Pastor John-Paul Miller claims he tried to raise wife from dead after suicide

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Tuesday, May 14, 2024

In a revelation that appeared to some as almost as unusual as his announcement of the suicide of his wife, Mica Miller, Pastor John-Paul Miller of Solid Rock at Market Common in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, said he tried to raise her from the dead but it didn’t work.

The grieving pastor made the revelation as he eulogized his late wife during a May 5 memorial service at the church.

“As Christians, of course we know she’s not here. [She’s] in Heaven, worshiping and enjoying and probably haven’t [sic] had time to look down here yet,” Miller said in a 35-minute recording of the service posted by the church on YouTube over the weekend.

“But I’ve been down to the body about four times this week and each time it still didn’t hit me [that she was gone],” Miller said. “I thought she was gonna wake up. I even tried to raise her from the dead one time this week.”

Miller then explained that he genuinely thought he had raised his wife from the dead at one point but the person he thought was Mica was her sister.

“I went to the mall. … She [Mica] had bought me this dog tag. The chain broke, so I went to the mall to get it fixed. And I saw a female about 20-30 feet in front of me. And she was wearing one of Mica’s dresses, and she has the same tattoo Mica has on her arm and the exact same hair, and out of just instinct, I screamed, Mica!” he said. “The girl turned around; it was one of her sisters. And I thought I raised her from the dead. She’s alive, you know. But I can’t wait to see her one day.”

Pastor Miller’s mentor and spiritual advisor, the Rev. Charles Randall, recently announced to congregants at Solid Rock at Market Common that Miller had been relieved of all ministerial duties "for a time of healing, counsel, and guidance, pursuant to our governing instrument.” Randall told The Christian Post that he has no plans to permanently remove Miller from the pulpit because God has not told him to do so.

Despite allegations against Miller painting him as an abusive, manipulative church leader whose lifestyle disqualifies him as a pastor, Randall insists that Miller will remain pastor of the church until he hears from God that he should be removed and God hasn’t told him to remove him yet.

And this would not be Pastor Miller’s first time weathering a scandal.

In a 2017 affidavit highlighted by the Daily Mail, Miller’s first wife, Alison, who's the mother of his five children, accused him of engaging in sex acts with minors younger than 16 and having an addiction to prostitutes. She also alleged that Miller was caught in an affair with Mica in 2015 while she was working as their babysitter and married to his then-best friend Jeremy Deas.

“Our marriage and my husband’s career were less than stable at the time, because at the time my husband’s affair was discovered, he had previously admitted to both me and our congregation that he had an addiction to prostitution,” Alison wrote in the affidavit seeking alimony.

“He had also confessed to me and other staff members of the church that he had sexual encounters with young females from the church, who were under the age of sixteen,” she added. 

Instead of removing Miller as leader, Alison stated that church officials demanded he get counseling for his sex addiction, but he refused to get counseling which caused many of the members to leave.

“When he refused, the majority of our church left the congregation,” Alison wrote.

Miller previously acknowledged the affair with Mica and being forced to start over at his church in an interview with CP, but he did not share the details alleged by Alison.

In one of the latest allegations against the pastor, according to News Nation, Miller confessed to posting a nude photo of his late wife on social media as she tried to divorce him.

“I’m sorry for putting a picture of you on the internet,” he said in an apology email cited by the news outlet. “It was for less than one hour and immediately taken down. I was hurt that you are telling everyone horrible intimate details of my past sin, and I just wanted to try and hurt you. Please forgive me. It was evil of me to do that.”

When asked about the allegation, the office of Pastor Miller’s attorney, Russell B. Long, said he had no comment.

Court records cited by The New York Post show that Mica Miller filed for divorce from her husband in October 2023, but the reasons were not stated. The case was eventually dismissed in February, but a few days later Pastor Miller filed for “Separate Support and Maintenance” seeking financial support. Mica Miller would file for similar support in April. A hearing was scheduled for June 5. On April 27, two days after she served Miller with divorce papers, Mica Miller was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to her head in Lumber River State Park in Orrum, North Carolina.

Miller told CP that shortly after he and Mica got married in 2017, she was diagnosed with “bipolar II, schizophrenic and dependent personality disorder.”

Since then, he says, they have been trying to manage her mental illness with lithium, and significant support. As long as she took her medication, Miller said, his wife would be fine. Mica, however, had a roller coaster relationship with the medication.

He alleged she would complain how the medication would make her gain weight or cause her to slur. And earlier this year, the wife of a well-meaning pastor friend who had no understanding of mental illness offered to pray and believe that Mica Miller’s mental illness would go away. That incident, he said, stuck with Mica and she started to believe that she no longer needed the medication.

Miller did not reveal that he, too, had mental health struggles and had also been medicated.

A dated video posted on Facebook by Ty Longerbeam on May 10 shows Miller experiencing what some claim appears to be drug-induced psychosis. He explains in the video to an unidentified person that his medication was changed, and he felt like ants were crawling all over him even though no ants were visible crawling over him.

In the video, Miller is laying on a lawn next to a truck with an open door mumbling almost incoherently. Neighbors offer him water and try to comfort him while gently trying to figure out the best way to help him.

When asked if he wanted his mother to come help, he said, “I don’t want my mom” because she is always trying to get him on medication and “this is what it does.”

“I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t do nothing,” he said.

Longerbeam did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CP. But in commentary he shared with the video, he said he wanted to show that Miller also struggled with his mental health.