Love and Death in the House of Prayer
Rolling Stone magazine released a fascinating article, last week, about Tyler Deaton--a former student in the International House of Prayer (IHOP), who is under investigation related to the murder of his wife. The article is called Love and Death in the House of Prayer.I do not believe IHOP is responsible for the death of Bethany Deaton or for the actions of Tyler Deaton. But I share this article with my readers because it addresses some of the New Apostolic Reformation teachings promoted by IHOP, including a dominionist view of the end time.The following excerpt from the article is a pretty good description of what IHOP founder, Mike Bickle, teaches.
This is IHOP's most alluring tenet: God needs IHOPers to effect the Tribulation and bring Christ back to Earth. "The church causes the Great Tribulation," Bickle has preached. Before founding IHOP, he argued that "God intends us to be like gods. God has conceived in his heart of a plan to make a race of men that would live like gods on Earth." Bickle sometimes affects to know God as he would a peer. "I heard what I call the internal audible voice of the Lord," he has said. He claims that he visited heaven one night at 2:16 a.m., and the Lord charged him with preparing for an End Times ministry and seated him in a golden chariot that lifted off into the empyrean. At IHOP, where prophetic experiences are endemic, the mortal and divine commingle liberally.The vanguard of God's End Times army, according to Bickle, will be made up of young people, or "forerunners," seers specially attuned to the will of the Lord, "the best of all the generations that have ever been seen on the face of the Earth." For seven years of Tribulation, they will battle the Antichrist. When Christ returns, he will slaughter by sword in a single day the unsaved, and his warriors will rule heaven and Earth forevermore.IHOP is not the only charismatic movement in America to adopt this theology of aggressive prayer. A constellation of ministries shares its vision. Together, they make up what has been called the New Apostolic Reformation, a decades-old rebellion against traditional Christianity that counts millions of adherents worldwide; it has become such a force in evangelical America that Texas Gov. Rick Perry hosted an NAR prayer rally in Houston for his 2012 presidential campaign. As prayer rooms are established in ever more locations, according to NAR, the "seven mountains of culture" – government, business, family, educational systems, the media, arts and religion – will fall under its influence.
If you read the article, I'd like to hear your thoughts.
-- By Holly Pivec