Bethel and Patricia King responded to my video on Shawn Bolz and Cover-up Culture

Summary

BibleThinker Summary

Episode: Bethel and Patricia King responded to my video on Shawn Bolz and Cover-up Culture

Host: Mike Winger
Date: February 1, 2026

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Overview

This episode is an in-depth response by Mike Winger to the aftermath and public reactions following his exposé on Shawn Bolz, alleged cover-up culture in parts of the charismatic church, and specifically how Bethel Church and affiliated leaders like Patricia King, Che Ahn, Danny Silk, and others have responded. Mike stresses the purpose of this episode is not to celebrate or claim victory but to urge thorough biblical accountability, transparency, and reform in church leadership—especially in instances of leader misconduct, abuse, and prophetic abuses.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Importance of Public Accountability (00:02–09:30)

• Mike frames the issue as about authenticity and biblical fidelity, not personal vendetta or reputation.
  • "This is not some kind of victory lap. It has nothing to do with any of that... These are very real, very serious issues for the body of Christ and the well being and health of the Charismatic church." (A, 00:03)
• Highlights Bethel's public apology regarding Shawn Bolz as "amazing," noting it has had a significant ripple effect among other leaders.
  • "Bethel actually apologized in a way that I'm going to be straightforward, was amazing." (A, 00:23)
• However, Mike cautions strongly that "apology isn't closure," and substantial concerns remain requiring public, sustained response.

2. Biblical Precedent for Testing Repentance and Integrity (00:05–00:12)

• Mike draws a parallel to Joseph's testing of his brothers before restoration, asserting that public transparency is for the church's well-being, not personal vindication.

3. Systemic Cover-up Culture and the ‘Culture of Honor’ (00:13–00:26)

• Mike delineates how the "culture of honor," especially as popularized by Danny Silk, can foster environments where abuse and cover-up occur:
  • “Danny Silk… is one of the architects of this culture... resulting in predatory or abusive situations where you have bad leaders or fake things going on and that results in cover up culture.” (A, 00:42)
• He acknowledges that confronting abuse publicly is unpleasant but essential, as efforts to address such issues internally or quietly tend to be ineffective.

4. Synopsis of Shawn Bolz’s Alleged Misconduct and Its Aftermath (00:31–01:00)

• Details years-long abuse and deception by Shawn Bolz (forced nakedness, false prophecy using Facebook, etc.), and Bethel’s platforming of Bolz despite warnings.
• Points out the larger web of problematic figures linked to Bethel, e.g., Bob Hartley, Bob Jones, Mike Bickle, Paul Cain, William Branham.
  • “When I opened the door to learn about, say Sean Bolz’s situation, other people came with other situations. And I started finding out that it’s huge.” (A, 01:01)

5. Initial Problematic Responses by Bethel Leadership (01:07–01:47)

• Plays and analyzes Chris Vallotton’s initial sermon, where Chris frames public rebuke as potentially reckless—defending privacy over public accountability and raising concern over permanently ruining a leader’s reputation.
  • “As soon as you say, you know, Henry is unsafe… you just destroyed that person’s reputation… Are you sure that person is actually trying to be evil? Are you sure?” (B, 14:37–16:13)
• Chris (in this older message) casts doubt on the reliability of social media investigations, suggests Mike may have financial motives, and privileges “restoration and mercy” over discipline.
  • “Whole documentaries get made about Bill and I and our movement...where someone makes thousands of dollars telling a story...” (B, 18:56)
  • “We live in a culture of fault finding and judgment and we hear half the story and we have a lynch mob again.” (B, 53:10)
• Mike rebuts these points, explaining his content on cover-up culture is not monetized, and that scriptural instructions on elder discipline (1 Timothy 5:19–20, Matthew 18, 1 Corinthians 5) require public rebuke for persistent sin in leaders.

6. Scriptural Mandate for Public Rebuke (01:48–02:50)

• Mike insists on the biblical demand for public rebuke of leaders who persist in sin and exposes the evasion of such by Bethel leadership.
  • “As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear.” (Citing 1 Timothy 5:20; A, 33:54)
• He highlights cognitive and practical dissonance in Bethel’s approach: privately warning select leaders—but not informing the broader church or public, thus enabling ongoing harm.

7. The Shift: Bethel’s Public Apology and Its Significance (From 02:51)

• After public and internal outcry, Bethel pivots with a public service of confession and repentance by Dan Fairley, Chris Vallotton, and Bill Johnson, openly naming “serious mistakes” regarding Shawn Bolz and the mishandling of accountability.
  • “What we’re going to talk about this morning is what we did wrong.” (D, 63:13)

Notable Steps and Statements:

• Dan Fairley:
  • Admits Bethel’s leadership “did not properly and fully discipline and bring to closure and bring out the truth” about Shawn Bolz. (D, 64:55)
  • Credits alumni and public pressure as catalysts for action.
  • “We have hurt and scared people because we did not tell the truth early enough, long enough, or loud enough. And this is a completely fair criticism.” (D, 69:12)
• Chris Vallotton:
  • Expresses changed perspective after an encounter with God, takes ownership, and apologizes to victims and the church.
    • “On Monday morning I had an encounter with the Lord and I see things quite differently…” (B, 77:23)
  • “We put him on a global platform… when he failed… it was our responsibility to tell the people…that didn’t happen. And that’s on me.” (B, 87:22)
  • “From this day forward, no one will ever say that in this house again. That guy we put on a platform, not our responsibility.” (B, 116:40)
• Bill Johnson:
  • Admits personal failure and “willful blindness,” stating, “I became so committed to just seeing Sean protected and come into a place of health that I just was foolish. And how it started is, I didn’t believe the allegations were true… over a period of time it became obvious… I became blind to it…” (E, 127:10–128:16)
  • Directly apologizes to victims for “contributing to trauma.”
  • Commits to prioritizing victims and giving “cleaner attention” to the church responsibilities.
    • “I promise to try to learn this one better.” (E, 148:15)

Community/Leadership Dynamics:

• Bethel leadership acknowledges that moving forward, authority for such decisions will be broadened (“the decisions…how to handle when leaders or individuals go awry won’t land with Bill anymore…” A, 154:34).
• Safe Church process with third-party accountability is promoted (A, 158:08–160:25).

A Notable Quote:

• "Repentance requires bringing forth fruit. Because 'so sorry' doesn't really get it if you just keep doing the same stupid thing over and over. So there needs to be a shift in our cultural values in that we focus on safety and security of our global community." – Chris Vallotton (B, 104:13)

• Steve Moore, a new leader, publicly thanks Mike for “protecting victims and giving them a voice” (F, 165:00), and pledges ongoing conviction and change in leadership culture.

8. Remaining Gaps, Concerns & Calls for Further Action

• Mike applauds Bethel’s confession, seeing it as a possible start of real change—if followed by continued transparency and reform.
  • “If it’s the first step on a journey, it’s a beautiful first step. If it’s the last step… it’s going to be a problem.” (A, 99:36)
• Insists other issues remain unaddressed:
  • Handling of figures like Bob Jones, Paul Cain, Bob Hartley, Mike Bickle.
  • The ongoing impact of problematic theological resources (e.g., The Physics of Heaven, the Passion Translation).
  • Propensity to minimize or obfuscate public correction, or re-frame close relationships as mere “acquaintance” after scandal, as illustrated with Patricia King and others (G, 191:47–193:12).

9. Responses from Che Ahn, Patricia King, Danny Silk, and Others (from ~02:50 onwards)

• Che Ahn, Patricia King, and others attempt to externalize responsibility for accountability to one another.
  • Each claims Sean Bowls wasn't really 'their responsibility' despite jointly commissioning him as a prophet (A, 189:23+).
• Mike calls this classic “cover-up culture” and presents evidence of collaboration among leaders in putting Bolz in positions of influence while later distancing themselves.
• Patricia King is critiqued for shifting language from “dear friend”/prophetic mentor to “ministry acquaintance” after Bolz's exposure.
  • "Now, after he's exposed, we were ministry acquaintances primarily..." (A, 192:43)
• Danny Silk’s post is perceived as a further instance of evasion and cover-up, offering commentary and lessons without actionable self-accountability despite his direct involvement (A, 172:04–172:43).

10. Michael’s Final Appeals and Corrections

• Mike corrects two minor factual errors from his earlier exposé.
• Reiterates his aim is not to be a “villain hunter” but to enforce a biblical model for church leadership and restoration.
• Urges the charismatic church (including Bethel) to “go a mile deep, not just a mile wide,” and to set an example for the global church by rooting out even favored figures’ abuses and false teachings:
  • “If you can't call out Kenneth Copeland, then I think we should be done with you.” (A, 201:40)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

On Public Accountability and Cover-up

• “When Christians call out their own, even if the world sees it, they see us calling it out ourselves. And that's actually a witness to the world...” – Mike Winger (A, 16:13)
• "If you have multiple witnesses ... you take the next step. You confront. They won't repent... Okay, I'm telling it to the church. That's what you do. That's just what you do." – A (34:33)

On the Cost of Confession

• “One of the main goals of this kind of confession is to acknowledge sin without appearing like a sinner. That is, unless you're one of those who insists on walking out true repentance.” – Bill Johnson’s book, quoted by Mike (A, 121:47)
• “My delay has caused so much frustration in family and staff. And please forgive me.” – Bill Johnson (E, 148:15)

On the Shift to Public Repentance

• "Our inaction, our actions after the fact. The Scripture talks about this... We have hurt and scared people because we did not tell the truth early enough, long enough, or loud enough. And this is a completely fair criticism." – Dan Fairley (D, 67:47 + 69:12)
• "On Monday morning I had an encounter with the Lord and I see things quite differently... We failed you as a body." – Chris Vallotton (B, 77:23 + 104:13)

On the Future and Next Steps

• “For me, this is the first week of a journey that I've never been here before. And how we navigate a global movement in the 21st century, it's got to be possible and it's definitely got to be way better than we've done.” – Chris Vallotton (B, 118:12)
• “We have to change for Jesus. If we want to see the world saved, we have to come together as a body of Christ. We have to hold each other to account.” – Steve Moore (F, 166:46)

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Important Segment Timestamps

| Segment | Topic | Timestamp | |---------|-------|-----------| | Opening context & purpose | 00:02–06:00 | | Defining Cover-up Culture & Culture of Honor | 00:30–00:45 | | Timeline of Shawn Bolz/Bethel dealings | 01:05–01:30 | | Chris Vallotton’s initial problematic response | 12:51–62:00 | | Scriptural rebuke: elders and public discipline | 31:00–39:00 | | Chris’s apology, Bethel’s public confession | 77:03–119:10 | | Bill Johnson's confession and analysis | 121:08–151:00 | | Bethel’s planned reforms, future steps | 154:34–160:45 | | Steve Moore’s closing, thanks to Mike | 164:08–166:43 | | Additional issues, ongoing concerns | 167:53–end |

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Flow & Tone

Mike Winger’s tone throughout is deeply sober, at times pastoral and emotional, with an insistence on “truth, transparency, and biblical fidelity.” He aims for compassion toward victims and clarity for the broader Christian body. His critique, though pointed (especially regarding evasive statements by some leaders), is generally restrained and calls for humility, grace, and hope that real reform can follow.

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Final Thoughts

Mike lauds Bethel’s public confession as “the best moment so far in cover-up culture”—while insisting that only ongoing, deep structural change, full honesty, and forsaking selective blindness will truly heal and reform the broader charismatic church.

“If this is the first step on a journey, it’s a beautiful first step. If it’s the last step… it’s going to be a problem.” – Mike Winger (A, 99:36)

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This summary covers the podcast’s important arguments, key moments, scriptural underpinnings, and the broader implications for leaders and churches facing issues of abuse and cover-up. Mike calls for continued vigilance, biblical integrity, and courageous public accountability to restore the trust and witness of the church.

Transcript

[A]

All right, everybody, this is the. Well, this is the live stream to respond to all the stuff that's been going on since my Sean Bowles video. I also released a video on Todd White also, there's Bob Hartley. There's a bunch of stuff that I've been sharing and there's been a whirlwind, a whirlwind of things. And I want to make it really clear as I head into this, this is not some kind of victory lap. It has nothing to do with any of that. And if that's, if you feel the little giggles in your heart and any of you guys, I encourage you to suppress that and go. These are very real issues, very serious issues for the body of Christ and the well being and health of the Charismatic church. And this affects other churches as well. And I'm not the one who dictates what happens next, but I would like to contribute and talk about some of the issues that are going on. So we're going to walk through it. We're going to walk through the responses. Bethel has apologized. Let me start with the good. Okay. Bethel actually apologized in a way that I'm going to be straightforward. Was amazing. Was amazing. And that sent a signal out that has affected other leaders all over the place in the way that they're handling the stuff from Bowles and the stuff from me, to be honest as well. That has really shifted things and changed things, to use a charismatic term. It's shifted things and it's beautiful. And but I'm going to go through that apology because there are some concerns, very serious concerns, very real concerns that remain that have to be addressed and we cannot just be like, oh good, problem solved. So I'm going to walk through the apology also. I'll link down below the apology if you guys want to hear the whole thing. And I want to acknowledge first, Bethel, thank you for doing that. That never happens. That never happens. And this causes victims to feel vindicated. This doesn't mean that those victims feel closure. That's not what it means. But it does cause them to feel vindicated. They get the sense of vindication, that what they went through was acknowledged by people who in that community, they'll believe them, right? There's tons of people that even after all my video came out, they're trashing me, they're trashing the victims, they're minimizing all the stuff. But when Bethel apologized, it vindicates them in a really powerful way. I didn't say it brought them closure, though. That's a different issue. We can talk about that. But I don't want to punish the positive things that Bethel did, because I have remaining concerns that absolutely should be in place, and I want to encourage us to keep those in place. I don't want to punish the positive thing that Bethel did, the transparency and the things that were shared on stage on last Sunday. Okay? We're going to walk through it all in detail, and I want to acknowledge there's a biblical precedent for what I'm about to suggest we do next as a church. And that is when Joseph was. Now, I am not Joseph in this story, okay? But when Joseph was betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, served God faithfully, was raised up to the right hand of Pharaoh, and then saved his own family and many others from famine. When this all happened and he meets his brothers again later, he actually sends them a test, and he waits to see their response to this test before he reveals himself to them and embraces them in a kind of restoration of relationship. That can be a biblical thing. And right now, Bethel is under the test, and the Charismatic Church is under the test. Again, I am not Joseph in this story. Not a test of Mike Winger's designing, but this is a test of. To their own people, okay, to the people who are the followers of these leaders, to say, what are you going to do now to demonstrate that you care about integrity, that you care about accountability, that you care about authenticity, and that you care about protecting victims, that you care about for following what Scripture says to do with leaders who sin. What will you do to show that this is real? And it would be a very large and very costly task for Bethel and other charismatic churches to do the right thing moving forward. But I'm cheering you on, if you will, so let me go through it. We're going to go through several responses. We're going to go through Bethel's response. That was from Chris Valatin, Bill Johnson, Danny Silk. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just look up Mike Winger, Sean Bowles, and a video will pop up that will tell you all about it. You need to get the backstory on this, and I'm not going to give it all to you today. So we'll also look at Patricia King, Chae Ahn, Danny Silk, and all of their responses to what's been going on. I think this is important because if the Charismatic Church can move forward in positive ways, then there has to be actual accountability and transparency. And some of the responses and even some of the good responses, there's elements in There that are not good. And some of the responses are just cover up culture. Okay? Like Chae on just cover up culture. In my opinion, Danny Silk, he is. I'm going to say it as plainly as I can. I do believe Danny Silk, whether he intended to or not, because he probably didn't intend to. To give him the benefit of the doubt. He is one of the architects of this culture and I've heard this from witnesses over and over again that his book and his stuff, honor about honor, the culture of honor that that results in predatory or abusive situations where you have bad leaders or fake things going on and that results in cover up culture. I've heard it over and over again and I think that that's true. So Remnant Radio has a good video. They analyze Danny Silk's Culture of Honor book. If you've read it or been influenced by it, I suggest you look, listen to them. Doesn't mean it's all bad. That's not what I said. It means that it helps propagate a culture whereby cover up takes place. Okay, so this happened in public and this is why this is going to continue to be in public. Recent events have proven that unless it was done in public, nothing would have happened. Nothing would have happened unless not just me, several people had spoken up and made video content and shared publicly and openly, nothing would have happened. The ball would not have moved at all. Everything would be the same as it was a year ago, the same as it was six months ago. So it had to be in public for the safety and sake of the body of Christ. And there's times in Scripture where public rebuke comes and it can be a very good thing. You know, the prophets ministries were all public rebukes. Just about every prophet had ministry of publicly rebuking. Jesus went around publicly rebuking. And there's times where it is in fact appropriate. So what's happened so far? I will share some new information today. I'm going to hold back a lot of stuff I have that I could share because I'm holding it back for now in hopes that Bethel will address these things internally because that's so much better than me trying to do it at this stage. So I'm holding some stuff back now I can share if I have to later. Hopefully I never have to share it because they're going to deal with it on their own. And we're waiting on that. And I'm hoping for that. I'm cheering for that. I'm rooting for that. So here's what happened so far. In 2008, Sean Bowles was known among his closest ministry companions as Sean the Liar. He did, you know, forced nakedness as well as very inappropriate acts in sort of trapped situations to people who were under his authority, both spiritual and employee relationships and landlord relationships in cases. All that kind of stuff that happened for years and years and years. In 2013, his prophetic grift, I mean gift, I mean grift took off. And it wasn't long after this that Bethel platformed Sean and he was just cheating off Facebook, right? You guys already know this part of the story. I find out from people coming to me privately. I mean, it was the minor prophets a year ago who made their video that really blew the lid off of this thing. But it caused no change in Bethel and it caused a very bad reaction from Bethel. What we can look at later, or I'll remind you of later. But anyways, people then came to me. I spent a year looking into all kinds of COVID up culture. Not just Sean Boltz, but a whole bunch of other situations. Some of them I've already made videos on, some I have not yet. And I do plan on making more videos. And none of those videos are monetized. And they all, to me, feel like a distraction from my normal ministry. And I can't wait to get back to doing the normal stuff. Okay, I don't want to keep doing this. None of the guys I know who are doing this, like doing this. None of them. We all are like, man, this is unpleasant. And it really is. You spend hours talking to people who are like crying because of what was done to them and then telling you about how the leaders responded. And you'll be like, yeah, this is taxing on the Soul. So in 2013, his prophetic grift took off because of using Facebook to cheat 2016, he gets endorsed by Bethel and by Chae on and by I think Brian Simmons of all people. And I'll tell you more about that. But the thing is, this is so much bigger than Sean Bowles. When I opened the door to learn about, say Sean Bolles situation, other people came with other situations. And I started finding out that it's huge. And I can give a list of names that are connected to Bethel in significant ways. Notice I said in significant ways because I know you're gonna be like, well, they're renowned staff, Mike. That's not what I said. All right, so Bob Hartley, Bob Jones, William Branham, Mike Bickle, Paul Kane. I could give more names. These are significant names. Who there Must be a cleanup on aisle six with all of these people. I think publicly, and that is the only way moving forward for Bethel, is to actually, I think publicly address all of those issues and many more issues I will bring up today as things, hey, please address these, Handing these over to you guys to. To suggest that those things are dealt with and doing so in a public way so that there can be accountability. Because I've realized with COVID up Culture, fellow leaders seem like they never hold anyone accountable in regards to the issues. I'm talking about proper accountability. I didn't say they won't confront, but they won't hold them accountable. And that means that it has to be the people. And it wasn't my video that made Bethel change. It wasn't. It was people at Bethel. It was alumni from Bethel reaching out, going. It was a person in the pew who's been giving and donating to that ministry for years, who's been there for 10 years, who said, no, this is not okay, guys, we have to do something now. They're the ones that made Bethel change. It was someone on staff, I'm theorizing here, who said, no, it's not okay. In fact, Chris, message Sunday night, that was not okay. It was people internally who made it happen. And that's why I asked to be public, because the charismatics can fix the charismatic church. But it's going to be the random individuals who are not like, committed in decades of ministry with a sordid history of their own cover Up Culture issues. It's going to be the normal people that demand this must be dealt with and dealt with God in a godly way. And that, I think, is what led to this. So let's talk about stuff that's not good. Chris Valatin's response. This happened on the 18th. This is like the day after my video goes out. Sunday morning. Build is aware of it. Everybody's aware of it. I didn't realize it would get that viral. I know some of you guys are like, of course it would. It's easy to say that afterwards. Okay. I didn't know that it would get that much attention, to be honest. Maybe I'm being naive, but you haven't been in my shoes. I've put out video content where I think this is so important, this is so relevant. I. I think this is going to reach a lot of people and then it just doesn't. That's happened plenty of times, so you never know. But this went all over the place. And in hindsight, it makes sense. But I Didn't know. Chris Valatin makes a response, Bill doesn't. Bill's response initially, now they did so much better a week later. Okay, so hang on. We'll talk about how they did better a week later. We'll talk about how there's still concerns after that. But the day after my video came out, Bill taught a normal Sunday service. I listened to it. You notice how nobody's talked about it because it was just as though nothing was going on. He didn't address any issues. He didn't talk about any issues. He didn't acknowledge any issues. Bill was a ghost when it came to dealing with this topic, as he has been, at least as far as the public's concerned. He's been a ghost the whole time. Chris, on the other hand, gave a message Sunday night and we're going to go through some clips from that message. I don't want to go through tons of them because he changed his mind. Okay. After this message, there was a lot of pushback. He says he had an encounter with God and totally changed. And his next Sunday gave stuff that I have much to commend and I want to commend that. So I'm not going to go over every jot and tittle. I'm not going to do that. Of Chris's previous message, I was going to a week ago Friday, I was going to do this, and I found out, hey, the tide's changing. Give us some time. So I delayed this stream a week and now we'll get into it, but we have to know how we got here or we won't know where we're going. So here's some clips from Chris Valatin's message on that day. Let me. Okay, let me find where there's so many things open on my PC right now to do this. Okay? This is from Chris's message on that day. Let me do it this way. This is live, so it's going to be a little clumsy, but this is the only way I can make it work. I'm spending so many hours behind the scenes connecting with victims, more victims, people reaching out and issues related to this, issues related to other things. And so it doesn't give me a lot of time for the video prep, to be honest.

[B]

20, maybe, what, 25 years ago, if you had a complaint, if you felt that you were abused or you had a story, you pretty much had to go find someone that had a media outlet, you know, a Fox News or something to try to tell your story. And there was maybe a little bit of Vetting, like, is this a credible story? Maybe there's some background, somebody does a background to see if your story is actually credible. But what happened with the Internet and then social media, especially what in the last 12, 15 years is everybody has really the same reach, and you can tell your story. It could be credible, it could not be credible. And you could tell your side of the story without another side of the story.

[A]

Initially, Chris started his message like this. It was basically saying, like, guys, I was. He didn't. He very much addressed my video and talked about it in some specific ways we'll talk about. But it was meant to be a message where he sort of processed live on stage the struggles of being a pastor in a large ministry that reaches around the world in a social media age. Okay, those are real struggles. But the context in which this was given ended up being really bad. So initially it was like, hey, man, who are we really responsible for? This is a real challenge. We're sort of struggling through it. You know, kind of like you guys can feel for us that this is challenging and difficult for us at this point. I don't think that Chris felt that he had done. He had made any. Well, it looks like he's not suggesting he made any really serious errors, but maybe like some more minor errors in regards to these issues. Let's listen to more of this message. We're only going to listen to a few clips of it.

[B]

You know, you don't have a family talk, so, you know, we're. We're where Jesus talked about in Matthew Chapter six when he talked about forgiveness. And he said that if you go to a person and he's sinned against you, and then you take another person, and then you take another person and that doesn't work, you tell it to the church. Well, there's no such thing as telling it to the church without telling it to the world anymore. If you expose somebody from the podium, within a day, people who you didn't plan to have that message sent to them, have that message sent to them. And you have to decide, like, are you really, really, really, really, really, really sure that you want to publicly expose somebody who's in some form of the process? Are you ready for that? Because you don't know people like you did when you were in Weaverville. Like, are you really sure that's the right thing to do? Because as soon as you say, you know, Henry is unsafe, or say something like that, you just destroyed that person's reputation. So I'm pointing out that the process of how you deal with people. And how well do you know that problem? How well do you know that person? Do you actually. Are you sure that that person is actually trying to be evil? Are you sure?

[A]

There's a number of things here. Again, I'm not going to cover every single piece. A lot of it, you guys can tell just by what you've seen. But. So it's Matthew 18, I think is what he was referring to, not Matthew 6. The passage gives a command. I'm going to read it to us. It says, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you've gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you. That every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you. And he goes on and talks about the binding and loosing which seems to be connected to this. So that's a command for individual, you sinned against me, right? This is not primarily the passage you go to when you have a leader who is sinning against people in a way that is disqualifying. That's not Matthew 18. Okay. Matthew 18 is not the passage you go to for leaders in sin. Because with leaders there's a stricter accountability. That's what Scripture tells us, James. We. We shall be judged more strictly. And then we have passages that tell us what to do with this. Chris knows these passages. He's read these passages. I've been bringing them up constantly in my videos. I'm sure people have brought them up to him. But it seems at this point, okay, this is a week ago or almost two weeks ago now, at this point, it seems as though his position is that he has reasons why he doesn't want to follow what the scripture says to do here. And it has to do with, you're going to ruin this person's reputation forever. The world's going to know and they're not going to trust the church. And this echoes what he said to one of the witnesses who was a victim of Shawn at the time when he asked him, chris, will you please expose Sean publicly? This was years ago. And his response was, this would hurt the whole prophetic movement worldwide. I think that my more biblical approach is that when Christians call out their own, even if the world sees it, they see us calling it out ourselves. And. And that's actually a witness to the world that we as a community, we separate ourselves from the sins of that man by calling him out. And when you don't call him out, of course, you join yourself to the sins of that man. We'll talk more about that later. Are we actually participating in the sins of others when we do cover up culture? And the answer is yes, we actually are. So that was unfortunate. There's more, though. This is part of the video where he suggests, let's be honest, this is how everybody would hear it, that I'm doing this for money. And this moment makes it clear that I don't think Chris has seen my video. But moreover, he's not even familiar with my content. He doesn't even know what he's talking about. He's maybe only heard about it, and he's saying this, which at the time was really bad.

[B]

So whole documentaries get made about Bill and I and our movement. Hours of YouTube videos where someone makes thousands of dollars telling a story, and people write me and like, you did this and you should have it. And I'm like, well, yeah, you know, if I believed that story, I would have quit the ministry a long time ago.

[A]

There's two things here. One of them is super important, and the other one's sort of important. The super important one is this. The tenor of Chris's message would have cast doubt on the idea of whether Sean was even guilty or not. He suggests social media investigations. Ultimately, this is unreliable. That's the implication of the video. Ultimately, you know, you heard a story, you heard one side of a story. You don't understand. In fact, Shawn, in this message, becomes the victim of Mike Winger because, Sean, you've ruined his life. You ready to do that? You ruined his life. And Chris tells stories about how his own kids or grandkids suffered because of his reputation, being attacked by people. And the implication is that I am the villain here. It's crazy to hear this, that I'm the villain. That was the day after my video came out. So the major issue is that not that I'm the villain, but the other point I was making there. That's the major issue is still, after all that, less than two weeks ago, Chris is suggesting through his teaching. He didn't actually claim it. He suggested it's implied that Sean is actually. There's another side of the story. It's not as bad as all that. And that these investigations are unreliable. And then the more minor point that I want to clear up, it's Crazy. This is still being said. When I first started doing this series on cover up culture, I knew I would be attacked in certain ways. I knew some of them I could defend against. Other ones I can't. I got an email from someone who's like, I don't think you had the right tone. I think that you were, you had the right heart, the wrong heart behind it. Like, I can't really defend against heart accusations. You were, you were enjoying it too much. That's what they said.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

So I can't defend against that. What are you going to say? Just ask yourself. You can hate me all you want and think I'm bad all you want, but just ask yourself, is it true? And then you can address the situation and not ignore it. On the other hand, I knew I would be accused of doing this for money. Now on every point we've tried to cover this, well, in my ministry, the money that comes from YouTube or Facebook or Instagram, if there's any ad revenue that comes in from any of those sources, it goes directly to the ministry account. It does not go into my bank account and it does not change my wage. That means if a billion dollars came in, I would not get a bonus because of that. I would not get a raise because of that. That's the way the ministry's been set up. More YouTube money really actually usually means at the end of the year, we donate more money to missionaries, we donate more money to other causes because we have a surplus at the end of the year. And that's how it's been for several years. So this is why on my website, if you click and I don't say this to brag, I say this because I'm being accused publicly. If you go to my website and you read it says before you donate, okay, first off, I never ask. I never ask. When I first started, I asked, I said, hey, guys, I need help to get this going. Once we had enough money coming in, I never asked again. If you go to the website and you click and you read the disclaimer before you donate, I say, hey, we're really well taken care of. You may want to give somewhere else. If you do continue to donate here, I may take some of those funds and support other ministries I believe in. And I didn't monetize any of the videos. On top of that, like the whole coverup culture series are unmonetized. There's not an ad on any of them unless YouTube does something fishy. I mean, sometimes weird things happen. YouTube just puts ads on things that aren't supposed to have ads. It's probably just a glitch, right? Sometimes. But the whole thing is. So there's a million views on the Sean Bulls video, zero ad revenue coming in, even though it would just be going to good causes. It was purely for reputation. I knew I'm going to get accused of this. I've got to make the whole. And everyone knows who's paid attention to this series. They all know it's not monetized. This was a weird thing for Chris to do because he's complaining about social media investigations that don't get the good evidence, that don't find out both sides of the story and then they go out and they slander people's character and ruin their reputation and it causes them long term harm. And yet Chris, just off the cuff claims that. I mean, you can say he didn't really claim. Let me play it again. You can claim, well, he didn't really say it about you, Mike. But let's be adults. We all know this is about me.

[B]

So whole documentaries get made about Bill and I and our movement and hours of YouTube videos where someone makes thousands of dollars telling a story and people write me and like, you did this and you should have it. And I'm like, well, yeah, it's, you know, if I believed that story, I would have quit the ministry a long time ago.

[A]

He's just, he's doing the thing. This is cover up culture is you do the thing that you're accusing others of doing. What I actually did was I brought witness testimony verified by multiple witnesses. I brought video evidence and all sorts of evidence and presented it in a way that was very compelling because it took, I can't even, I don't even know how many hours to put together. Didn't monetize it, didn't none of that stuff. I'm getting nothing. Our ministry is losing money over this. We've paid lawyers fees for people, we've paid for counseling for people who've been involved in these things. It's been all that because I don't care about the money. It's a tool in the service of the kingdom and that's all it is. That being said, that was the week before. Okay, this is the week before. The reason I'm highlighting this is not out of bitterness. I want to be very clear. The reason I'm highlighting this is because this was the ongoing, years long attitude that Bethel had. Not because it was 12 days ago, the attitude they had. No, no, it was years and years and years. This is the COVID up culture attitude. When you have a leader, you don't expose him because we really care about him. And when people try to expose him, they get sideswiped publicly in cases where their motives are questioned and their finances are questioned and all this stuff that's cover up culture. Cover up culture is elitism where you look out and all you see is Sean Bowles. I love him. I just want to care for him. I want to restore him. And this disables you from following scripture, which it says actually publicly expose him, kick him out, excommunicate him from the body of Christ, declare to everybody, you're not associated with him, you're ashamed of him and he needs to repent. Deliver him. Deliver. Scripture says, deliver such a one over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that he might be saved. That's the best way for his real restoration, is that that's what should have happened. So this a week ago, or, excuse me, 12 days ago. It shows you that this is cover up culture. This is what has gone on at Bethel and so many churches for a long, long time. And that's why we have to know where we've come from, if we can try to look at where we can go.

[B]

People are innocent till proven guilty in America, but not on social media. Social media has created a whole different dynamic in which you are guilty till you prove yourself innocent and then you are invited on to talk shows and podcasts to tell your case to a jury that has already determined you're guilty.

[A]

I'm gonna throw out a possibility here. I just want to give context, though. Over a year ago, or almost a year ago, I think it was February last year, Minor profits made their video about Sean Bowles. And before they did it, my understanding is they reached out to Chris and were like, hey, we're getting all this. They had a lot of evidence already. My video shouldn't have been needed. I exposed some of the stuff that he did, you know, the gross stuff he did. Yeah. I was able to expose that in a much more bright and thorough way that actually showed people it was real. But the other prophecy stuff was well taken care of. Okay? Minor prophets did that before they did it. They reached out, hey, Chris and I know these guys, okay? I know the guys. They would have been thrilled to help Chris tell his side of the story. And to that would have been something they would have helped with and been very gracious to him. But this is how coverup culture sees it. Calls for people on the outside going, hey, I'D like to hear your side. They're seen as, like, hostile entities that get no response. Right? They're seen this way. I'll back it up a little bit.

[B]

To tell your case to a jury that has already determined you're guilty.

[A]

Now, I reached out to Sean Bowles before I did my video. I've reached out to Bethel in the past, and they said about Bowles, and they said, we're not. We want to handle it internally. We don't want to talk about to you basically, at the time, and those were sincere. I've reached out to Sean Foyt. I have not yet made a video about Shawn Foyt. The offer's still open. Sean, if you want to defend yourself before I share what I know, come and talk to me. Show me the evidence. Now, you may see that as invasive, but later on, you're going to be like, well, why didn't he let me tell my story? Well, I've given you the opportunity for months, so later on, if you don't like it, suck it up.

[B]

Sorry.

[A]

You'll see why I'm hard on Sean Foyt later on. I have all the evidence. I have a lot of stuff to share there that's, I think, very relevant. I'll wait till I can present it to you in a good way.

[B]

And if you're someone like me, I am blackmailed all the time. If you don't tell your story, we're going to tell everybody that you did this thing.

[A]

So it's difficult to say one side of the story is the complaint, and yet I also will not tell my side of the story when people ask me to. That's just an impossible standard.

[B]

The only way I can tell my story is to tell their story, and I can't tell you their story because that's what shepherds do.

[A]

So pastoral confidentiality is a big deal. And there's a sense in which he's right. And you might nod your head, Yeah, I have tons of secrets that will die with me. Tons. Okay. As a guy who's doing pastoral ministry for many years, even now, people tell me stuff. They share their deep stuff with me, and usually it just dies with me. Even my wife will tell you. I've gotten in such a habit of not sharing people's secrets that I fail to tell my wife important things. Sometimes that people tell me because it's just. My mode is like, you tell me, I pray, encourage you. But when there is someone else at risk, there is a moral obligation to not hold every statement you've heard from people as pastoral confidentiality. So when people come to you and say, sean gave me this word prophetically and he got it off Facebook, there's no pastoral confidentiality there. What you have is with Sean to keep his secrets. What you have is a moral obligation to go and defend this person who received a fake prophecy from a fake prophet. That's what your moral obligation is. So it's misplaced to address that here. Again, this is 12 days ago, and things have changed already a lot. The question is, will the change last? Did I already play this full video?

[B]

People are innocent till proven guilty.

[A]

I think I did, yes. Okay, so here's the next one. And I think this might be one of the better examples of just cover up culture from that sermon.

[B]

People have this idea that if you're Bill Johnson or Chris Valentin and you confront somebody, they're like, oh, I'm sorry, I'm never going to do that again. What if you confront someone and they say, I didn't do that?

[A]

This is a legit issue, right? In cover up culture. If you confront somebody and they go, I didn't do that, and they deny it, there's nothing else left to do. You can separate from them, but you can't expose them. Exposing people is just not on the radar. And so you can see the frustration when you refuse to do the thing that scripture tells you to do.

[B]

I don't have investigators. I don't have a. A court that, you know, where they say, everyone, no one imprisons everyone in prison's innocent. I don't have a court system that figures out that the person that says they're innocent isn't innocent. I have no process. I have me talking to them and they go, I didn't do it.

[A]

It's important to remind. I'm glad. I'm glad Bethel came out recently, had a much better message to people because I'm glad I don't have to just respond to this. This would have been dismal to just respond to this. But it's important to share this because, again, it's decades long of habitual behaviors. It's not just with Sean Bowles. So the idea here is, I'm not an investigator. This implies he can't come to the truth of the issues. Like it's not possible for him to know the truth. When he gets an accusation, he will never really know if it's true unless the person admits. And Sean denied it. So what are you going to do now? Sean didn't deny everything. He confessed some of this stuff. He denied the Facebook stuff. He denied researching prophecy, but he reportedly confessed the sexual harassment stuff. And so I don't even know how this fits with that. This seems more like subterfuge as it relates to this particular issue, which is the reason he's giving this message is because of my video. But if he's unable to determine the truth of something, then why did he cut Sean off? Why did he tell all these leaders privately? Don't have Sean. Don't ho. Sean. I don't trust him. He's a liar. He told him all these things. So clearly Chris had a strong conviction of Sean's guilt. And this doesn't make any sense to go. I'm not an investigator. This is a weird and I would say deceptive thing to say to people because it doesn't seem to factor into Sean's situation at all.

[B]

Well, Joanne says you did. Well, I didn't. Okay, now what do I do? What do I do?

[A]

Well, this next part is so. It's almost like somewhere in the back of his head, Chris has scripture telling him what to do. Scripture tells us the testimony of two or three witnesses. Let every matter be established. So multiple witnesses is the standard of scripture. If you have multiple witnesses, I'll read it to you guys. This is important. First Timothy 5, 20. I hope you guys get it memorized by the end of this stuff. I'll read from verse 19. Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. See, that's what you do. You don't believe the charge against the elder unless it has corroborating evidence. Now, two witnesses could be a claim, and they've got email proof, right? We're just saying make sure it's true. And witnesses are the way you make sure it's true.

[D]

Typically.

[A]

Now, what if it is true? What if you have two or three witnesses? Scripture says, as for those who persist in sin, rebuke in the presence of all so that the rest may stand in fear. Hard to do, easy to understand. That's the requirement. But what does Chris say?

[B]

What do I do? Well, five people said, you did it. They said, I did it. This isn't. There's no. I don't. I think there's, like, this idea that, like, leaders, spiritual leaders have some sort of authority that they can press people into. And you go, we can't go to our church if you do that.

[A]

Chris is directly arguing against Scripture. If you have five witnesses who say, yeah, you did it. I mean, obviously, if you have Five witnesses. And you have reason to believe there's. There's these. Like, they're lying or something. But. But you have good evidential support that somebody did it. You take the next step. You confront. They won't repent. They won't seek restitution with those victims, with those people that were hurt. They won't. Okay, I'm telling it to the church. That's what you do. That's just what you do. And you have the authority to do it because Scripture is your authority. The Bible tells you to do this. You have to do it. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 5, and he says, look, you've got this guy doing these sexual things. He's unrepentant. Kick him out. In the presence of all. Kick him out. Deliver him to Satan, which means out of the church. You're saying you're no longer part of our fellowship, which means that the local body has to know about it. Right now, if you have a 10,000 member church, 10,000 people don't need to know that Joe Schmo is getting kicked out. But if Joe Schmo is a leader and everybody knows them, then they all have to know the communication of the excommunication needs to equal how big the person's reach was. And that's just the only way that it works. So Scripture's clear on this, and Chris is fighting it. Let's listen more.

[B]

There's. No, I don't. I think there's, like, this idea that, like, leaders, spiritual leaders have some sort of authority that they can press people into to go. We can't go to our church.

[A]

That's exactly the authority we have. Right. So First Corinthians, chapter five. I'm going to read to you guys here for today. I can't put it on screen. Sorry, it's just a tech thing. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans. Ironically, this applies to Sean Bowles, because the stuff he's doing is not tolerated even among the non believers in this case. For a man has his father's wife and you are arrogant, you ought you not rather to mourn. Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though I am absent in body, Paul's speaking here. I am present in spirit. And as if present, I've already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. You want to be an apostolic person? You pronounce judgment against those things when you are assembled. That's in a public gathering in the name of the Lord Jesus. That's authority right there. And my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus. You, meaning the collective church. You are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. There is authority. It comes from scripture. So, yeah, and it's not just that the leaders have the authority. It's the whole church has the responsibility to do this with those who are doing those kinds of things.

[B]

Great. There's 3,000 other churches I can go to. Are you following me?

[A]

Yeah, I'm following you. So the idea that there's, you know, if we kick him out, there's so many other churches and. Right. How does that make sense? Why would that be a reason not to care? Would that maybe be a reason to warn some other churches that you might be aware of? Right. Because that you care about them. It doesn't make sense that they did this with Todd White, too. I'm not saying Bethel did this with Todd White, but the leaders around at the time did this with Todd White as well. They're like, well, he could just quit and start a new ministry. The reason why he can quit and start a new ministry and get away with it is because you won't tell people publicly what he's done. You'll only privately create little barriers. But if you do the public rebuke when you're assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus as a gathered Christian group, you do it publicly. Yeah, he can't just run to a ton of other churches, especially a guy like Sean Boltz. He's too well known. Everybody's going to know whatever church he's at right now. Guess what? Now they know because it's public. But until it went public, they never would have known. So, yeah, that's why you raise the red flag.

[B]

There's this idea that when you confront somebody, they're going to repent. And then if they don't, you should tell everybody.

[A]

That's the idea.

[B]

And by the way, you can't just tell the church because you're going to tell the whole world that the church has this majority, the people you're trying to lead to Christ, you're going to say, don't trust churches because they are made up of really broken people. And you get to tell the whole world that churches are not safe.

[A]

I also grieve that this goes out to the whole world. But because the ministry goes out to the whole world, the rebuke has to go out to the whole world. That's just a ratio. If I was caught embezzling funds from my ministry, having some mistress on the side, if I was doing those things, you guys would have to tell everybody and that would be embarrassing. But the thing that's restorative about this is it's the church saying, we won't stand for that. Mike Winger, we love you, we care about you. We think your ministry has been great, but you're done. We trust Jesus, we're all about Jesus, and we're going to follow what he says. And that tells the world that Christians will won't stand for the hypocritical ones among us. That's actually healthy. That's like people that can be respected. Let us become people that can be respected. Because what happens instead is we cover it up. We cover it up and eventually it comes out anyways. And when it comes out, now the whole church is implicated. We're sharing in this guy's sins because we knew and we didn't do anything. So that's the thing that ended up happening because of the lack of activity. Okay, there's one more long clip I'll play from Chris's message from 12 days ago. And then we will share better things that happened more recently.

[B]

Galatians 6:1 says, Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual, restore him or them in a spirit of gentleness.

[A]

Cover up culture takes Galatians 6:1. I'll just remind us of this. And they make it like a blanket rule, like you always have to restore people no matter what. And I think Bethel's attitude towards restoration in the past that many others have followed is that you take broken leaders. They like to use the word broken because it makes it sound like you're like the passive victim of what you've done almost. But they'll take broken leaders and they'll keep them in ministry even when they are currently disqualified and should be sat down. Like really sat down. That's the report I've heard from numerous sources. And it has to stop each one.

[B]

Looking to yourself so that you too may not fall into temptation. Revelation 2:20 I have this against you that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads my bondservants astray. So they commit acts of immorality and eat things. Sacrificed idols. Listen to this second part. I gave her time to repent and she does not want to repent of her immorality. I don't know if you noticed this, like this is Jezebel famous for taking God's bond servants and drawing them into immoral sex? And what's Jesus's response? I gave her some time to repent. And where is she at in the church? Here's what I have against you. Not that you did it, that you tolerated it. And by the way, you and I both gave her time to repent. You gave her way too much time to repent. You let her stay too long. I was gonna leave her in for a while. You let her in too long. Are you with me?

[A]

I wanna be very clear. Chris, a week later got on stage and said, I can't believe I used Revelation 2 that way. And that's good that he said that. The question that remains is, have you been using it that way for the past 30 years, not just one Sunday night? And that when you said it in front of the people, they were like, oh, my gosh. Because my theory the whole time has been if the people just knew what was going on, they would put a stop to it themselves. That's been my hope. Maybe some people think I'm too optimistic about that. But I believe in the Charismatic Christians, my brothers and sisters in the Charismatic Church, that you guys wouldn't stand for it if you just knew. If you just knew. And it just takes a while to go. All of a sudden you're like, I guess maybe there is something here. When they heard this, they pushed back. And Chris says he had an encounter with God the next day as well. But I think that you guys had to push back. So revelation chapter 2. Chris uses it as if it were saying, now keep in mind, this guy is seen as a prophet expounding here the word of God. He's saying that the tolerating of Jezebel for a season was appropriate and was following what God does. That's what he seems to be saying here. Am I wrong? And that this is then a model for that. We should tolerate people who lead others astray. In this case of Jezebel, seducing my servants into sexual immorality and to eat food, sacrifice to idols, idolatry. And we should tolerate this in the church, just not too long. No, they're not rebuked for tolerating it too long. They're rebuked for tolerating it at all in the passage. And God, of course, he could end every sin right away. But we don't take that as a model for us allowing people to sin in ways that are harming the people of God. I don't need to keep commenting on this because he'll rebuke himself for it later on. And I'll play that for you.

[B]

But my point is, God's response to people who are even doing evil is I want to make sure that I make sure that I make sure that they don't want to repent. And I would say this, that Bethel's mistakes. Shortcomings.

[A]

He'll talk about the shortcomings in a second. I know. I'm sorry. For those who think I'm interrupting him too much, I'll forget if I don't pause it and share this with you. The perspective of, I don't want to call this leader out who's sinning in ways that hurt people, because I want to make sure and make sure and make sure and make sure that he isn't going to repent. That's not what scripture calls us to. Right. Even on an individual level, you just confront them with sin, they don't listen. You bring others, they don't listen. You tell it to the church, that's it. Now that's an individual, personal offense thing. This is not like a leadership betrayal type stuff. With leadership betrayal, you get an accusation, you've got multiple witnesses, you confront, they persist in sin. And depending on the specifics, this will play out slightly differently in different scenarios. But then you rebuke in the presence of all that, the rest also may stand in fear. This is the opposite of what Scripture teaches, but it is the standard practice of COVID up culture. And, and it is something that has trickled all over the charismatic world. The influence of Bethel cannot be overstated. Now, they didn't invent it. They didn't invent it, but they're the current, like, probably most influential charismatic church on the planet, to my knowledge. And this has been going on forever. William Branham. Yeah, him too. Oh, he just ended bad, Mike. No, that's not the true story. You guys don't know. The true story because of COVID up culture.

[B]

Is that we're always a little late. Like, why didn't you do it then?

[A]

So we're always a little late. This is the confession moment that is deeply disturbing and wrong to suggest that that's the case. This is why I had to make a five hour, 50 minute video to show all the steps. Hey. And then this video came out. And then here was the response from Bethel. And let's highlight the phrase they gave publicly when they made their statement. That was not true. Guys. They. They're not being honest about it. And in some cases, this is still the case.

[B]

In some because we're trying hard to see people redeemed.

[A]

So I'm going to take the flaw that I have and I'm going to couch it as my big old heart.

[B]

Why didn't you do it when you heard the first thing? I don't know. We're trying really hard to make sure that we're not the Church of the Pharisees who have forgotten where we've come from.

[A]

It's important to recognize that in cover up culture, in cover up culture, if you are the one calling for accountability, you are talked about like this. You're the Church of the Pharisees. You're a Pharisee, you're bloodthirsty, you're unforgiving, you're ungodly. You're all these things, this is casually said about you with no evidence, no witnesses, no second side of the story, none of that. Because this is the elitism. The leaders are just too important to receive accusations against the people accusing them. They're replaceable. We've got lots more people that can fill the gaps with those people. I know that sounds cynical, guys, but I think there's an element of truth in that. And I know that those who be offended by me saying that. But why is it that so much effort and energy is spent protecting the reputations of leaders but not protecting the actual safety of the people in the congregation?

[B]

You know, when the woman was caught in adultery and the Pharisees came to Jesus and said, hey, the law says we should stone it, what do you say? I like his ultimate response. He said, yeah, probably a good idea. He who's. He who's never sinned. Get us started. Isn't it interesting he didn't say he who's never committed adultery. See, we have relative righteousness. See, when I see somebody that sinned in the likeness of the adulteress, I go, well, I can make a judgment about her. I can talk about her on my YouTube channel because I have never done that.

[A]

This. It's awkward to talk about this because it's very obviously personally about me. The basis of which I bring these accusations forward is on the authority of scripture and also with the concept of if I ever do that, you guys have to call me out too. That's the only real accountability is accountability that scares me as much as it scares you or scares those other leaders. Right? You're like, Mike, you're talking about fear. You want leaders to be afraid. That's what Scripture says. 1 Timothy 5, 20 that the rest may also fear. I am afraid that if I blow it, my board, the guys that are on my board for Bible Thinker, for my ministry, they would call me out publicly if I really blew it like that. That scares me. And that's a healthy fear. I, of course, did not make my video because I thought, well, there's a sin I didn't commit, so I'm going to expose that one. That is a childish and angry lie that is being propagated and we can pretend it wasn't about me, but that would also be a lie. There's every reason to think that was very much about me. And imagine what it does to the congregation when they just watch the video or they're aware of it and they hear this kind of talk from their leader, who they love and trust, Chris, who's ministered to them many times, who maybe helped them through the loss of their child or through their divorce, who's ministered to them greatly in good ways, in ways that were lasting. But also does this.

[B]

See, we have relative righteousness. See, when I see somebody that sinned in the likeness of the adulteress, I go, well, I can make a judgment about her. I can talk about her on my YouTube channel, because I have never done that. And Jesus said, great, if you've never sinned, get us started. And I'd like to point out that we end up with relative righteousness, because I think as long as I'm better than you, then I have a place to say something about it. And I like to point out to Galatians, Paul said, make sure you who are spiritual, that you restore people with a spirit of gentleness. Look into yourselves to make sure you don't fall into the same temptation. When we get the idea that someone we see on the Internet, maybe who switches well known or famous or not, did something really terrible, and we think, I would have never done that. You don't know because you haven't been there.

[A]

I mean, I personally oppose this idea that Christians have to think, oh, I would do that too if I was in that scenario. I mean, I don't know how that helps you to think that I know this, that on other grounds I absolutely deserve the wrath of God and judgment of God, and I have failed Christ's more times than I can count. That's true. Only by his grace am I sustained. But if I'm harming others, I got to be dealt with. And if I'm a leader who's doing those kinds of things, obviously I have to have to be dealt with. That's what scripture requires. It doesn't have to be anger. It doesn't have to be malice or wrath. It can just be following what the Bible says.

[B]

Prayerfully, you wouldn't. But we have become in the last 20 years a global community. That spends a lot of time telling people, well, they're wrong. You can post.

[A]

I want to point out that this whole message is about where Mike is wrong.

[B]

Jesus is amazing. I love Jesus. Jesus loves you. And somebody will write a negative comment. I did an experiment. I wrote, I was telling my friend, watch this. And I wrote, jesus loves you. And somebody wrote, well, the Bible says, Jacob I loved, and Esau I hated.

[A]

So this is a very true thing. The comment sections grieve me frequently. Okay. Even now with the Bethel stuff, there's a lot of snide things like that. Those issues are much smaller than the larger, broader issues I'm actually trying to address. I'm not going to spend my time on that. I hope Christians would be walking in wisdom and responding in godly, Christlike ways, even as they're calling out things that need to be called out. But I don't see how that's relevant to what we're dealing with today.

[B]

Like, you can't win. Someone's got to tell you. Like, there is one verse in the Bible where God said he hated somebody and you just missed that one. And I'm just pointing out we become, we live in a culture of fault finding and judgment and we hear half the story and we have a lynch mob again.

[A]

Everything he just shared is fault finding and judgment against large swaths of people. Obviously me very directly and plot by implication. And that doesn't matter. That doesn't factor in that he's making all these statements and claims about random people all over the place because there's this elitism. And so elitism always creates unfair standards.

[B]

And we create. There is a lynch mob society on social media that hears the story. And for some reason they think, if I really love God, I. I will rise up and create justice for this person. And they don't even know the person. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for being a heretic by the Catholic Church.

[A]

This is where I'm trying to figure out is, is Chris Joan of Arc? Is Sean Bolles Joan of ARC.

[B]

And 40 years later honored as a saint. Galileo the scientist was put on house arrest because he believed that the earth actually circled around the sun, not the sun around the earth. He was branded a heretic and spent the rest of his Life on house.

[A]

Arrest by the Catholic Church, he's going to say. I actually. I think that that was mostly because he took a swipe at the Pope. I don't think it was just the Galileo stuff has some myths around it.

[B]

Catholic Church. The Church is famous for making judgments about people.

[A]

The judgment's about me in this video.

[B]

And I'm not participating in that, no matter how much you taught me. I need mercy.

[E]

And I.

[B]

Want to always be overly merciful instead of overly judgmental. And behind the scenes, I'm very confronted. And if there's a story about Bethel where a leader didn't get confronted, confronted seriously confronted, numerous times, you just don't know the rest of the story.

[A]

This is true. I think this is true. Anyways. Okay. As far as I know, Chris is very confrontive. He is the opposite of Bill in this regard. He confronts, like, easily and does it all the time. But the complaint was never that Chris failed to confront Sean privately or failed to confront Bob Hartley privately or failed to confront people privately. It was the failure to do what Scripture demands publicly so that you will protect your people who look to you and respect you. And by failing to do that, there was a major failure that has caused ripple effects that represents an entire culture of doing this. Not only will they fail to protect people, but they will later whitewash the history of these people and put them on pedestals. So then they have their House of Generals. They have God's General's Book, which has a list of people. You're like, how do you. You should be exposing most of these guys, at least the majority of them should actually be exposed, not endorsed like this. Because the coverup goes both ways. It goes into present and it goes into the past. Again, things got better. I'm going to play the sermon that was so much better. And you guys can see it. And I've never seen anything like it, and I'm very grateful for it, so please stick around for that.

[B]

But just because someone's confronted doesn't mean they'll change. And you have to decide, are you going to shame their whole family when you don't know them like you did in Weaverville? Are you sure that you want to make a permanent record of this person's failure?

[A]

I want to. I need to address this for everybody's sakes. When you expose a bad guy like Kenneth Copeland or. Or Benny Hinn, it brings shame upon their whole family. That's true. But you didn't shame their family. They did. Their actions shamed their family. Sean Bowles Family is feeling shame and it's Sean who shamed them. To blame the whistleblower is to propagate cover up culture and to punish the only people who are willing to stand up and do something to stop the harms that these guys are causing. So this is a complete reversal of the source of shame. The source of shame is the man's behavior. It is not the person who exposed him.

[B]

Are you sure? And having to answer that question is not easy.

[E]

Not easy.

[B]

Especially when your family is shamed every day for things that we did not do or that were blown out of proportion.

[A]

Chris most closely identifies, at least at this moment and probably in the distant past, with the leaders themselves. Leaders can't fall prey to the temptation to identify yourself with the other leader too much because your job is to protect the sheep. And shepherds can't unite. And you see a bad shepherd who beats his sheep and just think like sheep shmeep. I'm not going to worry about them. I'm going to worry about this leader because I feel like when, when Sean gets exposed and his kids are crying that that's kind of like when my kids were crying when people said bad stuff about me. We have to guard ourselves against that over half truth.

[B]

I know what it's like to have a permanent record of documentaries against me for 30 second clips out of a 40 minute talk.

[A]

I do too by the way, taken.

[B]

Out of context, things people said, jokes you told. I don't want to create that for people who have failed so they have a permanent record. Unless I am positive that they are so destructive that it warrants telling the whole world, including people who don't know God. This person should be marked forever.

[A]

For.

[B]

Being a cheater, a liar. That is a big decision that most of us don't have to make, but we have to make them. And I do think we have erred at times by waiting too long. But it is with the right heart.

[A]

No, no. If you're disobeying scripture, your right heart doesn't matter. That's really important to know. That's a secondary consideration. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, right? There's all kinds of people. There are people who have with the right heart divorced their spouse, abandoned their kids and married somebody else. And they were fully convinced that this was the thing God was telling them to do. Their heart just didn't matter. So we don't do that.

[B]

Would you stand please?

[A]

I let them the applause part play out for a while just to. I want people to Understand something. If you've been deeply part of a church, like you don't just attend some church where you're anonymous. But if you've been deeply part of a church, you can sense what it would be like. You would so want to wrap your arms around your pastor and be like, for years you've ministered to me. I love you. Whatever you've done, I'm with you. Thank you. That even though I don't agree with the message just came out. I want to show support and I want us to move forward. And that desire for the catharsis of making things better could allow you to then just allow things to be swept under the rug. But I don't think Bethel allowed that. Okay. I don't think they allowed that. Time goes by and everything changes after Chris's message. I am blown away by what happened next. It was beautiful. It was wonderful. And I want to highlight the good and I will address some of the other stuff as well. And we're going to listen to. It's going to be a long stream. You guys are getting used to me saying that now I'm going to listen to pretty much the whole thing of what they shared because I want on record what is the best moment there has been so far in cover up culture. And it came from Bethel, who has been a source of much of the COVID up culture. And I would like to give them full credit for that. Okay. This is Dan Fairley. Dan is one of the three pastors that are there. I guess Danny Silk is no longer really there even though on their website he's listed as their leadership, but he's not actually at the church locally, even though the website's like local leaders is what it. That's how. Anyway, I'm not saying they're lying. I'm just saying that's why I thought Dan was still part of the local church is because of their website. And he was for many years. But he's actually connected to them. But he's not locally there. Usually he was in the audience, I guess, but he does not get on stage. Danny Silk, this is Dan Fairley. He's going to talk first and let's just listen in. And I want us to give as much props as we can to Bethel. Okay? There's going to be a lot of ill will towards these guys right now. But here's the thing. If we don't allow people avenues for change and avenues for forgiveness and repentance, we cut off one of the most glorious truths of Christianity and one of the most necessary things for any long term relationship, which is forgiveness. And so we need to at least allow. And we can do it with a critical eye. But. But let's have open arms that are like, you would be welcomed, you would genuinely be welcomed if there was real repentance. And there's much in this that is very good. I want to applaud those things. So this is very long, but we're going to start listening.

[D]

We're just going to talk about some of our mistakes and failures in a situation about Sean Bolson, this one. Aches and failures in a situation about Sean Bolson, this one. To let you know about that ahead of time in case this is like a triggering moment for you or you're like, I'm not ready for this. I didn't come to church for this. Just to kind of give you a heads up. Chris and Bill will be speaking in just a moment. And our heart is to end in a time of prayer and confession and repentance and not you guys, you didn't do anything wrong. What we're going to talk about this morning is what we did wrong. And so at that moment, we just ask for you to cover us with grace as we seek the Lord's forgiveness in the face of some grievous mistakes. So we plan on ending a little early if we're able to, to give us time to kind of be together and grieve to stay here. We don't have another service, you know, starting too quickly afterwards.

[A]

Now, I want to say really quick, my heart goes out to Bethel. I don't want your, your community to go through this, but I encourage you not to blame the whistleblower. I could say anything I want about you guys and it wouldn't have mattered if it wasn't for the fact that so many of these things were real and true. And I know that there's a lot of people analyzing me and analyzing my heart and talking in your communities about Mike's secret motives or maybe he didn't do it the right way. And I know that when you can't fight the evidence, you fight the protocol. Or you vaguely say, well, there's more to the story. Or you start spinning narratives that are simply not honest and nobody's hearing you spin them, so there's no accountability there. But I still regret the grief. I'm sad about the. I don't regret. It's not mine to regret. I'm sad about the grief that is going through your community.

[D]

And so we'll be available to you guys to visit with and talk and just process with as well. So the. There's an older senior leadership team and a younger senior leadership team, just so you know. And we call it the slt. So the older SLT Senior leadership team, very small, it includes me and especially at the time right after Candace and Eric Johnson left and before the 17 new Youngbloods joined the team, the truth is we did not properly and fully discipline and bring to closure and bring out the truth of a very important situation regarding a man named Sean Bowles who preached and prophesied in this platform and with our team around the world on many occasions up until 2019. Brian and Jen weren't involved the Bethel music staff teams. They weren't involved in these decisions or the lack of them. And we are blessed by, as I mentioned, newer leadership that's here with us this morning, our younger senior leadership team who had nothing to do with these decisions and just want to again appreciate them for their support and also to honor them for the immense help they have been as we process these, we process our failure.

[A]

I'm going to give you guys some inside baseball. I believe and believed for a long time now that the best hope the Charismatic church has for undoing cover up, or any other churches for that matter, whether it was in some other denomination or whatever group, is the next generation of leaders, not as much the current one. And I think that some of them at least have risen up and said, hey, we need to fix things. It's amazing that they've come up and said Sean Bowles by name and are saying we're here to repent. This is about repenting. They don't give a derogatory word about me. They don't do any of that stuff. And at the very end of the message, I'll share. For those who don't have the time to watch the whole video, Pastor Steve, who's one of the younger guys that's part of the next sort of generation of leaders, actually called me by name and thanked me for my video. I kid you not. And that is amazing. Not because it's about me, not because of ego reasons. I want you to think about what it took to go from years of the way they viewed me, to be honest, at least the senior leaders probably have until now. I mean, the way Chris talked about me in the previous week versus that, that's amazing. So this is a good thing. And I think those younger leaders, if you take encouragement from me, it would be whatever the cost, do what's right.

[D]

So we're clear we're not responsible for Sean sin. Sean is. But we're equally clear that we are responsible for our sin.

[A]

I'm going to take exception to that a little bit later on.

[D]

Our inaction, our actions after the fact. And the Scripture talks about this in kind of a surprising place. It's sobering that one man's sin can impact you in the moment of correction. And I'm going to read it to you out of Galatians, chapter 6, verses 1 through 5. Brothers and sisters, if a such someone is caught in sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks they are something, when they are not, they deceive themselves. Each one should test his own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone without comparing themselves to someone else. For each one of us should carry their own load. So the truth is we have hurt and scared people because we did not tell the truth early enough, long enough, or loud enough. And this is a completely fair criticism.

[A]

That's amazing. Yeah. I have something to say about that that might not be amazing, but to even hear that was wonderful. Thank you, Dan, for sharing that. We have earned the criticism that's coming our way from before, when Chris was like, social media and the goons or the crowd, the mob. That's the term Chris would use. The mob. And sure, there's people like that, but there's also a whole lot of sincere people that are just like, you guys have some really serious criticisms that are legit right now. And to hear them say, this was a great thing.

[D]

I am sad and embarrassed about this. We are sad and embarrassed about this. And I just ask you just not to judge too harshly. We have experienced this three times. We'll do it with the one o' clock service and then tonight as well. And so maybe not look for a lot of subtle emotional clues. We've been up since 3 o'clock this morning. When we sin publicly or make a mess publicly as we have, it's important to take responsibility publicly. And that's one of the things we'll be talking about. To listen as people share their frustration, their sadness, their fears and their correction. And we're getting a lot of that on texts and social media. And it's people's sadness, fears, frustration and correction. And we've earned that. We've been hearing a lot of this and we expect to hear more in the season ahead. As it sometimes takes a while for the frustration to land. You kind of want to take care of us in the moment and cover us, but you know, in two weeks or two months, you're like, wait, what happened?

[A]

Yeah, this isn't going to go away quickly. And anybody who thinks that, oh, they gave this apology, so it's over. Right. We can just move on. That's not true. And anybody who thinks that that's very unhealthy and that will lead to more harms if we don't take a long look at this in the same way that a person who has had a 10 year long affair can't just overcome it in a day. This is going to be a process. You know, you can't just be like, well, he apologized. Welcome back.

[D]

I just want you to know we're here for you in that moment too, and we're not rushing past this. I want to thank especially our alumni. Some of you are probably in the room right now and there's about. This is always mind boggling to me. There's 18,000 alumni running around the planet and reading and around this congregation here. Yeah. So blessed by them.

[A]

But frankly, it was 18,000 people who've come to that church, got training and then left. That is an ongoing concern for me because I'm worried that the training they got has elements of this. I've already addressed this stuff in other videos. But this is why they had to say something very publicly. Their reach is too big not to.

[D]

Their communication, their agitation, their pestering. They're like, what about this? What about this? The. That began to happen on our alumni pages. That at first was a frustration and then you realize this is necessary, this is key.

[A]

The leadership at Bethel in reality did not see the gravity of the situation. I'm gonna be straight, I think, except for other people making them see it. And it wasn't me, it was the alumni who spoke up and thought, I think I'm gonna get kicked off the alumni group. Cause there was plenty of people and they're ripping on me, ripping on the whole situation and defending Bethel's actions. But there were a number of others who said, you know what, I don't care what the consequences are. I'm calling out the truth here. And there was people, I think, on the leadership team who said the same thing to the others. And then slowly, guys like Dan Fairley were like, I guess we're in the wrong here. I think that's what happened.

[D]

They drew our attention back. And subsequently other national voices have joined that. And as well, you might have been seeing some of those things as well. Well, is. And they called us to finally and appropriately address this. And they were, our alumni were simply calling us to live up to what we taught them, Calling out the gold in us as we taught them. And this isn't over today, nor are we putting a bow on this and moving it on. Moving on. We have had a lot of key conversations this year. We expect to continue to have key conversations. But this is the beginning of making things right as we've moved to an increase in accountability. This morning is about accountability before you guys and hopefully into transformation.

[A]

This is the most important part of the service. I mean not just this actually, it's later, but it's at the very end. But the most important part is right at the very end. This is the most important thing that is being said though this concept and it will play out more later is we're not just saying we're sorry about bulls. We're addressing guys, there's cover up culture. It's real. And they're saying we're going to look at it. Does that mean it's fixed? No, but how cool is that that they even went that far?

[D]

As you all know, it's not our mistakes or our sins that define us, but what our Savior does and how we respond to his amazing grace. And that is our great hope this morning. Let's not to applause this morning and this is a somber moment. But I'm just going to ask Chris to come and share your heart with us. He asked. You've been asking for prayer. We are praying for you as you share.

[E]

We love you.

[A]

Okay, so Dan Fairley's done and Dan was the pastor who I believe knowingly and misled Elijah when he was like, hey, do you know anything about the Shaumbo stuff? I've got a huge investment into this. It's affecting my life in a big way kind of situation. And Dan didn't tell him the truth. The nice thing is that Dan actually did speak to Elijah Stevens the other day. And all I know is it was overall positive. But I want to say what he got up there and said was a lot of good. Was it enough? I don't mean I'm dissatisfied. I reject you entirely or something like that. I just mean there's a concern I want to point out. I'll just point out one. He says we're not responsible for his sins, we're just responsible for our actions. Let me read to you what Scripture says. 1 Timothy 5:22. It says and this is super important. Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, that is you're appointing people, you're putting them into ministry positions, nor take part in the sins of others. And commentaries mostly think that this means by laying hands on people you put them into positions of leadership. And if in fact you brought someone you shouldn't have, you can be one who's partaking in their sins. The other option is that because 1 Timothy 5 has just said if you have an elder who's sinning, rebuke in the presence of all persisting in sin. Because that has just been said that what is being implied here by Paul is if you don't rebuke so you laid hands on him and if you didn't rebuke him, you became a partaker of his sins and the rebuke was what public in front of all and on either one of those interpretations which are the only reasonable options you've got. I think Bethel partook in the sins of Sham Bowles and that is something they've yet to really take accountability for. They take partial but not full I'll talk more about this when I get into Che Ahn and his response, but let's look at Chris Valatin and what he had to say.

[B]

Good morning. I'm incredibly anxious. I have not ever done anything like this before. Well, I've done it twice today already. I feel a little bit like my emotional tank is emptying.

[A]

But.

[B]

I feel loved by you. So I'm going to take you on a little journey and tell you about the process with Sean Boltz. And I want to say I've had a heart change in the on Monday morning I had an encounter with the Lord and I see things quite differently and I'll talk about the change in my heart since that encounter to that so in 2019 it came to our attention through some European leaders that Sean Boltz was using Facebook to get some of his words of knowledge. And we got involved Danny and I. Danny Silk and I Bill was out with his wife was passing sick and we got involved and we began to do an investigation. As we were doing that somewhere in the midst of that it might have even started first sexual allegations about Sean's ministry in a spiritual specifically around his employees came sexual harassment came to light and Danny got in the trenches there and began to investigate the sexual allegations. And also the and Danny got the there was 14 Facebook videos that the Europeans had put together in their own investigation and they said can you guys do something about about this? So Danny who Was, you know, we've. We were. I'll say we were all friends of Sean. Sean was here many times in 2014 when I had a nervous breakdown. He ministered to me several times through my nervous breakdown.

[A]

I believe that. And this is what. One of the things that makes it really hard. See, when you know a leader only from far away on stage, especially if he's not really part of your circle or he hasn't ministered to you in a deep way, it's easier to be like, we flag you. You're a bad guy. But imagine this leader tremendously helped you in some amazing way. And then you find out some stuff about him that's really like, dude, he's actually got this side to him that is very bad, and it's uncontrolled and he's unrepentant. That's a difficult thing to work through. But Scripture has given us clear guidance on what to do about it. You just have to rip the band Aid off.

[B]

And so he was a friend of the house at the time. And Danny looked at the videos and flew to LA and showed him the videos and also showed him the sexual allegations. And he flatly denied it. I didn't do that. I would never do that. I don't know why you think I do that. And it just went nowhere.

[A]

And so Danny, right, I've heard conflicting testimony here, so I'm not even. I'm not suggesting Chris is being dishonest on this point in any way. So I've heard from some sources he admitted to the sexual stuff, and others he would never admit to it. And I'm a little confused as to what really happened there, to be honest. So I want to just put that out there because I was talking about.

[B]

Earlier, I took on the prophetic side. I said, I'll work on the prophetic thing, and you work on the allegations, the sexual allegations. So Danny did some research, got a hold of some other former employees, and it turned out.

[A]

I'll share.

[B]

I'll spare you all the facts, but it turned out that those allegations were not only true, but it was a culture for a long time.

[A]

So validating to the victims to hear this from Chris, Even people who were upset with Chris and were like, I can't believe you did that before, who heard him a week prior give that message and were, like, feeling pretty upset, right? And hurt and wounded and being like, I can't believe that he's doing this. They heard this and Chris, they were like, if you ever watch this, they were so happy to Hear this. It's healing to the heart. When you expose a predator, it heals the victims in great ways and also causes them to relive the trauma. And that's why they need counseling and stuff sometimes. But that was great. I'm so grateful that he shared this stuff publicly because the last Sunday before this, you wouldn't have known if it was even true. You would have thought there's another side of the story. You might have even thought that the people who Sean hurt were actually not victims at all. This, however. That was awesome. Sorry.

[B]

And so I flew to LA and confronted him. And it was a four hour meeting. The first two hours was confronting him as Galatians one, as a friend who had sinned and calling him to repentance. And he's flatly denied that he had done anything wrong, that he would never do that. And it, it really got nowhere. The last two hours were a very different meeting, very passionate meeting. And I was saying to him, if you don't confess your sin, if someone else has to confess your sin, it's going to get ugly. Because if you confess your sin, you're going to get forgiveness and you're going to get repentance and you're going to get whole. But if someone else confesses your sin, your whole ministry is going to burn down. And I was like, bro, your ministry is going to burn down if you don't, if you don't get in here and do the right thing. So he did, went on for a long time. We all felt that we should give him some time. We were texting back and forth and pretty soon it was just like, no, no, no messages back. I'm not doing anything. This is not happening. And I just be. So we, we began to meet. This is like almost a year past and, and part of it is so, part of the, I think the timeline is that, you know, where was Covet? We were in Covet, Benny was passing. What's that? Aaron Canis left. And one of my very close, very close family members began a divorce. And I was completely exhausted. That's not an excuse, but that was where we were. And so we had a conversation like, what should we do? And he's not repentant. Okay, well, let's take him off of all of our platforms. So we took him off of all of our platforms. We took all of his books out of our bookstore. We took all this messages off for, you know, off of our network.

[A]

They didn't successfully do that. I mean, I've, I still found stuff in 2025. That was on Bethel's stuff. I'm not saying that it's deliberately left. I'm just. Just for the sake of clarity. But the. I'm going to let them keep talking. There's obviously some. Some things here. It is a little. When you're offering an apology like this, I mean, it's really tempting to be like, I want you guys to know what I was going through at the time and all the struggles that we were having at the time. And that matters. We care about that. But it can also blur the reality. And so I know that Chris has shared this in multiple audiences at multiple occasions before he even brought it on Sunday morning about like, oh, here's what I was going through at the time. Here's all the things we're going through. I was overwhelmed. I get all that. But that, that actually doesn't really. You were overwhelmed, but you traveled and spent a whole trip, multiple trips to go talk to Sean. You confronted him for hours. It would have taken you five minutes to make a public statement. It wouldn't have been a time consuming thing, is what I'm suggesting. And that being overwhelmed wasn't. Anyway, you guys get what I'm saying. I don't want to diminish the stress that he was experiencing. And life, life is hard.

[B]

And we told a bunch of our close ministry friends that we knew were having him on their platform.

[A]

Yeah. And it would have been easier to just do one public statement and not have to call a bunch of people individually over and over again.

[B]

But here's the challenge that I didn't understand till four days ago, five days ago, I thought we were helping somebody else with their problem. He was on many, many platforms. I don't know, 100 or 200 churches. Those European leaders asked us to help. We weren't on his board. We went to his board on a couple of occasions. They did nothing.

[A]

And Sean Floyt, Dr. Zollner, actually Sean Foyt has. Was on Sean Bowles's board. Sean Bowles was on Sean Foyt's board. And they both shared two board members between them. I think that matters board members that didn't want to hold them accountable.

[B]

I wasn't thinking of it like I would think of a staff member. Like that happens in our staff. That is not going to go. I was like, this is not our responsibility. This is someone else's responsibility. We've done what we could. And that was a serious mistake. We put him on a global platform and as soon as we did that, other people, other People believed in him because we believed in him. And consequently, when he failed and then failed to repent after giving him time to repent, it was our responsibility to tell the people that we told we trust this man. To tell them we don't trust this man. And that didn't happen. And that's on me. I made this.

[A]

Thank you, Chris Valatin. There's some disagreements, but oh, my goodness, thank you so, so much for what you just shared there. That is very powerful. And the thing is that when you say this out loud and so many people hear it, you are causing other people to follow in those footsteps instead of the footsteps that you set before where it was like, not our problem footsteps, which is what Chaon did as well. And he's still dumping us. We'll talk about Chaon later. It's gonna be a long video and sorry to the mods and Sarah. It's probably longer than I even said I thought it was gonna be because you probably knew it would because you know me. Sorry, Sarah Zimmerman, but that was really good. I'm grateful that you said this and that you took responsibility. I want to point out, though, that Bill has not. Bill didn't come out on stage first. Dan went first and then Chris went. And Bill is. It should have been Bill up there to say this initially. If I was in Bill's shoes, I would be the first one on stage. First one on stage. I wouldn't send other people anyway. I'm going to back up a little because I kind of cut him off.

[B]

To tell the people that we told, we trust this man. To tell them we don't trust this man. And that didn't happen. And that's on me. I made that decision. I know that it sounds like we were hiding something. I want to point out to everyone who knows me and our global audience too, I confess my own sins. When the Lord talked to me about cussing, I'm like, about a week later, I told the whole world, I've never been upset. I've never been able to live with. I do something wrong and I don't confess it. So it wasn't in my mind to cover up anything.

[A]

I have to say this. Bethel did cover up. It wasn't just inaction. Bethel did actually cover up. They took steps to cover up. And I know that sounds outrageous to some of the people at Bethel. I'm suggesting go back and rewatch my video. Just the sections where I talk about those sequence of events. The statement that came out from Bethel that had explicit cover up stuff Going on in that statement, in the text, in the conversations that Chris had on Instagram, which I put on screen, that was explicitly cover up stuff. The Sunday before, he gave this message and said, it's never been in my heart to cover for anybody. He gave a message that suggested that there's another side of the story, that the people who are making the videos and stuff are actually in the wrong here, and they're acting like Pharisees. And that is what that message would have suggested. Now, you might say, I didn't intend it to cover up. I didn't say what you intended. I said what you did. That was cover up. And it's not honest. It's not true. I'll say it's not true. He may believe it, he may believe it, but it's not true that there was no cover up.

[B]

It was a couple of things. One, I struggled with what is our responsibility, which I see completely different. And by the way, it's so sad that somebody has to put out a video that creates a firestorm to get someone who's 70 years old to do something. That's an indictment against my leadership. I should have known better. And if I didn't know better, I should have went and got counsel. And I didn't do that. And I'm very sorry.

[A]

I did reach out to Chris before I made the video. He wasn't wanting to talk to me. I know the minor prophets reached out and said, hey, can we talk? Before they made their video? And I've been available at any point. I understand why they don't. I haven't talked to Chris yet. Maybe we will in the future. I don't think that's a big issue, to be honest. I don't want people. I don't want a bunch of people hounding. You haven't talked to Mike, Chris? I don't. I don't care. Okay. I care that. That they contact the people who were hurt by Sean. I care that they reach out to others. I know Jubilee dawn has not yet been reached out to, but I know that Chris reached out to at least one of the. One of the victims in particular, who was. Was the one. They had the text conversations, and it was a great conversation. And he appreciated Chris's humility and his. And his honesty and his apology, and it was very healing, and I'm grateful. Good job, Chris, for that. So thank you, Chris. More. More of that stuff from leaders looking at the people they hurt and saying, I won't just make public statements to my congregation. I'm Going to go and call the person and be like, how do I make this right? I'm sorry.

[B]

I take full responsibility for that. I'm very sorry. And being sorry doesn't fix anything because the side effects of that are that people took prophetic words from Sean and as news came out and of course it will. We live in a social media world. I didn't know what to do. What do I do with this prophetic word by somebody who's been getting mining Facebook to get his words of knowledge. What do I do with these? And instead of stepping in and helping process, like what do you do with these words? And then this, the sexual allegations, what do we do? One of the victims.

[A]

In a previous message, Chris made it sound as though exposing Sean would cause people to doubt those prophetic words they received. And that that was the problem. And now he's saying something so different and good. He's like, actually they do need pastoral guidance. Like, what do I do with these prophetic words that I received? Like, what do I do with them? That's what they needed. That's what they needed all along. And I'm grateful that he's saying that now. That's a great u turn on that topic.

[B]

I'm sorry. One of the victims of the sexual allegations reached out to me and wanted me to help. I did. I reached out to Sean on several occasions and after a while just got so involved. It didn't go anywhere. Danny was meeting with him too and, and he was persistent like he should have been. He's asking a spiritual father's life, can you help me? I'm in a crisis. And unfortunately his persistence and my not knowing what else to do. Caused my to me to make a decision out of frustration instead of compassion and I just blocked him. It wasn't the first day or anything like that. It went on for a long, long time. And I think just my capacity for stress was at an all time low as I was trying to help my family member, Benny and Covid and all the issues that were happening all at once.

[A]

He's going to talk more about this. I want to encourage you guys to know also this is good. Chris didn't have to admit this. Okay. I don't know if this was like he knew that we didn't know that he had blocked this witness. I didn't know that. I didn't report on that. If you could call what I do reporting. I don't think it really is reporting, but I'm not a reporter. I'm trying to help the Body. But, yeah, that was not, to my knowledge. That was not public. Now, I don't know if Chris ever saw my video or he just talked to people who did. So who knows? Maybe he thought it was public knowledge. But the point here is that he admitted something that is very vulnerable. That was very much a wrong, cruel thing he did, and he's saying it was wrong. And that's a beautiful thing. We applaud this. And for those things, we go, that's awesome. As Christians, we take confession and we think, that is beautiful. That is beautiful, and that is good. And it was really healthy for the person he's talking about to hear this. And. And later they did talk, and it was a good talk. So isn't that the best case scenario? Now, I'm not saying Bethel's problems are solved. No. But isn't that good in that microscopic moment? Isn't that a beautiful thing? Yes.

[B]

And it was sad to look back and realize that someone reached out to me for help, and not only did they not get help, they got stonewalled. It's not the way a leader should behave. And I want to say publicly, I'm so sorry for all the people, like everyone in this room. You're carrying the stigma of my inability to do the right thing, which was to post. Hey, we put this guy on a stage and we trusted him. Hey, we no longer trust him. Everyone should know that.

[A]

Ten seconds, that's all. That's all it would take because it would just spread from there. Everybody would know. People would tell people. They wouldn't even know all the details, but at least it would protect people from Sean.

[B]

And I didn't do that. So I especially apologize to the victims. The victims of the inappropriate sexual culture and obvious. The victims of all the people of Sean's prophetic ministry who struggled with. What do I do with this word? Some of the words were amazing. Do I believe this word? Do I put faith in it anymore? How do I process this? And frankly, we had never processed that on that level before, so it was new territory.

[A]

This is a red flag to me, this moment, and I'm going to be straightforward. I know I'm going to lose the ear of a lot of people, maybe at Bethel. Bethel, you've had a lot more fake prophecy than Sean Bowles. I know you haven't processed it before, but if you were to do your own real accounting of some of the stuff that's gone on, you would be rethinking Bob Jones right now and be like, we need to do the same process with Bob Jones's stuff. We need to really do the same process with any Paul Kane stuff. We've got to. And you might be like, paul's not part of our movement. You need to do the same process with the Paul Caine stuff. There's a number of other people as well. There are words that you may hold close to your heart that were not the Lord. It was wishful thinking. I could give examples. I'm hoping Bethel will find their own. Will find their own. Because I don't just want to display all the dirty laundry stuff. I want to ask for you guys to respond well to the truth. And hopefully you will. But you have had to deal with this before. You've just never dealt with it before. That's the reality for us.

[B]

It's, again, not an excuse. Sunday night, I was not in this. This is our responsibility mode. I was still in, hey, we did more than 100 platforms. He was on, hey, we took our own time to investigate this. We confronted and confronted to no solution. And it's like. And I was in this mode of like, I don't know why everybody's mad at us. Like, who else did anything? Not realizing, like, we're the ones that put them on a global platform. We're the ones who caused it to go from this to this. It was on us. And honestly, I say sometimes adversity introduces a man to himself. And I saw in me a man I did not like.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Monday morning. And I want to thank people who push back and who are dedicated to the body of Christ being a healthy body. We need. It's not fun, but we need that kind of pushback.

[A]

And some people are criticizing Chris right now because they're like, you say you had an encounter with God. Oh, now you see everything. But even Chris acknowledges that it was the people who pushed back that helped him to see it. Okay, whatever he meant by that phrase encounter with God, it was people who are inside Bethel, who are inside and close, who pushed back and said, no, this was wrong. And they helped pull his eyes open to see it. And there are some things. Maybe he's not seeing everything that needs to be yet, but there are some things he's seeing. And I think that what he's saying here is absolutely genuine. I do. Is it sufficient? Here's my summary. If this is a first step on a journey, it's a beautiful first step. If it's the last step of dealing with an issue, it is going to be a problem. But we'll talk more. There's a Lot more I have to share with you guys. I've waited for a couple weeks to share this info. So hang on. There's going to be a section on Chaeyeon Patricia King and. And we'll talk about how Bethel not only increased their platform, they like officially appointed him, they participated in the appointing of Sean Bowles. And we have evidence of this now. They didn't just have him on their platform. They went to his apostolic anointing and participated. Cheon Bill Johnson, Chris Valatin. Sorry, not Chris. Cheon Bill Johnson. And Patricia King. And Patricia King later was like, we're ministry acquaintances. That's not true. Oh, great. It's freezing again, isn't it? Please tell me it's not.

[B]

Last Sunday night, I was trying to process externally, which I'm sort of famous for doing. Like, I don't totally have it figured out, but I think I'll just tell everybody about it and maybe it'll. Maybe it'll be a good message. I had a sincere heart. I was really trying to. Trying to share with our body with all of these Facebook, all these, you know, social media swirl. And my friends are like, say something. And I'm like, oh, you know, what am I going to say? What I'm going to say is, wow, it's really hard to pastor a global body, 21st century with social media. That was really a pretty dumb response, actually, especially since I hadn't worked out how to do it. Like, let's just tell everybody I don't know what I'm doing. And I actually quoted Revelation 2 where it says, I know your deeds that you love, your love and faith and service and perseverance, that your deeds of late are greater than at first. Well, that's good. But I have this against you that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. And she teaches and leads my bond servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things, sacrifice to idols. I gave her time to repent and she does not want to repent of her immorality. Funny, I don't know how you read that verse and emphasize, I gave her time to repent instead of you tolerated the prophetess who is perverted. But somehow I didn't get that. Somehow I read right over that and not saw. I didn't see that the Lord was actually speaking, speaking to us like, hey, you're doing these greater works. That's awesome. You're tolerating this prophetic person who's actually perverted his ministry. And I gave him Time. And I'm emphasizing in my message, I gave him time when I should have been emphasizing. I called him to judgment.

[A]

Amen. Amen. I'm not punishing a man who comes forward and is like, look, this is what I got wrong. This is where I got it wrong. He's calling himself out very openly and honestly. This is a wonderful thing. This is a wonderful act. I know some are thinking this is just all strategy. I don't believe that. Okay, maybe you think I'm being naive. I've certainly been accused of this in the past with Bethel. And in some cases, I have been, too, myself have been too gracious towards some of these guys. I mean, I'm talking here about Todd White. My first video on him, like, seven years ago. I was definitely too gracious to Todd White. My first video on Bethel. I was overly gracious because there's things I didn't know and I assumed the best, but I'm still going to try and. Because total cynicism is not the safe path either. So this looks like it's real. I think his eyes are opened. Are they open all the way? That's a different question. We'll talk more about that. But grateful for this moment right here. Yeah. God rebukes them for tolerating Jezebel. This is not a passage that's encouraging us to tolerate Sean Bowles for a time. No. The second you know what he's doing, you stop him.

[B]

That was dumb at best. I didn't see it. I didn't see it till Monday morning. I saw it when I realized, this is our. This isn't just. This isn't our fault, but it is definitely our responsibility. These are the things, you know, Repentance means that you take ownership of your failure. So, number one, I need to take ownership of my failure. We failed you as a body. We failed the students, failed everyone who trusts us. And I sincerely am sorry, but repentance requires bringing forth fruit. Because so sorry doesn't really get it if you just keep doing the same stupid thing over and over. So we need to be a shift in our cultural values in that we focus on safety and security of our global community. We have to focus like it's. It. I used to say it's not our responsibility to keep everybody safe. Well, we can't keep everybody safe. But it is our responsibility to do our best, as it depends on us to keep our people safe and to keep the people who trust us safe.

[A]

I think they probably always would have said they want to keep the people who Trust them safe. But the fact that Chris is saying we have to look at our values and figure out what's wrong, and he'll say this more. That is exactly right now is the shambles situation. It. I think if you have a really long look at your values, you're going to have a long list of serious things, and it's going to be like, oh, my gosh, if we really do this, it's going to be very costly. But that's the next step. That would be the ideal situation.

[B]

That was a very bad core value on my part. Number three, we must realize that leaders who have graced our podium and being promoted by us are thereby. We have to care as much about their character as we do about their gift. When we put somebody on stage, we have to care.

[A]

I think when you guys hear that applause, what you should do is those of you who are extremely cynical about Bethel, like, you're 100% cynicism. You're like, they're all a bunch of unsaved people. I think you should hear, here's a crowd that is saying, we really want you to do that. We don't want people of bad character who are up on stage because they have some sort of gift. That's their own audience, spontaneously, for the first time in this whole day, from the stuff we've been watching, actually just spontaneously applauding because they actually have that heart. And, Bethel, you're the people who I'm counting on to bring the change and transformation. The fact that you care and you want that, that's the only way it will ever happen. Now, it may require hard choices, and it may cost you in some ways you haven't anticipated, but that is a beautiful thing.

[B]

If we're going to take responsibility when somebody that gets on our stage falls, we got to care that they have a track record. Now, obviously, you can do all the investigation you want and still make a mistake, that's a mistake. But when you don't even try, that's not a mistake. Number four, we have to take steps to bring greater accountability to our own leadership teams and ensure that we together live out these values. We have to call each other to account when we break these core values that we're creating. When we say, hey, it is our job to keep people safe, as least as it depends on us. This is our job. This is not their job because he's in some other ministry or he's not on our board, we're not on his board, and we just slough it off. And then what Happens comes into our, into our network. It comes into our people and in the body of Christ and wreaks havoc. And we're like, well, that's not my problem. I'm sorry, from now on, it is our problem.

[A]

I'm sorry to point this out at this point, but I just want to acknowledge Bill's not even on stage.

[B]

From now on, we better think of how we're going to solve that problem. And I don't know that's going to be an easy solution. But the Lord will give us wisdom and grace and we will figure it out.

[A]

This is the real question. Okay, I'm going to be rooting for them. I'm not going to be, I'm not going to play games. I'm being honest here about your criticisms and concerns. I have plenty to have. But this idea that moving forward we need to make changes, we haven't even yet figured out what they have to be, is probably one of the best approaches they can have. And when they're looking to other people to help them, assist them in it, that is also very good and healthy. But I anticipate that what will actually need to happen will be so extreme that it will require a reckoning within Bethel to say, are we going to act like this was a Shamboul situation? Are we going to act like this was a cover up culture situation? And it goes back and branches out into a lot of different places and people and systems and things that sometimes we love. That's what remains to be seen. And I hope for the best.

[B]

We will be a better movement in the future. We want to remain a place of restoration for leaders, but not at the expense of protecting the flock. Listen, people come here from all over the world. Some of them you know, some of them you don't. It happens a lot here. A leader who has fallen comes into our midst and we help restore them and we've restored so many people. And I want to tell you that I, a product of that restoration. I met this man when I was 26 years old and I was in the middle of a three and a half year nervous breakdown. And he wrapped his arms around a broken kid with two little kids and a wife who moved to the mountains because I was mentally ill.

[A]

I'm not disregarding anything that Chris is talking about. Actually, what you're seeing here is I love the idea of restoration. I needed that too. Bill gave that to me and he feels deeply grateful to Bill for that. And they want to extend that to others. But if we have, and I'm going to use this phrase very intentionally because when we get to Bill Johnson, we'll see why. When we have a willful blindness about the dangers of these people we're trying to restore. It's scary. When you say we've restored so many leaders who have fallen. That's actually a concerning thing. It doesn't mean they're all bad, but I don't think we can trust that you have restored them properly. That remains to be seen. It doesn't mean they weren't. It means it remains to be seen because of the kind of willful blindness that Bill Johnson in particular exhibits that then trickles down into the whole movement, which trickles down into the entire charismatic world.

[B]

And he believed in me and I never want to lose that. But in the midst of that core value, we have to protect the flock.

[A]

Amen.

[B]

You can't let predators and people who are unrepentant have our podiums and be among our people when they are still destructive. And I'm so sorry for that. And we will do better. Will we get it right every time? No. But at least we should try. At least we should build a culture where we can say, oh, we got through the cracks, not like we have an open door. There's a big difference between an open door and he fell through the cracks. Sunday night's message I thought was good is inappropriately placed in the wrong context.

[A]

It was not. It wasn't good. It wasn't good. Scripture's clear. You fought against it, Chris. You should really reconsider that. It wasn't good. First Timothy 5:20, Matthew 18. It tells you the step of tell it to the church. Rebuking the presence of all. And you didn't do that. You thought Galatians one was a blanket rule for every scenario. Restore such a one is always the thing or something. I don't know. So that wasn't good.

[B]

And sent a message that he cared more about the leader than I did the victim. I say this for people who don't know me because this is probably going all over the place because my failure has gone all over the place. I grew up in a very violent home Till I was 8 years old. I remember my mom being beaten and I left that house with a huge heart. For every victim. I've had two nervous breakdowns, one of them mentally mental illness. I have a huge compassion for people who have broken. We spent five years with broken kids in a non Christian youth group. I just want to point out like I didn't extend my. My compassion to people. But I have great compassion for people who are broken.

[A]

I'm going to defend Chris for a second here. When you blow it and it's like in an online world, like we are right now, and then the one thing people know about you is the one thing that you did wrong, people will have an easily have a misimpression of who you are. And yeah, this was a big issue. This was a big problem. I also think Chris has a really serious passion for justice and that he is willing to be tenacious to protect people and to do good things for people. I think that's true about Chris and I think it's fair for him to be like. I mean, he's not saying this in these words, but I'll say it in my words to be like, guys, the things about me, if those of you who only know the things I've done wrong, that's all you know about me. That's like all you think I am. And there's more to me than that. And it's fair that he wants to say this. I know people have criticized him. They're like, you're manipulating people, the crowd, by sharing your sob story about your past. And that can happen. That can be an aspect of this. I'm not denying that. But I do want to acknowledge that there's an overwhelming one sidedness when we do find out that someone's flawed. And this is why when I did my video on Sean Bowles, I'm like, dude, Sean, I would champion your forgiveness. And people were like, I can't believe you said that, Mike. No, I would. It doesn't mean I want him back in ministry, but I would champion his forgiveness if he repents. People can be more than their sins and more than their failures and pastors can be more than their worst moments. And I think there's a lot of issues I have with Bethel and with Chris that I don't think that they're a safe place spiritually for people to be. I don't believe they are. That's for good reason. I've explained it numerous times. But it's fair for him to say this in one respect, which is when you see you guys, if you were in the public eye for a little bit, you would see and you'd be like, oh my gosh, these people only know one thing about me and they think that's all that I am. And that's fair for him to say.

[B]

That I think I'm really sorry and it troubles me so bad because I can't Imagine if one of my kids was on his team or got some great prophetic word and was running their life after it and found out later that that man was incredible. I can't imagine how that wouldn't have broke my heart. And for some reason that idea that that's not our responsibility dictated my actions. Deeply sorry. I'd like to say it'll never happen again. But I hold you to, I hold my leadership team to, like, please don't ever let me do that again.

[A]

I think there's an awareness there that he's like, I don't know what it is in me that has led to this and I need help. There's awareness there. I hope that he hands over the authority for others to actually take action and not just to privately appeal to his judgment on this issue, because I think that that would be good.

[B]

I just want to say to the victims, super sorry, it's not just a scripted message. It's like deeply grieved. From Monday on, haven't slept much. When you have this much experience as a leader and you get something that wrong, you should be troubled. I've spent a lot of time and our team has spent a lot of time giving feedback. How did we get it wrong? What was the value that was misplaced? How do we change the culture? How do we make sure that we don't just fix this or say we're sorry, but how do we make sure that we build a culture that 20 years from now, this is not, this is not okay. No one's going to ever say, well, that's not our responsibility ever again. And I promise you, from this day forward, no one will ever say that in this house again. That guy we put on a platform, not our responsibility. We'll learn to be more vigilant. We have a lot to learn. For me, this is the first week of a journey that I've never been here before. And how we navigate a global movement in the 21st century, it's got to be possible and it's definitely got to be way better than we've done.

[A]

It's not mysterious at all. You do what Scripture says. Two or three witnesses, the elder who persists in sin, rebuke in the presence of all that the rest also may fear. Matthew 18. People say Matthew 18 all the time. But in the charismatic world and in cover up culture, Matthew 18 is only steps one, maybe two. And then you go back to steps one and two again. You never do step three where you tell it to the church. First Corinthians 5 when you are assembled together, deliver them over to Satan. It's simple. It's just that it's embarrassing. But it's more if you don't do it. It just takes time. And as you don't do it, people can smell, they can feel that there's something fraudulent going on in your movement. It affects everything. A little leaven leavens the lump. And that's the thing. I'm glad that they're going to change things and that he wants to change things moving forward. But to really change things, this has to be seen as the very beginning of a self evaluation that is going to be costly.

[B]

And prayerfully, a lot of other leaders will learn from our mistakes. And prayerfully, we don't just get well. Prayerfully, the body of Christ becomes a safe, godly place for our children, for people to get well, for leaders to get well, for victims to get healed without. Creating a huge mess. Please forgive me. I understand that your trust for me is broken. I know for some of you that will take time to heal. I'm very sorry. I do give you my word that we'll move to maturity in this. Bill's going to speak now. God bless you. Thank you so much for listening.

[A]

All right, next we're going to hear from Bill Johnson. There's. There's plenty of stuff I could share. I don't want to pause every time he says a phrase. I'll say that the idea, that much of what he said was amazing, and I applaud it. And if it's the first step on a journey, it's great. If it's here's the whole journey, then it's actually really problematic. And so I think a lot of people, even within the church would agree if this is just about the Shaun Wohl situation or just about if they're as bad as Sean. You guys have to reevaluate your view of prophecy. You have to go back and reevaluate your view of prophecy and how much you'll tolerate stuff that isn't real. That has to happen. An open conversation within your own movement has to happen about that. Because this Sean stuff wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for that.

[E]

Thanks. Chris very nobly takes all the responsibility when it really comes back to me. You know, Both Chris and Danny were much more willing to pursue bringing correction, not just the initial correction, but actually walking through long term this whole journey. And I was the part of the process that slowed it down.

[A]

Bill's gonna share some stuff here that I like, and then there's the overall. I want to say nicer things. The overall flow, though, is that Bill speaks roundabout, for the most part, suggestive and not clear. Unlike Chris, who mostly was very straightforward in a way that you would understand what he meant. What do you mean? You were the one that slowed it down. What does that mean? Because when you use minimizing language when you're talking about the things that you did wrong, that's actually a red flag. Hold on, let me show you guys. This is from Bill's book. He writes in a chapter called True Confession. Bill Johnson. Confessing sin has become a real art form. If you do it right, you can appear spiritual while admitting to sin. Phrases like the Holy Spirit has shown me or God has been dealing with me about can emphasize our spirituality over our disobedience to God. It's another way of saying, I have this tiny little sin. But through my deep devotion to God and my sensitivity to his voice, I perceive that I've grieved Him, Therefore I confess. It saves the horrible embarrassment of looking bad. Another classic confession goes something like, I need to confess the sin of a lack of discipline. Is the lack of anything sin? No, but it's a good way to confess the sin, the sin of laziness without using the ugly word and being humiliated. If you want to be good at appearing spiritual while confessing sin, you'll have to ask yourself this question. Now, he's using sarcasm here, right? He says, what will people think? This is the driving force in the minds of ordinary people who overnight become masters of confession. Even, even those who haven't had a creative idea in years can rise to the challenge with the idea, with that idea in mind. After all, looking good is the American way. Let me illustrate some of the how to's. And I'm reading this before we listen to Bill talk because I think there are elements that are connected. And I think we have to acknowledge this, knowing that Bill was the primary driver behind Sean Bulls and him being covered up for years. Bill was the primary driver there, and he admits it here. And I believe that he's been the primary driver behind a lot of people. If you find yourself nailed by God over stories that you've told that had slight embellishments in them. Don't confess to lying. That's an extreme word and sounds much worse than exaggeration. You could possibly try the suggestion of the previous paragraph and say, I need to confess a sin because my memory isn't as good as it used to be. I am sometimes not as accurate in my stories as I should be, as opposed to saying that you were lying. Or you could be bold and try the first suggestion saying, God has really been dealing with me lately. It seems that some of the stories I've told had some slight exaggeration in them. Please forgive me. Either way, you saved some face without appearing like one of those habitual liars. And God only knows how many people would stumble if you made that admission. Let me read one more little section from the same very short part of his book. One of the main goals of this kind of confession is to acknowledge sin without appearing like a sinner. That is, unless you're one of those who insists on walking out true repentance. Solomon in his wisdom said, he who is slothful in his work is brother to him who is a great destroyer. Can you imagine the lazy person saying, don't link my sin with that of terrorism. I just lack a little discipline. Protecting our self image by going soft or. This is so hard to read. This part of the picture on sin is the sure way to damage our self image and prolong our bondage to sinful habits. That's the concern. That's why I'm going to confront this, because I want to see Bethel. I want to cheer for Bethel. I want to root for Bethel to have transformation, because that could be part of transforming the Charismatic Church in good ways that are needed to the point where you guys can call, like, everybody knows, like, Kenneth Copeland's an evil guy. Like, how do you guys not all know this? How do your leaders not all know this? How does Bill not know this? Or does he know it? And he tells them, I don't. We'll come back to that. He says, I wish that I could say I learned this from a book, but this is a page from my own life. Pride is the enemy of true confession, and real repentance is the destroyer of pride. He says, I was the part that slowed it down. What does that mean, Bill? That's not a proper way to talk about that.

[E]

You know, sometimes your strongest trait becomes your weakest trait. And one of the things I do well is I believe in people, and they don't deserve it.

[A]

This is not appropriate, but it can.

[E]

Move into what some have called unsanctified mercy. And that's actually what I. What I did. I became so not impressed with the gift. I don't. I don't.

[A]

I'm going to back up and play that part again. But the idea that he actually said the phrase unsanctified mercy is beautiful. I Think that maybe Bill's interpreting it as kind of like a soft way of saying, I protected an abuser and further traumatized his victims. I subjected my people to a false prophet and then didn't protect them when I found out the truth. He could say those things. But maybe in Bill's mind, saying unsanctified mercy is like a nicer way of saying it. I thought of unsanctified mercy as a really derogatory thing, but I don't know if other people really do. But I'm glad to use the term because it helps legitimize it for those who follow Bill. But listen carefully to what he says here.

[E]

I've called unsanctified mercy, and that's actually what I did. I became so not impressed with the gift. I don't. I don't do gifts over character. But I became so committed to just seeing Sean protected and come into a place of health that I just was foolish. And how it started is I believed. I didn't believe the allegations were true. Initially, I think probably all of us wondered, man, this can't be true. We love this guy. We've spent time with him, he spent time here. But over a period of time, it became obvious it was true. But I became blind to it because my loyalty to him as a friend, as somebody who had ministered deeply to me, as Chris mentioned to him, and so many people authentically, that we became blind to the fact. I became blind to the fact that there was a real issue that needed to be addressed. I'm completely blind to it.

[A]

This is super important because it's at, I think, the core. I hate talking about this stuff in public like this in front of all these people. But I think it's important because Bill has had a puppet strings impact on the entire charismatic movement. The entire charismatic movement. I've talked to pastors who go, we're trying to recover from the. From the impact that Bethel has had on our ministry and how we handle prophetic and spiritual things. I've had those conversations. So it's important that we recognize this. When he says he was, I'm going to use my words willfully blind. He heard it, didn't want to believe it. Later it became obvious it was true and he became blind to it, like it was something happening to him. He chose not to believe it even though he knew it was true. This was a willful self deception of Bill Johnson in regards to Sean Bowles. And it explains so much, and it explains far more than Sean Bowles, because Bill has treated the prophetic this way for a long time and become blind to the fact that many of the things that he calls prophetic aren't. And this has trickled down so that there is an entire culture who is believing things are prophetic and real that aren't. They're believing an act of tongues is real, that it's not a healing. That was real, that was not. Now, I'm not saying there's no prophecy, tongues or healings that have happened at Bethel. I don't believe that. I'm saying, and I've said this from years and years ago, the ratio of the real to the fake is disturbing. And Bill's impact is to spread his own self imposed blindness to all of his followers so that they become victims of all kinds of things that go far beyond Sean Bowles. This is a willful blindness that Bill's confessing. He's saying it in a way that it's like it's his big heart of love and loyalty. And that I think is not appropriate for this moment. But it reveals something that is at the heart of so many issues that are going on at Bethel. The thing that they will have to uncover from, recover from is the blindness of Bill Johnson. I am confused by this. I don't know what was really going on in the leadership in Bethel at the time. I know that Chris believed it was real, Danny believed it was real. And they cut Sean off from every event. They did. They cut him off from all the events. He was not going to be speaking at their stuff. And Sean said elsewhere that he was staying in close contact with Bill the whole time. So Bill had to have been aware and he had to have been aware of the extreme reaction. And he had to have been okay with the reaction of cutting Sean out of everything. But yet he's saying, I didn't appeal to them to ask them what they thought about it. This is weird. I don't know what is going on in Bill's mind. I don't know what actually happened in the history of it. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something. I'm open to that. But this seems. It seems as though he is doing the thing now that he said he did then, which is not seeing things clearly. And that's concerning.

[E]

More and more people. More and more injuries took place through the prophetic and then through his own.

[A]

Teams where when he says he slowed the process down, the only thing that didn't happen was a public statement about Sean Bowles. So he let everything else was allowed to happen. Unless there's More behind the scenes that we're not knowing about. That was prior to that. And I'll tell you guys some stuff afterwards. I have some new evidence. I'll just. I'm just going to share it. I don't know what to do with it all, to be honest. But if he's slowing it down, the only thing he could have been slowing down was don't let anybody else know about this. Don't let it be public. Don't do the public thing where we warn our people that, Sean, you need to test the words that he gave you and he was lying. We need to call the missionaries the people. We need to tell Elijah Stevens. Is that what he said they couldn't do when he said he slowed it down?

[E]

It's confusing where people were traumatized over some of the sexual issues. Just horrible, sad, sad, sad stuff. And I spent time with one individual that I know, and we actually had a real. I felt a really honoring time going both ways. He was calling out for help. He was expressing the pain of his own journey and the trauma that he had faced being on that staff.

[A]

I know this person. We talked a lot. He was one of my sources. So he met with Bill, and we.

[E]

Had a really good time of connection. I was so thankful for it. What followed, however, is I did. I was invited to do an interview on tbn, which I agreed to do, and found out it was to promote Sean in his book. And I went through with it. And so if you can imagine making a heartfelt connection with somebody and lending support for their healing, and then a week, a month, three months, whatever it was, I don't recall now, let's just say two months later, endorsing the very guy that he just brought a report to me on. And it was just a slap and the face to this young man. And it was just such a horrible misjudgment on my part. Just absolutely foolish.

[A]

I need to pause here. Did Bill believe that Sean was guilty when he went on TBN and endorsed him? Because here it sounds like he did. He actually had his whole team who believed he was guilty, or at least Chris and Danny Silk and whoever else. And they warned everybody. Chris says they told everybody. They told their whole teams, don't do anything with Sean. Everybody, everybody knows, okay? They all know about Sean. Bill hat had to have known. Did he not believe it? But he was. He's living in some kind of La la land. This is spiritually dangerous territory. And I'm telling you guys, this is important. And I know it could truncate the whole video and hurt its reach inside the charismatic movement. But Bill has done this all along with prophecy. When in Weaverville, when he talks about the glorious time they first got prophecy going, he sat at a table and he told everybody to go around the table and say, if Jesus was here, what do you think he would say? And each person said something, and at the end he goes, you know what you just did? You prophesied? Bill just chooses things to believe and believes them and then declares them in the name of God to others. And in that environment of incredible positivity, it can be very empowering and very encouraging. But we cannot live by lies. We cannot live in the La La land. And that is exactly what he was doing. It leads me to this point. I don't even know what Bill believed about Sean at that point. I think that when he was talking with the witness, he acted as though Sean was guilty. When he was dealing with his leadership, he acts as though Sean's guilty. And then when he goes in front of Sean, he acts as though Sean's innocent. And how is that man reliable or safe or discerning or godly? I know about this meeting as well. So after he goes on TB and endorses Sean, the same guy who talked to him meets with him again, and they talk again. And he was very straightforward. He was like, I'm just going to be straight because everybody deals with Bill with padded gloves. But he decided to tell him the truth, and that was exactly what needed to happen. And here Bill's confessing it. That's the good part. Good job confessing it, Bill. I don't know if you even know what you're confessing, though. That's the part that is concerning. Is not a proper way to do life. Because when Bill gives favor, I know that this is going to cause people to not listen to me. Sorry. As long as you guys heard that. I didn't have it on screen, I think, but it is not a proper way. Oh, you didn't. Someone said no audio. Okay, I'm going to go back and replay that section then. Should have had audio, but whatever. Okay, I'm going to replay that section.

[E]

Some things are inexcusable. I'm just glad they're not unforgivable. I several weak parts of my own. The way I function. I do rally to people who are in trouble. I rally to people that I give favor to people oftentimes far beyond what they deserve. And I don't apologize for that because I think it's a proper Way to do life. And so I'm committed to that. But what I did wrong was I did it at the expense of the victims. In other words, I showed mercy in one category that seriously affected those who shouldn't have been traumatized any more than they were.

[A]

Okay, I. He's right. And that is a beautiful thing to confess because it's true. It happened here. And if this is the first step in a confession, that's a beautiful step. If that's all there was, then it's actually problematic. And here's the reason why. Bill's habit is to show favor beyond what is proper and is something he sees as magnanimous, as loving, as wonderful, and a lot of people like it about him. But the form that Favor takes is things like endorsing a book with an endorsement that's not true. Like going on TBN and endorsing a man when you know if. Look, aside from willful self deception, which doesn't make it better, you have the knowledge that this guy is actually evil and bad and deceitful and a fraud. But it also translates into things like the physics of Heaven. Bill endorsed that book. It had heresy in it. He endorsed it because he liked Judy, because that was his assistant and they had a long relationship and he liked her, so he endorsed the book. And in the case of Sean, he's aware that when he endorsed Sean on tbn, there was a number of people who were hurt by it. But I don't think he is aware that when he endorsed the Physics of Heaven, there was people that were led astray by it. That when he has cast his favor on people, he has actually brought harm to people many times and in many situations. That's the thing that I think he's not yet really aware of, and that's the thing that Bethel has to pursue.

[E]

And it was just careless. It was careless on my part. It obviously is not intentional. You don't think through that stuff. But the fact that I could be that careless and work to defend somebody who not defend anything that he did that was wrong, just work to see them restored. But in the effort to do that, to do it at the expense of those who had really, really suffered. And it's there. There's the trauma from the sexual issues, and there's the trauma from missed prophetic words and stuff that has been.

[A]

Here's trauma. You go to Bill's church and he says someone's being healed of liver cancer right now. Raise your hand if that's you. You raise your hand. You believe you've been healed of liver cancer because Bill says God's just healed you. You go to the healing rooms after service and they're praying for you, and they give you instructions on how to keep your healing. And you're keeping your healing with all these practices you have to do. And it turns out you were never healed. It was just Bill's willful blindness. It wasn't. Now, God may have healed you, but in many cases, you weren't healed. And in that culture, you're not supposed to talk about it now. You walk away. And when you end up with your cancer, still, you lost your healing. Why? Well, you have all these practices you were supposed to do. You didn't really do them to keep your healing. I consider those victims of a false theology of healing that is part of. Bill sees what he wants. He believes what he wants to believe about people. And it's always positive. It's always nice. But believing always positive things can destroy people's lives.

[E]

Promoted throughout our movement. And I am so sorry. I actually. I contributed to the trauma. I contributed. I wasn't just there to help bring healing as I thought I was, but I actually contributed to the trauma.

[A]

That is a beautiful, healthy moment. Thank you, Bill. I hope you will see that that applies into a lot of other things.

[E]

That's a horrible realization, you know, to realize that you're making something worse. And my. Sometimes it's your action, sometimes it's the lack of action. And I have this horrible trait of just not confronting well. And sometimes I'm just afraid of getting it wrong, so I just avoid it altogether. And we've got such an amazing team that I have purpose to be much more eager to receive input on these issues instead of just delay, delay, delay, which is what I'm known for. And I just apologize to you for the effect on your lives, your heart, your trust, and just the life of this family, this movement, because of delay and because of avoiding confrontation, avoiding conflict. And I. I want to continue to grow in showing appropriate mercy in situations. But it really comes down to when we're pursuing justice, it's got to be the victim first. The priority has to be to serve those who have been traumatized. And you know what? Sometimes it's just really, really painful to be involved with people in trauma. I mean, it's hard because oftentimes they don't need advice. They need somebody to listen. They need somebody just to be there.

[A]

And sometimes they need an advocate who will stand up for them. I need to say this so I don't Forget to say it. Later this week, Bill was speaking at. And yeah, I have this information and you guys can believe it or not. This week Bill was speaking at a BSSM student gathering and they did some discussion with students, Bill and others. And Bill said effectively that when he did the interview on TBN, he isn't sure in 2023, he's not sure if he believed Sean was guilty at that point or if he didn't believe Sean was guilty at that point. For my part, to hear him say that even after all the stuff he said here during the interview, he already met with one of the victims. You had had your people talk to multiple victims. You had tons of evidence. You had him cut off from your local ministry, but never told anybody about it. You had all this going on. And now he says, I don't know for sure what I believed at that time. There is a deep self deception that Bill Johnson is dealing with and it is dangerous. And it's dangerous that he is effectively one of the major heads, if not the most influential, charismatic in the world. Now we all have issues and I hate for them to take someone's issues and throw it in front of everybody like this. But that issue is already in front of everybody. It's just they don't see it, they don't know it. This is something that they have to recover from. There needs to be recovery from Bill Johnson and the COVID up culture of all kinds of things, of covering up prophecies that aren't real. Telling your students that you have to get prophecies wrong. You know Jeremy Boutros who just recently came out, he was an assistant of Bill Johnson's. I'll try to remember to put it back on screen so you guys can hear it when I play it again. Jeremy Boutros came out and made a video and he was Bill Johnson's intern before he worked for Sean Bulls for a number of years. He talks about Sean, he confirms a lot of the stuff that was in my video and stuff that Bethel has said. He said about Bill, that Bill is just such a good heart, such a big kind heart. That's how he appears, very much so. But that 90% of the stuff could be wrong and he would be okay with it. That was the basic idea of what Jeremy said. Now what if Jeremy's wrong? This guy who was close working for Bill for a while, what if he's wrong about the 90, 80, 70? The point is a high degree of fakery is embraced because a willful blindness is placed over the eyes of the leaders and the people. And then they don't realize that a lot of the problems they have are coming from this. We need the work of the spirit, but we need only the authentic work of the Spirit. And this is why Scripture counsels us. When prophecy comes, you do what you test prophecy. When tongues comes, you require interpretation or just sit down, right? Keep it to yourself. If healing comes, you verify. You don't just say like, oh, you must have lost it. But don't worry, it was real. Because Bill said, raise your hand, you're healed. You can't be in the place where in your culture you go. We just say, everybody's healed. We act like every prophecy is real, but privately, we all know that a lot of it's not. That's not a safe culture that creates Sean Bowles's. It creates them. And I don't know how else to explain that it does, but I'm hoping to stop the next one from coming up. You know. Okay, I said I'd remember to put it back on screen.

[E]

So I am repurposing my own heart, my own gift, my own life to give much cleaner attention to the victim as a priority. And then the whole church and then, of course, the victimizer. We want to see healing and restoration everywhere. But the mandate really is to care for the victim. And so please forgive me for anything and everything I have said or done that would put less value on attending to the hurt and broken people. It's just wrong. It's just wrong. My delay has caused so much frustration in family and staff. And please forgive me. I promise to try to learn this one better. I just. I don't do that well. But I'm praying with your forgiveness and grace to be able to attend to these things in a much wiser way. The Lord has gifted us with a brilliant team. And back when all of this started, it was just a few of us trying to make decisions, and.

[A]

All of.

[E]

Us were under incredible pressure because of all the stuff going, going on just in our personal lives. And now we have such a.

[B]

Brighter.

[E]

Broader team to really help to speak into these situations. So I pray that with the wisdom of the whole group. You know, the scripture says we have the mind of Christ. It doesn't say I have. The emphasis is on the corporate, that together we have the mind of Christ.

[A]

This is actually the greatest hope, I think, for Bethel is not the discernment of Bill Johnson, but the discernment of other people who can see it for what it is, and their eyes are being opened to it. And then they're going to take a stand and it will be very costly. I'm telling you guys, it's going to be costly. Bethel, I would say in coming days, Bethel will have to make some very hard choices that will either further harm their reputation, but at the reward of restoring integrity and authenticity and realness and health, or sliding back into cover up. Those are the choices. And it'll be mostly the younger leaders that make that decision. I think I could be wrong because I don't think that the senior leadership can see it, but they can allow the others to step in. And that's what Bill's talking about here. It takes the wisdom of others. And if they stick with that, that could be a great way to go. That could be a very good way to go.

[E]

And so that is, that is our pursuit. That is my commitment, is that together for us to hear from the Lord what to do appropriately in given situations. And I do ask you the victims of the prophetic, any other sexual tension stuff that could exist, you know, like, please forgive us as a leadership to, to drop the ball as we have and to increase the pressure and the conflict in your own souls. And I just ask you to forgive me. And I do pray that the Lord would truly, truly bring healing to us as a movement, healing to us as a team, healing to me as an individual. Yeah, Yeah, please forgive me.

[A]

I love that Bill said and acknowledged that he had prioritized Sean, ultimately over the victims and that he wasn't going to do that again. Because elitism is another core tenet in the COVID up culture stuff. It's beautiful seeing those things and having Bethel call out some of that stuff is, is like a clarion call that this cover up culture that not only me, not only me, guys, that a bunch of other people have been calling out for a long time, right? When Justin Peters, whose name is anathema in these circles, when he makes videos and he shows you Kenneth Copeland or Benny Hinn taking advantage of and hurting people in wheelchairs for their own self aggrandizement. Many charismatics do not blink an eye. But maybe after a statement like this, a few more of them will and they'll realize Copeland, Benny Hinn, they're not just flawed, they're evil, evil men. And if that's controversial to say in your culture, something's wrong with your culture.

[D]

So we're going to pray together in just a few moments. But I wanted to let you know of a couple of things, things that we've done and already been in the process of Doing it probably goes without saying. But just to be very clear at this time, I want to clearly state that the evidence we have seen concerning Sean Bull's prophetic integrity has produced a broken trust with his ministry. And we believe that Sean was not truthful in how he received his words or not words of knowledge or prophetic words. We also acknowledged our belief that he engaged in sexually explicit and harassing behavior TR towards some members of his staff. We do not condone his actions, endorse his ministry, and we strongly advise you to take our position into account if you choose to interact with his materials and moving forward as a team and as a board. We recommit ourselves to responsibility, which was mentioned by both of you guys, reimagining re embracing that, commit ourselves to truth and accountability. And there has been a lot of that going on in these last week, this last week. But ultimately transformation in Christ, which is our goal for this house, for our own lives, and for you. As Bill mentioned, our senior leadership team is grown to over 25 people, gifted and talented. Our board eldership is going to be more active in a role in leading and speaking. And I think it's sometime you've talked about that role of discipline will be sitting with a different place than you.

[A]

In other words, the decisions, it seems, of how to handle when leaders or individuals go awry won't land with Bill anymore. Guys, that's big. Can you imagine what it took to even say that out loud in that environment? That's big. And that's a wonderful thing that just happened and it should happen. That's a good thing.

[D]

The expectation. Also we'll be influencing additional training and equipping and the prophetic so we know how to discern words and to again be able to identify false words.

[A]

Can I give you guys some encouragement? Bethel, the standard in Scripture implies that public words are tested publicly, not privately. The standard thing that you and others have taught is you get a public word and then you go, okay, go ahead and test that. And you privately test it, and then if it's wrong, you can blame the person. No, you didn't test it. Well, actually, you're supposed to have them test it publicly. And. And I know that that would actually damage the movement as far as how many words you're going to get, because once you start testing it publicly, you'll find out there aren't as many real ones. But that is what scripture asks for. And it's beautiful that you guys are talking about that. It's like, that's actually beautiful because if the charismatic church just puts in the biblical safeguards around the gifts, it will bring so much health and well being and protection into the lives of people. There's a reason the Holy Spirit inspired those things about the spiritual gifts.

[D]

Should someone happen to need. Sorry, should something happen that needs to be addressed? We're implementing a confrontation model, an investigation confrontation model that would include a wider communication when substantiated allegations are brought forth and met with unrepentance. We also have created and will continue to make paths to provide help and support for those who experience something that takes place in our environment that's not healthy, appropriate or biblical. And you likely know that. I think Chris mentioned it, but we put a letter out to our alumni. The feedback was not enough and way too late, frankly. But you can see that on our website as well, if you would like to. But around that time, we did begin to work on a safe church process and we had a look at some of our processes and just some of the things like we kept people's issues so close, like we're not a gossiping environment. So we'd actually hire somebody that people would come to us and go, why did you hire them?

[A]

This is an issue actually within Bethel. Yeah, there's people who don't even know the stuff that I know about Bethel that's going on there that are in leadership. And so it's a surprise to them. They think everything's fine and they don't know, like, dude, you have one of your major leaders is doing this and they go, what? So that is a problem. But the statement they're mentioning, it's important to draw this out. The statement that they made publicly about Shaun was in response to the minor prophets. And I don't think ever would have happened if not for the minor prophets. They were the ones that triggered the statement. The statement itself was not only too little too late, it was misleading. It was actively misleading. It was cover up culture. And the fact that they haven't admitted that yet is disturbing. I mean, I have to acknowledge that I go over specific examples of deception and misleading in that statement and if I'm wrong, I will publicly come out, show me I'm wrong. Someone from Bethel, show me I'm wrong. I will publicly come out and apologize for that because I want to clear the air. But that does matter because we are.

[D]

So good at keeping things close. That's hurting us. We need to open that up. We have opened that up. And one of the ways we've opened that up, One of the ways we've opened that up is by having the safe church process for our alumni community. They were invited. We invited anyone experiencing abuse of any kind in our environment to report via phone or form to a secure third party team outside the Bethel environment. And this was done to ensure that Bethel itself would be held accountable for the information that was reported. In other words, we couldn't lose the report or change the report.

[A]

I don't know the details here. I've tried to look into it. Others have. I hate to say it this way. Let me just say this. I don't know about this group. I looked into it a little bit, and I don't know if, let's say, an overwhelming number of reports came in about somebody in a major position of leadership having done something significantly problematic. Is there any chance Bethel has to be like, well, we're just gonna. We'll handle that ourselves. Let's not talk about it? Or does this third party have the power to actually, like, force accountability? And that is a question that I think is important, and I don't know the answer, and I don't want to. I obviously have a guess, but I could be completely wrong. And so I want to just say it's something that needs to be considered for those who are reporting. But if it was me and I was at Bethel and I had some story, I would probably reach out to this third party. They're talking about the safe church thing they're talking about and report it. Because if enough people say it, then the leaders who are really trying to bring change can actually bring change. Okay. I don't think this is all damage control. I know. I know a lot of you guys do. I don't believe this is all damage control, but that doesn't mean that the job is done. I think it's a first step that could be the open door to something really wonderful.

[D]

Then the investigation. And we will begin the investigation process as we're able. And both of you have both said we need to get outside help from if that. If it's beyond our capabilities. Yeah. And we started this a year ago. It's been in operation with our alumni, and it has soft launched already. So you'll be able to find this at SafeChurch Bethel. Sorry, somewhere.

[A]

Bethelchurch.com SafeChurch Bethelchurch.com SafeChurch if it was me and I had a report, I probably would bring it there unless I felt like it was something scary that was putting myself in danger. Doesn't mean you can't share your story elsewhere, too.

[D]

And it's open. It's online. We're monitoring it. While we're committed to doing better in the future, I absolutely understand that some of you are. Right now, you're working through pain and confusion. Can I trust this house? Can I trust these people? Working through the consequences of our behavior, we contributed to that. If you were directly impacted by a prophetic word from Sean or within our environment or as a result of sexual misconduct, we invite you to reach out to us so we can offer support, pastoral care or counseling resources. And if this is. If this defines you, you can email us@safechurch bethel.com. We are going to move to a time of prayer. And again, as I mentioned, we don't think you guys have anything to repent for. We want to publicly ask the Lord. In our Bibles, there's a book of lamentations. There's prayers of. Of sadness over sin. Very important to the Old Testament scriptures. And so this would be one of those moments when we are standing before the Lord, undone by the gravity of our mistake, the immaturity of our thinking, and asking for the Lord's grace in these moments and for your grace. And so I'm just going to.

[B]

Why don't you stand? Let's pray together. You know, James says he that knows the right thing to do and doesn't do it to him, it's sin. And, you know, when I was young, I was just trying to figure out what the wrong thing was I was doing.

[A]

By the way, there's a lot more I have to share with you guys still. We need to look at Chaon's response. Dismal. Dismal. We need to look at Danny Silk's response because he was deeply involved. He knew all about this stuff he was confronting. He also knew all about Todd White's issues. And we're going to look at some other stuff as well. I need to share some other issues with you as well. I think these things are important expressions 58. Sean's church has made a statement, and I believe it's a lie. These things need to be shared.

[B]

But, you know, as. As we grow, God holds us to a different level of accountability. And in this case, we didn't do the right thing. And so I want to pray. I want us to pray for the victims, and I'm just going to lead us in prayer for those and for our own hearts.

[A]

And there's. There's a lot more because this is so long, what I want to do. You can hear them all pray. I want to actually go to the very end. This is Steve Moore. So Steve Moore is online lead pastor. He's also one of the new team members they're talking about. This is how we close the service. Now, Bethel has an official statement on their website that involves everything pretty much that Bill, Dan and Chris shared. It doesn't include what Steve shared. I don't know if they even knew Steve was going to share this, but here's what he shared. And I thought it was the most hopeful thing I have heard. And not because he talks about me, not because of that. But listen, I'll tell you, it's good.

[D]

You guys come on and get prayer if you would. We're going to hang out here if you need to find us, okay? There'll be folks hanging out. Bless you guys.

[F]

You know, as Dan said, this isn't the end, this is the beginning journey for us. And we just want to reiterate for the people that have been hurt from victimized. We are deeply grieved and our hearts are with you and we're praying for you and for those. I just wanted to let you know that this is not done. This is not a one moment. And as you know, we are on the leadership team now and.

[A]

You have.

[F]

Our commitment that we are allowing the Lord to seek our hearts, to bring a full conviction of if there's any sin for us to actually repent and to continue clean up our message. We just want to thank Mike for protecting victims and giving them a voice and bringing this forward. And I just want to say publicly that, Mike, we love you and we're thankful. We're thankful you're a godly man and a brother. We love you and appreciate you. I am in personal contact with Mike and I just want to test anyone. He is a godly, God fearing man and we need the fear of the Lord more than ever.

[A]

I love that he said this. This is not what you're thinking. We need the fear of the Lord more than ever. Look, I've been talking with Steve behind the scenes and I've been same as you would. I'm like, can I trust him? Is he telling me the truth? Is he just trying to get information out of me? I don't know. And I think he's genuine. I really believe he's genuine. And I think he's, in some ways, he's the best hope for the future of Bethel. Not because he'll be like the next Bill Johnson. That's not what I'm saying. I don't know what their future looks like in that regard. I mean, he's Committed to, like, this is a. We have opened a can of worms and now we need to find all the worms and deal with it. That is the best moment of this response. Because if Bethel does that, if they chase it down any trail, they have to. To deal with what I call cover up culture, which I do think applies to prophecy and healings and all kinds of stuff. It doesn't mean everything's fake, but it means you won't tolerate fake. Then I think they're going to head down a path to deal with a lot of stuff. So I appreciate what Steve said.

[F]

Leaders need to fear the Lord more than ever.

[A]

Leaders.

[F]

And we have to change. We have to change for the global body of Christ. Not for our sake, not for any movement. We need to change for Jesus. If we want to see the world saved, we have to come together as a body of Christ. We have to hold each other to account. We have to come not in unity, of agreement, but of unity around Christ. And we humbly ask those that we've hurt and pained for your forgiveness. And we do make a commitment that we will be better and we will change. This is not the end. We have had several meetings with our senior leadership team and our board of elders. We will be continuing to meet regularly in the upcoming weeks as we discuss and debrief and process what we believe that the Lord and the Scriptures are leading us to. And so we also ask that you would pray for a full conviction and a full work of Christ within us so that everything may come to the light and that we can be pure before the Lord and pray here before a congregation.

[A]

Yeah, we're super thankful that you stayed along this journey. I think that's everything I had to share with you guys from this service. That was the most hopeful moment at that last Sunday service for Bethel was to me, Steve going, I'm praying for full conviction and that everything will come to the light, because it's not a. That was everything. Now we've got our laundry aired and we're going to move forward. It was like, there's stuff that's not in the light yet, and we need it to come to the light. And that's the truth. Now I don't know what kind of internal struggles are going on there. I'm not going to theorize about that. I think that that was a good moment. Now I need to share some other stuff. They say in 2019 that they have been made aware. That's what Chris said. He said in 2019 they became aware of the allegations against Shawn yet there's evidence that Jason Smedley. I have the evidence that he made two people aware in 2017. One of them was Stacy Campbell, who, to my knowledge, does not work for Bethel. Right. And after he presented her with the evidence, according to him, he didn't hear from her again. The other one was Ben Armstrong. Ben Armstrong is a pastor at Bethel here. He opened the service that day, actually into his nature of generosity.

[G]

And one of our greatest acts of worship is to act like our Heavenly.

[A]

Father, and we get to do that in giving today.

[D]

So we're going to do declaration number two.

[A]

So let's do this together. I don't know if you heard that, but the point is here, this has been Armstrong. He opened the service, that Heavenly Father, and we get to need the volume there. He opened the service that day, Ben. And now Ben may not remember it, and I think he may remember it differently. Okay. And so all I'm saying is, I think it's on me to share this much with you, is that Jason definitely let Ben know Sean has been cheating with Facebook words, and he presented him with some evidence. Then that's like, November, December, Stacy Campbell knew in September, which was a surprise to me to find that out. Then In January of 2018, over a year, really, before Chris acknowledges it, there's an event that happened that I think we need clarity on, and maybe they'll share about this because they're talking about timelines and these matter. Jason Smedley, he shared with a few people. He shared with Ben Armstrong, who afterwards, from what I can tell, just stopped replying to him. Like, he sent him a document and stuff. And then Ben just stopped replying to him. He's like, well, I'd like to get your thoughts on the Sean bull stuff, the document I sent you. And he just didn't reply. Did Ben tell other leaders? I don't know. I don't know if he did. Maybe he didn't. Maybe he thought it was no big deal. Maybe he just didn't give it any. Maybe he didn't even read the document. But the point is that somebody, a credible person, a prophetic thing, was basically this whole shambles thing could have been wrapped up back then. Then in 2018, Jason sends the document over to somebody in England, Europe, and that person says, according to them, I have a contact in Bethel. I sent it over to the leadership there. And they acknowledge, like Chris, they acknowledge that there is some synergy between Sean's word and Facebook, but they trust Sean. And this was damning evidence. Or so I'm led to believe, and I think it's true, is that it was like Sean giving words that were in order, like he would go down. Like you looked at the Facebook page, it was like in order of the exact things that they were saying, that kind of stuff. So it was the same sort of evidence that was available back then. So in 2018, then, according to this source in England, hey, they know about it and they said that they're okay. Now, at the same time as this is going on, Jason Smedley gets called by Paul Cain or contacted by Paul Kane. For whatever reason, somebody there communicated something. And Paul Cain decides to attach himself to Jason in a way that was spiritually disturbing and inappropriate and traumatizing for him because Paul Cain was a sick, twisted man who was a predator who was also a fake prophet. In the same stream, in the same basic stream, that information I think has to be available. And there's more I could share, but I'm waiting for more details. Okay. So I don't want to go beyond. The next thing I want to say is Danny Silk. Danny Silk did the following post. I'm going to put it on your screen in just a moment. Danny Silk was there. He was part of the confrontation. He knew that he was guilty, right? That it was the guilty verdict. Hold on, I'm just getting this ready for your screens. Is that going to work? And he sent this out to his email list or something, maybe his support list, I don't know. A word from Danny Silk. This past weekend, Bethel Church took a meaningful and courageous step by publicly addressing the circumstances surrounding Sean Bowles and the changes in his relational connection with the church. In a moment marked by humility and honesty, Bill Johnson named the delay in response and owned his own reluctance to step into a difficult confrontation. It wasn't just a delay. He endorsed the man after having information for who he was. And his whole leadership team knew it. And they wouldn't tell anybody, tell the public, excuse me, not anybody. Obviously, they told some other leaders that level of candor matters. The Sunday morning Message from January 25, 2026 speaks directly to this moment and can be found here. And he links it. What stood out most was not simply what was said, but how it was said. Bill's acknowledgment of hesitation exposes a sobering truth about leadership. Small, often unseen character constraints can quietly expand into something much larger. Leaders don't just make decisions. They shape emotional climates. Their fears, blind spots and delays can unintentionally elevate anxiety, uncertainty and confusion throughout an entire community. And Danny is now giving us a lesson, a lesson that, to be honest, I think most people are going to be like, why are you trying to give this lesson? This is inappropriate. He says culture is formed less by stated values and more by pattern behavior. When leaders are predictable or. Or when unpredictability itself becomes the norm, it trains people what to expect, what to fear and what not to challenge. Over time, these expectations solidify into belief systems that feel immovable. And when those belief systems are finally questioned, the pushback is rarely about logic. It's about anxiety, Change threatens, safety, identity, belonging. I mean, you are correctly identifying several factors that led to the continued cover up. But you were connected to it, like you were in it, man. You weren't just like. You're not just a commentator. Sorry, I'm trying to get where you guys can see it on screen. There's a little bit. I'll just read it. This is why it's so important to say, clearly, reluctance to confront is not the same as deception. Well, Bill had both. Bill's hesitation was not cover up of Sean Bowles's actions. That is. That is not true, Danny. That is not true. Bill went publicly. He wouldn't let him. He didn't publicly warn people, okay, when scripture tells you to warn and you don't, you're covering up. Then he knew about it and endorsed him publicly. That's absolutely covering up. Then when it was exposed by minor prophets, you guys released a letter that was part of COVID up. And I know that you don't see it that way, but that's cover up culture. You don't see it. It's the self imposed blindness that is why it's so important. He says to say clearly, reluctance to confront is not the same as deception. Bill's hesitation was not a cover up of Sean Bowles's actions. That's not true. It was the result of a deeper tangle, a web of shared beliefs, fears, loyalties, and leadership dynamics that made clarity difficult and unity elusive. Leaders were trying to find a path forward that minimized damage, protected people, and preserved the organization, even as agreement remained frustratingly out of reach. The rest of his statement is here, Where he says, truth always carries a cost. Trust is forged not in perfection, but in transparency. And transparency requires courage. And I think most of us are just like, blah, blah, blah. This is, you know, when you punt to isms and this sort of thing, in a situation like this, it seems as though you're avoiding just saying the obvious elephant in the room, like Danny, why didn't you say something publicly? You know, when I was doing my Todd White exposure, Danny knew all about Todd. He knows all about Todd now. I don't know. I don't think he's made a statement about him. When I did my video in the past, he knew it was true and he let Todd. He didn't do anything to stop it. Right. Stop Todd. When the video came out, when the victims of Todd White and the people trying to blow the whistle on him came forward, they said, mike, Danny Silk worked with Todd for a year and a half and reportedly gets $400 an hour to do it. And maybe there is like, maybe he's got an NDA. Maybe Danny's got an NDA he signs because these are his clients, these people he works with in some cases to try to restore them. I don't know. But the point is they wanted to quote Danny saying that Todd was a dangerous narcissist and he wouldn't allow that to go in the letter because it would hurt his relationships with other people. So I read on. He says, truth always carries a cost. Trust is forged not in perfection, but in transparency. And transparency requires courage. From the outset. It's easy to shout should have and could have. But anyone who has led a family, marriage or community knows that real solutions must be worked out from within the system, not imposed from a distance. Clean answers are rare when real people are involved. No, I mean, stuff can be imposed from a distance. That is quite obviously true. It's not preferable, but it can absolutely be done. This story does not need villains. It needs wisdom. There are no bad guys here, only flawed people navigating pressure, misunderstanding, and moments where fear outweighed clarity. Our calling as the body of Christ is not to pile on, but to love, protect, and uphold one another. In moments like this, we must resist the urge to join a bandwagon against people or places we have no relational cost in. If criticism costs me nothing, I'm almost certainly the wrong person to wield it. Is this criticism of like me because I'm on the outside and oh, it cost me nothing, so I'm the wrong person to wield it? Is this just more cover up culture, Danny Silk, because you're the author of a lot of A significant amount of it. Because you're the author of the Culture of Honor. I mean, it was a week ago, a week before the Sunday, that Sunday morning, that Chris was just doing more of the same. It looks to me as though Danny is doing more of the same. If criticism cost Me? Nothing. I'm almost certainly the wrong person to wield it. I hate these. I won't argue that you're wrong or argue that it's wrong to say out loud these things. I'm going to argue you're the wrong person. Are you sure you're the right person, Mike? You know how many charismatic leaders have asked me that recently? Are you sure it's free? Shouldn't someone else do it, Mike? Shouldn't somebody else do it? Really? Come on. Come on, Mike. Is it you? It's not protocol. And so many victims are silent because they feel like it's not their place. What we witnessed matters. Exposure, while painful, creates space for healing. I genuinely love what just happened and what it revealed. Well, maybe the Sunday you love. I don't know what you feel about me. It seems like I was the wrong person. We will adjust. We will learn. We will realign our priorities with our values, and we will. We will build a future we actually want to live in, one marked by truth, accountability, humility, and love. I hope so. Mistakes do not define us. How we respond to them does. And if we choose courage over comfort, honesty over image, and relationship over reaction, this moment can become a turning point, not just for Bethel, but for all of us watching and learning today. I'm very proud of my leaders and the tribe I belong to. Danny Silk, founder of Loving on Purpose. So, Danny, I'm not going to comment long on that. I think that it was your public statement. You made it for a lot of people to see and that it exhibits more of the same. And this is the problem. There's stuff you can't hide from right now, but the proof of it not being more of the same is when you expose your own issues and you actually have transparency that costs you stuff. And you don't throw random criticisms at people like me who I would rather have not done this. If at any point in the last year Bethel came forward and gave that Sunday message they just gave, I would have been like, I don't need to make a video about this. Although that may have even been a mistake at that point because it's so pervasive, it needs to be called out. So here's the next one. This is expressions 58. This is the church that Sean started. And this is their official statement, which I did not give them a lot of attention in my video because I didn't want to. I wanted to give them space to, like, deal with this. Maybe. Maybe they needed to, like, repent and deal with it that way. You know, maybe they needed to, like, say, oh, my gosh, we didn't. We didn't realize, like, we were sort of bamboozled, too. But unfortunately, this came out, and I've spoken to witnesses who confirmed that this is not true. Expressions 58, which is Pastor Jonah Toledo. He says any claim of misconduct should be handled seriously. And at expression 58, we are committed to investigating any claim of misconduct about anyone on our staff or in position of influence within our organization. To be clear, not one victim or former employee of either expression 58 or Bowles ministry has ever come to us with any personal claim about sexual misconduct in regard to Sean in the time we ministered together from 2002 to 2016, 14 years, he says, we never witnessed Shawn act in a predatory way with anyone, nor were any claims of sexual misconduct ever raised. I've talked to two different witnesses who were around back then who know these guys who say that that is not true. If you guys had just been quiet, I wouldn't have brought this up. But what you're doing now appears very much to be absolute deception. Jonah Toledo was with Shawn when he was 18. This is all according to witnesses I've talked to. He traveled with Shawn for years. Traveled with him. Didn't just visit him or say hi to him or hang out with some. He traveled with him. He lived in Shawn's house. He was an employee of Sean. He started the church with Sean. They were very close. One of the witnesses I have says he even had a direct conversation with Jonah about this. He talked about with him about Sean having exposed himself and done the deed. And this pastor said, I just thought it was Sean being Sean Cheon. Here's his statement. Cheon, one of the major apostolic leaders, like the term new Apostolic Reformation. Nar. It came from Cha. An's, like, senior guy, right? C. Peter Wagner. And when he retired or passed, Cheon took over C. Peter Wagner's position. And he's. Look, he says, dear friends and family of Harvest International Ministry, Wagner University and Harvest Rock Church, because he's the NAR leader guy now, this is. This is him. He says the following, and I'm not going to read the entire letter. He says, Around 2020, I was made aware of serious allegations of sexual misconduct against Sean Bowles. I confronted Sean and he denied all of the allegations. I sought the Lord and I believed him to be a brother in Christ needing some serious help. I asked Shawn to submit to his pastor at the time, which was Bill Johnson. I have to show you on screen. There you go. Sorry I'm so bad. Which was Bill Johnson and asked him to resign as a member of him. He agreed to both. After that conversation, him immediately removed Sean as a member of him and removed him as a speaker for any and all future events. Sean has never been involved in any events that him and Harvest Rock have hosted since. I was deeply saddened to learn that despite Sean calling Bill Johnson his pastor, it appeared he did not want to submit to any of the discipline that Bill required. Ultimately, Sean was removed from the Bethel Network. So Cheon. Cheon or Cheon. I'm sorry, whichever. Chaon says it was Bill. Bill was Sean's pastor. Chris said he's under Che, not us. I think it was Chris that said that. Certainly that was how Patricia communicated it. Patricia King. Patricia King says, oh, it's Chris and Bill. It's not me. They're all washing their hands of it. But yet we have text evidence that Sean claimed that he was under Che as his apostle. And Che, we have video evidence. I'll show you in a second. Saying that Bill Johnson is his apostle. And then we have Chris and Che both asking the other one to take care of it because neither of them want to. Because cover up culture is just there. Let me share more. A little more. He says, when I first met Sean, he was a speaker at various events in which I was also invited to speak. Okay, so he's like, I barely knew him. I loved everything about him. He was part of my son's generation, the next generation that will take the lead in the body of Christ. He seemed to be very sincere, a very sincere believer. I had no reason to doubt his integrity. In 2013, Sean asked to join the HIM Network, and after review of his application along with his references, he was approved to become a member of him. Oh, but Che, you do not tell the truth. There is more. Let me see if I can find some of this I can show with you. Share with you. Sorry. This is Cheon, and I know that's Lou Engel there and stuff like that, but here is what it says in the text. Honored to commission amazing prophets tonight. One of them, Sean Bowles. Another one, Stacey Campbell. He commissioned him as a prophet in 2014. Commissioned as a prophet in 2014. There's more. Hold on. I had so much to pull together, and I prioritized talking to victims to preparing the stream, to be honest. Okay, there's more. I'm not going to share everything I have with you guys. Stay tuned. To minor prophets. They're actually going to share more on this stuff. Soon. But I wanted to share a couple things with you here now. Oh, there it is. There it is. Found it. Okay, here is a clip from later. This is 2015. Now, January of 2015, this image. And here, Harvest Rock church saying him commissioning. They commissioned him multiple times. I'm zooming in so that you can see that's Sean Bowles. Standing next to him is Patricia King participating in the commissioning ceremony of Sean Bowles. There's Chae on right there. Then I got one more. August 6, 2015, Chaon puts this up on social media. I'm zooming away and let's look at what it says first. Oh, my gosh. That was inappropriate. Stinking Facebook. What is wrong with you? Chaeyeon special night commissioning Apollo and prophets at the Leaders Shift 2015 conference at H Rock Church. Commissioning apostles and prophets. So what is happening here? That's Sean Bowles once again getting prayed over, laid hands on as they as a group are commissioning a whole bunch of people. And as far as we can tell, this looks like Brian Simmons, author of the Passion translation. We could be wrong. If it is Brian Simmons, then Sean Bowles got a Brian Simmons commissioning or SB got a BS Commission. I'm sorry, I apologize. Already along with them on stage, Patricia King. We have right in the center of your screen, Patricia King. We have then Cheon in the center of the image. Then we have Cindy Jacobs to the left of that, and then over further, we have Bill Johnson. Then these guys, they didn't just put him on stage in front of people. They commissioned him as a prophet to the world with their apostolic authority. And when the time came to call him to account, everyone goes, it wasn't my responsibility. Bill Johnson's his pastor. It's not me. Oh, no, no. Che Ahn says he's his apostle, not me. But even if it was Bill Johnson, or excuse me, if it was Che on, then explain this. Cheon says that Bill Johnson is in fact his apostle. This is at the campaign launch for Cheon's a bid for California governor, which is ongoing right now. And he introduces Bill as his apostle.

[E]

By the way, for those who don't.

[A]

Know, I believe in accountability.

[B]

We need to hold people in.

[A]

Governor Campbell, Bill John says my pastor is my apostle. And I just want to just really thank him for taking time out of his busy schedule.

[B]

He's been gone almost the whole year.

[A]

But he came from Dallas. He was at Brother Copeland's conference, and he cut his message short. He was first preached today just to be with me. And I just want to thank you, Bill, for standing with me. See you. The irony of this I'm not going to overlook. Che is running on a I believe in government accountability, which is something we definitely need to our government. But he's running on I believe in accountability. And then he calls Bill his apostle here. He also calls him his apostle. Yeah, I know you personally, and you're such a Christlike leader. In fact, I say Bill as my apostle. So it's such an honor to have you here. Love you so much. I've received flack because people will say, well, Bill's not. He doesn't claim to be an apostle. I'm like, dude, if you shake a guy's hand who says you're his apostle, you're claiming to be an apostle. Everybody knows Bill's the apostle. Chris is the prophet. Anybody who denies that is not being honest. These guys had responsibility for him. Patricia King, we were ministry acquaintances. She says, chaeyon, oh, Bill's his pastor. It's not my thing. It's Bill's job to deal with this or to try. And then Sean just says, I don't want to submit. They remove him from the HIM network. They remove him from their connected ministries. Patricia King takes his endorsement off of her. He wrote the forward to her book. She takes the forward off, reprints it without any public acknowledgment that it's a reprint, removing the foreword of Sean Bowles. And it's years before anybody publicly says anything. These are significant issues. Here's. Is now the time I should talk about Patricia King? I'll mention her again. This doesn't mean these people's ministries are 100% bad or that everything they've done is wrong. It means that these are real issues and there should be some accountability and some changes for those real issues. But I'll get flack for saying that. But the. But I do think that they're not apostles and prophets. That's. That's true. But here's Patricia King. She talks in a video recently about this. She says several things. She says her relationship with Sean is that he is. Was a ministry acquaintance. Let's talk about that one first.

[G]

Later, he told me that someone had stepped forward who might be able to help. Clarifying my relationship with Sean. I met Sean Boltz approximately 25 years ago. Over the years, we ministered together at various events, shared conversations in green rooms, and I hosted him on occasion as a speaker and media guest. In all of these interactions, I experienced him as kind, humble, respectful, and eager to grow in his Understanding of scripture and the gifts of the spirit. I was never officially connected to Sham through a ministry board, accountability structure or oversight role. I had never been to his personal home, nor did we have a close personal relationship. Our connection was primarily that of ministry equation acquaintance. Seeing one another perhaps once or twice a year at shared events.

[A]

Okay, that's 2026. After Shawn is exposed. We were ministry acquaintances primarily. This is her in 2016. Notice that she was part of his. She was part of the process of commissioning him as a prophet. And then here's how she introduces him back then.

[G]

It is our blessing to have Sean Boltz with us. I mean, he is all over the world just blessing people. He's been a dear friend for how long, Sean? Many years. I mean, even before we were even in media, you know, so that's a long time ago.

[C]

I was on your second show.

[G]

You were on my second show? Yeah. I mean, you were one of the first people that we interviewed back in the day when we had one camera and we're doing, you know, three. He was a brave soul. I think you were a teenager then.

[A]

They go way back. They go way back. Dear friend. Now a lot of people are thinking, but, Mike, they always exaggerate. Like, everybody knows they're exaggerating. No, they don't. They don't all know that. Certain people know that. Most people just go, this is her dear friend. And then she's introduced him that way. A dear friend. It was a prophetic gift. And yet later, after he's exposed. Well, we're ministry acquaintances. But listen, there's more. Sean credits her for him staying in the prophetic ministry.

[G]

Aren't you like, that was a long time ago, but I actually prophesied. I remember then prophesying about you. You in Hollywood. Do you remember that? Yeah. And you're in Hollywood. It's really quite amazing what God is doing in him through you. And your prophetic mantle is amazing. And we've. We've always enjoyed supernatural, you know, visitations and testimonies and. And that. So I really want us to welcome this awesome man of God and a good friend of our house. Come on up here, Sean.

[A]

We love you. Awesome man of God. Good friend of the house. He already faking the words here. He's already been engaging for years in the behavior behind the scenes. I'm not saying Patricia was cognizant of those things. I'm saying if you endorse him as these things and you later find out he's not, you need to publicly say something. But Instead, Patricia King removed Sean from the foreword of her book Quietly now, behind the scenes, she was corresponding with some witnesses behind the scenes. She was passing information, recorded the conversation of what happened, sent it over to Chayon and Chris, but none of them would take action. And that's cover up culture. Everyone's afraid to pull the trigger because it's just somehow part of the system. Nobody pulls the trigger. I'm not saying they never have and never would. And you can come up with an example of somebody they pulled the trigger on. But look, it happened here and we can give other examples where it hasn't.

[C]

Thank you, guys. Just to honor this ministry and Patricia just through the years, seriously.

[A]

And this is Sean going to tell us how Patricia apparently was pivotal in his prophetic ministry?

[C]

See, she prophesied, she's looking at me through the one camera for the first show and she's going, you're going to be doing this, you're going to be doing this. I'm forerunning something that you're going to be doing. And Patricia has been a voice of, I would say prophetic exhortation to with so many of the apostolic prophetic community. And it keeps us in alignment. I think she has an alignment gift for other leaders. And so I remember at one point I was really focused on transformation and seeing cities transformed. And I was on different teams doing like the Sentinel group transformation team. Have you ever heard of that? And some different teams. And Patricia, we're on the back of a car, someone's driving us somewhere, and she goes, don't move away from the prophetic. I feel like there's a temptation because the prophetic right now is in a weird place. Don't move away. God is saying, make sure to pursue revelation at all costs. And she just, she has that motherly thing that she's like looking at you.

[A]

Do you see, you know, you could be like, Sean's just lying here. Well, then she's participating in a lie about prophecy and not clearing it up afterwards. So there's no good resolution to this. Patricia had an obligation to publicly call out Sean even if no other leader would. She's there at his commissioning. Chae on had an obligation to publicly call out Sean even if no other leader would. Bill Johnson had an obligation. Danny Silk had an obligation. Chris Valatin had an obligation even if it went against Bill. Moving forward, it's helpful if they not only acknowledge that they collectively failed, but they individually should have called him out and to later come out and say he's a ministry acquaintance or Cheap acting like, well, you know, he was. You know, there was this guy named Sean I heard of. You know, that's deceptive.

[C]

And you're like, okay. Because there was part of me that was kind of tired about some of the culture at that time of different prophetic ministries were exhausting my heart as a young person. I just felt like there was, as far as. Especially the corporate stuff was more negative than positive at the time. And so she was saying, don't move away, away from it. Even if you. Even if you're branded with their reputation, it doesn't matter. You'll be branded with Jesus's reputation. Just go for it. And then. And then she prophesied about this media stuff. And so she said it like three or four times to me over the years. So this October, last October, I came and filmed with you. I think it was October, November, somewhere around there. I feel.

[A]

I want just. I'm only playing this so long for a reason, is because I want us to establish this connection that they're discussing here in front of a crowd as they promote Sean and his book and his tours and all the things he's doing as his ministry takes off. It really matters, and it creates a sense of moral obligation for Patricia King.

[C]

On one of the shows with her, and she said it again, and she was just saying some things. She was kind of just giving me the lay of the land, just total spiritual mother thing that she does. Just telling me, like, how she built and just kind of giving me the insight of how God showed this team to build and encouraging me kind of like, you know, it was almost like a bait tactic or something. Like, come on, get into your immediate calling. And so I just did my first stint on.

[A]

Now he's talking about how it's been successful and how he's getting asked to go everywhere now. Because, remember, around this time, that's when he gets platformed, endorsed, supported by some major leaders. And Azusa now happens, and a bunch of fake prophecy happens, and then he.

[C]

Skyrockets Dreams and Mysteries, which was John Paul Jackson's show. And I'm hosting season four with two other people. And so there's. I. There's 12 episodes I just. I just got wrapped this week, six of them as a direct result from Patricia's Word, where I opened my heart even more to some of the destiny that I was in conflict with because of judgment that was in my heart. That was just misplaced judgment, immaturity that God had to heal me of. And then I got called by God TV to Host some stuff and some other places. And my wife and I are going to be hosting a faith based show at some time the next two years, an interview show. So I was laughing, going, okay, not only is it on, but I've been in 24 Christian television shows since November. And I'm like, everywhere I go, I'm like, okay, tvn, okay, here's the mic.

[D]

Okay.

[C]

Anyways, here we are on tvn. You know, you know, it's just I'm everywhere.

[A]

I'm on all the mics I'm on, got all the shows, I'm, I'm exploding.

[C]

It's so funny when you just say yes to your destiny, especially if you're at war with part of it. It's so good to come out of conflict. So I just want to honor the house because Patricia put me back on track to primarily pursue prophetic in the midst of all that we're doing as building to not neglect it at all. I mean, she gave me, it was right after Jill Austin passed away. She gave me this like, strong, like, don't just become an apostle. Don't leave the prophetic. And I'm like, okay. I just remember I went home and I was telling my friends, Patricia told me, like, I'm going to leave the prophetic to be an apostle. And then I have to like make, you know, and it shook me. Like it was jarring. So I just want to honor Patricia. I just want to honor you because there's been key moments in my life that you've said some things that have set a different course. That was God's course. It brought alignment. So I really honor you for that. And that's just so. It's awesome to be here and what you built, you know, and I've been on the TV show, but it's awesome to be in your family. So thank you so much and thank you, XP family. You guys are awesome.

[A]

That's all I got to say about Patricia King. I know the way this comes off to a lot of people. It's as though we are looking for villains. And that's the whole story. These are whole people and they've done in many ways, done good things and they've also done bad things. And that's how humans are. But to deal with COVID up culture, you've got to deal with the patterns of behavior. And one of those patterns is not my problem. And they mentioned it, Bethel mentioned it. But there's a sense in which Bethel is not acknowledged. Like, you guys helped commission this guy. You didn't Just put him on a public platform. There's like, an apostolic commissioning thing. And if your apostolic thing means anything, that's definitely significant. Okay, quickly. Some things that I'm going to close out because I'm done talking about this. So there are additional issues that Bethel would need to address. For example, the Physics of Heaven. The Physics of Heaven is a book that not only was harmful and very spiritually dangerous to people, but was endorsed by tons of. Not just Bill. Lots of people at Bethel endorsed it. When Elijah publicly criticized it, Bill told him, don't contact me. I'm sorry, Bill. Chris told him, don't contact me anymore. Now, I think he's apologized for this, but I want to show this is important. When I made a video about the physics of Heaven, and it got lots of attention, they removed it from their bookstore long after Elijah and he had appealed internally, appealed with people, please, guys, this is bad. This book is bad. But Judy Franklin has favor with Bill, so her book stays. And Bill likes giving favor to people who don't deserve it. When I did my video, they removed her book from the bookstore. And the only comment I heard having come from Chris was. Heard that came from Chris. I heard that this comment came from Chris was, yeah, well, the book had some stuff we didn't agree with, so we removed it from our bookstore, which is. I would call that cover up. Okay. The real reason you removed it is because there was so much attention on it. When internally people tried to get you to remove it, you didn't do anything, because it's one of the anointed ones of Bill. That's how I interpret those events. I know some people are like, you're reading too much. I'm like, come on, guys. There's a lot of evidence here. There's a lot of reasons to believe this, but the physics of Heaven, you can tell me. But we didn't really teach it in the school. But it wasn't really. I mean, yeah, Judy Franklin came and guided our people in fake spiritual experiences, but that didn't happen a whole lot. Guys, this is the thing. The blind spots of Bill become the blind spots of everybody. So the physics of Heaven should be dealt with more openly and honestly, and they should look into it. The Passion translation is an ongoing problem with Bethel. Brian Simmons has created a translation so bad that Bible scholars, who are generally approving of all kinds of translations, even ones you guys don't like, are saying things like, it deserves a surgeon General's warning for its potential hazards, or it's not even right to Call it a translation or I like Darrell Bock said, my head hurts. I showed all kinds of problems with the Passion translation that was ignored. So I paid money and hired scholars to review the Passion translation. Brian claimed that there was like they were paid to slander him. I paid them to review it as that there's a scholarly job job. Right. Then I published the reviews to add weight behind my criticisms so that people would realize this is actually a bad translation. I interviewed Ethnos360, the missionary organization that Brian's supposedly trained to be a translator with. And they said he was not trained to be a translator. That's not true. I've showed Brian has exaggerated and deceived people over and over again with his translation and his claims about it. And he is still flying high in the charismatic movement. And the Passion translation still has a special Bethel version of it. Because Bill likes to give favor to people who don't deserve favor. Maybe he doesn't want to. Maybe it's like Sean. He doesn't want to believe the things that are true about this translation and about Brian Simmons. And so Brian's making millions and millions and people are reading a book that is distorting the message of God just in ways they like. They need to deal with this. They need to deal with it. Maybe youversion wouldn't carry the Passion Translation if Bill Johnson hadn't endorsed it. Maybe the Hillsong leaders wouldn't have supported it if Bill Johnson hadn't endorsed it. I don't know. He said it was one of the best things that's happened to Bible translation in his lifetime. It's like saying about shambles, like, I know the character behind the man in the book who wrote the book. It's like, that's deceitful and wrong. But there's so much more. The eschatology needs to be re examined for Bethel, the idea that Jesus is perfect theology. I did a video on this years ago and it's very problematic the way in which it was leveraged back then. I don't know if it's still taught. Did it go quiet? Did it get corrected? I think it should be corrected. The idea that God always wants to heal is not healthy. The handling of miracles is not healthy. The handling of prophecy is not healthy. They acknowledge some of that. The idea of apostles and prophets governing your church instead of a plurality of elders in your local fellowship is not good. It's not appropriate. Remember the show me the toes controversy? They did not address that. I exposed it in my video. Remember the wrong prophecy that bill read from Steve Witt. That likely caused people to move to Reading. I had someone from Bethel email me and they were like, you got things wrong. For instance, Reading did have housing prices increase. I was like, yeah, by like 3%. Whereas the California average was like 7. And it was said to be a boom town. So you guys are like growing at like maybe around half the California average, give or take. It was three point something percent. Those things should be addressed. Okay? The acceptance of false faith proclamations. This is going to happen and maybe we can prophesy it and then God will back it up later. That's pulling the blinders over your eyes. That's intentional willful self deception. Guys, there's other stuff too. Chris just recently interviewed Catherine Crick, who is evil Theresa Dedman. I don't know. She's still selling her prophetic yoga pants. The Rediscovering Bethel series. I could go on and on. It was misleading at best. The Rediscovering Bethel Series. Bob Jones, Paul Kane, Bob Hartley, Mike Bickle. There needs to be more. If this is the first step in a long journey, I applaud it. And I know my video probably feels very hostile to a lot of people, but I'm just trying to be very honest. I think that with eyes open, we just say, bethel, what you did was really good. If it's a first step. Now take these other steps and we will applaud you along the way. Not like you have to please the crowd. That's not what we mean. We just mean clean up your mess. Your phrase, clean up your mess. I don't know if you can. I don't know if you will, but I will cheer you on and I will hope for it, and I will encourage it, and I'll support you as you do it. In every positive step, I would encourage. I'm not going to make a video every time something happens either. I really don't want to make more videos about this unless I have some really good reason to. Now I have two corrections I want to offer. Okay. And then I'll have one last appeal to Bethel and to everybody else listening. Two corrections. For myself, two things I definitely got wrong in my video on Sean Bulls. Number one, I said that Mike Bickle had asked this rich couple, had talked to this rich couple about wanting to build another wing onto his Wagner School. That was not true. I was incorrect. This is the couple he gave wrong prophecy to, and he ended up getting a big donation from them. The truth is that Cha an wanted to build a wing onto his Wagner school. And he talked to the rich couple about it. And Bickel was working on a massive expansion of what they called the Truman property. That was what Bickel wanted to build. So that was an error in my video, and I apologize. And the second one is, I said that Stacy Campbell wanted this rich couple to move to Santa Clarita. This was not true about Stacy Campbell. What I said was not true. Sean Bulles wanted them to move to Santa Clarita. Stacy Campbell wanted them to move to Santa Maria. So that was an error in my video. If there are other errors, which I would not be surprised if there's, I may have got something wrong, I'm willing to publicly come out and apologize. Especially if they're serious errors. Because these are jokes almost. If they're serious errors, I will. If they're just nitpicky things like, I think you had too much fun while doing it. Well, I have a policy to try to act like I'm enjoying myself because it's easier to watch a video when someone does that, even if you're struggling through sometimes, because I think it just makes it better for you guys. But anyway, I'm not going to worry about that stuff. I will say anybody who I've misrepresented in some significant fashion or, you know, any corrections, I want to bring those. I need to be accountable, too. I know a number of charismatic leaders are talking to lawyers right now, trying to see if they can sue me, and we'll see how that works out for them. I don't think it'll. Even if I lost the lawsuit, man, the truth is, you sue me, we're just going to go to discovery and more is going to come out. But if you want to reach out to me and tell me something you think I got wrong, I'm happy to admit that publicly. But I'm not playing let's get Mike an NDA threatening with a lawsuit. No. If you sue me, I'm not suing you. But you sue me, we're going to go to the mat. Okay? We're going to go to the mat. Not for me defending myself, but for me making sure truth gets out and cover up. Culture can't be propagated. That's the way it's going to be. Last thing. Bethel Church leaders and people who attend, members. You can do so much good right now for the body of Christ in the way that you handle this and move forward. And I know you don't agree with everything I said. I know even the list of Things that I gave you that I think you need to deal with. I know you probably won't agree with that list, but. But if you will just do your best diligence to try to do with as much as you can, it will bring great blessings to the body of Christ. As long as there's no ounce of COVID up culture involved in the process, it's going to bring huge blessings because there is a lot of damage that's been going on for a long time. And I'll give you an example. If you guys can't call out Kenneth Copeland, then you're. I think we should be done with you. If you can't. I mean, I don't think you should be the leaders. I think you should become an example. I don't think you should be the leaders in this movement at all. But I think you should be examples, become an example for people as you move forward. That's just the reality of it. So I know how this comes off. I know that I risk this coming off. Like I'm like this domineering, like I get to tell you guys everything you need to do. That's my two cents. As somebody who has talked to tons and tons of victims behind the scenes, as someone who's spent a long time dealing with these issues, as someone who I think God has placed in a position to try to make a difference at this exact moment in time, that's what I think. And I pray that there's something that you guys benefit in this. I encourage you guys in the audience in the crowd to taper your comments with wisdom. Let your speech be seasoned with grace where possible. I think that that would be good moving forward. So let's pray and close this very long video. You guys are not going to hear from me till at least next Friday because I. I'm tired, man. All right, except for some shorts I already recorded. Father God, we pray for your will, your will to be done. We pray for unity in the church and that that may come at the expense of some tearing things down. We pray for blessings on the charismatic world. They're so effective at growing churches and spreading Christ all over the place. They really are. And we pray though that they would not just be a mile wide, but they would become a mile deep. And that you would bring reform and transformation into the charismatic world. And we ask for Bethel and their leaders to have courage and fearlessness and moral clarity. In Jesus name, Amen. Amen. Sean Bulls, Todd White, you guys are done. You should absolutely be done in ministry. And everybody around you should make sure that happens. All right, guys, I'm done. God bless you.