The Cross and the Fearmonger

A dramatic banner headline on WorldNetDaily:

Famed pastor, author predicts imminent catastrophe

The pastor is none other than David Wilkerson, whose 1963 biography The Cross and the Switchblade (as ever, “as told to John and Elizabeth Sherrill”) remains an evangelical paperback classic . WND tells us that Wilkerson has a blog, where he has just revealed a message from the Holy Spirit:

“An earth-shattering calamity is about to happen,” he writes. “It is going to be so frightening, we are all going to tremble – even the godliest among us.”

Wilkerson’s vision is of fires raging through New York City.

“It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires – such as we saw in Watts, Los Angeles, years ago,” he explains. “There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting – including Times Square, New York City. What we are experiencing now is not a recession, not even a depression. We are under God’s wrath. In Psalm 11 it is written, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?”

…”God is judging the raging sins of America and the nations,” claims Wilkerson. “He is destroying the secular foundations.” Wilkerson urges everyone to stockpile a 30-day supply of food and other necessities to deal with the catastrophe he foresees.

“I do not know when these things will come to pass, but I know it is not far off”…

Presumably “the secular foundations” is a dig at the recent electoral set-backs of the Christian Right; WND of course loves the idea that Obama might be the true architect of the current economic woes that Wilkerson is capitalising on. We’ll also assume that the 1965 Watts riots are invoked because of their severity, rather than because Wilkerson wants specifically to predict “race riots”, although the connotation is unfortunate.

Wisely, however, WND declines to quote Wilkerson’s underwhelming opening sentence:

For ten years I have been warning about a thousand fires coming to New York City.

Ten years? How about more than twenty years? Here’s the opening of his 1985 Set the Trumpet to Thy Mouth:

America is going to be destroyed by fire! Sudden destruction is coming and few will escape. Unexpectedly, and in one hour, a hydrogen holocaust will engulf America — and this nation will be no more.

It is because America has sinned against the greatest light. Other nations are just as sinful, but none is as flooded with gospel light as ours. God is going to judge America for its violence, its crimes, its backsliding, its murdering of millions of babies, its flaunting of homosexuality and sadomasochism, its corruption, its drunkenness and drug abuse, its form of godliness without power, its lukewarmness toward Christ, its rampant divorce and adultery, its lewd pornography, its child molestations, its cheating, its robbing, its dirty movies, and its occult practices.

Or how about 35 years? In his 1974 The Vision, Wilkerson predicts:

Nature will release its fury with increasing intensity over the next decade. There will be short periods of relief, but almost every day mankind will witness the wrath of nature somewhere in the world.

That book also predicted “the biggest, most disastrous” earthquake to take place in the USA.

10 Responses

  1. I really don’t get what the fundies have against sadomasochism. Especially since so many of them are enthusiastic practitioners.

    And I’m not simply talking about having to sit for an hour listening to the preacher every Sunday. Although that qualifies.

  2. It would not be such a big deal but there are SO MANY saying the same thing now that it is unavoidable. God is warning us that catastrophic events are coming! Does that mean we should go and hide in a cave? NO!! Live your life and press into God to get a word from the Holy Spirit for yourself that confirms what He is telling these others. He confirmed it to me. But there is nothing to fear if you know where you stand with Jesus Christ as the Lord of you life. God is wrapping it up! Know who you serve before it is too late!
    http://unitedstatesprophecy.com/

  3. […] I blogged on Sunday, Wilkerson recently announced that God had warned him of an “earth-shattering […]

  4. I would like to sarcastically point out that why should we expect these prophecies to come true when the biggest prophecy of all, that Jesus is coming back Real Soon Now, hasn’t?

    We’ve been waiting for two thousand years…(sound of foot tapping)…

    Even in my lifetime people have been pumping out prophecies that have been proven false, to wit, all the Hal Lindsay books, 88 Reasons Jesus Will Return in 1988, all the various identifications of the Antichrist (Henry Kissinger, Anwar el-Sadat, Mikhail Gorbachev and Saddam Hussein, to name just a few).

    All false, every single one.

    And, as Bartholomew has pointed out, Wilkerson’s been babbling this stuff for literally decades and none of it’s come true.

    I have to laugh…so many prophets were predicting that McCain was going to win last November and that failed to happen, so much so that the owner of End Time Prophetic Vision (http://www.etpv.org) was posting daily updates from Oct. 22 through Nov. 4 and then, due to disappointment, posted again on Nov. 9 saying that he was not praying for Obama. These prophets also were false as well.

    In short, prophecy, not worth the electrons it’s written upon!

  5. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because there are wackos out there doesn’t mean that there is no true prophecy. I guess I am a odd duck as I was one who stated Obama was to be our next president. I guess God is not a right leaning republican as He placed our current president in office.

  6. […] conservative sources – Sadly No! recently brought us the Riot Swank, while over a month ago Pastor David Wilkerson warned the world that God had told him that riots were imminent, and that the godly should put 30 […]

  7. Wow. Another delusional nutcase who sees prophecy. Well, I suppose you could say some of these whackjobs have some brains. They write books about prophecies that never occur and rake in a lot of money from gullible people who buy them.

    Randorf, the burden of proof for prophecy is on those claiming it is true. The hope that there is, and that it will help us is part of the gullible mindset these charlatans make a lot of money from.

  8. […] Wilkerson (we’re still waiting for the imminent ”earth-shattering calamity” he prophesied in March, by the way) and James M. Hutchens, who runs the JerUSAlem Connection. As I’ve […]

  9. […] speaking of dodgy prophecies, it’s now more than two years since David Wilkerson last promised us “fires raging through New York City” that “will engulf the whole […]

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