Who is Kanye’s V.P. and why does she think she can pass through walls?
Michelle Tidball-Krubeck (from Yaresh.com)
A preacher and a rapper both get into car crashes and decide to run for the presidency (for the Bible tells them so). Just when I was convinced the Simulation2020 scriptwriters had jumped the shark, I received this Twitter alert:
Kanye West is running for president…with an obscure Wyoming preacher.
The announcement interview in Forbes was peak Kanye. He is considering an independent run under a self-styled Birthday Party, modeling his presidency after Wakanda, recycling old Ben Carson bits about Planned Parenthood conspiracies, and saying the popular vote takes a back seat to God’s presidential appointment.
The most curious part in the article was a single line referencing his running mate, a life-coach named Michelle Tidball. Knowing Michelle would be a hairsbreadth away from being called into action should, God-forbid, anything happen to President West, I set off to learn more.
Part of my curiosity stemmed from the fact that my family tree produced a bumper crop of obscure preachers. My father shifted his studies of mathematics to divinity; my uncle (whose Marxist tendencies didn’t sit well in 1970’s Christian America) learned a form of non-nationalistic, non-conservative Christianity from black evangelicals in the Church of God and True Holiness; I studied theology in a former sundown town in Northwest Arkansas before leaving for Kansas to complete my degree in religious studies; my great-grandfather was a coal miner & traveling Apostolic minister who lived at the dawn of the Welsh revival; and his enterprising son left the family tradition to join a schismatic element known as the New Order of the Latter Rain (or Latter Rain, for short) in the 1950s and ’60s. We’ve seen a varietal or two.
While researching our hopeful vice-president’s nonprofit, “Abundant Ministries,” I discovered they were affiliated with World Ministry Fellowship in Plano, TX. In the 1960s, ministers who received the baptism of the Holy Spirit began practicing ecstatic glossolalia, commonly known as speaking in tongues. These trancelike states appeared as gibberish to their traditionalist congregations and many were often asked to leave their respective denominations. World Ministry Fellowship provided them a safe pillow to land.
Then, it all clicked. I knew why Kanye’s rant sounded so familiar. His choice for V.P. shared ideas sprouted from the soil of the Latter Rain movement whose teachings I’d been exposed to growing up in the “burned-over district” of Western New York.
There are a few things that make this rivulet of American Pentecostalism unique:
As indicated by their belief statement, they hold to a conservative, fundamentalist interpretation of scripture that takes the Bible as literally true.
It was formed by charismatic, maverick preachers, many who were poor and unsatisfied with the religious and monetary experiences of God offered through their denominations (e.g Welsh Apostolic ministers pooled & split their wages while some American preachers earned vast amounts of money and prestige). They were willing to push the envelope and risk being ostracized to find the truth.
Many believe Jesus is coming back imminently (possibly this year). When he does, the spiritual dry spell will be precipitated by a “latter rain” which will fall in the form of the reappearance of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. These will be the same quality of miracles attributed to Jesus & his disciples (healings, speaking in previously unknown foreign languages, raising the dead).
They believe in prosperity and abundance. Jesus wants more for you than you could ever imagine. This “Prosperity Gospel” is famously seen in the teaching of Kenneth Copeland & Creflo Dollar and evidenced by their Rolls Royces and private jets.
In the case of Vice Presidential hopeful Michelle Tidball, it incorporates elements of esoteric knowledge & practices (dream interpretation, numerology, prophecy, invocations, Jewish mysticism & talleisim) with a uniquely Christian slant.
Browsing Michelle’s website, Yarash, (now down), and listening to her lectures, it became clear that her life coaching was modeled for students willing to “rock the boat” and ready to become a manifest son of God. In essence, this means you have within you superhuman capacities, like Jesus, just waiting to be unlocked.
You need only to eliminate demonic influences and “own the birthright” granted you as a son of God. This birthright is the freedom from the sin which is holding you back because Jesus took care of that on the cross. With Michelle’s coaching (and the Holy Spirit’s help) the world is your oyster. For someone like Kanye who opened up to David Letterman about his struggles with mental illness, this must-have been welcome news and may explain the “alternative treatments” he alluded to in the interview.
While not providing any direct credentials, Michelle’s bio cites “various degrees in mental health and criminal justice” and says she previously “worked as a mental health therapist for ten years” before transitioning into life coaching. My uncle, who preached in this world before becoming a professor, likes to joke that Pentecostal jargon has received an upgrade in the past few decades. What used to be called “ministry” is now “life coaching,” the same way “missionary work” has become “humanitarian relief.”
In one of her ebooks entitled, So Your Child is Working Hard on Their Testimony…. How To Change What is Seen, Michelle provides readers additional backstory. We learn she has a Masters Degree in Addiction Psychology from an unnamed university and she has worked in a counseling setting in the court system. This may have been during her time in Utah where the registered agent for her company appears to have been Judge Ronald L. Read (unconfirmed).
In Michelle’s book, she uses her married name, Kruebeck (alternatively Tidball-Krubeck), courtesy of her most recent husband Jim, a Contemporary Christian musician, “jail pastor, bible teacher, and counselor in a County Detention facility in Cody, Wyoming.” On the weekends, Jim plays in a local bar where he’s fondly referred to as the “pastor of the bar”. Not to be outdone, Jim’s son previously was an active member of the Wyoming Area Paranormal Society, a group of ghost hunters who investigate purported hauntings.
At this point in my research, I wasn’t immediately reaching for my mail-in ballot, but I was down to invite the Krubeck family over for a BBQ. Any family who volunteers at prisons, works in drug rehab, plays music, and chases ghosts are bound to be curious, have big hearts, and surely have great stories to tell.
And do they ever.
Photo by Bill Blake, Blake’s Portrait Studio, Cody WY
Michelle published her ebook at the prodding of long-time friend and “Biblically Based, Spirit-Led Dream Interpreter”, Dr. Barbie Breathitt. The book begins with a hearty recommendation from Jeff Jansen, founder of Global Fire Ministries, who, according to his website, is trying to create a “new breed of man” modeled after Jesus. Back when my grandfather was preaching in the mid-’70s, they thought the children being born around 1975 were the last generation, a new breed to be known as the Manifest Son’s of God or Joel’s Army. Poor publicity (see Todd Bently) has necessitated a rebranding and distancing from these terms, but the concepts remain.
According to Michelle’s book, “human psychology” has crept into the church fooling us into believing that true healing from addiction is not possible. This is because the secular world fails to see the “supernatural realm” as the true cause of addiction. She offers a remedy through the power of the spoken word embued with the truth received via the Holy Spirit. Her ebook provides prayers, declarations & incantations to remove the demonic holds which addiction places on family member’s lives thus setting the captives free.
First-hand evidence comes in the following story. Michelle received a phone call telling her that her daughter was given 24 hours to live. When she arrived at the hospital room, she “anointed the room, put upon her tallits, prayer scarves and read the Names of God over her again and again. The next day she woke up!”
The end of the book promotes opportunities to join Michelle for upcoming seminars including: “How to Recognize Wolves, Vampires, and Jezebels”, “How to Influence your City, State, & Family — Declaring in all God has in these areas.”, and how to “Increasing Your Realm of Influence — Principles for taking your territory and expanding your borders”.
What really caught my attention was a final offer to receive for the low price of $10.00 (plus $3.00 shipping), the story “Never the Same,” Michelle’s supernatural encounter of having a truck drive through her car. Given her site was down, I turned elsewhere where her story was available in its entirety on YouTube. The link and the transcript are below.
[embed]https://youtu.be/biR0r1R3gIQ[/embed]
“Never the Same” by Michelle Tidball-Krubeck
It was March 4, 2006, and we had just come from a conference. David Herzog was doing Ever-Increasing Glory up in Kalispell, Montana. And, the Lord just really spoke to me about the greater levels of his glory– the more that we can have when the presence and his glory come down. So, as my husband and I (Jim) thought about it and talked about it for the next week, we just said, “Lord, please, we want to experience the greater glory. We want things to be new. We want to experience all that you have for us.” And so, by faith, we received and ever-increasing glory at that conference. And as we drove away, we started to see the manifestations of that glory. We started to see people getting saved and people getting healed and overcome by the presence of the living God.
But on that day, that Saturday, it was just a typical day. We just got up, had church that evening. We started preparing for what we were going to do that night and we came together and had a great service and the presence of God was there. And as things started coming to a close, we all got in our cars, said goodbye for the week, and started heading home. There were four of us in the car: my girls, Crystal and Heather, and then we had another young man who needed a ride home who had just started attending our church from jail.
And so as we were driving down the street, the light was green and I started to pass through the intersection to head up the hill. And all of a sudden, Crystal screamed as loud as she could, “STOP.” And I stopped the car. And when I did, I went to look at why I was stopped, and coming down the hill was a LARGE pickup with an 8-horse trailer coming at us at 50 MPH in a 30 MPH zone and he wasn’t stopping or he wasn’t swerving. And, all of a sudden, he hit my car and I could feel the energy shift. And in my mind, I was thinking, “I’ve been hit! I’m in a car accident. Is this really happening? Is this really happening?” And then I started to watch as the truck started to pass through my side of the vehicle. And then I saw it come across my dash and I watched piece-by-piece of the car. I watched the first door come through, then the second door, then the back end of the truck, and the trailer, and all the sections of the trailer passing one-by-one passing right in front of me.
And in my mind, I am thinking, “OK, this is just a weird place. It has actually hit me, but (like everyone says) it’s in slow motion. And yet, it was in slow motion, but there was a loudness to it. The silence was loud. And so, as he passed through, the car remained silent. Everyone was thinking the same thing, but no one was speaking aloud. And as I watched the truck pass through my dashboard, I turned to the right and there was an officer, and all of a sudden I saw his lights go on and he began to chase down the guy who was driving the pickup truck with the horse trailer.
I completed the intersection and go over to the side to a restaurant that’s there. My youngest daughter gets out and begins to scream. She’s so overwhelmed because there’s such an energy in the car. We don’t even know what to do with this. “Did he hit us? Did he not hit us? What is happening?” We saw him hit us, so my natural mind is saying, “This is what happened!” But, my spirit is saying, “No, this is not what happened.” And so, I’ve got this conflict going on and no one is wanting to talk, because no one knows what to say. And all we keep saying, over-and-over is, “He hit us, he HIT us! He just hit our car!” But, we haven’t had an accident. There’s nothing going on with the car.
So, we finally convinced Heather to get back into the car– and that we were going to be ok. And we just started to try to relax. We drove up the hill and I dropped off the young man who was with us and we went home. And all of us felt that our bodies inside were trembling. It was almost like when you are traveling in an airplane and the take-off happens and that place –where it’s like your body is going but it almost feels separated from your spirit. It’s a strange thing. It’s like your spirit is experiencing one thing and your body is experiencing another.
So, we talked about this and I called Jim and I told him, and the one thing he said to me was, “Isn’t it interesting that there was an officer there?” And I thought, “OK… Lord, there is an officer there. Let’s find him and find out what he has to say.” So, we found him and he didn’t want to talk about the ‘so-called’ accident, I guess. And he said, “All I saw happen was the truck hit her car. I reached down to pick up my microphone to call in the accident and when I looked up the truck had passed through your car.” And he began to pursue him. He said, “I can’t tell you anything about the accident, but the gentleman did spend the night in jail.” So, I don’t know what ended up happening to him, but he never slammed on his breaks, he never swerved his truck, he never tried to miss anything there, but he actually drove through it.
It was days before we were actually able to really, kind-of sleep. I can tell you that a year later, my body is still not where it was.” About nine months later, I ran into David Van Koevering, and he’s a quantum physicist and I said, “Explain to me what had happened to me? I’m not the same!” And he says to me, “Michelle, you will never be the same.” He said, “In order for that to happen, people had to be praying for you, and angels began to vibrate your car at the same frequency that the truck was vibrating through; so that when the intersection happened– when the completeness of that thing happened– you were vibrating at the same time and you were able to pass through each other. And, he said, “Be blessed and know that you’ll never go back to the same thing.”
And so, here I am, “never gone back to the same thing.” My body sees things different, my spirit hears things different. The presence of the Lord is different. My dreams are different. How I hear his voice. How I understand him is different. As I got to thinking about this testimony that God has given me and I got to thinking about in the Book of Revelation where it says that he “overcame him by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony.”
My testimony is that God takes his supernatural being into the natural things of life and, in that, miracles are created and lives are changed. He intersects into our realm and he changes things that our minds cannot comprehend, but that our spirits can. And it is about his glory, it is about the greater glory. It is about his presence coming in and changing you and causing you to understand him, spirit-to-spirit. We need to throw away old ideas that the God of the Bible did miracles then, but he’s not doing them now. That’s a lie! He is a God that can’t keep from doing miracles! He can’t quit coming up to his people and changing their lives. He will not stop talking. He will not stop doing. All we have to do is say, “Lord I’m here. Come and do it.” In the glory are the greater miracles. In the glory, there’s a greater increase of those things happening and the world needs that today.
My life was spared. I have a call. I have a purpose. I have a destiny that I must fulfill. And he said that day, “You shall fulfill it. I am a good God. I care for you. I want you to fulfill all things in me.” And I am just so blessed and I just want to say to you now, right now, receive the presence of the Lord. Lay down your mind. Lay down trying to figure out things with your natural mind. Understand him, spirit-to-spirit. Come into that place with him where he can show you the supernatural, where you can take the supernatural to the streets. Where you can approach the drug addict and now he doesn’t need rehab, because, in a moment, he’s free.
To the person who is mentally ill, in a moment they’re free from the chains and the bondages and the harassment that the enemy has so long taken over control with them. Take the greater glory in. As Peter walked along, his shadow healed. Come in and be a shadow healer. Come in and spread the glory of the Lord. Our cities are crying out. The earth is crying out. The atmosphere is crying out for the sons and daughters of the living God to come forward and take their rightful place and come in enforce the things that the cross took care of, to speak living words to people, to have the word leave our mouth in substance and create the unseen realm and to change the seen things. We are not living in a world that lives by the seen things. We live in the unseen realm. We live in that hidden place with Christ. That place where he is revealing all of the mysteries.
This is the time for the mysteries. The season is now. It is come. It is beyond time. He is speaking to his people. He is speaking in dreams. He is speaking in visions. His people are walking in a supernatural way. That’s all his heart desires is to take you to a new realm. Untie yourself to the earth. You’ve been chained to the earth too long. You’ve been chained!
According to Colossians 2:20, why are we listening to the elemental things of this world? Why are you laying yourself down to the rules and regulations of this world? It’s time to come up to a greater level. It’s time to have access to all things in Him. He’s giving you all things, come up and do it. He says, “Go out and heal the sick and raise the dead, and cast out devils and take the Gospel out so that people are snatched from the pit of hell.” It is your time, go, and do this.
And I just now release the presence and the things that God has imparted into me. I release through the CD. I release through the spoken word and the sound. I release through for you now to do the greater things in glory. I release for you now to have greater visions and dreams. I release now that even the DNA and the blood cells of your body would now start operating and vibrating at a heavenly frequency. There is no sickness in heaven. It vibrates at a different frequency. And truly, God wants to bring heaven to earth. And so I just release now your ability to move into the heavenly realms at a greater level. Move into the new dimensions of God. I break off of you limitations. I break off of you boundaries. None of that exists anymore. None of that exists.
There are no limits to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. There are no small amounts, no small apportions. It is the wholeness, it is the fullness it is the vastness of the God who loves you with an everlasting love, a love that will never change, a love that will never stop. A love that will be there no matter what. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. There is no other one. He is the Ancient of Days. He says, “I AM…I AM.” Not just the “Great One,” he is the “I AM.” And the I AM desires to be a friend to you, and won’t you be a friend to him? Won’t you come into a relationship with him? Won’t you let him come and just sit at his feet and let him come over you the mysteries? The mysteries of his love so you can impart that to other people. The world is dying, the world is hungry and I charge you now, “Take this. Go out there. Live the supernatural walk. He has a path. He has a path for you. Go and do that now in Jesus’s holy name.”
Michelle’s ebook is attractive because it is filled with elements of hope. She preaches that everyone has “royalty” in them which comes from an identifying with a common Source| God| the Divine. Such ideas of a shared divine spark were held by the Quakers and led them to become radical abolitionists demanding immediate emancipation of slaves. She encourages her students that on the other side of overcoming fear lies true freedom. She emphasizes a reduction in self-consciousness in favor of an increase in God-consciousness. She talks about the power of our thoughts and words to shape-and-create our realities. Similar principals have been espoused by many of the world’s greatest religious leaders. Between the lines, you can also tell that she and her husband, like much of our country, desire to see the planet and its people healed from addiction, sickness, social ills. Like many of us, she longs for a path to recovery for those leaving incarceration and addiction hoping to reintegrate into society.
The flip side is that Michelle is apparently a mentor and life coach to a potential presidential candidate who is admittedly bi-polar and whose family is concerned he is experiencing an episode. She is a coach who appears to have abandoned her academic & scientific training in favor of a purely spiritual one. She believes drug addicts don’t need treatment, they need miracles. Mental health doesn’t require a therapeutic approach and understanding of root physical causes, it calls for an exorcism of the demonic influences that are the true causative factor. These all stand on shaky theological premises that require serious examination and ignore other empirical factors at play.
I’ve seen faith alone used in attempts to cure cancer (something even former Presidential candidate Marianne Williams doesn’t recommend). Family members were blamed for lack of faith when the prayers didn’t work. Parents withhold treatment from their sick children because of a literal interpretation of the Bible and those children often die. The role of belief and the power of a positive mindset is real. It has been demonstrated through the placebo effect, but that should not discount the use of proven, scientific principles to aid our body’s capacities. Systems, be they theological, philosophical, or medical should be subject to scrutiny. If they work consistently to achieve the desired outcomes, only then are they considered valid and true.
I know nothing of how Kanye and Tidball-Krubeck met. They both appear to have been involved in car crashes which left their personalities drastically changed and possessed of a sense of heightened spiritual awareness and personal mission. They both seem to have an underlying care for people and a willingness to take dramatic action based on their beliefs– regardless of how sound they might be. Vice Presidential candidate Tidball-Krubeck believes we are living in the end times and we should expect miracles including raising the dead and pickup trucks and trailers vibrating themselves through your family car. She believes this because Jesus is said to have walked on water and could pass through walls. She and her network of believers are actively recruiting followers and have aims to establishing the Kingdom of God in America.
At the end of the day, I remain unconvinced that the Birthday Party ticket and its aims at a theocracy, backed by the promise of miracles represent the best hope for the future of this planet.
