If we look up “spiritual abuse” in a concordance, it’s not a term we will find. Does the Word of God speak to this dynamic? Does God care? Who really hates what false prophets and teachers do to the sheep of God’s flock? If I or someone I know has experienced devastation at the hands of people who spoke for God, is God angry? Does He want them to quietly pray for the restoration of a spiritual abuser, silently submit, “put up with” whatever the great man or woman of God throws their way? Does God want us to be silent, protect reputations, and “cover over” the errors of people who’ve told us they’re sent by God but destroy the sheep? Should we pray for them to be restored to ministry?

In this video, I walk through 2 Corinthians 11 with references to some of my own experience . While I was never a part of IHOPKC, I tell the story of how a sensual spiritual experience as a young teen visiting the Toronto Blessing and listening to Mike Bickle teach locked me in a steel trap of BELIEF that God had sent special, anointed ones to impart and distribute His Spirit to the church. 

Not just me but a church, a family, countless other families who in the early 90’s were turned from focus on the Gospel and Bible to chasing the latest prophecy, movement, or spiritual experience. The ongoing ripple effect of destruction, division, and deception is beyond description: churches that disintegrated, marriages and families destroyed, faith-burnt unbelieving children, sexual immorality and even sexual abuse that marked the most ardent “intercessors,” even total geographic redistribution in pursuit of movements. Everyone seems unable to connect the dots back to the invasion of another spirit, another gospel. It’s heartbreaking to see believers defrauding into thinking this is just normal life in Christ. 

It was years before the Lord would utterly destroy that trap and free me through the overwhelming power and absolute certainty of His Word in the Scripture. But He did.

I hope that believers who are in the midst of shock, trauma, maybe rage or soul-wracking doubt can hear me testify that Jesus, the real Jesus, is the Way out. And contrary to what they told us, He called His people to be ABSOLUTELY unwilling to put up with the abuse that inevitably attends false teachers and prophets.