Apprising Ministries has shown you that Francis Chan Has Endorsed New Apostolic Teacher Mike Bickle. Here we’ll consider the post Francis Chan Message At IHOPKC OneThing 2013 by John Lambert, “an Activist, Speaker, and Consultant with the US Center for World Mission,” a movement founded by the late Ralph Winter. ((http://www.uscwm.org/our-story/birth-of-a-movement, accessed 1/7/14.))

Let me show you the following bad example set by Chan as one reason why his recent decision to endorse Mike Bickle and IHOP at their annual Onething Conference, and to allow himself to be used by them, is wrong. First of all, Lambert writes:

As I said in my previous post on this, Francis Chan was a great example of humility.  He prayed,

“God, I don’t want anything coming out of my lips that doesn’t honor you. Speak through me. May I say anything you want me to say.”

Chan started off by admitting that this was the first time he has been to an IHOPKC event.  He went online and said he thought, “Man, there’s a lot of good things going on there.”  Rather than simply believing criticism, he chose to look more deeply at both sides and take this opportunity to share the message the Lord gave him. (source)

Certainly as Christians we should be humble and pray. However if one is already in disobedience, as Francis Chan was to give his blessing to a false prophet like Mike Bickle and his IHOP organization, then I’m afraid that they’ve already set themselves up for being deceived; and for failing to honor God.

Lambert tells us, “Rather than simply believing criticism, [Francis Chan] chose to look more deeply at both sides and take this opportunity to share the message the Lord gave him.” Rather, based upon what Chan gushed in his endorsement of Bickle and IHOP, we’d be better off saying that Chan would simply choose to ignore that criticism.

And by doing so, Francis Chan ended up lending his considerable credibility with younger evangelicals to the seriously false teachings of Mike Bickle, which are then perpetuated through that IHOP youth movement. This becomes apparent as Lambert offers:

I think that his coming speaks much about him and also about the leader of the IHOPKC movement, Mike Bickle.  If Bickle was what some people make him out to be, it would have been potentially dangerous proposition to invite someone to like Francis Chan to address his ministry’s conference.

But the IHOP team not only invited Chan, but gave him free reign to speak what the Lord put on his heart. This should speak volumes about the leadership of IHOP and their confidence in following Jesus and the truth of God’s Word. (source)

On the contrary; Francis Chan’s sappy sentimental experience over doctrine approach to serving the Lord, which leads to a wishy-washy view of Scripture, made him the perfect invitee. I’m not surprised at all Bickle and IHOP gave Chan “free reign” to speak. Likely they knew he wouldn’t be critical of them anyway.

And sure enough, they were right. As Lambert points out prior to his assessment of Chan’s message:

Many of my friends said they were left weeping and praying before the Lord.  From my view, many people were praying with their heads down in response to the message.  It was a message that I feel was well received by those in attendance. (source)

Herein lies another example of spiritual danger brought on by apostatizing evangelicalism’s embrace of Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism and charismania. For you see, weeping and praying—even with heads down—to some supposed well-received message, in and of itself, proves nothing.

For example, you can see this all the time in services held by New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) spiritual wing nuts like Bickle or his friend Apostlette Cindy Jacobs. We would even expect to have seen this on occasion in papal services at the time of the Protestant Reformation as well.

Yes, Francis Chan’s message did contain many of the right words in regard to the Gospel; but, I would offer, they were not spoken in the power of God. That’s what missing in these services. The fact is, Chan was dead wrong to endorse NAR heretic Mike Bickle and his egregious cult-like IHOP followers.

In closing this, for now, it’s my opinion that much of the visible Christian community is absolutely rife with a growing spiritual blindness. In that regard, now each of us really needs to seriously begin coming to grips with when one is to separate themselves from those who run into that darkness to spread apostasy.

And I say, pastor Andy Foster does give us some solid food for thought along this line when he offers that:

The concept of ‘platform fellowship’, as defined by many conservative evangelicals, allows them to justify in their own minds the freedom to associate with, worship with, preach with and lecture with those that, on a strictly Biblical basis, they should distance themselves from. It is in many ways an attempt to find a way for men to bring together what God has put asunder!

Often this ‘platform fellowship’ involves participating in an event with those who are in the apostasy or professing Christians who are disobediently compromised with apostasy. While association on a platform does not necessarily mean a personal agreement with every speaker in every non-fundamental issue of the faith, it must at a minimum, entail the recognition of any differences as being within the pale of Biblical orthodoxy and that nothing prohibiting a joint exercise in worship exists. (source)

Further reading

• JOHN PIPER TO PREACH WITH HILLSONG PASTRIX CHRISTINE CAINE AT PASSION 2014
• STEVEN FURTICK PROMOTING JOYCE MEYER AT HIS ELEVATION CHURCH
• SEPARATION FROM THIS UNGODLY WORLD