“It’s Not a Metaphor” — My Time at the International House of Prayer
The distressingly beautiful true believer leaned into my girlfriend’s personal space and closed her eyes tight.
“Father God, let your grace upon Rebecca that she may know you, free her from the afflictions of the body and open her heart to your love”
Rebecca glared at me. I had instigated this, her eyes said. And she was right. The whole thing was my idea. The casino, the strip club, the interminable antiquing and now this, a gathering of over 25,000 young evangelicals at the Kansas City Convention Center, one of whom was now praying over her.
We were at OneThing, the annual conference hosted by the International House of Prayer or, as they prefer to be called, IHOP. (IHOP IP LLC v. International House of Prayer, 2:10-cv-6622. Trust me, you don’t want to go there. Everyone kept their name and someone got a big settlement.)
It was a sign from above, of course. You would have to be blind to miss them; they were all over the freeway promising prayer, song and ample parking. Miracles for all those who ask, eternal salvation or triple your money back.
Now we were being prayed over by a gorgeous blonde in the cafeteria of the Kansas City Convention center. She smelled like honey suckles dipped in sunshine.
One hour earlier.
We entered the main hall as the band playing their second encore. Like any good touring rock band, a giant projection screen hung behind them so you didn’t have to elbow your way up front to get a good view.
“All other gods are false gods,” the four attractive singers repeated, the lyrics subtitled for the few who didn’t know the words. “All other gods are false gods,” again, and again. The young and younger, hearts full of the holy spirit, a jumped up and down in a frenzy I have not seen since the last Green Day show at the Patriot Center.
And the crowd did wave, and sway and reach to the heavens. And the crowd did lay hands, and kneel and sob, truly, sob. The crowd did prostrate themselves, and the crowd did form something of a mosh pit.
OneThing is impressive. Not only is there a concert hall with a light show worthy of any large touring rock band, there multiple prayer rooms running 24 hours a day, each with their own house band. There was a room for healing, a room for prophecy and a room for general communion with other disarmingly attractive young people.
Downtown Kansas City was occupied by ecstatic young people. The locals couldn’t help but stare. Confidence and youth don’t usually go together. It makes them shiny.
They sang, they played hacky sack and generally zipped around. When all is forgiven and God has a purpose for your life, it does wonders for the complexion.
OneThing is the brainchild of pastor Mike Bickle. In the secular world, Bickle is best known for organizing Rick Perry’s prayer rally. In charismatic circles, he’s known as a former leader of the Kansas City Prophets, an end times oriented group of young preachers who made their name by claiming to speak in His name.
In 1999 the Prophets were the Young Guns of evangelicals, courting controversy and envy. They had moustaches that would make me look gay, but were masculine on them. They were denounced by some, praised by others but they didn’t care. Why should you, when you talk to God?
Theologically, they were in the dispensationalist crowd. They reflected on things eschatological. They preached historic premillennialism. They told stories about the coming 1,000 year reign and the great apostasy and they did it all with a youthful stoner flair. They spoke to God about the end. Of course they were obsessed with the book of Revelation, and believed that the terrifying screed applied directly to our modern times.
On a street corner in New York, you would barely notice this kind of thing, but in the Middle West it bespoke authenticity. Perhaps it was because they had short hair and pressed blue jeans and rarely smelled like malt liquor. I wasn’t there, so I can only speculate.
In the end, they picked winners no more frequently than CNBC. That is, almost none of their predictions turned out to be true. Then their leader, Bob Jones (not related to the college) did something so predictable, none of the prophets saw it coming. Pastor Jones had several young women undress in his office so they could be “naked before the Lord” to receive a special “word.”
Evangelicals are no slouches at suspending disbelief, but when it comes to sex, they just want that shit to go away. Ask Ted Haggard.
Bob Jones may have gone down the memory hole, but the prophecy he had for Mike Bickle has not. It’s archived in dozens of PDFs at mikebickle.com. The visions in the hotel room in Cairo. The Black Horse, the White Horse, Gabriel and a report of an unseasonable snowfall that led directly to the creation of IHOP.
“There is going to be a snow that will come at the first day of spring and you will know the things I’m telling you are true.” It snowed, which convinced Bickle that Jones had a directly line to God. I would have assumed he had picked up a newspaper, but I swim in different waters than these men.
God (by way of the groping prophet) told Bickle to create a church with 24-hour prayer for young people. He was to build it on Harry S. Truman’s farm. Harry Truman comes up a lot in the writings of the prophets, which makes sense only if you recall that Truman assented to the foundation of Israel, thus making way for the second coming of Christ, war, the kingdom, and the casting of unbelievers into the fire.
None of this is metaphor. Bickle in his ministry and his politics is trying to set the stage for the second coming which will involve a one world religion, nuclear war and a lot of bizarre winged animals coming out of nowhere.
Again. None of this is metaphor. Bickle does not speak in metaphors and doesn’t seem to understand them either. On January 27, 2008 he bought the 125-acre Harry S. Truman farm.
The beautiful young people may be in Kansas City for OneThing, but it sure isn’t the OnlyThing going on. This is not a ministry of charity and love but one devoted to building a spaceship for the ride home while the earth burns in the rear view mirror. Anything that gets in the way is not just misguided, it is of the devil.
Which brings us to Oprah. Bickle has had beef with Oprah for years, but it wasn’t until he hosted Rick Perry’s prayer conference that someone dug up a video of him babbling about her being the Harlot of Babylon.
It was funny and it made a good meme but it deserves to be put in context. The reason Bickle is so upset by Oprah is because she’s nice. Everything that has made her popular — her empathy, her tolerance, her compassion proves to Bickle that she is the leader of a false religion foretold in the book of Revelation. She is the Harlot, leader of a “False Justice” movement.
I tend to think a world based on compassion where everyone is fed and clothed and cared for when they are sick is a good thing. For Bickle and the tens of thousands of young minds he has twisted, it is of the devil.
The devil’s people will be doing acts of justice, and acts of compassion. Trust me it will be humanitarian, but it is a trap. It is to lead people away from Jesus so they walk into deception. … [The Antichrist] will inspire acts of compassion but for all the wrong reasons. The goal will be the dignity and happiness of man.
Needless to say, Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild is nowhere to be found in IHOP Kansas City and its many franchises.
None of that is obvious to the young people skipping (yes, skipping) around the convention center. Ask them about politics and they crinkle their noses adorably and bite their lips and say they were meaning to get to that but really they don’t know. Abortion? Um. It’s bad? The gays? Not sure. Obama?
They have more important things to worry about like healing and speaking in tongues. The gifts of the spirit, which they were only too happy to demonstrate. So when the beautiful blonde angel of the Living God asked if either of us had any medical problems, it felt like a dare.
She had asked if either of our legs were longer than the other which was interesting for two reasons. One is that Rebecca’s legs are of different lengths the result of a childhood surgery that I’ve never quite understood.
There’s no denying it. This child of the living God had something we didn’t. And we had something she didn’t. She had happy days and restful nights and communion with friends and family and a future that was going to work out just fine. We had dark circles under our eyes, a galaxy of antidepressant and at least two poorly considered tattoos. She had the rest of the weekend to praise him while we were going back to Kansas City to indulge an alcohol habit that straddles the line between fun and…pathetic.
Why not follow her into the communal prayer room? Why not be cleansed by his precious blood and buckle up for the rapture?
Having lived in New York City, I like to think that I am immune to beautiful women with batshit ideas. But I was wavering.
“I ask that Satan and all demonic powers leave her body…”
Wait. Demons? Really?
In this modern age to believe that God will heal you because you ask extra hard is just silly. Rebecca’s left leg is still longer than her right and has remained that way since.
I want to underline how much I liked this woman. I liked all the young evangelicals. Another word for fearless sincerity is charisma. I could not say I was close to her, but it pained me to learn that later that same night a blood clot formed on a recent missionary trip to Thailand broke off and traveled to her brain. It lodged in her brain stem, and by the time she arrived at the hospital and was given heparin (a blood thinner), her primal life functions were grinding to a halt. She died later that evening.
Of course none of that is true. As far as I know she his back in Lynchburg, her sweet life as untouched by tragedy, as it was when I met her.
If it was, true, I imagine her called before the throne to face Saint Peter, before him the book of life.
“Sweet child, I have before me the book of life, the names of those who will enter paradise. Do you have anything to say in your defense?”
Overcome, she fell to her knees and looked up at Jesus, making him a little uncomfortable.
“Lord Jesus, I accepted you in my heart and prayed you forgive me my sins, and praised you for cleansing me with your sacred blood.”
She glanced at the holes in the Christ’s wrists, unhealed. If only he would stop picking at them, he thought.
“I devoted my life to thee and lived for your glory following your sacred…”
Jesus leaned in and whispered something to St. Peter who held up a hand to silence her. They seemed to argue, gesticulating with their hands. (You want they should stop being Jewish?)
Her knees began to ache, but dared not move. Peter nodded. He turned to her, his face grave.
“He wants to know what you’ve done for him lately.”
“Excuse me?”
“He says. What have you done for me lately?”
“I praised…I took him into…I…”
St. Peter reached into his holy robes and removed a copy of the King James Bible. He began to read.
“For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.”
Tears welled up in her beautiful eyes.
“I was…I was waiting for you to come back.”
“Whatever you do to the least of these my brothers, you did to me. It couldn’t have been more clear.”
Jesus closed his eyes. He hated this part.
Peter slammed the book of life theatrically.
“Your name is not written. I DO NOT KNOW THEE.”
She sobbed and began to pull at her beautiful hair. This went on for several minutes. Finally Jesus spoke.
“Don’t worry. It’s really not so bad. There’s a mega church down there. I think they’ve got a Starbucks.”
And so the ground did open, hurling her into the air-conditioned pit of the damned, where she doth play the congas in a worship band.
