Message ministers caught in a lie
We want to be respectful, but when we find people who claim to be ministers of the gospel lying over the pulpit, we have to draw a line. I don't know how common this is in the message, but when the pastor of our message church in Surrey, BC, Canada lied to my face on several occasions, it started me questioning the Message. His story is below. More recent cases of Message ministers caught lying are at the top.
Barry Coffey
Barry Coffee, a message pastor from Hickory, North Carolina, told about an experience he had in the Vatican. We have him saying it on video. Barry stated:
So, I've been to Rome. Listen for a sec. I've been to Rome and saw the chair where he sat when I was a sinner and didn't know what it meant, but I saw the chair with the round back on it. It said vicarious day deili (sic) and had... had the inscription there. And it means, in a loose translation of the Latin, it means instead of Christ.
Barry is speaking of the throne that the pope sits on. This is the same claim that William Branham made. He said he saw the words "VICARIVS FILII DEI" engraved above the papal throne when he was in Rome in 1954. The problem is that in our book, Under The Halo: Examining the Legacy of William Branham, we prove this to be a lie. This means that Barry Coffey's statement is also false. The philosopher Frederick Neizche summarized the problem with lying:
I'm not upset that you lied to me. I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.
And that's the problem, Barry. Why would anyone ever believe anything you say?
Ed Byskal
Edward (Eddie) F. Byskal died at the age of 90 on September 17, 2025, and was the founding pastor of Cloverdale Bibleway, a message church in Surrey, BC, Canada.
He was a friend of William Branham and was well known for being the man in the "green checkered shirt" in the story that Branham told about shooting a grizzly bear.
I attended Cloverdale Bibleway from 1973 to 2009. For most of those years, I was the worship leader, treasurer and member of the board of trustees. My wife was dedicated as a baby by Ed Byskal in the church he pastored in Dawson Creek, BC. I knew Ed well and considered him to be a dear friend, a godly man and my pastor.
Until he did something that stunned me to the core of my being.
He lied to me. Not just once but on several occasions. And he didn't just lied to me. He lied to the entire leadership of the church.
Ed Byskal covered up the sexual abuse of a minor. And when you cover up something that terrible, lies will inevitably flow from that action. It twisted something on his inside.
I am not a prophet, in fact, this was the only time I have seen the gift of prophecy exercised in my life and it was terrifying. I won't go through the entire story but I carried a message to Ed Byskal one afternoon that I knew to be from God. I told him he had two choices: one was the way of the cross, the harder way; and the other was the path of hatred and the rejection of God. At the end of both of those paths, I told him what would happen. Within a couple of weeks, I was sitting in the congregation while he was preaching.
Ed did something that took almost my breath away. What I told him would happen if he rejected God came to pass in front of the congregation. I was in shock. I almost stood up and screamed, "No! You are rejecting God!" But I sat in my seat and said nothing. This was for me and not the congregation. I walked out of the Sunday morning service, and I have not been back to Cloverdale Bibleway since. The church I had attended for 37 years. How could I go back to a church where I knew the pastor had rejected God.
The problem with telling a lie was put into clear perspective by the philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, who said:
“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”
Ed Byskal was a liar, and I would never believe a word he said ever again.
The church went through a significant split after I and one of the associate pastors left that day. People started leaving in droves. Several new churches were established by those who no longer had confidence in Byskal's leadership (one new Church in Canada and at least one in the United States). Prior to the split, Ed Byskal told his congregation that if 49% of them voted for him to step down, he would. More than half of his congregation left after he refused to acknowledge their concerns.
After the split, Byskal referred to those who left as "apostates," even though their doctrinal beliefs had not changed.
Footnotes