[Image of Mike Bickle from The Pitch here.]Insanity, some have said, is to keep doing the same thing over and over again, in spite of the fact that whatever it is you're doing doesn't work.
Mike Bickle is the founder of an outfit called the "International House of Prayer" located in Kansas City, Missouri. Notice the acronym, IHOP. You should know that evidently Mr. Bickle felt no need to attend college or seminary...he got his vibes directly from God.
Mr. Bickle is a fundy christianist who believes that prayer really works. His ministry is "known for leading 24-hour prayer and worship" experiences. The outfit has been on this road to nowhere for 10 years!
But now Bickle has come up with something new: "At the 10-year mark, we're making a commitment by the grace of God to combine 24-hour prayers of justice with 24-hours works of justice until the Lord returns." Good luck with that! But what the hey, christianists have been waiting 2000 years, what's another 10 or 20?
Got to admit, though, Bickle a "pastor," has a flair for organization and fund-raising. He's got offshoots of his outfit in other places around the world and "some 4,000 people currently raise support to work with the ministry full or part time."
There's a slight problem though because when Bickle talks about "works of justice," he's really talking about "evangelizing" people (especially the down and out) by providing certain social services. It's an old fundy trick, but still works. So he's going to "convert" (pun intended) an old apartment house into a "Women's Life Center. The facility will house a crisis pregnancy center, and provide a home for former prostitutes and women rescued from sex trafficing."
Then he's in process of buying other properties to be "used for feeding and evangelistic activities." Oh, and a "100,000-square foot shopping center ... will serve as IHOP's new headquarters and house a Justice Ministry Center that will include an adoption agency, offices for the Bound4Life movement founded by Lou Engle, and Exodus Cry, a ministry that helps rescue girls in Eastern Europe from human trafficking."
Yes, you're right. It's all about abortion and that nasty "secular liberalism," and gay marriage. These are the things Bickle sees as America's real problems.
Oh, and persecution. "...he sees persecution looming." And, he's had a vision: "It will start out with economic persecution and troubles and pressures [in other words, send money!], and it will mount to verbal restraints--you can't cross the line, you can't even talk about gay marriage, you can't talk about abortion. It's going to mount up from there even in America. We believe that."
Well, hell. Christianists are good at believing things that aren't true, for which there is not a shred of evidence, and there is not a shred of evidence for anything that Bickle says. But he's got to create a sense of danger and urgency so people will keep writing checks.
Back to prayer. Over the past 10 years, Bickle's outfit has been creating a "'culture of prayer,' with some 1,500 full-time committing to 12, two-hour prayer times each week. 'It's part of people's job descriptions. ... We tell them, "You are intercessory missionaries; you're not just [employees]. Part of their task is to be in the prayer room crying out for justice.'"
What a con artist!
Have any of these prayers been answered? Thousands of prayers sent heavenward over a period of ten years. Thousands! What hath God done? How has God answered these prayers? If prayer really works, we should see quite easily a lot of evidence that the prayers were answered; evidence that can be tested and replicated.
Not to be. Oh, Bickle claims that "the ministry" has received "several prophetic messages" through the years. And those messages have to do with that same old crapola about persecution, along with news of a "great harvest."
"We think," says Bickle, "very strongly from the Word and the Spirit that it's great trouble and great victory-both of them are emerging at the same time. It will be the greatest harvest field in America, but it will be the season of the greatest falling away from the faith, or at least from the organized church."
Yup. All those prayers over all those years and that's all he got! Sheesh. How can people fall for this garbage?
To put it plainly, there is no evidence of any kind that any of the prayers were answered. None!
In fact, it has been proven that prayer doesn't work! Extensive and careful studies conducted by scientists from Harvard, Duke and the Mayo Clinic have found no evidence for the efficacy of prayer. And it is important to note is that these studies should have found some evidence if prayer was viable at all. As Victor J. Stenger writes in his book, "The New Atheism," "science is fully capable of detecting the existence of a God who acts in the lives of humans in an important way such as listening to and answering prayers."
It hasn't happened.
I actually feel a little sorry for these fools on their knees. Sounds like insanity to me!
Some of this material has come from an article in Charisma magazine here.
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