The Good, The Bad, and the Unqualified
Welcome to the 100th. Post, Sorry this one is REALLY long.
Welcome to the 100th post. I have been thinking a lot about what to post and just how far down the rabbit hole to go with this. In the last few months, I have spent a fair amount of time encouraging people to get closer to the Lord and away from the “system.” But even Jesus had to speak about the negative from time to time, to wake people up. So in some way, this is that post. FYI, this is not all the information that could be said on some of these topics, that kind of stuff is now coming out via other things like the legal system.
I am just old enough to remember the effect of John Wimber’s teachings and how it impacted many places. It was simple, to the heart and it released many people effectively into the healing ministry. I saw several power encounters myself. All in all, good memories of a cleaner, simpler time.
Context about Me and what I am saying
I normally prefer to write about other things like what you have seen so far on my stack, as well as my work on some Christian Science fiction stories. However, it was the Lord who sent me down another path. For 15 years I was a member of the Morningstar Fellowship of Ministries, with several years of that on staff at the Fort Mill facility. During this time I would have described myself as VERY pro-Morningstar.
It was in the last few years that the Lord started to open my eyes and my wife and I seriously wanted out of the ministry at any cost. I was planning on just going silent about my time in that ministry like the majority of other people like John Mark McMillan. But the Lord stopped me and asked a question, “What is the Legal definition of the word complicit?”
This told me a few things.
1. I could not remain silent.
2. A time of legal action was coming to the ministry.
There is a small collection of people I know who are doing research. This research started after the Todd Bentley fiasco and continued right on through what I have called the Bickle Pickle to what others have now called, “The Morningstar Earthquake.” So based on memories, lots of research, and stories told to me, I am going to paint a broad picture of what I understand.
Warning; the following may conflict with people’s understandings.
At the end of the 1970’s the Charismatic was taking on a new form, this form was being led by John Wimber. It was taking the complicated and making it simple so that the common people could understand. Some of this had its seeds planted by the Jesus People thinking, other roots of this could easily be traced back to John Wimber’s Quaker roots.
Without any planning, the simplicity of this flew in the face of older outpourings. The dog and pony shows of previous moves like A.A. Allen and Aimee Semple McPherson that were highly connected to image, show, and glamor were rendered pointless. People’s outward image of their make-believe self-importance evaporated under the real-life, down-to-earth ways the Holy Spirit was bringing. Suits and ties, and other forms of formal Sunday clothing, started to evaporate and go the way of the dinosaur as did much of the pretense on the ministry stage.
Jesus who always had a heart for the poor, had now become personal, relatable to the everyday, common person. As a result, we could all “do the stuff,” healing was happening on a large scale and around every corner. No fancy building or name was required to get the job done.
Wimber was a man of integrity and he required medical verification for healings. If you walked in with a condition that was seen by a doctor, he wanted you to go back and get it confirmed that the condition was gone. This had an explosive effect, as it dumbfounded many doctors and surgeons who later came to the Lord. Do we see this anywheres in the Charismatic leadership today?
The Charismatic had blossomed into a new creation. The devil could not directly attack this, had he done so he would have only poured gas on the small fire and it would have spread into a powerful wildfire. So he went for the next best, he got unqualified leaders in front of the movement.
Basically, if you can not stop a movement, then put your leaders in front and change its direction. This happened in the early to mid-80s, and suddenly names like Joyner, Deere, Bickel, and more tried to connect themselves to what was going on. These people were like candy, sweet to the taste, but rot to the teeth. I wonder if John ever knew he had sexual predators and government agents under his feet?
FYI, I highly suggest this video below for clarification on what I just said…
Unfortunately, many high-level prophetic people have been pulled into working for the government. Check out a recent statement from Kim Clement’s daughter on “Project Morningstar,” for the US government.
I remember in those days, various theologians attempted to enter into the movement to help this new expression of Christianity gain a solid theological footing. But the names I just mentioned rejected them saying that they “got this because we have our own theologian, Jack Deere.” This in my opinion was a bad move.
(FYI, if you're having a problem with my using Jack’s name in this I highly suggest you read this… P.S. This is not the first time I have heard about this.)
I also recall Wimber saying that it was the prophetic that saved the Vineyard and that later it was the prophetic that almost killed it. What an odd statement.
John tried to deal with Rick’s pride issues and failed as I heard rumors that Rick was trying to merge MorningStar and the Vineyard together as one movement. Thank God it never happened. As time moved along John then had to deal with many other messes that were popping up like the sexual deviant Kevin Prosch and more.
John, whose background was Quaker had a good understanding of God’s heart to the common man. The people who connected themselves for selfish purposes did not, and as a result the needs of the poor, widows, and orphans slowly got pushed to the back of the bus in favor of miraculous power encounters by all the new ministries that suddenly exploded before our eyes.
Then from the end of the 80s to the early 90s some “Christian ministers” went overseas and got “blessed.” Names like Arnot, and Ché Ahn entered the stage and the Toronto blessing became an outpouring for the kundalini spirit who was masquerading as the Holy Spirit. We in the Charismatic took the bait, and now this Hindu demon is fully embedded in our ranks. About this time some elements of the Charismatic shifted and became the Hyper-Charismatics.
Now I know at this point Ché Ahn’s name has not really crossed people’s minds as much as other names to investigate, but it should. It was not that long ago here in North Idaho that I spoke with a man who had a ministry dealing with the removal of demons. He gained a little bit of a reputation, Ché Ahn church heard about it and sent a team to help out. He soon realized that this team was in need of having spirits cast out of them, so he did.
This team was extremely grateful for the new freedom. When they returned Ché Ahn was not happy with them. He pressured them and eventually with their paychecks hanging over their head, they allowed Ché Ahn to lay hands on them and pray for them. Just like Jesus’ warning, their problems returned, seven times stronger. So who do you think Ché Ahn works for?
This is only a small sampling of our hidden history, and for legal reasons, I will not say more about some of these people who are well-known for suing people, as I am confident God has a way of making the rest of the story come out in his own way.
Modern
The Charismatic is a mess. In the end, to fix this mess, it will take several well-known men and women in the future with good reputations to come together and replant the Charismatic in good soil. In the past, the Lord did much of this through Wimber, but now I feel it will take more to continue this work. So many people do not trust what they see now for good reasons. The fake is now more common than the real, and we with itching ears have become tired of the ear aches. It’s time to hit the reset button.
Not long ago I did a post called, “10 Things.” This post broke all the records and doubled my subscriber list. Jesus said, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” John 12:32. Apparently if you write a simple post about Jesus, and strip away all the modern paint and stained glass Jesus really does become brighter to people.
I love the response back that Martha Gayle gave to the post, “Click here to read it.”
We are a people who now stand hungry, we have been eating the junk food of distraction and it does not satisfy us. What we have been given is so far away from Jesus’ words in John 4:13-14. The reality is we need new leaders, and I feel Jesus has been preparing them, getting them ready.
Generally, we only have a surface understanding of Jesus's mission on Earth. In reality, it was simple. So Simple that our minds can not handle it so we complicate the message with tradition and anything else we think it needs. Jesus’s, restoration through his blood to a new way of life, building a family for the Father can only come one way. To accomplish this his redeemed now have the potential to become leaders to gather and grow more. This requires us to always be checking the quality of the leaders we produce.
Because of our narrow understanding of leadership, we often point to the qualification of elders and fail to say more beyond that. The reality is Jesus is our pattern of ministry, and leaders should closely follow the pattern he gave us. As I hinted about in the post “10 Things” I feel leaders also need to compare their lives against what Jesus said in Matthew 5:3-12. This is something I will cover a bit more deeply in “The Calling, Part Three.”
To date, there is a vacuum in leadership as quality has been replaced with sub-par quality (Isaiah 3:4). These are the leaders who were trained by the world to put on a show for the masses and never learned to display Jesus before the world. Many of these now lead compromised lives like Paul Keith Davis who left his Christian wife he started his ministry with, for a woman half his age.
When all this first started erupting, Todd Bentley was getting exposed. But all that quickly shuffled off to the side when Doc Brown’s tribunal made everyone stop talking and then Covid came. Now we have better momentum and things are still moving. I mean Brown tried to stop the Bickle Pickle, but the IHOP crowd rolled right over the top of him.
Other News
But there are other issues, issues related to who supports who that should be investigated. Case in point does the American Baptist Denomination still financially support the World Council of Churches and the UN? I know they did in the 80’s and 90’s. It was also during those days the denomination had witches and Bi-sexual Buddhists openly teaching at the highest levels.
The World Council of Churches has been one of the main historical mental breeding grounds for the woke, liberal, and homosexual mindset that has invaded Christian denominations worldwide. Here are some quotes from an American Baptist gathering in Canberra Australia, 1991. This was called the “Re-Imaging Conference,” where 4000 people gathered.
~"I don't think we need a theory of atonement at all. I think Jesus came for life and to show us something about life. I don't think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff ... we just need to listen to the God within.”~ Delores Williams of Union Theological Seminary
~"My bowel is Buddhist bowel, my heart is Buddhist heart, my right brain is Confucian brain, and my left brain is Christian brain.”~Virginia Mollenkott
~"When we do trance healing, we believe that this life-giving energy came from god and it is everywhere, it is in the sun, in the ocean, from the ground and it is from the trees ... We ask god's permission to use this life-giving energy for our sisters and brothers in need. If you feel very tired and you don't have any energy to give, what you do is ... go to a big tree and ask it to `give me some of your life energy” ~ Dr. Chung Hyun-Kyung
During this “Christian” event, worshipers were encouraged to express and celebrate their devotion to Sophia, the biblical goddess of creation.
These three women influenced and taught at major Christian Seminary, influencing the thousands of pastors we now have today in many of the mainline denominations. And now it is these woke pastors who are leading the body of Christian lemmings off today’s cliff, will we wake up?
Morningstar
FYI; there is a prophetic word given in 2018 that I believe is being fulfilled at this very moment. I will be discussing this in the near future. As well as additional prophetic insight from myself and another former Morningstar person.
I remember Rick Joyner saying at many of his conferences that Morningstar was a “target-rich environment.” This is absolutely true if you're paying attention to current events. Was this statement a self-fulfilling prophecy of this moment in time we are now in? Let me do a quick recap.
Ricks's replacement, Chris Reed stepped down with a slightly confusing letter. Rick then posted a message calling him “deceived” but then later scrubbed the message. The Roys Report then did a dive into the subject and got a testimony (that may have been leaked by Rick according to Chris) of an MSU student that Chris got way too close to.
This forced Reed to do a video where he explained his side of the story as well as the reason he left was related to another sexual incident before Chris arrived. This incident concerns Erickson Lee, a police officer who ran a youth group. Lee and his friend Chase Portello took advantage of more than one young boy. This resulted in a lawsuit and now two more lawsuits were filed that already conflicted with Rick Joyners online statements.
Because of Chris and his wife’s background, they felt that they could not stand up for the victims while defending the church, so they left. Time passed and then Justin Perry put out his video adding some clarity to the issues. Apparently, the issue of restoration of Reed fell on him and Tom Hardiman. According to Justin's story, all this plus other events connected to MSU contributed to him leaving Morningstar.
Just as the dust was thinking about settling Rick did a Sunday morning message to calm people down. Chris who had waited two weeks then spoke up, calling Rick and Justin liars. Chris has also insinuated that the real reason Justin stepped down is connected more deeply to the Erickson case than what Justin was saying.
So who is telling the truth? Chris as I said at least provided some evidence. But everyone except Kathryn has a ministry reputation at stake, so she (at the moment) is most likely the most truthful.
Note: a chronological unfolding of these videos and much more will be posted in a few days. Look for a post called, “Icabod.”
Now will others come forward and start speaking? Will we see a Dave Yarnes or perhaps a Tom Hardiman video? Who knows, perhaps Rick will encourage someone from the shadows to step forward like he did during the Todd Bentley fiasco to come forward as a character reference to say how good he is. If that happens then you can expect a video to two to pop up on Facebook from Leonard Jones, Don Potter, and maybe Steve Thompson will even come out of hiding. I say this because I did hear from one source that Steve was speaking to Mike Bickle, giving advice on Rick's behalf shortly after he fell last year.
My Insight
Let me add my insight, based on my time there and what I know from conversations. From what I have been told it was Bobbie Conner who had the prophetic word that Chris would replace Rick. Because of recent events and ongoing issues of the last few years, some people, including some board members feel Bobbie messed up this one.
But I disagree. Due to the mounting sin issues within leadership at the highest level the Lord gave them the leader they were going to get according to his word. “I will make mere youths their officials; children will rule over them.” Isaiah 3:4 Morningstar leadership got an immature leader, a man who could lead a small congregation but was not equipped for a larger, international ministry. And unfortunately, the people paid for it. Now don’t misunderstand me when I say immature. I am not saying “ungodly” or “unsaved,” as there are many leaders who can do a good job with smaller congregations, but are just not ready to take on bigger ministries.
I would also argue Chris actually fulfilled what the Lord wanted. It was not what he (Chris) wanted or anyone else wanted, but it forced the door of exposure wide open. He became the oil to the rusted gears that refused to move. Chris is young and he may need to get a regular job for a while to pay the bills, but I suspect in time he will grow in wisdom and people will hear from him again. I would encourage him not to rush back into ministry too soon.
I have read the court documents of the first lawsuit concerning Erickson Lee, these documents conflict with Rick’s claims (that he retracted, but I have a copy) that no one in a leadership position was named. I am amazed at how many names I recognize in this lawsuit. The lawsuit also establishes the claim that there have been several other sexual abuse issues since Morningstar was founded that were never followed up on or swept under the rug.
This is a fact I have no problem believing. I have heard several stories when I worked for the ministry, and right now I am hoping certain key people speak up. These people tried to bring the issues to leadership. One of them worked at CSCL and even tried to talk to Rick but, Rick shut her down. So I hope this person comes forward to tell her story.
From what I have learned Morningstar has a long, hidden history of sexual deviancy. What you are seeing today, is but a sample of a much larger, older issue of the hyper-grace theology.
A Message to the Morningstar Board Members.
One of the common things you are now hearing from people’s testimonies is that Rick lied. As a reminder to the board here are the qualifications for an elder according to scripture. (AKA leader of a church)
One who desires the office
Above reproach
Husband of one wife
Sober-minded
Not a drunkard
Self-controlled
Respectable
Hospitable
Able to Teach
Not Violent
Gentle
Not Quarrelsome
Not a lover of Money
Manager of his household (children follow the Lord)
Not a recent convert
Well thought of by outsiders
Because I am trying to keep this stack short I will only address a few of these, 2, 5, 10, 13, 14.
#2 Above reproach, can any of you on the board honestly say that with all these testimonies about Rick, he is currently above reproach? These claims are serious and should be INDEPENDENTLY investigated.
#5 Not a drunkard, I would love to talk deeply on this issue, but I have no desire for Rick to sue me. So to the board members who have attended the Knights of Malta parties, since when does a church need a bartender? How about the Morningstar Lodge or Dave Yarnes’ basement? Do you need people to come forward and testify? If so, I know the names of a few who might be encouraged to be brave.
#10 Not Violet. I have never heard of Rick attacking anyone. But I have heard of bursts of anger whenever he believed someone on staff had betrayed him. There have been staff members whom he has had a security lock them out of their own offices as punishment for what he thought was betrayal.
#13 Not a Lover of Money, dear board members please investigate the following. What happened to the large sum of gratuity money that Hilton Head gave to Morningstar? What happened to the 10K that was given to fix the roof in 2017? What happened to all the money (40K if I recall correctly) that was given to fix the lower kitchen?
#14 https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/03/28/pastor-rick-joyner-has-five-kids-all-of-them-reject-his-radical-christianity/ Dear board, I know Rick has invented a prophetic word to get around his Children not following the Lord. But seriously are you going to say that personal prophecy now trumps scripture? For if you remove the measuring stick, what shall you measure by?
Comment to the Board. (If you are the real board)
Bob Weiner, it’s time to man up, pull your big boy pants on call a board meeting, and save the ministry. I believe the Lord desires this ministry to go forward, but it can not in its current condition or leadership. Darkness only grows bolder in the dark, do you really want to stand before the Lord and explain your actions? Bob, you have a small window. More is coming out, A LOT MORE. Bob, do you really need another testimony on this issue, fine then click here and watch.
Last Bits
Generally, I like to keep these posts shorter than this one, sorry about that. Substack has already forced me to shorten this post.
Like I said at the start, sometimes you need to expose the negative, to wake people up so that they will step away from the unknown darkness around them. Hopefully, you have also noticed that this is not the primary focus of what I normally write about.
But let’s face it, when the Bible speaks about coming out of Babylon so that you do not share in her sins. This means to get free we all need to understand what Babylon is so that we do not jump from one Babylonian pool into another pool of filth.
Up next.
“Icabod” will be posted on the 28th.
“The Calling, Part Two” on Oct, 2