These Preachers Say God Promised a 2nd Trump Term. What Now? [View all]

[Zorro]

They told their followers that God had told them that Trump would win. Trump lost. What else is left to say?

Kris Vallotton prophesied to all who would listen that God had told him Donald Trump would win re-election. As a senior associate minister at California’s 11,000-member Bethel Church, a swarm of eager believers received the pastor’s prophecy as God’s unshakeable will.

“This is not about politics. I’m so sorry if it feels that way. I know how it could. Everybody in the front row knows me. It’s not about politics. If the Lord gave me this word about President Obama I would stand here and give it and I have done so before. This decree, the Lord is gonna step in sovereignly. He’s gonna bring it to a close. And it’s gonna be ugly but it’s gonna be the Lord,” Vallotton said in November of 2019, as Trump faced his impeachment trial. “And I believe the Lord’s gonna give him another term. I believe it because… the Lord wants it. ‘Cause the Lord wants it,” he went on, explaining that “I am commissioned by God to do this today. I had three dreams in one night.”

Vallotton was far from the only Christian leader claiming before the election that the Almighty had rigged the outcome. J. Gordon Melton, religion professor at Baylor University and compiler of the respected Encyclopedia of American Religions, counted at least 40 influential Christian prophets who foretold a Trump triumph. These prominent figures were joined by a cottage industry of lesser-known voices whose online declarations about Trump’s impending triumph were viewed and shared millions of times.

In the Christian tradition, prophets are something like God’s carrier pigeons. They receive messages directly from the Divine and are then tasked with relaying those messages to the world without alteration. The Bible is stacked with stories of revered prophets—such as Elijah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah—who risked life and limb to deliver holy writ to God’s people. And there’s a label for those who wrongly predict the future in God’s name: false prophets.

In the Bible, there’s a simple one-strike-and-you’re-out test for sorting out the counterfeits: “You may say to yourselves, ‘How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?’ If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/these-preachers-say-god-promised-a-2nd-trump-term-what-now