Jedidiah Hartley

Today marks the launch of the Rise and Reclaim Advocacy Group! If you, or anyone you know, has experienced abuse within religious contexts we are here as an advocate group to listen and work alongside of you.

I never had a faith crisis moment where I woke up and realized "Oh my gosh, I don't believe this." I had a faith crisis moment looking around at everyone else in church and realizing, "Oh my gosh, THEY don't believe it."

18/ I am choosing to speak up against all the abuse I have seen with the hope that me raising my voice and shedding a light on this corruption will allow even a few to find freedom from these predatory religious systems.

17/ So many within the Charismatic church are trapped within these abusive religious systems, being exploited by leaders who are explicitly out to deceive and prey upon them.

16/ It is my firm belief that the root of the Charismatic church in America is fundamentally rotten. While the community itself might hold a great amount of genuine, kind and virtuous individuals, the leadership of the community has sold it's soul for power, money and sexual exploitation.

15/ When I began to speak out against my father and against Bickle, I was shocked to see the leaders of the "christian" community I was once a part of, flock to defend and shield clear sexual abusers.

14/ I wish I could say that the corruption, deceit and abuse that I have seen my father give himself over to was isolated to just him. But the grave reality is that abusers like my father, and like Mike Bickle are absolutely rampant throughout the Charismatic church.

13/ Since speaking up, more and more individuals have come forward, both publicly and to me privately, to share testimonies of abuse they suffered at the hands of prophetic and religious leaders within the charismatic community.

12/ To come to terms with my father being not only a fraud but a sexual predator was absolutely devastating, but it was the revelation that finally pushed me forward to speak about all the abuse I had seen growing up.

11/ Shortly after these women came forward about Mike Bickle, other brave women began testifying about sexual abuse they had experienced at the hands of my own father.

Just as Bickle used prophecy to manipulate and sexually exploit vulnerable individuals, so too had my father.

10/ The story these brave women shared was absolutely heartbreaking, and it shed a grim but important light on the prevalence of sexual abuse and prophetic abuse within the community I was raised in.

9/ But things changed in fall of 2023, as I learned of a scandal involving the pastor of the cult community I was raised in, Mike Bickle.

Several women had come forward testifying that Bickle had used prophecy and his power as a pastor to sexually abuse and groom them as teenagers.

8/ For nearly a decade, I said nothing publicly about my father's fraudulent practices. I left the church, lost my faith entirely, and I warned leaders behind the scenes, but I could not bring myself to speak out publicly about it as I knew this would cost me my relationship with my father.

7/ For instance, In 2014 my father and I spoke at a prophetic conference hosted by charismatic mega-church, Bethel, in Redding CA. At this conference the lead pastor, Bill Johnson, fed my father a list of names of everyone in attendance so that he could research his prophetic words before he spoke.

6/ These experiences traveling with my father not only revealed just how deceptive his ministry was, but it also revealed how many pastors were complicit in this prophetic grift.

5/ As I grew older, I began to realize some of my father's patterns were deceptive, however I did not realize the extent of the con until I traveled and ministered alongside of him when I was in my early 20s.

4/ When I was young I, of course, was unaware of this, so I grew up thinking of my father as a prophet. I believed that he, and the other prophets within my community (most notably Mike Bickle), could speak with God as clearly as if they were to call God up and talk to him on the phone.

3/ For decades his playbook has been the same. He gets specific information about people through a variety of means (online searches, church directories, or conversations with pastors) and then pretends as if he is getting this information divinely from the Lord.

2/ My father, who has been an influential prophetic figure to several mega-churches including Bethel and IHOPKC, is a fraud and his prophetic ministry has always been a con.

A thread for those who don't know me:

1/ I am the son of "prophetic" minister Bob Hartley, I grew up within the cult community that birthed the apocalyptic mega-church, IHOPKC, and over the last year I have begun to blow the whistle on rampant abuse within the charismatic community.