Quinn’s Testimony - Full Version

by Quinn

Real Names: Quinn, Dave, Kathy, Suli

Pseudonyms: Grace, Ryan, William, Henry

Note:

Many, but not all, of the facts I cite in this story can be corroborated by meeting notes and journal entries timestamped very close to the actual date they were written.

Full Story

My name is Quinn.  I came to Friday Night for the first time in January 2015.  People are drawn to Friday Night for a variety of reasons, but I had a passion for scripture and felt I could sink my teeth in and learn a lot there, in large part from Dave.

By January 2021, I was part of Dave’s inner circle, a small group that met on Monday Nights for 2.5-3 hours to plan Friday Night meetings, discuss any issues that were coming up, study scripture, talk about what was going on in each of our lives, and pray for God’s direction and blessing over the group.

On May 15, 2023, Dave delivered an extremely emphatic prophetic word to me that led me to believe it was God’s will for me to marry Grace, a young woman in the group with whom I had a great friendship but had never dated.  It was odd.  He didn’t come out and say the words, “God is telling me you are supposed to marry Grace,” but that was very much the message I came away with.  He used leading questions while speaking with intense, mystical conviction.  I was told to “act quickly.”  At the end of the night, he emphatically stated, “that was NOT from me.” – basically a less KJV-sounding “thus saith the LORD.”  In 8+ years of ministry with Dave, I had never heard him so confident he was receiving a message directly from God.  Most of the time, when he spoke prophetically, he would use language and tone that indicated uncertainty, and this was a stark contrast to that.  In fact, I felt that it was such a powerful spiritual experience that it would be borderline disobedient to ask other prophets who hadn’t been present to confirm the message.¹

¹ My Biblical reference point for this was Luke 1:20, where Zacharias is made temporarily mute for not believing Gabriel’s words.

At the time I did not understand the odd juxtaposition of being somewhat indirect while extremely forceful at the same time.  It makes sense to me now as either something Dave used to morally justify his actions to himself in the moment, or plant seeds of plausible deniability to protect himself in the future (or both).

Here is my journal entry (same as above) from the original night.  It’s timestamped May 16, 2023, because I made a couple edits the next day.

At the time, my scriptural framework for dealing with prophecy consisted primarily of Matthew 7:15ff and 1 Corinthians 14:29:

Matt. 7:15 ¶ “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

Matt. 7:16 “You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they?

1Cor. 14:29 Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others pass judgment.

At the time, I believed Dave had really good fruit in his life and had impacted a lot of people’s lives for the better.  I had no idea how many people he had seriously harmed.  Typically, people would just have bad experiences, leave the group, and tell very few people if any.  And he had many failed prophecies I was unaware of, including ones delivered with intensity and emphasis like the one he gave me.  I was unaware of all of this even though I was part of the inner circle and Dave would point to us as a source of accountability for him.

Two other men were present the night of the original prophecy: Ryan and William.  Ryan confirmed the word immediately; William neither confirmed nor denied it.  Later that night, Ryan modified his confirmation:

I went home from that meeting already convinced Dave was right – again, based on Matthew 7:15, the manner of Dave’s delivery, and my false perception of Dave’s character and prophetic legitimacy.  In my mind, when someone delivers a prophecy with that level of intensity and confidence, there’s no middle ground – you’re either speaking from the Holy Spirit or you’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  The information I had available to me at the time pretty much ruled out the wolf possibility.

The next day, I prayed and believed I heard a confirmation of Dave’s word.  In retrospect, it’s not surprising to me that I “heard” that.  I believe Dave prophesies by his own spirit (see Ezekiel 13 and Jeremiah 23:16ff) and trains others to do the same.  His intense conviction and my perception of him as a godly prophet created an internal disposition from which I then “heard a word,” because what am I doing?  Prophesying by my own spirit. 

When I told Grace everything several days later, she was completely shocked, but she also thought she heard a confirmation.

Within 2-3 weeks of receiving the original word, I was at Friday Night with Grace when she questioned Dave.  She brought up the fact that much earlier in the year, she had received a prophetic word herself saying that she would not meet her potential next partner until December, which would be after she finished school.  According to Grace, Dave himself had confirmed that word.  Dave responded by immediately blurting out, “You’ll meet him at the altar!”  Grace recalls telling Dave that she liked the idea of a December wedding, so that idea may have provided a rationale for Dave to reinterpret Grace’s prophetic word.  We accepted his judgment.  In retrospect, this indicates that Dave, Grace, and I all believed that Dave had unilateral authority to decide what is true when presented with contradictory prophecies.  No one suggested bringing in a third party, even though 1 Cor 14:29 clearly says “let the others [plural] pass judgment.”  Dave’s explanation, “you’ll meet him at the altar,” provides surface-level validation of Grace’s word, but in reality simply renders it null in favor of Dave’s word.

Around the same time, Dave told us at Friday Night that he felt so strongly about it, he would marry us the following week if we wanted.  This was not a joke, he was completely serious.

Time wore on.  The relationship had good elements, but very significant problems as well.  However, I moved forward based on my conviction that God had spoken.  I would share my relationship struggles with my Monday Night group and consistently be encouraged to press on by Dave and Ryan.  I don’t recall William expressing much of an opinion one way or the other.  The message was basically that everyone had confirmed the word, God uses suffering to build our faith, and we have to trust what God says rather than our own understanding.  In my mind those were all biblically valid points, so I pressed on, believing God would provide in one way or another.  We planned our wedding for 12/28/23.

Another time, I wanted to make absolutely sure we were on the same page, and I asked Dave to confirm his understanding was that God had said this is His will period, not that it was something I was to consider / try out / etc.  Dave confirmed that was his understanding (it was mine as well).

On 10/27/23, I contacted another prophet that had been discipled by Dave but was no longer at Friday Night, to get another opinion.  Initially, he was taken aback to find out that Dave had been the one to speak the prophecy, rather than me receiving it from God directly.  He suggested it could be a case of spiritual abuse / spiritual manipulation – two terms I had virtually no familiarity with, despite having been to seminary and been at Friday Night for 8 years.  We met up in person on 11/1/23 and he asked me about my history of relationships, etc.  He was encouraged by this conversation and felt like everything was making more sense.  At the end of the night, we prayed, and he believed he received a confirmation.  He assured me that if he felt Dave had spiritually manipulated me, he would have no problem rebuking Dave to his face.

Grace and I met with Dave and Kathy on 11/12/23.  I was emotionally raw from depression and anxiety over the problems in our relationship.  I told them I was dreading my marriage, and that I had a deep gut feeling that we had taken a wrong turn down a horrible path.  To Kathy’s credit, she spoke up and said something along the lines of: “Dave, dread is a strong word!”  I also brought up the fact that the word had come through Dave and not to me directly.  Kathy immediately looked at Dave with anger, as if he had done something wrong.  Shockingly, Dave simply denied remembering that it happened that way.  I was extremely confused and angry.  I thought it was black-and-white.  Kathy said she would be “very upset and very surprised” (exact words) to find out Dave had been the one to speak the prophecy to me.

When I went home that night, I looked at my journal entry (pasted above) and confirmed it was as black-and-white as I had thought.  Dave just lied.  I couldn’t believe it, I was furious.  Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I didn’t have the journal entry.  Would he have been able to gaslight me into believing it happened otherwise?

The following night, the four of us met with five additional people to seek counsel.  Most if not all of these people had been discipled by Dave or Kathy directly.  At the time I believed I was casting a wide net of godly people who could pray and give us good counsel, but it was just an echo chamber.

When I walked in, I was extremely angry, and I am sure it was visible in my body language.  Dave stood up and gestured like he wanted to give me a hug.  I did not want him to touch me in any way, shape, or form, but I had a strong feeling that if I did not comply, I would be perceived as coming in the wrong spirit and any fault I tried to point out in Dave wouldn’t be taken seriously.

The first thing I wanted to address was the fact that the prophecy came from Dave, not me.  There were probably 5-6 attempts to deflect the conversation away from that topic from various people in the room.  It was unbelievable.

Dave once again denied that the word came through him.  Someone deflected by saying, “what matters is what is God saying now.”  Another person reminded me that I had already promised to marry Grace, insinuating that I had an obligation to follow through.  Another person said he completely understood why I felt the way I did, but that he thought I was right where I needed to be.

One woman supposedly got a vision for me and delivered it in a super intense, emotional way, which caused me to break down, since I was already emotionally raw coming into the meeting.  The vision suggested my mom had neglected me as a small child, suggesting that was the reason for the problems in my relationship with Grace.  That vision was false, but I had no way of knowing at the time, because it was about my very early childhood.²  The group interpreted my emotional response as a sign that the Holy Spirit was working.  And, of course, the vision reinforced Dave’s original prophecy by explaining that the problems in our relationship were due to unresolved trauma – the idea being that once that trauma is resolved in a counseling context or possibly miraculously healed, everything will be great.

² I asked my mom about it later and neither of us can recollect anything that would remotely validate the vision.

I brought my laptop with me that night and told the group directly I had evidence (i.e. the journal entry above) that would settle the matter of who spoke the prophecy.  Not a single person in the room expressed interest in seeing the evidence, the subject was simply changed away from it.

Kathy completely changed her tune from the prior night, going from “I would be very upset” to saying it was her preference if Dave not initiate prophecies like that.  I called her on it directly, saying she had done a complete 180 from the prior night.  She shouted over me: “No!”  This was a gaslighting lie – an attempt to convince Grace and me that what we heard with our own ears only 24 hours prior was not true.  On top of that, it was really unclear to me what exactly the problem would even be if Dave had originated the prophecy. All I knew was the other prophet had taken issue with it but then changed his mind, and then Kathy seemed to have a problem with it but also changed her mind.

Looking back, the overall feel of the evening was that everyone else had already decided what God’s will for our lives was, and their role was to say “encouraging” things that would get us to do it.  No one seemed to believe that all the facts should simply be laid out for Grace and I to consider so that we could make our own decision.

One woman spoke up, indicating that when Kathy got angry with Dave the previous night over initiating the prophecy, it was because of her spiritual gift (mercy).  The idea is that people with this spiritual gift rush to defend people who are hurting.  This comment seemed to provide spiritual cover for Dave, by explaining that Kathy’s anger the previous night had been rooted in empathy rather than fact – she had felt a certain way but it didn’t mean Dave did anything wrong.

The thrust of the whole night was that everyone believed the prophecy was from God.  How could I possibly go against that?  Even I myself had prayed and thought I heard a confirmation.  Was I now going to throw out a word from God because it didn’t seem right from a human perspective?

Kathy said she would support me no matter what decision I made, and someone else said there was no rush and we could postpone.  To me, those statements rang hollow in light of the overall upshot of the evening, which was that the prophecy was totally legitimate.  To me, the statements boil down to: “we’ll support you even if you want to disobey God” and “you can put off God’s will if you’re scared / nervous.”  Dave later told me privately that he did not agree with Kathy’s statement about supporting us no matter what decision we made, because God had spoken.  I agreed with Dave, and in a way I still do: if God gives someone a command, it makes zero sense to tell them you’ll support them in disobeying it.  

But statements like “we’ll support you either way” allow leaders to practice spiritual manipulation and then shield themselves / blame the victim afterward by claiming a choice was offered.  Sure, you can pick Door A or Door B, it’s totally your choice!  But also, Door A is God’s will, we all heard Door A, even you heard Door A.

I spoke to Dave privately at the end of the night, and he admitted being the one to speak the prophecy originally.  He explained that Kathy tended to get in the way of his prophetic ministry.  Seeing how flustered he was in front of the group and how willing he was to speak plainly with me in private, it seemed that he was simply afraid of Kathy’s reaction.  I accepted his explanation and moved on.  In retrospect, obviously it was not okay for him to lie, and I should have called it out as sin.

So, why did I come away from that night still trusting Dave and Kathy and the prophetic word?  Several reasons:

• The comment (noted above) that I had already promised to marry Grace appealed to my sense of integrity and didn’t feel manipulative at the time.  Also, I just didn’t want to let her down.  The idea of dragging her into this and then cutting it off at the last minute was horrifying.  I would’ve felt like a monster.

• There were other “encouraging” things said that made sense to me at the time.

• It was not believable to me that we could get all these wise / godly people together, pray as a group, and come to a completely wrong conclusion that would severely damage Grace’s life and mine.

• The Bible does not say a prophet cannot give someone a life-altering message, so Kathy’s anger over that seemed arbitrary.  At the time, I had no clue that it was relatively common for abusive churches and cults to exert control over their members’ personal life decisions, especially marriage.

• Fundamentally, I knew prophets had to be judged by their fruit.  I believed Dave had had very positive impacts on many people’s lives including my own, and I simply wasn’t aware of all the damage he had already done.

• Overall, I believed that people had said things that were not right that night and not engaged in a healthy way, but I thought that God was working in the meeting in spite of those unhealthy things.  Looking back, it was just a cacophony of lies, gaslighting, manipulation, covering for the leaders, and a false vision – made possible by years of being trained to think that Dave is a reliable prophet, and he and Kathy are the experts on relationships and ministry, so you should just trust them even if your instincts tell you otherwise.

On 11/16/23, I met with a counselor named Henry.  I was referred to Henry by someone connected to Friday Night.  I gave Henry some insight into the origins of my relationship with Grace, but I also asked him to evaluate it from a purely clinical standpoint.  I was extremely careful to be as objective as possible, not painting the situation too positively or negatively.  At the end of our first meeting, he said he thought I had a good thing.  This, combined with the “positive” items noted above, helped me make a final decision to move forward with the wedding.  

We got married in December 2023, and we were distracted for a while with the logistics of combining our lives, but when the dust settled the same significant problems persisted.

In mid-2024, I was still struggling in my marriage and I met with Dave to discuss (Ryan was there too).  He asked me about my childhood, and I shared some negative experiences I had growing up.  It was all fairly run-of-the-mill – there were things that weren’t perfect, but nothing abusive.  Dave looked me right in the eye and declared: “Your mother abused you. And your father abused you.”  He provided no explanation or justification for his claims.  I was shocked.  I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything at the time.  Something about how intense, long, and personal this meeting was seemed to kind of normalize what would otherwise be absurd.  I wasn’t sure if he was speaking prophetically or not.  The whole thing was just jarring and confusing.  Months later, I questioned him on it, and he eventually settled on the defense that he must have been projecting.  He said he was sorry if he said anything that was out of line.  I let it go at the time.  In 2025, I would learn that it’s a common practice in cults to attempt to delegitimize members’ families of origin.  I believe his goal (possibly conscious but more likely subconscious) was to destabilize my connection to family to create emotional dependency on him so that he could increase his power over me.  It didn’t work because I knew my parents had not abused me; there was no gray area.  How sinister it would’ve been if I had been abused and Dave had capitalized on it.

On 8/25/24, Grace and I met with Dave because there were still unresolved issues in the back of my mind surrounding the events leading up to our marriage.  Dave again fully acknowledged he was the one who spoke the prophecy originally.  I called him out on the fact that he could now remember what he claimed not to be able to remember in November 2023.  His response?  He simply claimed to not remember contesting the fact in November 2023.  So now there are multiple layers of amnesia:

• May 2023: originate prophecy

• November 2023: deny it happened

• August 2024: admit it happened; deny having denied it in November 2023

Another time in 2024 (I cannot remember exactly when), I asked Dave when he had ever been wrong about a prophecy.  He said he could not recall any time he had been wrong.

I started looking into two of Dave’s old prophecies: the Coin of the Realm, and the Belarus prophecy (covered in Cara’s Testimony).  The Coin of the Realm presented a really clear-cut case where Dave issued a very confident prophecy, it was confirmed by his community, and it was completely false.  For me, this really opened up the possibility that Dave’s prophecy about Grace and me could be false.  It certainly didn’t help that Dave never admitted he was wrong about Coin of the Realm or Belarus.

By 3/17/25, I was completely convinced that Dave had given me a false prophecy that had caused massive destruction to Grace’s life and mine.  But I wanted to give him one last chance to explain how he could possibly be right.  I questioned him at our typical Monday Night meeting, so Ryan was there as well, but William happened to be absent that night.

I questioned him on his Coin of the Realm prophecy, and he offered a flimsy defense, pointing to the story of Jonah.  For more detail, see my separate testimony The Coin of This Realm.

Similarly, I asked him about the Belarus prophecy, which he had shared with our Monday Night group on multiple occasions.  The bulk of the incident is documented in Cara’s Testimony, who was there in the 2000s when Dave was first telling people about it.  According to Cara, when the prophecy failed, Dave interpreted it as having been a test from God.  Interestingly, when he relayed it to us in the 2020s, he insisted that God gave him a message He knew Dave would misinterpret in order to get him to do something that would result in good.  That’s awfully close to saying God told a manipulative lie.

On 3/17, I told him his explanation was far-fetched compared to the simpler explanation that he didn’t hear it from God.  I also called into question the idea that God would deliberately deceive someone to achieve this purpose.  He cited 1 Kings 22 as a defense, a story involving God sending a lying spirit into the mouths of Ahab’s prophets to give him false assurance of victory so that he would die in battle.  I pointed out that that doesn’t fit, because Ahab was under God’s judgment.  Dave basically shrugged and said God could still use a lying spirit that way to accomplish His purposes.

Side note: The Ahab incident fits a broader biblical theme of a kind of judicial abandonment of people who have persistently rejected truth.  Examples would be God hardening Pharoah’s heart, or God giving immoral people over to a depraved mind (Rom 1:28).  Dave’s theory, on the other hand, would make God some kind of powertripping puppetmaster who arbitrarily screws with His own people.

Notice also that this theory preserves Dave’s own reputation and prophetic legitimacy while maligning God’s character.  It seems there is no one on earth or even in heaven above that Dave is not willing to throw under the bus to avoid simply admitting he was wrong.

But Dave didn’t just do interpretive gymnastics to maintain his own credibility.  He covered up the truth in a desperate bid to manipulate me.  When I brought up the Coin of the Realm prophecy, Ryan falsely claimed Dave had been in Zimbabwe at the time he delivered the prophecy.³  It’s a fairly easy mistake to make.  Here’s a snippet from Dave’s original Coin of the Realm email:

³ If Dave had in fact been in Zimbabwe, it would’ve provided a possible route for the prophecy to be true, because of some economic things happening there at the time.

If you read it carefully, he clearly wasn’t in Zimbabwe at the time he received the prophecy.  But when Ryan made this false statement, Dave allowed it to go unchecked.  He just looked at me and said “Oh, okay,” awaiting my response.  He clearly saw an opportunity to use a misunderstanding to prop up his false prophecy.

Mind you, earlier in this conversation, Dave recounted the much older Belarus prophecy in vivid detail, going on a monologue for 3-4 minutes straight, and having no issue remembering details.  But when it came to simply remembering what continent he was on for the Coin of the Realm prophecy, that was too much to ask.

I also brought up Dave’s override of Grace’s earlier prophecy that she wouldn’t meet her next potential partner until December of 2023.  He began saying, “well, if I said to her ‘perhaps the interpretation of that could be’…”. until I cut him off mid-sentence to remind him that his response was immediate, and that it was confidently asserted.  Notice this is yet another time that Dave is implicitly claiming to not remember what actually happened.  That’s four times in this story alone Dave had trouble remembering.  Why does he have such a hard time remembering events that would call his character into question?

I pointed out to Dave that in other situations (including the Coin of the Realm prophecy⁴), he would emphasize that people should prioritize what they themselves hear from God, as opposed to what a prophet is hearing on their behalf. Dave shrugged and basically said that God works in a variety of ways and maybe the Spirit gave him that utterance in that moment.

It was a long conversation.  There was more discussed that I may share at some point.

When I left Friday Night, for years I had been leading a Wednesday evening discipleship group and a Saturday afternoon Bible study.  Then we had Monday Night meetings.  My wife hosted girls’ night on Thursday nights at our house, and she attended Dave’s Saturday morning women’s discipleship group.  I mention all this in case at some point in the future someone tries to paint a narrative that the people who have problems with Dave are only half-committed or only there for a brief time.  I may well understand Dave’s theology as well as anyone, and because of this investigation, his patterns of spiritual abuse as well.  Disbelieve me at your own risk.

⁴ Direct quote from Dave’s 11/5/15 Coin of the Realm email: “Many others have been asking for advice, and one called, bothered that I had not given more specific direction. But the counsel I gave is still true—pray, listen, and obey His word to you.”

Aftermath

I left that last meeting with Dave and Ryan on 3/17/25 on good terms.  I was convinced Dave’s prophecy to me was false, but I thought he had provided it in good faith with good intentions.  It was only after I got home and saw that Dave lied about the Zimbabwe thing that I got angry.  Were it not for that, this website might not exist.

There was something deeply wrong about that lie.  He tried to capitalize on someone else’s false statement in order to build scaffolding around his false prophecy.  To do that, while claiming to represent the true God, would be like using witchcraft to charm someone into accepting Christ.  It is a desecration.  Yet knowing Dave’s patterns, I am nearly certain he justified it in his own mind because he did not technically utter a false statement, but rather allowed Ryan’s statement to go uncorrected.  

““Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the temple, that is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple is obligated.’” ⁵

It was the scribes and Pharisees who were wrapped up in technicalities as a means of neglecting what is right.

After we left Friday Night, Suli asked Dave about what happened with us.  According to Suli, Dave said the following (Suli reviewed these bullet points for accuracy):

1. The evening of May 15 was merely a discussion, nothing prophetic happened.

2. Quinn subsequently received his own prophecy.

3. Quinn is walking away from the faith.

4. Quinn despises prophecy (in general, not just Dave’s).

All four are false.

(1) and (2) are contradicted by my original journal entry (above, near the top of the story).  Several people in the group have verified the timestamp on that file.  If you want to see it yourself, feel free to reach out to me.

(3) and (4) are false, though I have no way to prove I’m not lying.

⁵ Matt. 23:16, NASB 1995

Appendix

From what I understand, Dave and Kathy are trying to do quite a bit of damage control by highlighting how strongly they emphasized to me that if I wasn’t sure about the marriage, not to move forward.  That’s a half truth at best.  I’d like to explain in detail what exactly was said at different times.  These events are in no particular order.

Events 1 and 2

Narrated in the story above – “Kathy said she would support us no matter what decision we made, and someone else said there was no rush and we could postpone.”  I explain above why those statements meant basically nothing to me.  I also explain how Dave told me privately afterward that he did not agree with Kathy’s statement.

Event 3

There was one time during the engagement period I was expressing doubts to Dave and he began to say, “Well, if you’re not convinced in your own mind…”  I responded by saying that I was convinced in my own mind, but that a major reason for my confidence was the intensity and conviction with which he had delivered the original message – essentially that I had never heard him so confident he was hearing from the Lord.  He could have used that opportunity to say that that was a red flag and we needed to slow down / reevaluate.  He did not.

Event 4

The Monday Night group was at a restaurant for dinner and we were talking about prophecy.  Dave was talking about how so much of the time people receive a message themselves and then the prophet is there only to confirm what God has already been speaking.  He was essentially making it sound like prophets have a lesser role than some might think.  I immediately blurted out, “that’s not how it was with me, though.”  Dave sort of got quiet at that point.  I continued by explaining that thankfully, Dave was not just some random guy but a leader whom I had a long-established relationship with and had seen good fruit in.

Event 5

I was explaining to the Monday Night group how poorly things were going in my relationship, and Dave asked if I had a plan to pull the plug.  I don’t remember the exact terminology he used.  The idea seemed to be a predetermined cutoff point where if the relationship hadn’t improved to a certain point by a certain time, I would call it off.  This question was very strange to me, because in my mind that was a totally illegitimate option if God tells you to do something.  We celebrate Abraham’s faith precisely because he did not have a cutoff point.  So I was confused as to why Dave would ask that.  I don’t remember exactly what I said in response, probably something close to “Uhh, no?”  I don’t remember Ryan’s exact words, but I remember him clearly agreeing that it was an illegitimate option.  I went away unsure what Dave’s motivation for that question was.  This entire interaction happened in the space of about 15 seconds, and then the topic moved elsewhere.  Discussions with Dave didn’t often involve questions like, “Why are you asking that question?” or “Please elaborate on your thought process of why it occurred to you to say that.”

Event 6

At the end of the 11/12/23 meeting with Dave and Kathy, Dave suggested I do a Gideon fleece-type test.  Looking back, I wonder: if he believes in that type of thing, why didn’t he suggest it at the beginning of the process, instead of a month and a half before the wedding?

I would have set up some kind of Gideon test when I got home, were it not for the fact that the first thing I did was look up my journal entry and confirm that Dave had lied to everyone during the meeting.  That sent me into a rage, on top of the already horrible, chaotic mix of emotions I was experiencing.  So I completely forgot about the Gideon thing.  Again – you might not be reading this right now were it not for that lie.

Summary

In my mind, none of the above instances provided any kind of “out” for me.  A real out would’ve been someone notifying me about Dave’s prophetic track record and/or past moral failures. Again, it’s back to Matthew 7:15-20 – how was I supposed to disbelieve Dave if all his bad fruit was hidden from view?

In the end, I got married because I believed I would be turning my back on God if I did not.  That’s it.  This is a long story (thank you for reading to this point), but at the end of the day, it’s no more complicated than that.

FAQ

Q: Wait, I thought you heard from God directly? Isn’t that what you said during the engagement period?

A: At the time, I felt very strongly that I could trust Dave.  I felt he had been selfless in giving me a word that couldn’t possibly benefit him but could result in him receiving backlash.  I had no idea some people got off on feeling powerful and controlling other people’s lives – that was a totally foreign concept to me.  I knew Dave couldn’t benefit monetarily or sexually, so I didn’t question his motives.  All that to say, I would tell people that God spoke to me.  Since at the time I believed I had heard a confirmation of Dave’s prophecy, in my mind I was telling the truth, just not the full truth.

Q: Do you think Dave believed he heard this word from God, or that he made it up completely?

A: I believe he believed he was hearing from God.  I think it’s an Ezekiel 13 case – “prophets who are following their own spirit and have seen nothing” (v3).  Jeremiah 23:16 also refers to prophets who “speak a vision of their own imagination.”   In 10 years at Friday Night, I never heard these chapters discussed, whether in the main meeting or in a discipleship group with Dave, or any other Friday Night context.  This is in spite of the fact that Dave fairly regularly teaches on obscure texts.  

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Dave clearly also believed in his own mind that Grace and I would be a good couple, and had expressed sentiments along those lines many times beforehand.

Q: If the word came from Dave’s own spirit / imagination, what would be the subconscious motivation?

A: Impossible to know for sure, but I have some ideas.

• Power / ego gratification.  It reinforces the idea that Dave is the one who receives divine revelation for other people’s lives.  And it makes him important, because his influence has a permanent effect on their life as well as generations to come.

• “Locking” people in – marry two Friday Night people, and you may well have their loyalty for life.  Unfortunately for Dave, it didn’t quite work out that way this time.

• Engineering dysfunction – if a relationship is built with fundamental flaws, it keeps people needy and turning to Dave and Kathy for support, since one of their main ministries is pre-marital and marital counseling.

Quinn’s Testimony - Summary Only

by Quinn

Real Names: Quinn, Dave, Kathy, Suli

Pseudonyms: Grace, Ryan, William, Henry

Due to the private nature of this story, we are currently only posting the summary. The full details may or may not be shared at a later date.

Summary

This is the story of how Dave used false prophecy, deception, and manipulation to coerce my marriage to Grace — and then lied and slandered me to protect himself.

• On May 15, 2023, Dave gave me an emphatic prophecy that led me to believe it was God’s will for me to marry Grace. He spoke with intense fervor, insisting it was not from him. This leveraged the trust I had built in him over eight years as a spiritual leader and supposed prophet.

• I wrote the following journal entry in response, timestamped 5/16/23 since I made some edits the following day.  If you’d like to be able to see the timestamp for yourself, please let me know.

• When Grace’s earlier prophecy contradicted his, Dave reinterpreted hers to render it meaningless.

• During my engagement struggles, I was transparent with Dave. He consistently urged me to press on, even privately dismissing Kathy when she offered me freedom of choice.

• When it came up in a group context, Dave denied responsibility: “I thought we were asking you questions.” But in other contexts, he freely admitted the prophecy came through him.

• After the marriage, things worsened. Dave doubled down with another false prophecy reinforcing his original one.

• Then I discovered this was not an isolated incident but part of a long history of confidently asserted false prophecies, including the Belarus prophecy (from the 2000s) and the Coin of the Realm prophecy (from 2015).  Additionally, the Coin of the Realm prophecy had been confirmed by Dave’s community.

On March 17, 2025, I confronted Dave. He:

• Took no responsibility for his failed prophecies.

• Provided implausible explanations by which they might still be true.

• Tried to justify overriding Grace’s prophecy without prayer or reflection.

• Let someone else tell a false story about the “Coin of the Realm” prophecy — and allowed it to stand, to manipulate me into believing it was valid.

Finally, after I left Friday Night, Dave told slanderous lies about me to Suli, claiming:

• The evening of May 15 was merely a discussion, nothing prophetic happened.

• Quinn subsequently received his own prophecy.

• Quinn is walking away from the faith.

• Quinn despises prophecy (in general, not just Dave’s).

Suli reviewed the above bullet points for accuracy.

Inside the Inner Circle

by Quinn

Note: Ryan and William are pseudonyms

I was part of Dave’s inner circle at least as far back as January 2021.   I left in March 2025.

Ryan, William, and I would meet with Dave for 2.5-3 hours each Monday night to plan out our Friday Night ministries, discuss any issues that had come up, study scripture, talk about what was going on in each of our lives, and pray.  Two other men were part of the group at different points, but they don’t play major roles in the story below.

This inner circle was one part of what Dave considered his accountability structure.  From time to time, he would ask us what his faults are / what we thought he could do better.  This fostered an image of humility and teachability.

However, problematic things happened in this inner circle.

Polygamy and Naked Girls

We have noticed a pattern at Friday Night that as you get closer to Dave, you learn more and more of his oddball theological beliefs.

Having heard a lot of Dave’s thinking on sexuality, I will attempt to explain it as a system of thought.  Take it with a grain of salt as I’m trying to systematize mostly isolated comments, but I do think it paints a coherent picture.

If it feels like I am divulging too much of Dave’s personal life, consider that this is not what he talked to his counselor about, or discussed with his wife in the bedroom.  These are his teachings.  While he may have desired to reserve these teachings for a certain select group, I see no biblical precedent for that kind of thing.  If it’s really God’s truth, then the whole church should know and benefit from it.  Similarly, some of the other stories divulge details about Dave that may seem deeply personal.  Keep in mind that we are talking about things he said and did while operating in his capacity as a ministry leader.

The foundation is his belief that polygamy is not a sin.  He correctly points out that the Old Testament never directly calls it a sin, and there are men who are portrayed as righteous who have multiple wives.  The best example is probably King David, whom the text does not condemn for having multiple wives in general, but only when he takes another man’s wife (Bathsheba).  The only direct New Testament warning against polygamy is 1 Cor 7:2,¹ but in context it doesn’t sound like a universal command.

Ultimately, however, Dave’s line of thinking is difficult to hold onto.  When Jesus is asked about divorce, He grounds His response in creation, not the Mosaic law.²  If one were to think about polygamy in the context of creation, what might be the conclusion? We would observe that God could’ve given Adam multiple wives but He did not.  (Personally, I think an argument can be made against slavery on similar grounds: why didn’t God give Adam a servant so he didn’t have to tend the garden?)  Additionally, in the first century polygamy was rare both among Jews and in the surrounding Roman society.  So the fact that the New Testament didn’t prohibit it (if you buy that 1 Cor 7:2 isn’t a prohibition) could simply be because it wasn’t a topic of controversy or interest at that point in history.

Regardless, Dave’s belief that polygamy is not a sin is foundational to his sexual ethics.  It segues right into his belief that it’s not a sin for a married man to sexually fantasize about a single woman.  The way he would put it is that it’s only a sin to fantasize about a woman that one “could not legitimately obtain” (that phrase is a direct quote, though it’s been years since I heard him use that exact verbiage).  Since polygamy is legitimate, the implication is that one could legitimately obtain any single woman, even if one is married.  Therefore, all single women are legitimate objects of fantasy.

Sometimes, he would say that simply having a lustful thought isn’t sin until you actually hatch a plan to go and commit the act.  If you take that to its logical conclusion, you could justify entertaining any sexual fantasy.

Every now and then, Dave would bring up the topic of looking at a “naked girl”.  He essentially wanted to know if we felt it would be okay to look at an image of a naked girl every now and then.  He did not use the terminology of “porn,” though it’s my understanding that in a separate conversation with another group he did.  He emphasized the idea of moderation and said it was like drinking a beer but not getting drunk.  Dave brought this up at least twice to our inner circle, possibly more.  I remember responding once by saying if “looking at a naked girl” is like drinking a beer, then looking at today’s internet pornography would be like injecting heroin.  Ryan agreed with me.

Dave would also indicate he did not feel a husband needed to be straightforward with his wife about any kind of porn problem he might have.  He once asked something along the lines of, “Where does it say in the Bible that a husband has to share all of his struggles with his wife?”  That’s a legitimate point; the Bible doesn’t say that.  The problem is that Dave’s take on this is still rooted in the belief that polygamy is not a sin.  If downright taking a second wife is legitimate, then certainly fantasizing about it is also.  Under that line of thinking, a husband who looks at porn may be sinning against God, but he’s not sinning against his wife.  (But, going back to the whole “naked girl” thing, Dave may not think it’s a sin at all, I’m not sure.)

Since it’s on the topic, I will also recount something Dave said openly to Friday Night years ago.  He told us that he and Kathy had once been dealing with a couple where the wife had cheated on the husband.  I do not remember if he specified when the infidelity occurred (i.e., while the couple was dating, engaged, or married).  He told us that they advised the woman not to tell the man.  If I recall correctly, the reasoning was some combination of “we prayed about it” and “we felt it would only cause emotional harm with no benefit.”  There may have also been an element of it only being a one-night stand versus a prolonged affair; I do not remember.  Dave told us later that Kathy got upset that he shared the story in front of everyone at Friday Night.  But there was no indication Kathy contested his version of the events.  In other words, as far as the actual decision to give that woman that counsel, it appears Kathy either went along with it or instigated it.

I took some time to reflect on the counsel Dave and Kathy gave this woman.  Aside from the obvious fact that hiding a massive infraction against your spouse doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that’s going to be conducive to a healthy relationship, the advice is deeply controlling.  Dave teaches that adultery is not grounds for divorce.  While this viewpoint isn’t unheard of in the church, it is a minority position.  But what’s so deeply problematic is that the husband may or may not have held to that doctrine.  By encouraging the woman to keep her offense secret, Dave and Kathy took away the husband’s chance to decide for himself what constitutes legitimate grounds for divorce and make his own decision.  It is a violation of his personhood.  And again it fits the pattern of control being exerted specifically over dating / marriage.

¹1Cor. 7:2 But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband.

² See, for example, Matthew 19:1-12.

Fake Accountability

When someone had a problem with Dave, the consistent pattern was that Dave would receive the complaint and filter it down to us through his perspective.  Of course there could have been complaints we never heard about as well (we would have no way of knowing).  Still, it felt like Dave often wanted our approval, like he wanted us to tell him that the other party was in the wrong.

We were never encouraged to reach out to the complainant and hear their side of the story.

There was never a time that we sat down with the complainant and Dave so that we could hear both sides directly.

In two cases of spiritual abuse that are not currently being shared publicly, the victim confronted Dave (without us there), and Dave subsequently painted a distorted picture of the situation to us.  In one case, Dave’s misrepresentation of the situation (which he did mostly by omitting key facts) is so egregious that, in my opinion, it disqualifies him from ministry leadership on its own.  The glaring omissions painted a picture that falsely exonerated Dave while slandering the victim. In both cases, I found out much later what the full truth was.

One Odd Case

One man had apparently committed some kind of sexual impropriety with one of the women in the group, and Dave asked how we felt the situation should be handled, without giving us enough detail to accurately judge the severity.  I told Dave openly that the severity of the offense was important to our being able to assess how the situation should be handled.  He provided a vague response, and then proposed his own solution, which involved the individual being allowed to attend Friday Night but not being allowed to speak in group discussions.

Mike M’s Testimony

Mike M. shared some of his experiences with Jessica G and Quinn in June 2025.  Jessica G and Quinn co-wrote the following summary, which was then reviewed by Mike for accuracy and approved by Mike for public dissemination.

Mike met Dave Cottrell in 2004/2005 through Scottsdale Bible Church. Dave officiated Mike’s wedding in 2010. Several years later Mike confronted Dave with some of his concerns. Mike then stopped attending Friday Night.

One of Mike’s concerns was that Dave would orchestrate dysfunctional relationships / living situations / etc.. Mike had told Dave that he was attracted to both women and men. Dave suggested that Mike move in with three other men. After he moved in, Mike discovered that all of the other men had same sex attraction, but Dave was fully aware from the get-go. Since Dave did not share this information up front, Mike was unable to decide for himself if this would be a good living situation for him. (At the time the men held the wide-spread evangelical belief that same-gender sex acts were sin.)  Mike interprets this as one example of Dave intentionally creating situations that would result in crises, so that Dave could come in and save the day. 

Mike also identified a trend of unusual or controlling requests from Dave. These included:

• In the first few months of Mike being at Friday Night, Mike expressed that he could get out of an uncomfortable situation if he had $1,500. Mike was just sharing the situation, not asking for money, and it was not an emergency.  Yet Dave volunteered to give him $1,500 from the community fund. Afterwards Mike felt grateful to Dave. Looking back he wondered if Dave was trying to use the money to engender goodwill towards Dave.  At the time, Mike was on the fence about his involvement in the community.

• Dave asked Mike to go to another man’s house because the man was feeling tempted to look at pornography.  Mike stayed overnight.  Dave knew at the time that Mike was attracted to other men, so Mike feels it was odd that Dave asked him instead of a straight man.

• Dave asked Mike to drop everything one night to spend time with a man dying from cancer, that Mike did not know well, when Mike was only 22.

• One time, the Friday Night group was at In-N-Out.  Dave asked Mike if there was any reason why he wouldn’t ask a certain woman on an “edification appointment” (this is a term Dave invented for a kind of platonic date). Mike hesitantly indicated there was no particular reason he wouldn’t. Dave said that if he wanted to be a part of prophet school (a type of discipleship group), he needed to ask the woman out right now, over there. Mike said no. He was eventually invited to attend the “prophet school” but it was 4-6 months later. Mike felt that Dave was testing his obedience (notably, to Dave, not God). It seemed that his inclusion was conditional.

During these earlier years, Mike discipled another man. Mike later learned that the man had psychosis. The man described his experiences to Dave, who then claimed it was spiritual warfare. This led the group to encourage the man to practice listening prayer, but that involved him engaging his internal voice. This made the man’s psychosis worse. It ruined Mike’s relationship with him and the man left Friday Night deeply hurt by the experience. This an example of Dave acting confidently in high-stakes situations where he is inexperienced and uneducated.  

Several years later Mike was engaged to be married. He and his fiancee attended pre-marital counseling with Dave and Kathy. Mike told them that had previously had sex with men. Just a few months before the wedding, he shared that he did not know if he had STDs or was HIV positive. Looking back Mike said that his fiance was right to express concern over him hiding this information. But at the time Dave minimized it. According to Mike, there were multiple substantial issues that were minimized by Dave and swept under the rug, which ended up causing problems in the marriage.  At the time, Dave’s enablement fit Mike’s needs, because he wanted to get married.  However, Mike now feels that they needed an adult in the room to speak objectively rather than someone with an agenda, and that Dave had an agenda to create unhealthy / chaotic situations in order to make people dependent on him.  Quinn asked if there was ever a time where someone called out the minimization of serious issues.  Mike said his fiancee definitely vocalized it at the time, and that the response from Dave was basically to say we can get past whatever obstacle there is.  Mike also said that Dave’s minimization of serious issues taught Mike that he could lie and get away with things.

Finally in the mid-2010s Mike attended Friday Night and stayed late into the night asking Kathy and Dave about homosexuality. After getting frustrated with the conversation Kathy went to bed, around 2am. Mike continued the conversation with Dave. Mike worked his way through the various passages and explained why he thought homosexuality was not a sin. Dave got visibly frustrated.  Dave looked at Mike and said, “Well, Michael, which one of them’s the bitch, then?”  Mike was caught off guard and deeply hurt by the comment, and shut down.  Despite the fact that he was currently in a heterosexual marriage, the comment made Mike feel like there was something wrong with him.  This ended the conversation and Mike left.  He shared the story with his wife, who pointed out the misogyny implied in Dave’s words – essentially that in an ordinary heterosexual relationship, the woman is the bitch by virtue of being the receptive sexual partner.

Mike looks back at his time at Friday Night and can also see how parts of it were good, particularly the friendships he made. This was one of the reasons that when he eventually left, he did not publicly announce his concerns. He had taken his concerns to SBC and said that several other people had as well. He thinks this may have contributed to SBC asking Dave to stop teaching. But he also thinks that SBC made a mistake in that they stopped monitoring Dave. This allowed Dave to continue to recruit people from SBC to Friday Night.