From Right Wing Watch, earlier this month:
On his television program yesterday, End Times prepper pastor Jim Bakker interviewed Sadhu Sundar Selvaraj, who has born to a Hindu family but converted to Christianity as a teenager and whom Bakker hails as a modern-day prophet for supposedly having prophesied Hurricane Harvey and the destruction it would cause to the city of Houston.
During the program, Selvaraj told Bakker that during the 2016 election, he was called up to heaven and directly told by Abraham that it has been decided by “the council of the prophets” that Donald Trump would be America’s next president.
Selvaraj was born in 1962; he has a television ministry based in Chennai (Angel TV), and he has apparently been undertaking regular missionary work in Tibet since 1986. As indicated by his use of the title “sadhu”, Selvaraj’s outward appearance is that of a Hindu holy man – he wears a simple orange gown, and he has an impressive white-and-grey beard.
Selvaraj says that God asked him to continue the work of Sadhu Sundar Singh, a famous Sikh convert to Christianity who similarly described himself as Christian sadhu at the start of the last century, and who attempted missionary work in Tibet before dying young. (1) One US Evangelical/Neo-Pentecostal book thus compares him to Elisha, the Hebrew Bible prophet who received Elijah’s mantle. (2)
In the US, Selvaraj speaks at annual conferences held at Reverend Ann Ott’s In His Presence Ministries in Houston, Texas, and at Pastor Joe Sweet’s Shekinah Worship Center in Lancaster, California; these events are described as being “hosted by Angel TV” (for 2015 see here and here), and if you happen to live in California it may be useful to know that Selvaraj recently told Jim Bakker that “The Lord has shown me that Lancaster California is one of the places of refuge chosen by God for the last days”. The California conferences also include Neville Johnson, an “End Times” neo-Pentecostal from Queensland, Australia. (3)
Numerous videos of Selvaraj have been uploaded to a YouTube, particularly by a channel called “The Seraphim”. Titles include “The Antichrist Will Politically Rise From Berlin, Germany” (here); “Donald Trump 4 YR Tenure is the Final Grace Period And Warning For America” (here); “Jerusalem Becomes a Burden to All Nations, Gog Magog War” (here, with a bizarre computer generated backdrop); “Israel will build 3rd temple in exchange for land. Prophecy !!!” (here); “Identification of the Beast (Revelation 13) as revealed to Bro. Sadhu Sundar Selvaraj” (here); and “URGENT WARNING!!! Prophet Sadhu Sundar Selvaraj says Trump Is In Danger 2017” (here). Much of his teaching is based on personal messages received from God, although he also draws on ideas promoted by others – thus he joined in promoting the “Four Blood Moons” phenomenon that was supposed to signal the End-Times in 2015.
Another video is “Pope Francis is the Prophesied False Prophet in Revelation 13”, and the American neo-Pentecostal news service Charisma News has in the last few days run a prominent piece claiming that ” information confirms Sadhu Sundar Selvaraj’s prophecy that Pope Francis is the false prophet from Revelation”. The “information” is presented in a discussion between Jim Bakker and Tom Horn, whose religious writings are full of extravagant and bizarre David Icke-style science-fiction elements.
In particular, Bakker cites the fact that the Pope does not approve of Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel; Bakker, of course, is a fervent Christian Zionist who believes that modern Israel is an indication of the Last Days. Bakker and Horn also refer to the new anti-Francis book The Dictator Pope by the pseudonymous Marcantonio Colonna, and to attacks on the “Phariseeism” of Francis by the Catholic author Michael O’Brien (e.g. here). Horn, as discussed previously, believes (or at least claims) that Francis is in fact “Peter the Roman”, the final pope and thus involved in a plan to create an “Alien Serpent-Savior”.
Evangelicals of course have a long history of naming the anti-Christ, but it is nevertheless unusual for a high-profile source to positively state, without any wriggle-room, that a figure supposedly predicted in the Book of Revelation can be positively identified beyond doubt. Charisma News is owned by Steven Strang’s Charisma Media, and in 2005 Strang – author of a recent book on God and Donald Trump, discussed here – was one of Time magazine’s “25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America”.
Footnotes
1. An essay by the late scholar of religion Eric Sharpe posted here explains that “during the 1920s, the attention of Christians in practically every part of the world was seized and gripped by the work, witness and personality of an Indian Christian preacher, Sadhu Sundar Singh.” Sharpe also notes his interest in Emmanuel Swedenbourg, and “resemblances between Sundar Singh’s visions (or rather the explanation which he gave to those visions) and some aspects of the teaching of Swedenborg.” He also quotes Singh as having written in 1929 that
I have conversed with Swedenborg and some other Hindu saints who, after entering into the spiritual world, have accepted the Lord as the only true God and Saviour…
This quote strays from orthodox Christianity, and as such some Evangelicals suggest that his conversion, which Singh claimed was facilitated by a vision of Jesus, was a demonic deception. The issue was raised in 2009 in relation to the controversial neo-Pentecostal evangelist Todd Bentley (blogged here); Bentley claimed in 2006 to have had “a vision” of Singh.
2. Steven Brooks, Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: The Release of Mantles to the End-time Generation (Destiny Image, 2008). This was based on his 2003 Where are the Mantles?, which was self-published though Xulon Press.
3. Here’s Johnson speaking on the subject of “Sex With Strange Flesh – Jude 1:7 – Origins of Demons”.
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