Pastor Ernie Gruen was in a tough position in January 1990. A spiritual leader of the Kansas City area with over 30 years of experience in church ministry, he had seen many sincere Christians seriously hurt by Mike Bickle's group of false prophets. They were very uneducated, emotionally unstable, spiritually weak, badly led, inadequately supervised and poorly disciplined--but frequently promoted. Gruen had embraced and promoted Bickle, the new pastor in town, when he arrived in the city; so he felt partially responsible. He had confronted the power-hungry young preacher privately, but he neither repented nor recanted. There was no brokenness, no humility--just defiance and deception. He was stubborn as a mule, acting like an ungodly man in the Old Testament who had been marked by God and confronted by a prophet, showing no signs he would change. There was no point in further delay.Now it was time to step up, speak out, and name names--dramatically expose the private sins and public heresy of a serious man who consistently appeared so godly, so devout, so "cutting edge"--so prophetic. To the many Christians who saw the rising American religious star in public and heard all his wild stories at church meetings and special conferences, he clearly appeared to be pure gold--prayerful, worshipful, sacrificial--the leader of the future, the elite man of God called, anointed and appointed to lead the chosen generation into the greatest revival in world history: a global harvest of a billion souls.Could anyone so sincere be so sincerely wrong? Do I go with what I believe God is telling me? Or do I just accept what they say God is telling them?The struggle was so stressful. But his decision was final. He would face his fear of death. He would get in that pulpit with the entire congregation present and the tape recorder on, and defy the "prophets" to preach the sermon of his life--the word of the Lord--a prophetic rebuke against the worst fake prophetic movement in a generation.It was not a group effort in preparation or delivery; it was one man with one voice and one message. Usually he was a pastor of just his church; but on a winter Sunday morning, walking in the fear of God, carrying a special sermon carefully crafted on his knees with his Bible open, Ernie Gruen became, if only for one day, a prophet to an entire nation.