Today we are going to have to go back a few years to 1983 and catch up with some of the Manchild Company clan. We begin today half-way across the globe in the city that never sleeps, no the other one, that is Cairo, Egypt. Here in the shadow of the pyramids we find one the followers of Branham, Mike Bickle, seeking after God. Just as Branham taught all those years before this pastor believes God will speak to him through the pyramids and through Egyptology. After many days of begging for God to speak he finally hears a voice telling him to go back to America to raise up a work that will touch the ends of the earth. The voice goes on to tell Bickle that many others have said yes to this but few have done it.
Now with the confirmation he needed Bickle comes back to St. Louis, this message from God was just a confirmation because a young prophet name Augustine had told him a similar message before he traveled to Cairo. It was here in St. Louis he was told to go to Kansas City for God to move. Once in Kansas City, Bickle started nightly prayer meetings with about 15 others that had come with him from St. Louis. These meetings were quickly organized under the name of the Kansas City Fellowship. Soon a vision was laid out of how this move would go forward, most of it directly taken from Branham’s ideas.
This included having Apostolic teams that would plant churches, having only one central church per city under the direct leadership of a few key elders. It also included The Joseph Company, whose main objective is to care for the poor, mostly those in needy countries, and The Israel Mandate; whose main objective is to usher in the vision in the Book of Revelation of bringing back key Jews and thus ushering in the second coming of Christ. The major and most disconcerting part of this vision was the Training Center were hands on training would take place, thus transferring the power to the students to carry on the latter day revival. This went hand in hand with the other major part of the vision of a 24/7 prayer center in Kansas City, later to become the first International House of Prayer in the world. The goal is now to have these ‘IHOPs’ in every major city in the world. All of this is part of Grace Ministries, what the KCF became known as, and Shiloh Ministries, the section of Grace Ministries dedicated to the prophetic.
Soon this group of Kansas City people was losing sight of why they moved there. Bickle brought in a prophet to reassure all those who were apart of it, his name was Bob Jones. Bob Jones held a 21 day fast at which time he predicts a 3 month drought and huge move of God resulting in large numbers of conversions, though this didn’t happen.
To understand where this is all headed we have pull in another person. So let’s go back a few years before all this to a pop group manager by the name of John Wimber.
While managing his music group John Wimber has a conversion to Christ and quickly joins a local Quaker church, the year was 1963. A few years later a group of his followers breaks from the original Quaker church and forms Wimber’s own church which becomes a Calvary Chapel. He befriends a prophet, Lonnie Frisbee, who until recently had been doing acid, it was during one of these acid trip that Frisbee received his calling into ministry from God.
Frisbee had earlier befriended Chuck Smith, of the original Calvary Chapel after Smith’s wife had a vision of letting hippies into the church and Chuck had his son-in-law go pick up a hippie and bring him back so that Chuck could meet him, Frisbee was that hippie. Soon Chuck and Frisbee would be working together to make Calvary Chapel the ‘hippie friendly’ church of Chuck’s wifes dream. It should be noted that Frisbee would often come to the services with the smell of drugs still on him and lived a semi-open homosexual lifestyle. It should also be noted that at this time Chuck Smith was very open to the ideas of prophecy and the manifestations that the latter rain prophets had been teaching, and in fact had earlier in life worked for Paul Cain. Smith has had claimed that Cain and in turn Branham was a major influence upon his life.
Frisbee had by the early 70’s pulled away from Chuck Smith due to ideological differences. It was during these same years that Kathryn Kuhlman befriended Frisbee and would have him on her show.
By the late 70’s and early 80’s Frisbee was pouring into Wimber (and preaching at his church) and giving Wimber prophecies while Frisbee sat under his deerskin coat which he claimed was filled with the Holy Spirits anointing. Along with Wimber, Frisbee would also influence and lead many others, including Greg Laurie, who was very taken by Frisbee ‘way out’ style and would model much of his early ministry after Frisbee. In 1982 Wimber was pulling away from the Calvary Chapel group, some of which had to do with Frisbee’s influence, and changed the name of the church he led to the Vineyard Christian Fellowship.
By 1983 Wimber was so influenced by this prophet that he would move his church to Anaheim, California to be able to have a closer contact with Frisbee. Wimber began teaching a class at Fuller Theological Seminary about the third wave phenomenon, including modern day miracles, healings, and signs and wonders. The class included laying on of hands from Wimber and his co-teacher C. Peter Wagner. Many of the teachings came directly from the teachings of Branham and Frisbee.
It was 1983 when Bob Jones had first come to the Kansas City Fellowship. After the initial fast and visions growth began happening. Soon the revival here was growing and a number of national prophets were invited to take part in the leadership of this church.
Soon Bob Jones was bringing in many other prophetic leaders. These other leaders included Bill Hamon, Rick Joyner, Lou Engel, and John Paul Jackson to name a few. It was during this time that the leaders within the KCF claimed that soon the world wide church would be controlled by 35 key ‘super apostles’ all of which will come from the KCF (it should also be noted that this did include the Catholic church, which Bob Jones and Paul Cain have both been influencing and are both even knighted within the Knights of Malta, along with many other KCF prophets).
During this time Jones, Bickle, and other would have angelic visits by multiple angels and even by Jesus himself. Jones though would mostly be visited by an angel named Emma; sometimes he called this angel Emma-O. Emma will be mentioned again and in more detail at that time, but that will wait till the next installment.
By 1987 the Kansas City Prophets, as they had become known, were the talk almost every Charismatic circle. It was this year that Bickle and some other KCP personnel met with Paul Cain, who to them was a major prophet due to his direct contact to Branham. Soon Cain was in Kansas City and quickly became an in-house voice of God. It was soon Cain and Jones who were leading the other prophets. The following year Bickle meets with John Wimber in October while both are doing a trip overseas and after some persuasion convinces him to change the focus of the Vineyard churches to that of the modern day prophetic movement (I.E. The Latter Day Prophets, the Latter Day Rain).
Within four months of Wimber meeting with Bickle, Paul Cain is meeting and pouring into the Vineyard Leadership, these meetings included Wimber himself along with Jack Deere. Within 7 month of that meeting, it now being August of 1989, Wimber is awed by the leadership within the Kansas City Prophets that he sends a mandate out to all Vineyard pastors to go and be ministered to by the Kansas City Prophets personally.
At this same time the Kansas City Fellowship became a Vineyard church. Within months of this transfer to the covering of the Vineyard churches documents and witnesses begin coming forward with claims of wrongdoings from within the Kansas City Prophets as the leaders had become known. Ernie Grune was at the forefront of this new group of people, a former KCP himself. He begins telling all who will listen about how the KCF were sending out false prophets, making prophecies of local church closing and joining them, the covering up of lies that ran rampant amongst the leaders, among other allegations. He pens a 233 page booklet proving these allegations and sends it to Christian leaders across the globe.
The leaders within the KCP deny all allegations and then submit to a full investigation by Vineyard, bringing all ministries under the Vineyard covering. Wimber steps in personally and corrects all ‘issues’ within the community, in return Gruen agrees to cease with his claims and his 233pg booklet.
By 1991 Grace Fellowship, as the church had now become known, had regained some control and sent the KCP on a world wide ‘revival’ tour under the authority and support of Vineyard. This tour let multiple pastors within Vineyard and other denominations to meet the prophets first hand and be anointed by them. This helped the KCP regain respect and power that the allegations took away.
All was going well with the tour until November when more allegations came out, this time about Bob Jones. Women began claiming Jones had them strip naked in his office to be ‘naked in front of the Lord.’ These allegations rocked the KCP to their core and soon Jones was asked to leave the group altogether.
But Paul Cain picks up were Jones left off and becomes one of the head prophets of the Kansas City clan, now having even more influence that before. Now that the American churches had a restored trust in the KCP they begin to focus on England. The next 2 years Cain travels extensively to England and meeting with Dr. R. T. Kendall. By 1993 Cain has joined Westminster Chapel and by the end of 1993 is holding conferences in England with Kendall in an attempt to reunite the charismatic and reformed evangelical churches.
It is here where things start getting crazy. Before long a revival is breaking out in Lakeland, Florida. A pastor wanting revival travels to Argentina and another imparts the laughing spirit upon the Vineyard churches. But all that will have to wait till next time. The final installment of this 4 part series that will bring us through all that and right up to the Florida Outpouring of ’08 showing where every key player in it has come from.
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