Mike Bickle Is Forever Unfit For Ministry

Staging a comeback? A short overview of his ministry and why he is forever unfit.

This article is taken from my book review, here:

Review of Sam Storms’ Book ‘The Rise and Fall of the Kansas City Prophets’

As of April 20, 2026, Julie Roys and various podcasters are reporting that Mike Bickle is returning to ministry. He wants people to fast and pray for him, for seven days, so the attack from second heaven, where demons operate, will stop. Then he can make an easy transition. He implies that revival and any prayer movement and then the Second Coming will speed up when he is restored.

Mike Bickle Is Back!

First, my point of view.

I witnessed the goings on among the prophets and the crossover with Mike Bickle’s main church (or churches) and the Kansas City prophets on the one side and the Anaheim Vineyard, on the other side (where I attended). But I was never in church leadership or on staff at any time with any Vineyard. I was just an observer.

Let’s begin with a brute fact.

Bickle was reportedly abusing Tammy Woods shortly after her fourteenth birthday in 1980 until she got married in July of 1988. He was in his twenties when it began. Further, an independent report says he was seducing or trying to seduce seventeen or more young women all the way up to his exposure in October 2023. He has never fully repented.

He should have been in jail, not leading a movement from 1980 onwards. But the statute of limitation ran out, to his selfish benefit.

Moreover, who showed up at Kansas City? Augustine Alcala, Bob Jones, and Paul Cain. What do they have in common besides being prophets? All of them struggled with sexual sins (Alcala and Cain with homosexuality), and all of them committed clergy sexual abuse in one form or another, and Cain battled with alcoholism. It is naive to think that those men did not take detours from the straight and narrow path to engage in their sins from the 1980s and onwards. Alcala was excluded from Bickle’s ministry in 1984 and died of AIDS in 2007.

I was surprised to learn that Jones confessed his lust in 1991. I had wrongly thought he had gotten in trouble with some women (mother and daughter) at the end of his life, just before he passed away on February 14, 2014. Further, a report says Jones told Bickle that Bickle could keep his “anointing” if he did not consummate his sexual escapades. Wow. If true, a degraded, raunchy spiritual environment.

The Ernie Gruen report (see below) claims that one hundred people needed counseling after attending Bickle’s Kansas City church. Leaving a church is one thing, but getting counseling in the aftermath is something else! It proves the church was a mess and even spiritually dangerous. If twenty-five or even ten people needed counseling, this is still a scary number.

Does anyone want to bet against this proposition? Some of those leaving were women who were targeted by Bickle.

Many prophecies and visions and trips to heaven were given by various prophets and people and claimed by Bickle himself.

Here’s one.

In the large, black horse vision or dream (let’s call it a vision), in September of 1984, the claim is that Alcala had a vision of a black horse, sent by Satan or represented Satan himself. The horse was storming towards the prophetic movement, when a small, white pony stood in its way. The black horse kicked the little pony on the right knee, a kick which tossed him off to the side. At that moment Bickle, who was sleeping in the same room as Alcala, woke up from a sharp pain in his right knee.

We learn very shortly later that the little white pony symbolized Bickle. (What a symbol of him!) So who was the black horse? They eventually decided it was Pastor Ernie Gruen, who will draw up a long document exposing the entire prophetic movement and Bickle’s Kansas City church in May of 1990, long after the vision in September of 1984. (Or Gruen may have been warning people about Kansas City Fellowship, or whatever name or names it had during the decade+, as far back as 1984, before his long document was published.)

Later, Bickle claimed he’s the one who had the vision. No stability of soul. He shifted other stories around, also. Truth is a slippery thing for some storytellers. He is not a reliable informant.

The prophetic history is fluid and can be applied and reapplied, wherever the leader (Bickle) of the movement wants the application to go. No matter what, though, the vision is interpreted to promote and protect the movement and turn Bickle into the victim who overcame the satanic attack. He’s the hero.

Now in his latest X post he claims the second heaven is attacking him again.

Is there a second-heaven attack? Probably, but not in the manner and not for the reason Bickle and his followers believe.

I believe that God allows, in his judgment, lying spirits to infiltrate churches that are led by men who displease him (see 1 Kings 22 and 2 Chron.18; see 1 Tim. 4:1), particularly men like the degraded Bickle. First Timothy 4:2 says those who listen to and speak from deceitful spirits have a seared conscience. Bickle seems to have a seared conscience. His reported constant grooming of seventeen+ young women over the years proves it. He’s still deceived in his staged comeback. The attack is ongoing, right now, with God’s permission. It’s his judgment on Bickle and the whole prophetic movement and history in Kansas City.

Next, I don’t believe in the visions and words from Cain, Jones, and Alcala (and any other prophets) in the 1980s and into the 1990s and later, as they relate to the alleged awesomeness of Kansas City Fellowship, Metro Vineyard, or Forerunner Church. And I don’t believe the whole prophetic movement and self-serving prophetic history of those churches or the International House of Prayer in Kansas City (IHOPKC). Prophetic self-promotion of Bickle and his movement is entirely suspect. Prophetic history can be manipulated.

There will be no “Charismatic Vatican” in Kansas City or anywhere else to lead a global movement. Instead, all churches have to work together to win the lost (unsaved) and teach and disciple the found (saved).

The prophetic history and movement–the whole storyline–depends heavily on a corrupt and unstable leader and unreliable informant of the movement and history, named Mike Bickle. He is definitely the hero and focus of the whole thing. His trip to heaven in a chariot to meet Michael the archangel, a claim which he reportedly used to seduce women (you were in the chariot with me!) or trips to the third heaven and divine visitations from angels and even Jesus himself always seem to shine the hero’s light on him.

By my observation, no legitimate man or woman of God has ever claimed so many heavenly visits, not even the famous missionaries of long ago, nor Paul the apostle himself. All these numerous (alleged) heavenly visits and angelic revelations by or for Bickle are red flags.

And for the record, I believe angels (messengers) can visit people in dreams or visions or in person. And sometimes God may allow a visit to heaven or hell (think of the NDEs). But not when numerous trips and visitations promote a leader of a polluted movement and turn him into an elite superstar.

Three Sources of Prophecy (only one is good)

Dreams and Visions: How to Interpret Them

Review of “7 Simple Ways to Test Prophecy” by Joshua Lewis of Remnant Radio

God’s judgment came crashing down on the Kansas City prophetic movement and history, at long last. The seventeen courageous victims finally exposed it all.

The bottom line: I don’t believe in the church (or churches) Bickle planted with the endless name changes. (The name changes would have been for me a massive red flag flapping in the wind of instability.) I don’t believe he will lead a global charismatic movement and form a “Charismatic Vatican” in Kansas City as its headquarters. I don’t believe the prophetic words and visions and trips to heaven endorsing him. Alcala, Jones, Cain, and Bickle himself are bad, self-serving informants to prop up the prophetic movement and history of Bickle’s church or churches. All four of them were under judgment from 1980 and beyond. Because of their terrible sins against his Son’s church, his temple, his body, God allowed them to come under satanic attack and delusions, in the bigger picture of the movement and history. Bickle is still under judgment today.

So, for all the corruption in the Kansas City prophetic history and movement, unrepentant Bickle is forever unfit for ministry.

I pray that the people of God will see through this and reject his attempt to return to ministry. I trust they won’t make excuses for him.

Mature Disciples Do Not Make Excuses for Unsound Christian Leaders (I list fourteen excuses and reply to them under each point)

Basic Facts and Allegations about Joni Lamb and Doug Weiss of Daystar TV

Review of Sam Storms’ Book ‘The Rise and Fall of the Kansas City Prophets’

Calling Leaders by Name to Repent

NEW: Challenges and Questions for the Remnant Radio Crew

Mike Bickle and His Team v. John Wimber and His Team

Anaheim Vineyard and the ‘Phenomena’

Observations on the Early Vineyard Movement

The New Apostolic Reformation

Observations on New Apostolic Reformation and Christian Nationalism