final gen­er­a­tion, for whom the land­mark Supreme Court deci­sion Roe v. Wade con­sti­tut­ed a new Passover.

    “Every­one born after abor­tion’s legal­iza­tion can con­sid­er their birth a per­son­al invi­ta­tion to take part in this great army,” writes John Crow­der, anoth­er promi­nent Joel’s Army pas­tor, who bills his 2006 book, The New Mys­tics: How to Become Part of the Super­nat­ur­al Gen­er­a­tion, as a lit­er­al how-to guide for join­ing Joel’s Army.

    Both Bent­ley and Crow­der are enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar on Eli­jah’s List, an online water­ing hole for a broad spec­trum of Joel’s Army enlis­tees, from light­weight believ­ers who mere­ly share an affec­tion for mil­i­tary rhetoric and pas­tors who dress in army cam­ou­flage (sev­er­al Joel’s Army pas­tors are addressed by their con­gre­gants as “com­man­dant” or “com­man­der”) to hard­lin­ers who believe the church is called to have an active mil­i­tary role in end-times that have already begun. Eli­jah’s List cur­rent­ly has more than 125,000 sub­scribers on its elec­tron­ic mail­ing list.

    Rick Joyn­er, a pas­tor whose books, The Har­vest and The Call, helped pop­u­lar­ize Joel’s Army the­ol­o­gy by sell­ing more than a mil­lion copies each, goes the fur­thest on Eli­jah’s List in push­ing the hard­lin­er approach. In 2006, he post­ed a ser­mon called “The War­rior Nation — The New Sound of the Church,” in which he claimed that a last-day army is now gath­er­ing and called believ­ers “free­dom fight­ers.”

    “As the church begins to take on this resolve, they [Joel’s Army church­es] will start to be thought of more as mil­i­tary bases, and they will begin to take on the char­ac­ter­is­tics of mil­i­tary bases for train­ing, equip­ping, and deploy­ing effec­tive spir­i­tu­al forces,” Joyn­er wrote. “In time, the church will actu­al­ly be orga­nized more as a mil­i­tary force with an army, navy, air force, etc.”

    In a sort of dis­claimer, Joyn­er writes at one point that God’s army “will bring love, peace and sta­bil­i­ty wher­ev­er they go.” But sev­er­al of his books nar­rate with glee what he describes as “a com­ing civ­il war with­in the church.” In his 1997 book The Har­vest he writes: “Some pas­tors and lead­ers who con­tin­ue to resist this tide of uni­ty will be removed from their place. Some will become so hard­ened they will become opposers and resist God to the end.”

    Two years lat­er, in his book The Final Quest, Joyn­er described a vision (tak­en as prophe­cy in the Joel’s Army world, where Joyn­er is con­sid­ered an “apos­tle”) of the com­ing Chris­t­ian Civ­il War in which demon-pos­sessed Chris­t­ian sol­diers enslave oth­er, weak­er Chris­tians who resist them. He also describes how the hero of the nov­el — him­self — ascends a “Holy Moun­tain” in order to learn new truths and to acquire new, mag­ic weapons.

    Kids on Fire
    Bent­ley, who claims to be a super­nat­ur­al heal­er, is no less over the top, play­ing his bik­er-punk appear­ance and heavy met­al the­atrics to the hilt. On YouTube, where clips of his most dra­mat­ic heal­ings have been con­densed into a three-minute high­light reel, Bent­ley describes God order­ing him to kick an elder­ly lady in the face: “I am think­ing, ‘God, why is the pow­er of God not mov­ing?’ And He said, ‘It is because you haven’t kicked that women in the face.’ And there was, like, this old­er lady wor­ship­ping right in front of the plat­form and the Holy Spir­it spoke to me and the gift of faith came on me. He said, ‘Kick her in the face … with your bik­er boot.’ I inched clos­er and I went like this [makes kick­ing motion]: Bam! And just as my boot made con­tact with her nose, she fell under the pow­er of God.”

    The atmos­phere is less charged with vio­lence at “The Call,” a 12-hour revival of up to 20,000 youths led by Joel’s Army pas­tor Lou Engle and held every sum­mer in a major Amer­i­can city (this year’s event was sched­uled for Wash­ing­ton, D.C. in August).

    Atten­dees are called upon to fast and pray for 40 days and take up cul­ture-war pledges to lead absti­nent lives, reject pornog­ra­phy and fight abor­tion. They’re fur­ther asked to per­form “iden­ti­fi­ca­tion­al repen­tance,” lug­ging along fam­i­ly trees and genealo­gies to see where one of their ances­tors may have enslaved or oppressed anoth­er so that they can make amends. (Many in the Joel’s Army move­ment believe in gen­er­a­tional curs­es that must be bro­ken by the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion).

    As even his crit­ics note, Engle is a sweet, hum­ble and gen­tle man whose per­sona is dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile with his belief in an end-time army of invin­ci­ble young Chris­t­ian war­riors. Yet while Engle is care­ful to avoid deploy­ing explic­it Joel’s Army rhetoric at high-pro­file events like The Call, when he’s speak­ing in small­er hyper-charis­mat­ic cir­cles to avowed Joel’s Army fol­low­ers, he can ven­ture into blood­lust.

    This March, at a “Pas­sion for Jesus” con­fer­ence in Kansas City spon­sored by the Inter­na­tion­al House of Prayer, or IHOP, a min­istry for teenagers from the heavy met­al, punk and goth scenes, Engle called on his audi­ence for vengeance.

    “I believe we’re head­ed to an Elijah/Jezebel show­down on the Earth, not just in Amer­i­ca but all over the globe, and the main war­riors will be the prophets of Baal ver­sus the prophets of God, and there will be no mid­dle ground,” said Engle. He was refer­ring to the Baal of the Old Tes­ta­ment, a pagan idol whose fol­low­ers were slaugh­tered under orders from the prophet Eli­jah.

    “There’s an Eli­jah gen­er­a­tion that’s going to be the fore­run­ners for the com­ing of Jesus, a gen­er­a­tion marked not by their nice­ness but by the inten­si­ty of their pas­sion,” Engle con­tin­ued. “The king­dom of heav­en suf­fers vio­lence and the vio­lent take it by force. Such force demands an equal response, and Jesus is going to make war on every­thing that hin­ders love, with his eyes blaz­ing fire.”

    Although Joel’s Army the­ol­o­gy is main­ly direct­ed at peo­ple in their teens and ear­ly 20s via events like The Call and min­istries like IHOP, some­times the tar­get audi­ence is even younger. In some of the most arrest­ing images in “Jesus Camp,” a 2006 doc­u­men­tary about the Kids on Fire bible camp in North Dako­ta, grade school-aged kids dressed in army fatigues wield swords and con­duct mil­i­tary field maneu­vers. “A lot of peo­ple die for God and they’re not afraid,” one camper told ABC News reporters in a fol­low-up seg­ment.

    “We’re kin­da being trained to be war­riors,” added anoth­er, “only in a fun­ner way.”

    Cain and the Intel­lec­tu­als
    Both Chris­t­ian and sec­u­lar crit­ics assailed the mak­ers of “Jesus Camp” for refer­ring to the cam­p’s extrem­ist, mil­i­tant Chris­tian­i­ty as “evan­gel­i­cal.” There is a name, how­ev­er, that describes Kids on Fire’s agen­da, if you’re famil­iar with their the­ol­o­gy: Joel’s Army. Pas­tor Becky Fis­ch­er, who runs the camp, said that a third of the kids at her camp were under 6 years old because they are “more in touch in the super­nat­ur­al” and pro­claimed them to be “sol­diers for God’s Army.” Her cam­p’s blend of end-times mil­i­tan­cy and super­nat­u­ral­ism is per­fect­ly emblem­at­ic of the Joel’s Army move­ment, whose adher­ents believe their cause is proph­e­sied in the Old Tes­ta­ment chap­ter titled “An Army of Locusts.”

    The stark, evoca­tive pas­sages of that chap­ter describe a locust swarm that lays waste to Israel (to this day, the region suf­fers peri­od­ic locust inva­sions): “Like dawn spread­ing across the moun­tains a large and mighty army comes, such as nev­er was of old nor ever will be in ages to come.” As remark­able as the lan­guage is, most bib­li­cal schol­ars agree that it is a lit­er­al descrip­tion of a locust inva­sion and result­ing famine that occurred some­time between the 9th and 5th cen­turies B.C.E.

    In the Book of Joel, the locust inva­sion is described as an omen that an Assyr­i­an army to the north may attack Israel if it fails to repent as a nation. But nowhere is the inva­sion described as an army of God. Accord­ing to an Assem­blies of God posi­tion paper: “It is a com­plete mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Scrip­ture to find in Joel’s army of locusts a mil­i­tant, vic­to­ri­ous force attack­ing soci­ety and a non-coop­er­at­ing Church to pre­pare the earth for Christ’s mil­len­ni­al reign.”

    The sto­ry of how an ancient insect inva­sion came to be a ral­ly­ing flag for 21st-cen­tu­ry domi­non­ists begins just after World War II in Cana­da. Out of a small town in Saskatchewan, a Pen­te­costal preach­er named William Bran­ham spear­head­ed a 1948 revival in which he claimed that his fol­low­ers lived in a new bib­li­cal time of “Lat­ter Rain.”

    The most sin­less and ardent of his flock would be called “Man­i­fest Sons of God.” By the next year, the move­ment was so strong — and seemed so sub­ver­sive to some — that the Assem­blies of God banned it as a heretic cult. But Bran­ham remained a con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure with a loy­al fol­low­ing; many of his fol­low­ers believed him to be the end-times prophet Eli­jah.

    Michael Barkun, a lead­ing schol­ar of rad­i­cal reli­gion, notes that in 1958, Bran­ham began teach­ing “Ser­pent Seed” doc­trine, the belief that Satan had sex with Eve, result­ing in Cain and his descen­dants. “Through Cain came all the smart, edu­cat­ed peo­ple down to the ante­dilu­vian flood — the intel­lec­tu­als, bible col­leges,” Bran­ham wrote in the kind of anti-main­stream reli­gion, anti-intel­lec­tu­al spir­it that per­vades the Joel’s Army move­ment to this day. “They know all their creeds but know noth­ing about God.”

    The Gates of Hell
    Bran­ham was killed in a car acci­dent in 1965, but his Man­i­fest Sons of God move­ment, the direct pre­de­ces­sor of Joel’s Army, lived on with­in a clus­ter of hyper-charis­mat­ic church­es. In the 1980s, Bran­ham’s teach­ings took on new life at the Kansas City Fel­low­ship (KCF), a group of pop­u­lar self-styled apos­tles and prophets who used the Mis­souri church as a launch­ing pad for nation­al careers pro­mot­ing out­right Joel’s Army the­ol­o­gy.

    Ernie Gru­en, a local pas­tor who ini­tial­ly pro­mot­ed and gave city­wide cred­i­bil­i­ty to KCF pas­tors in the ear­ly 1980s, cut his con­nec­tions in 1990. Con­cerned about KCF’s plans to push its teach­ings world­wide, Gru­en pub­lished a 132-page insid­er’s account, based on taped ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions and inter­views with par­ents who had enrolled their kids in KCF’s Domin­ion school.

    Accord­ing to Gru­en’s report, stu­dents at the school were taught that they were a “super-race” of the “elect­ed seed” of all the best blood­lines of all gen­er­a­tions — fore­known, pre­des­tined, and hand-select­ed from bil­lions of oth­ers to be part of the “end-time Omega gen­er­a­tion.”

    Though he’d once pro­mot­ed these doc­trines him­self, Gru­en became con­vinced that the move­ment was turn­ing into an end-times cult, marked by what he sum­ma­rized as “spir­i­tu­al threats, fears, and warn­ings of death,” “warn­ing fol­low­ers to beware of oth­er Chris­tians” and exhibit­ing “a ‘super-race’ men­tal­i­ty toward the train­ing of their chil­dren.”

    When con­tact­ed by the Intel­li­gence Report, Gru­en’s spokesman said that Gru­en stands by every­thing he pub­lished in the report but no longer grants media inter­views.

    The Kansas City Fel­low­ship remains in oper­a­tion and has served as a farm team for many of the all-stars of the Joel’s Army move­ment. Those larg­er-than-life fig­ures include John Wim­ber, the founder of a Cal­i­for­nia megachurch, The Vine­yard, who, before his death in 1997, pro­claimed that Joel’s Army would not only con­quer the earth but defeat death itself. Lou Engle found­ed The Call based on the Joel’s Army visions that KCF “prophet” Bob Jones (not to be con­fused with Bob Jones III of Bob Jones Uni­ver­si­ty) received while at KCF. Mike Bick­le, anoth­er KCF mem­ber, stayed in Kansas City to form the Inter­na­tion­al House of Prayer.

    IHOP mem­bers and oth­er Joel’s Army adher­ents are well aware of how their move­ment is per­ceived by oth­er con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians.

    “Today, you can type ‘Joel’s Army’ into a search engine and a thou­sand heresy hunter web­sites pop up, decry­ing the very men­tion of it,” writes John Crow­der in The New Mys­tics. Crow­der does­n’t exact­ly allay crit­ic’s fears. “This is tru­ly war­fare,” he writes. “This bat­tle is not a game. They [Joel’s Army war­riors] will not be on the defense; they will be on the offense — and the gates of hell will not be able to hold up against them.”

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 2, 2014, 7:25 pm

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