‘Prophet’ with close ties to embattled IHOPKC founder is a ‘complete fraud,’ son says

A man known in charismatic circles for his prophetic ministry who has close ties to embattled International House of Prayer-Kansas City founder Mike Bickle is a con artist and a fraud, his son said this week.

Jedidiah Hartley, who was raised in the IHOPKC community and often traveled with his father to speaking engagements, said he could no longer remain silent about what he knew — and experienced — regarding Bob Hartley and his highly sought-after prophecies.

“I have never known how to address this publicly, but it has become clear that (it) is time for me to speak up,” he said in a thread posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday afternoon.

Then came the bombshell.

“My dad, Bob Hartley, who has been an influential prophetic figure in both #IHOPKC and #Bethel church is a complete fraud. His prophetic ministry has always been a con. For decades his process has been the same. He gets specific information about people, either through online searches, church directories, or most commonly, through conversations with pastors of local churches, and then he pretends as if he is divining this info.”

The post quickly went viral, eventually garnering millions of views and hundreds of comments of support. Even before his son’s accusation, Bob Hartley has in recent months been accused of sexually harassing and abusing women in the church.

The revelation comes as a sex abuse scandal involving Bickle is in its fifth month and questions continue to mount about the future of IHOPKC’s 24/7 prayer ministry. A key component of IHOPKC is what is referred to as its “prophetic history,” described as “about 25 powerful prophetic experiences that provide insight into what will happen in the days ahead in Kansas City, the USA, and other nations.”

According to IHOPKC, “These supernatural experiences were given to several prophetic people in the 1970s and 1980s. They include times when various believers saw the Lord, heard God’s audible voice, saw an angel, or had prophetic dreams that were dramatically confirmed.”

Sexual abuse allegations against Bickle were made public in late October, leading IHOPKC to “immediately, formally and permanently separate” from him and causing upheaval in the charismatic prayer movement. Bickle is accused of using prophecies to groom, sexually abuse and manipulate women over multiple decades, one starting when she was just 14.

Jedidiah Hartley, now an author and chess teacher in California, told The Star his father and Bickle have a long history, dating back to pre-IHOPKC days when Bob Hartley was part of Bickle’s Kansas City Fellowship church.

During those years, Jedidiah said, his dad — a former wrestler — was active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and would often speak at their functions, though he would avoid prophesying to them and talking about the end times. Numerous sports figures associated with the organization became involved with Kansas City Fellowship, including a group of Kansas City Chiefs players. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Jedidiah said, his dad even served as chaplain for the Chiefs cheerleaders.

“I remember I would go as a kid and we’d have like a little Bible study before the Chiefs’ game,” he said.

‘Time for the truth to be told’

When IHOPKC was launched in 1999, Jedidiah told The Star, Bob Hartley gave the ministry some land and moved several trailers onto the property to use for offices.

Though never a leader at IHOPKC, Bob Hartley was a familiar figure there, known for going up to the microphone in the prayer room to speak. A YouTube video shows him at the microphone as recently as December, when he called for 50 days of prayer “for reconciliation, restoration and Reformation for the Body of Christ.”

But in January, IHOPKC leaders banned him from the prayer room when multiple allegations of sexual assault and predatory behavior surfaced about him.

Though Bickle and Bob Hartley “butted heads” at times, Jedidiah Hartley told The Star the two remained close over the years. And after the sex abuse allegations were made public against Bickle, Jedidiah said, his dad talked of putting together a “restoration team” to help Bickle recover from the scandal.

“I don’t know if Bickle had asked him to do that, but he was certainly soliciting to be a part of Mike Bickle’s restoration team,” Jedidiah said. “Since the Mike scandal broke, there was a period of time where my dad was talking with him like every single week.”

Bickle did not respond to a request for comment about his relationship with Bob Hartley or Jedidiah’s allegations about his dad being a fraud.

In his posts on X Monday, Jedidiah said that several leaders “have knowingly enabled this con for decades.” One former leader of an IHOPKC affiliate “knew about the grift yet kept encouraging my father’s prophetic ministry, and told me to let it go when I objected,” he said.

For years, Jedidiah said, he did let it go.

“I knew it was wrong, but I thought it was bringing about good results,” he said. “Hundreds of people have shared wonderful testimonies to me about my dad’s prophecies changing their lives, and I just never had the heart to tell them the truth.”

Now, however, he said he believed it was time “for the truth to come out.”

While some lives may have changed for the better, he said, “my father has used the authority he has garnered from his prophetic ministry to manipulate and abuse people, including his own wife and children.”

Over the next few months, Jedidiah said, he would be sharing “many of the painful details of my father’s abuse to expose just how dangerous the prophetic con can really be.”

“It breaks my heart to do this,” he said, “but I have been covering for my dad my entire life and it’s time for the truth to be told.”

Some of those commenting on Jedidiah’s posts shared stories of their own about his father.

“I was on the receiving end of this,” one man said. “Problem was the info he used could only have come from one source. I confirmed later that they had been speaking about me with Bob beforehand and the way Bob used the info was manipulative.”

Jedidiah said the vast majority of responses have been extremely supportive.

“There’s been some people who have definitely been upset,” he told The Star. “It’s like when you tell a friend of yours that their partner is cheating on them. Sometimes, instead of getting mad at the partner, they get mad at you for telling them. And it is hard, because these prophetic words that my dad gave to so many people were instrumental in so many people’s lives.”

Bob Hartley issued a rambling and sometimes incoherent response to his son’s statements Tuesday in a YouTube video he posted from where he was staying in California.

“I love my son…he’s my son, my friend, not controller or director of my life,” he said. “And just…there’s a whole lot more to that picture. I want the best for him.”

He added that “truth doesn’t seem to matter anymore.”

At one point, he appeared to blame his problems on medications he was taking after having heart surgery. He also mentioned Bickle, saying he’d “hitch my wagon with Mike” and “I’m gonna stand up and be loyal until proven, the things, you know.”

Bob Hartley said “when you have two million people reading negative things…it just is exhausting. So the best thing I can do is be the best man I can be.”

He continued: “I’m not saying I’ve done this the best at all…And so I appreciate my son wanting to help me along that line...I want him to be my son, I want him to be my friend. I love him…”

Then, in an apparent reference to the massive number of views his son’s posts have had on X, he said, “Two million people. Congratulations, buddy. But he said I was false. He knows better…

“I’m sad. I’m sad. I’ve got a heart and I’m sad. But I love everybody.”

A sex abuse scandal of his own

Bob Hartley has an organization called Hartley Hope Ministries, which according to its website “serves to train and equip believers with spiritual tools and resources to bring forth hope to the world.”

“Bob Hartley is a highly sought-after prophetic voice around the world and is known as a Patriarch of Hope,” the site says. “He has made it his mandate to see God loved well and rid the world of despair through the paradigm shifting perspective of hope. From his next door neighbors to world leaders, Bob’s message of hope has brought forth transformation to the lives of individuals across every sphere of influence.”

But in recent months, he has been involved in a mess of his own.

In January, Michelle Seidler, a former member of IHOPKC’s leadership team in the prophetic ministry department, put a series of posts on Facebook and X that she said revealed that Hartley had been sexually harassing and abusing women.

The posts included stories of sexual abuse, along with videos and screenshots she said women had sent her in which Hartley made sexually explicit comments and offered to pay to have sex with them.

In her posts, Seidler called Hartley “a supposed prophetic leader in the KC IHOP community.”

“The reason I am doing this is because the church needs to be aware of him,” Seidler said. “Some of the things I will be revealing are only days old! And he has been doing this for years. (2017 it started that I’m aware of). The fathers in the church know he has been doing these things. And using the prophetic!!! Nothing has been done.”

She said the information she had received “reveals manipulating women for sex, as well as offering money for sex.”

“I will show enough evidence to make the church aware,” she said. “However, I do want to say that there (are) many others, with even more evidence, that do not want it released…”

Then-IHOPKC crisis manager and spokesman Eric Volz responded on X, thanking Seidler “for bringing this to our attention.” And on Jan. 15, Volz posted that “based on information we have been presented and verified, Mr. Hartley has been informed he will no longer be permitted access to the IHOPKC Prayer Room.”

Bob Hartley responded in a series of rambling videos, denying that he had offered to pay women for sex and saying his social media account had been hacked, and even blaming medication he was taking.

And then last month came another disturbing disclosure.

Bob Hartley’s ex-wife issued a statement saying she was one of the “Jane Does” who had been groomed by Bickle decades ago and told her story about his “predatory behaviors” to former IHOPKC leaders last fall. Those former leaders included her case in their report to the current leadership in October that prompted the investigation of Bickle and led to his ouster.

Stories didn’t add up

On Wednesday, Jedidiah Hartley posted more details about what he said were his dad’s cons.

“I grew up adoring my dad. He had (his) bitter flaws, but he was a wonderful storyteller who had lived an unbelievable life,” he wrote. “So in my early 20s I decided to write a book about him.”

The book, “I Hope it’s not Hereditary,” is a tongue-in-cheek account of stories from his dad’s childhood, he said.

“At first the experience was great,” Jedidiah wrote. “I got to spend time with my father and ask him about his life story. However, once I began writing the book something changed. The narratives of his life began to blur — his stories never quite adding up.”

When he pressed his dad on the inconsistencies, Jedidiah wrote, “he would become violently angry.”

“But this was just the beginning of things turning sour as, during this time, I also was traveling and ministering with him and this is where I fully got to see his prophetic grift on full display,” he wrote. “We would travel to churches, home groups, youth groups etc. and before each meeting my dad would speak with leaders of the group and ask for names of the congregants so he could ‘pray over them’ before we would minister to the group.”

Once his dad had the names, Jedidiah wrote, he would mine Google, Facebook and even the church directory to find details about their lives, such as phone numbers, addresses and random facts.

“However, pulling details off the internet was only half the grift,” Jedidiah said. “Most of the actual content of his prophetic word he would get directly from leaders or from other church members. Before his sermon, he would ask leaders about their church members’ lives. Their relationships, faith, family, jobs etc. and all the leaders were more than happy to give my dad all the info he would need without them seemingly being aware of what they were doing.”

When the time came for his dad to “minister,” Jedidiah said, he would place several three-ring binders “full of his manic notes” and put them on the pulpit. After delivering a sermon, he said, Bob Hartley would give prophetic words to people “straight from all the information he had written in his notebooks.”

“He would call out a name and then hook the individual with a specific detail from his internet search into a prophetic word,” Jedidiah said. “Most commonly, he would take strings of numbers from either their address or their phone number and have that correspond to a bible verse. Something like I saw you as the Isaiah 60:22 woman. A small one who is becoming strong. *dramatic pause* Does the number 6022 mean anything to you?

“A wave of shock would roll over their face and they would say that was the last four digits of their phone number.”

Hooking them, Jedidiah said, was just the first part of the con. The second part would be the specific word — “a word that he pieced together from the intimate knowledge he had gleaned from his previous conversations with the church leaders.”

“This is what made his words so compelling and why, still to this day, I know hundreds of people who refuse to believe that this prophetic word to them was fabricated,” he said. “The words were not generic fortune cookie prophecies. They were hand-tailored words about their lives.”

‘It was just their ‘hamburger helper’’

Jedidiah said he confronted his dad a dozen or so times about it.

“And here’s the crazy thing, he never would deny it,” he wrote. “He would deny, of course, that this was his entire process. He was still a prophet in his eyes, but he openly admitted that he ‘got help’ from natural sources.

“According to him, all the prophets did this. It was just their ‘hamburger helper,’ a phrase he had gotten from his prophetic mentor and major prophetic figure Bob Jones. A little something extra to spice up their meals.”

Jedidiah said none of his family members could stand what was going on.

“It was deceptive, it was manipulative, and we all hated the side of my father that would come out when he was in ‘prophetic mode,’” he said. “I used to plead with him not (to) use prophecy. ‘Just tell stories’ I would urge. He was a great storyteller and I thought people’s lives could change for the better just through good stories. But being a storyteller was never enough for him.

“They need me to be a prophet.”

Jedidiah told The Star that Hartley’s activity in the prophetic ministry has dwindled in recent years.

“A lot of his allure has been lost,” he said. “But in the heyday — 10, 12 years ago, he was traveling internationally, going and speaking to many churches, and people were excited.”

Jedidiah said he hasn’t spoken to Bob Hartley since he visited him in Kansas City in January when the sex abuse allegations surfaced against him. He said he gave his dad a list of three things he would need to do in order for him to be involved in his life again.

“He agreed to a couple of them,” Jedidiah said. “And then he was going to think about the last one. And then he was like, ‘I don’t think I can do it.’

“And basically that’s when I was like, ‘OK, I can’t be involved in your life any more.’”