Where I differ from the holier than Mike crowd

Where I differ from the many ministers, many my friends, on the subject of Mike Bickle's sins, is that I do not believe most of the accusations against him have been proven. The sins he has admitted to - with light petting, not sexual or oral intercourse - Mike has said it happened over 20 years ago, he repented and it was he thought under the blood. To repent doesn't just mean confessing he was sinning, it means turning from that sin. Bickle indicated that he had and had been walking free of it in the 20+ years since.

For me, that means God forgave him, and scripture says that the things God forgives He remembers no more, they are dropped into the "sea of forgetfulness" - Micah 7:18-19

18 Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the transgression of the remnant of His inheritance—who does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in loving devotion? 19 He will again have compassion on us; He will vanquish our iniquities. You will cast out all our sins into the depths of the sea.

People are the ones who cannot let past sins go and believe that people should be set aside forever, even for a sin that is in the past and under the blood. I cannot tell you how that bothered me in the beginning of all this, because if Bickle was honest in his admission, and people could still drive him from ministry by exposing his forgiven sins, where does that leave the rest of us who have repented of sins that we no longer walk in but have overcome? It means we are fair game for unforgiving Christians to destroy us, pull us from further ministry, slander us far and wide.

As far as I am concerned Mike Bickles' word is just as acceptable as the words of those who have accused him. Since sexual accusation became a weapon of Feminists, I am not swayed by multiple 'support accusers' with no-evidence accusations.

I look at the array of accusations that have multiplied and spread like wildfire throughout the body of the Messiah/Christ and I see people willing to ignore what Bickle exactly confessed to willing to conflate them in wild assertions that are magnified, overblown and embellished. Conflated is the word I'm searching for and is the problem in all of this. His confessed sin has been conflated to every sexual sin that ever took place at IHOP by any other people. Bickle is charged now to the point that he is held responsible for every other sexual sin. The original accuser is not even held responsible for her choice, dismissed as a child, not the young adult she was. The accusation dump-it-all-on-Mike have so enflamed people to the point they are ready to burn Mike at the stake and raze the IHOP ministry as well.

This tells me THE Accuser of the brethren is very much attached to one side of this. It makes me recoil from the lot of them. How can I trust them when they approve of the rampant portrayal of Bickle and IHOP as a predator haven for the sexual grooming and exploitation of girls.

I think that everyone is turning a blind eye to how many young church going women (and men of course) are secretly sexually active Christians. What if every pastor of every church where this was the case was held responsible for their sins, saying it was the spiritual climate that the pastor fostered? Well in fact, because the contemporary church does not preach about sins very much, social media standards do dictate a lot of the sinful choices that even Christian young people choose. They even deny the sins are sins.

Also, the Advocacy Group are all about blaming Mike for the sins of young people in the IHOP arena. Why didn't they do anything about the misgivings they had over how things were handled? Did holding onto their jobs mean more to them than pleasing God?

Mike has remained silent in the face of all these accusations by friends - close and not so close. He is doing what I have seen others do in the face of accusation against them. If he truly has long ago repented and turned from walking free of the sin before God, than God will arise for him at some point, but God will also allow the due judgments to fall on false accusers too.

When King David sinned with Bathsheba, sending her husband who was faithful to the king into a position that mean certain death for Uriah so David could have her as his wife, God confronted David. First by David's counselor telling him he was doing wrong by Uriah, and after the fact by sending the prophet Nathan, to tell him God's displeasure and how David would pay for it.

Yes, David did repent and God did forgive, and the consequences were borne by David. 2 Samuel 12:

13 So David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”

And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die. 14 However, because by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme, the child also who is born to you shall surely die.”

We all have to pay for our sins - even believers - when we repent we are forgiven by God but there are consequences we will pay personally and we "HAVE GIVEN GREAT OCCASION TO THE ENEMIES OF THE LORD TO BLASPHEME". That is exactly what the enemies of the LORD are doing in this case, and don't think a legal civil or criminal case against Mike will not result in more of the same: more enemies of God given occasion to blaspheme.

That is the real tragedy here - blown far out of proportion to Mike's actual sin because of the days we are in. unproven accusations are now the standard of evidence.