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Alternate known names: Brownsville Revivals, Elijah List, Florida Revivals, IHOP, Kansas City Prophets, New Apostolic Reformation (NAR)A movement within Protestant Christianity that embraces present-day apostles and prophets who claim they govern the church and give new divine revelation needed to set up God's EARTHLY kingdom., Toronto Blessing → see false prophet list.

Mike Bickle

Love and Death In the House of Prayer

Page 9

Bethany Leidlein and Tyler Deaton were married in August 2012. During the procession, Deaton sang "Come to Me, My Beloved." They held a worship service at the altar. Bethany seemed "resolved" and "serene," in the words of a friend. Some in attendance, though, were uneasy, spooked by Deaton's evident power over her. Several of Bethany's old friends felt a "deep sense" that they were bidding her a final goodbye.

Deaton and Bethany spent most of their three-week honeymoon in Costa Rica. Deaton had mischievously kept the destination from Bethany until they were on their way to the airport. That may have been the final romantic flourish of the relationship. In an e-mail to one of her roommates, Bethany described a difficult situation. "It makes me scared to get married," her roommate told the other women in the house. In a statement to detectives, one of Deaton's roommates said Deaton "confided" to the other men that he was "frustrated after his recent marriage [because] he couldn't get an erection."

Some of Bethany's roommates in the women's house noticed a change in her as soon as she got back from her honeymoon. She was "confused" and "uneasy." She'd moved into Deaton's basement room in the men's house, but within two weeks began spending one or more nights a week at the women's house. Sometimes she stayed several nights in a row. "I just need a little space," she'd say, or, "I just feel too controlled." But she wouldn't elaborate. No one had ever seen her so listless and depressed. She could not be consoled.

Deaton, and therefore the group, considered Bethany's distress to be her own problem. She was exhibiting inappropriate "resistance" to her new husband. She was restless at night, a former roommate says, which bruised his prophetic sensibility and cost him sleep. Since Bethany couldn't bring herself to blame him, she instead blamed some amorphous sinfulness in herself. Worried that she might be inclined toward repression and avoidance, Deaton instructed her to meet with Moore in the mornings so that Moore could ensure she was facing her problems.

During this time, according to the statements Deaton's roommates made to detectives, Deaton was pursuing "sexual relationships" with three of the men in the group. Moore recently told someone close to him that he too had been sexually involved with Deaton. "It was a skillfully orchestrated system of debauchery that shattered the wills of the boys under Tyler's care and crushed their spirits," says Herrington.

As the weeks passed, it seemed to one of Bethany's former roommates in the women's house that she was "running from the men's house, and then shrinking back." When her mood did not change, Dea­ton announced that he had done all he could to show her that God loved her, and now the group should try to defuse her self-criticism by ignoring it. He "came across as very logical, thoughtful and biblically grounded," according to a former member, but his edict left Bethany profoundly isolated.

According to Moore's confession, the drugging and sexual assaults began not long after Bethany returned from Costa Rica. Moore did not implicate Deaton in the assaults, but if they did happen, multiple ex-group members say, they could not have occurred without his blessing. By then, Deaton could blast anything, no matter how grotesque, with transfiguring grace, and it would appear holy. Certain details in the confession suggest that the men may have understood the assaults described to be religious acts: Moore said the men used his iPad to film and write poems about them.

Soon after Bethany died, the group members assembled at the women's house. Moore led a service. He was "laughing and looking happy, as he always did when he was leading worship and playing guitar," a former member says. He seemed "relieved."

Three days after Bethany's body was discovered, one of the men in the house told detectives, Deaton told him about a disturbing dream. He said he had dreamed of suffocating Bethany to death.

Right away, some of Bethany's friends and family members thought her suicide note was fabricated. Its defeatism was antithetical to her spirit, and it was ineptly composed. "Someone who wrote so beautifully couldn't have written something that inarticulate," one friend said.

"My name is Bethany Deaton," the note read. "I chose this evil thing. I did it because I wouldn't be a real person and what is the point of living if it is too late for that? I wish I had chosen differently a long time ago. I knew it all and refused to listen. Maybe Jesus will still save me."