Spiritual Forces and the Election of Donald Trump: Some Notes

It’s God Wot Won It

From Franklin Graham on Facebook:

Many thought the Trump/Pence ticket didn’t have a chance. None of them understand the God-factor.

Hundreds of thousands of Christians from across the United States have been praying. This year they came out to every state capitol to pray for this election and for the future of America. Prayer groups were started. Families prayed. Churches prayed. Then Christians went to the polls, and God showed up.

While the media scratches their heads and tries to understand how this happened, I believe that God’s hand intervened Tuesday night to stop the godless, atheistic progressive agenda from taking control of our country.

Graham here infers a general spiritual atmosphere that inspired the faithful to vote for Trump; in contrast, Michele Bachmann has a rather more mechanistic view of spiritual causality in which (rather narcissistically) she was at ground zero of a cosmic drama. WND has the details:

…A large prayer group had gathered in Dallas, hosted by Ken Copeland ministries… Presenters David Barton and former Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., invited viewers to join in prayer… As they prayed, something began to stir.

“At the precise moment we began broadcasting on Daystar,” Bachmann told WND, “as the polls were still open, and a national audience of believers joined together and prayed in concert, we literally saw the race break in favor of Trump.”

“The Times put out a timeline tracking the election results as they broke for Trump last night,” Bachmann continued. “We went wild in the Dallas studio last night when David Barton, Ken and Terri Copeland, and various pastors saw that the victory for Trump began exactly at the precise moment believers corporately, over national television, sought the Lord for His favor upon our nation.”

At the neo-Pentecostal end of Evangelicalism, the contours of God’s intervention are explained in rather more elaborate detail. As Jennifer LeClaire writes in Charisma News:

In the 1990s, a Jezebel curse was released over our nation. Today, it is broken.

…An evil, unseen kingdom was toppled in the wee hours of Nov. 9. As the ekklesia—the governing church—continues rising in the years ahead, we’ll see the manifestation of this divine toppling in both the spirit and the natural. A demonic throne was overturned today and more demonic thrones will be toppled as the violent governing intercessors, emboldened by the Spirit of God, take them down by force in prayer in the name of Jesus (Matt. 11:12).

LeClaire explains that Jezebel refers to “ever-increasing manifestations of immorality and idolatry” since 1993, presumably coinciding with the arrival of Bill Clinton in the White House.

Somewhat Delphically, God told LeClaire the day before the election that “on Election Day, a Kingdom Will Be Toppled”, but although she understood this to mean that Trump would win, she judged it prudent to avoid “prophetic presumption” by clarifying this point before the results were in.

More details of the “Heavenly War Over the Election” were provided just before election day by Frank Amedia, who warned of “the SPIRITUAL WAR  that is being waged by the Lord Jesus Christ and His Body here on earth against the diabolical forces of the spiritual fortress alliance of satan, Jezebel, Ahab and Abaddon.

The “Jezebel Spirit” was also linked to Clinton by Pastor Saeed Abedin, who complained that Clinton had not done enough to free him from imprisonment in Iran. Just before the election, Abedin also revealed that God had shown him the face of the next US president while he was in prison in Iran, and he later realised that this was Trump.

Prophets of Trump

Ahead of the election, a number of individuals claimed that God had given them insight into how Trump would win. A firefighter named  Mark Taylor apparently got the word from God in 2011, while watching Trump being interviewed on TV, and he wrote down what God told him:

The Spirit of God says, I have chosen this man, Donald Trump, for such a time as this. For as Benjamin Netanyahu is to Israel, so shall this man be to the United States of America! For I will use this man to bring honor, respect and restoration to America. America will be respected once again as the most powerful and prosperous nation on earth, (other than Israel). The dollar will be the strongest it has ever been in the history of the United States, and will once again be the currency by which all others are judged…

More recently, Charisma‘s Michael Brown relates the story of Pastor Jeremiah Johnson, who received a punning communication from God in July 2015:

Jeremiah knew very little about Trump when he wrote these words: “I was in a time of prayer several weeks ago when God began to speak to me concerning the destiny of Donald Trump in America. The Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, ‘Trump shall become My trumpet to the American people, for he possesses qualities that are even hard to find in My people these days… I will use the wealth that I have given him to expose and launch investigations searching for the truth. Just as I raised up Cyrus to fulfill My purposes and plans, so have I raised up Trump to fulfill my purposes and plans prior to the 2016 election… Though many see the outward pride and arrogance, I have given him the tender heart of a father that wants to lend a helping hand to the poor and the needy, to the foreigner and the stranger.'”

Trump as Cyrus became the most popular evangelical rationalization for embracing Trump; the alternative was to accept James Dobson’s dubious claim that Trump had suddenly found Jesus but was still a “baby Christian” from who we shouldn’t expect much evidence of religious conversion.

Another early believer was Lance Wallnau; as Charisma‘s CEO Stephen Strang wrote in October:

Lance Wallnau believes God is raising up Donald Trump like he did King Cyrus in Isaiah 45. When the charismatic speaker/business consultant first said this long before the billionaire businessman received the Republican nomination, nearly everyone thought he was nuts.

Now, Wallnau’s analysis is ringing true with many Christians who are looking to make sense spiritually of this very strange election season.

Wallnau also believes God gives leaders “common grace” to be instruments of His purposes—ones like Lincoln or Churchill or Thatcher.

Wallnau also thinks that Trump himself has prophetic powers, pointing to a 2015 Tweet by Trump that Anthony Weiner would “tell the world” about Clinton’s emails as evidence that Trump had foreseen Mark Comey’s October Surprise announcement. Wallnau’s own powers, though, are fallible – and he got tied up in knots as he attempted to discern how God was sending messages about the election via the World Series.

But Christians didn’t have a monopoly on Trump prophecies: a few days before the election there was interest in Rabbi Matityahu Glazerson, who claimed to have found confirmation that Trump would win via codes in the Bibles, while Hindu Sena, a Trump-supporting Hindu group in India, now say they were certain Trump would win because “Hillary’s stars did not reflect the presidency but Mr. Trump’s did”.

I wrote about how evangelical leaders have been supporting Trump here.

Prophets of Dud

Alas, a few people somehow got their spiritual wires crossed, perhaps due to spiritual interference from the mass of secular election bloviators. In Nigeria, TV evangelist T.B. Joshua has been widely mocked for deleting a Facebook post from 6 November in which he had declared that God had shown him a woman winning the election (he’s since restored the item); while back in Israel a rival Bible code expert, Kikar Hashabbat, saw Clinton’s name among the Torah’s Hebrew and a kabbalist by the name of Netanel Shriki had confidently predicted a win for Clinton at 55%. Shriki went astray despite having the power to destroy Hamas tunnels by the power of prayer.

Peruvian shamans also failed to call it right, predicting in December that “The US will band together so that Trump does not become the United States Republican Candidate”; a more recent attempt to get the gods to punish him so that his bid would fail didn’t work out either.

2 Responses

  1. I would have voted for Donald Trump as the better candidate by far for Christians. But that is only my opinion.

  2. Don’t fall into the trap of being so dismissive of Xists Richard.

    Putting Trump in the Whitehouse is exactly what the Xists did. Pollsters who got it dramatically wrong are still scratching their heads as to why Latinos and other minority voter groups whom Trump insulted and railed against, still voted for him and gave him the edge ; but it is crystal clear to us.

    For 30 years the SAFF has been warning of the dangers of the fifth column in parliament and the hidden political force in the West which has been using subtle tactics below the radar of the chattering classes.

    ‘Intellectuals’ continually make the mistake of assuming that Xists are all dim and uneducated – hence the final irony of their excuses in the shock Trump victory – only dumb people would have voted for him so the answer to his nonsense is more education. NOT!

    There has been a massive pro-Trump propaganda exercise on Christian TV and radio stations in the U.S. which has been ignored by mainstream media and which swung the vote his way. Richard’s latest article throws a light on only a small part of it.

    At one time, pre 1990, it was not possible for religious programming to be broadcast in the U.K. Now of course it is commonplace, on radio and even on Freeview. The impact of these Christian stations pumping out propaganda can now be seen.

    The SAFF sent representations in to parliament during 1990 when politicians debated the broadcast bill which would give permission for Christian stations. We tried to warn our political leaders of the dangers and suggested some extra rules but the Xists got just what they wanted as they always seem to do because of the Christian blind-spot. As can be seen from this extract from a 1990 SAFF update to members which gives some idea of the scope and influence of the Xism even then, prior to the IT revolution. It doesn’t take a big mind to imagine what influence they have today using the same tactics on Twitter, Facebook and their own broadcast output. This is what the SAFF said in 1990.

    ” However SAFF involvement may already be too late. The Christian organisation WRITELIGHT which exists to co-ordinate letter campaigns from thousands of Christian fundamentalists recently reviewed the combined Christian fundie group action in lobbying parliament.

    “The debate took place late at night. Not only had all but one of the likely opposers of freedom for truly Christian broadcasting left the chamber but also no less than 7 MPs spoke in favour of it. If the Bill, as it now stands, becomes law there is nothing
    in it that any watchdog authority could use to prevent the Gospel going out over the airwaves.”

    Later in their newsletter WRITELIGHT reports on the success of the last project on their ‘telephone
    chain’ when WRITELIGHT organisers sparked off the chain and it produced hundreds of calls of complaint within an hour about a Radio 4 programme.

    You need to be more aware of the way that
    you are being manipulated and your rights are being eroded. The Writelight organisation provides action packs to its members to instruct them on how to write and complain on various topics.
    They are categorically urged to hide their Christian beliefs.

    “Do not use religious jargon in your correspondence. Write as a concerned member of the community”.

    The action pack contains lots of influential addresses and people whom the writer should
    contact. It also contains form letters clearly inciting the writer to LIE. One form letter designed to be sent to TV companies reads “I punish my children for swearing and they reply; ” It’s what they say on the television.”.

    Another form letter which is meant to be sent to newsagents displaying soft-porn magazines or videos instructs the writer to lie again and state

    “Having talked to a number of other parents, I have found they are as concerned as I am about
    this, particularly as your shop is situated so close to the school.”

    WRITELIGHT is part of the Executive Council of Assemblies of God in the U.K. and Ireland. The Assmblies of God is the umbrella Pentecostal organisation which spawned and affiliated virtually every TV ministry in the U.S.A. including Jerry Falwell; The Bakkers; Swaggart; Robertson et al.

    The Assemblies of God has over 2 MILLION members in the U.S. and Swaggart’s World Ministries alone contributed over 12 MILLION DOLLARS per year to the FOREIGN MISSIONS programmes of the Assemblies of God. ”

    Robertson of course made his own abortive attempt at the presidency a year or two later but was booed down. In Trump the Xists had the ideal cross-over candidate who could suck-in those voters who probably wouldn’t have chosen him if they’d known what he truly represented ( a full fundie agenda, not the simplistic cosmetic racist/misogynyst damnation focused on by the obsessive Left).

    It was interesting to see a TV Voxpop interview the day before Trump’s landslide with a young lady who was asked why she still supported Trump after the revelations about his misogyny . She said that he had confessed to god and asked for forgiveness for it so was now absolved.

    Tony Rhodes
    Director
    SAFF

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