As recently posted, Southern Baptist president, Ronnie Floyd, will be speaking at an IHOP event in Kansas City in December 2015. While some of you may be picking your jaw up off the floor, or shaking your heads in disbelief, I stated that I simply wasn’t all that surprised about the partnership. After all, the blooming Arminian, Ronnie Floyd, shares much in common both theologically, and eschatologically with Bickle and IHOP.
Ronnie Floyd’s 2015 Southern Baptist Convention was themed “The Great Awakening,” which carries with it the connotations of his prophecy of revival. In his manifesto, he exhorts Southern Baptists to “Humbly Come Together Before God in Clear Agreement, Visible Union, and in Extraordinary Prayer for the Next Great Awakening and for the World to Be Reached for Christ.” As I’ve reported before, Ronnie Floyd already has very close ties with a “revival” ministry known as Life Action Ministries. At one point, Life Action urges leaders and pastors of all denominations to coalesce around Floyd’s edict.
Ronnie Floyd’s “plea” to Christians is as follows:
There is no great movement of God that has ever occurred that does not begin with the extraordinary prayer of God’s people. The time is now for us to come together before God in clear agreement, visible union, and in extraordinary prayer for the next Great Awakening and for the world to be reached for Christ.
For the sake of our nation and the spiritually lost around the world, it is time to humble ourselves before God. For this, I plead with all Southern Baptist pastors, missionaries, laypersons, denominational leaders, churches, denominational entities, conventions, colleges and universities; from student to adult, regardless of age, vocation, or status.
As we come to God in humility and repentance, entering into this special season of extraordinary prayer, we plead with God for spiritual revival personally, revival in the church, and the next Great Awakening in the United States.
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I am pleading with each of you to join in this spiritual movement to pray for the next Great Awakening so the Great Commission will escalate to its rightful priority and accelerate to its completion in our generation.
So it’s clear his purpose is to cross denominational lines and unite with other professing Christians at all costs. But just how far across those lines does he intend to take the Southern Baptist Convention?
Apparently all the way to IHOP.
A “revivalist” by the name of Malachi O’Brien, who pastors Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church, also has close ties to Life Action Ministries, regularly speaks positively of IHOP. Malachi O’Brien was chosen by Ronnie Floyd to lead the 2015 Southern Baptist Committee on Committees for 2015 in the state of Missouri.
So what does IHOP have in common with Ronnie Floyd? Or a better question, what does Ronnie Floyd have in common with IHOP?
Mike Bickle, a former Kansas City pastor, founded the organization after he claimed a man named Augustine approached him, and “prophesied” to his congregation with astonishing accuracy about the state of his church. Bickle later claimed to receive an audible revelation from God that told him “I am inviting you to raise up a work that will touch the ends of the earth. I have invited many people to do this thing and many people have said yes, but very few have done my will.”
In 1990, Ronnie Floyd preached a sermon titled “When Revival Comes.” In this sermon, he claimed a direct revelation from God, and “prophesied” saying,
I believe God is bringing and will bring our church into a state of spiritual revival. Ninetyfive percent of us are afraid to go into it because we do not know what is there or what may happen. God told me this week the following nine characteristics will be experienced by our fellowship. I do not share expositionally today, but practically. I want to encourage you to step on over into revival.
- Outpouring of God’s Spirit on you
- Open confession of sinAn unbelievable transparency of God’s people
- Opinions of man will fade to the awesomeness of God’s Word
- Obsessive desire to pray
- Observe a radical obedience to God
- Overflowing well of praise to the Lord
- Overt Reaction of Satan
- Ordinary people will experience extraordinary events
- Overwhelming response to the Gospel of Jesus.
So as you can see, Floyd’s obsession with prophesying a charismatic revival spans multiple decades, and is eerily similar to the Mike Bickle’s claimed prophecy. Further, IHOP’s website states that it “was founded by Mike Bickle and twenty full-time “intercessory missionaries,” who cried out to God in prayer with worship for thirteen hours each day.” Today, IHOP’s “intercessory missionaries” are required to commit themselves to at least 50 hours a week of intercessory prayer, including at least 4 hours a day, 6 days a week in the intercessory prayer room. (Source)
Similarly, Floyd is exhorting Southern Baptists to a nearly identical mission. Floyd says,
The church must rise up in extraordinary prayer and urgent action. We must take desperate steps forward spiritually during these desperate times in which we live. With urgency in this hour, knowing the Lord could return at anytime, it is incumbent on us to rise up together now as His Church. Therefore, I am pleading with our Southern Baptist Family to come together in clear agreement, visible union, and extraordinary prayer for the next Great Awakening and for the world to be reached for Christ.
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Surely we can embrace with clear agreement that spiritual revival personally, spiritual revival in the church, and spiritual awakening in the nation are all needed so we can accelerate our pace in reaching the world for Christ. Certainly we can deny ourselves, defer our own preferences, and visibly unite in extraordinary prayer…
Further, he asks Southern Baptist pastors to:
Challenge your church to pause at either sunset on Saturday evening or sunrise on Sunday morning, to pray for three minutes for the anointing of God to come on their pastor as he preaches God’s Word and the anointing of God’s power to come upon the worship services of their church. Prayerfully, these 180 seconds of focused prayer will soon begin a true 180-degree change in our churches.
With the similar focus on compulsory prayer with mystical undertones, it’s no wonder Floyd and Bickle are so attractive to eachother. They practically claim the same, unbiblical theology. Further, both Bickle and Floyd teach the same unbiblical concept of first fruits (storehouse) tithing, misapplying Malachi 3:10 to back up their claims. The desperate dependence on and call for money by both Floyd, and Bickle, seems to be the driving force behind their ministries. (See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here) The Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil (1 Tim 6:10). But this love of money, and call to embrace a mystical, charismatic, entertaining form of “worship” in the church to bring about a supposed and similar prophecy of revival between these two men seems to be the common ground between them. Since Floyd’s prophecy has taken precedence over expository preaching and proclamation of the Word of God, similar to IHOP, and with Floyd’s betrayal of the church by partnering with them at their event, one can only ascertain that Floyd genuinely believes in the mission of IHOP, and intends to unite the Southern Baptist Convention with them.