My longtime friend and former colleague at Metro Christian Fellowship, Michael Sullivant, has given me permission to post his email to me. Here it is.

Dear Sam … thanks for your deep and heartfelt confession. I do hope it serves to ease your heart and mind, as well as helping people whom you accidentally misled, to metabolize this terrible event in the global body of Christ in our day. It's a cautionary generational tale of the highest magnitude. May we all learn from this. Thank you for going low. It has and will make a difference, I'm sure.

Mike has had many wonderful believers persuaded at various times, to various degrees, and for various lengths of time about his unassailable integrity and devotion to Jesus. He carefully curated, projected, and managed an image of being the most dedicated disciple among us all, yet always shrouded in a strategic mock humility. He hasn't been the stereotypical slick preacher ... no ... far from it!

A few pieces of feedback I do have is that there actually were some people in the mix who discerned some of the dark deception that especially Mike and Paul were perpetuating, though there was no concrete evidence of the sexual abuse that was actionable … only prophetic revelations, now validated, that had to be prayed about for years. (Through the years, many people approached Mike and sought to bring corrections to him for his spiritual pride and some of his unsound teachings. They mostly did so in carnal anger and so they were easy to write off.)

My dear sweet wife, Terri, saw a number of these actual "mafia-like" criminal acts being committed by them both early on. I was “slow of heart” (Luke 24:25) on this front and it created a deep tension in our marriage for some years. To my shame, I didn't believe her periodic minority reports. They were too inconvenient. How sad I am about this failure on my part as it caused a deep suffering for her to bear alone. But ... she prayed in secret and never wavered from her convictions. I have repented this injustice to her.

In 1997, I also began to also prophetically see, mainly in clear dreams, some of Mike’s deceit. This also made sense of some more cryptic dreams God gave me earlier on regarding some systemic errors in our work. Mike's deceit is maybe his primary besetting sin, which he would self-justify whenever it surfaced? That, and maybe his lust to "conquer" all others? (The latter was bred into him by his father from early on in his childhood.) I think this challenge to conquer may lie at the root of his predation upon pretty young women … even more than sexual lust.

As IHOP began, Mike progressively began to divide from and trash Metro and its leadership. I confronted him at that time about his breaches of “relational ethics” and misuse of “prophetic” words to manipulate people and situations to get his way and violate agape. (1 Cor 13:1-3) I gave him some of my clearest simple revelations, which he summarily dismissed without a second thought. He had set his course. The Lord spoke to Terri around that time very firmly, "Stand back while I discipline my son!" (We took that to heart and "stood back" for 25 years, until 2024.)

Then Mike began to drive the new IHOP ministry into more and more of a cultic direction via a prophetic history that took on mythic proportions, a claim of holding the true interpretation and applications of the Revelation, a vibe of possessing secret knowledge of the general timing of the return of Christ, and employing strategies and practices that elevated himself to a place of being above questioning and correction. (These were the same tactics that William Branham employed to coalesce his cult following that continues to this day. Let us beware!)

The loyalty he quietly, sometimes secretly, demanded from his followers was inordinate and way beyond reason. He trained an army of radical followers who are now directing the zeal he instilled in them to expose him as a fraudulent deceiver. He told Deborah she was an Esther, but ironically, I’m sure he never suspected that he would actually play the role of Haman in the narrative ... hanged on his own gallows.

I felt a need to go on record which this testimonial. I hope it doesn’t smack of exploiting this vulnerable moment in all of our lives and ministries.

We love and respect you dear Sam and certainly do forgive you for being led astray by Mike for some time. (I wrote a public confession last year because I too wounded people defending Mike and some others as well, back in the 90’s.) We are glad that the light of Christ has shone more brightly to deliver us from this spiritual oppression that has cast a large shadow over our city for too long. Let us band together to denounce Mike as a false shepherd and labor to protect the beautiful people of God from his influence in the future.

Your brother and friend,

Michael Sullivant
Director of Relational Networks
Life Model Works
www.lifemodelworks.org