HERE COMES THE FALSE POLITICAL PROPHETS, AGAIN, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO SEAN FEUCHT, JULIE GREEN, AND LANCE WALLNAU. MANY OF THESE FALSE POLITICAL PROPHETS HAVE FALLEN BY THE WAYSIDE IN SHAME AND EMBARRASSMENT BECAUSE THEY WERE USED BY A POLITICIAN FOR A SEASON, AND THEN WHEN THEIR FALSE PROPHECIES DID NOT COME TRUE, THEY WERE FORSAKEN BY THE POLITICIAN AND THE POLITICAL PARTY
Christian musician Sean Feucht of California have a prays along with Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., left, during a rally at the National Mall in Washington, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2020. JOSE LUIS MAGANA/AP IMAGES
HERE COMES THE FALSE POLITICAL PROPHETS, AGAIN, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO SEAN FEUCHT, JULIE GREEN, AND LANCE WALLNAU. MANY OF THESE FALSE POLITICAL PROPHETS HAVE FALLEN BY THE WAYSIDE IN SHAME AND EMBARRASSMENT BECAUSE THEY WERE USED BY A POLITICIAN FOR A SEASON, AND THEN WHEN THEIR FALSE PROPHECIES DID NOT COME TRUE, THEY WERE FORSAKEN BY THE POLITICIAN AND THE POLITICAL PARTY. WE WOULD NAME A FEW HERE, BOTH BLACK AND WHITE, BUT TIME WOULD FAIL US.
This is very simple to understand, people: A PERSON IS A FALSE PROPHET WHEN HE OR SHE IS IN ANYBODY’S CAMP BUT GOD’S, for a true prophet speaks for God only–not for a politician, not for the Republican party, not for the Democrat party, or anybody else. And a true prophet has no problem rebuking Trump or Biden, the Republicans and the Democrats, the whites and the blacks. And a true prophet does not have the time to prophesy against Mickey Mouse or Minnie Mouse. What is sad about all of this is, the church did not obey the simple commandments of the Lord–the Great Commandment and the Great Commission, and did not obey God’s Word. They have resorted to politics to save their way of life. That has not worked and it is not going to work.
Lance Wallnau used to be a corporate marketer who privately believed that power lay in prophetic revelation. Then came 2015, and he began sharing a word from God: Donald Trump was “anointed.”
Seven years later, prophesy is booming. And for Wallnau, it’s been a busy run-up to the midterms.
In July, Wallnau prayed over Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) before a cheering Atlanta arena audience. By early September, he was at a conference outside Colorado Springs with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.). And, a few days after that, here he was in the suburbs of Harrisburg, Pa., for GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, whom he compared with George Washington at Valley Forge.
“Now there’s another Christian colonel who is in charge,” Wallnau told the crowd of hundredsstanding in a suburban restaurant parking lot. “They may out-gather, they may outmaneuver, and in my opinion they may know how to out-cheat. But they cannot outflank us if we move as one. … The whole country will be affected by what happens in Pennsylvania.”
All over the country this year, figures like Wallnau,hailingfrom the right wing of prophetic and charismatic Christianity, have been appearing with candidates as part of a growing U.S. religious phenomenon that emphasizes faith healing, the idea that divine signs and wonders are everywhere, and spiritual warfare.
Longtime watchers of religion in the United States say this rise of prophetic figures is the result of multiple forces. Among them are a collapse of trust in institutional sources of information, the growth of charismatic Christianity and its accompanying media ecosystems, and a Trump presidency that brought in from the fringe spiritual figures long rejected by the political and evangelical establishments.
“For two millennia of church history, people have been claiming to be prophets,” said Matthew Sutton, a Washington State University historian of American religion who has focused on apocalyptic and charismatic Christians. “But it’s a new tactic in the United States for it to be part of waging culture war.”
What it’s meant to be a “prophet” has changed many times, but the term has typically been used as an adjective, not a noun, Sutton said; anyone might say something “prophetic” against sin or injustice. Most Christians in the United States, he said, have emphasized other spiritual roles mentioned in the Bible, such as “teacher” or “elder” — not “prophet” or “apostle,” which they believed ended with the biblical text. But in recent decades, some Americans have been resurrecting the title of prophet and giving it new meaning.
This election cycle, Sean Feucht, a longhaired California prophetic figure and unsuccessful candidate for Congress in 2020, has appeared with Arizona gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.). Dan Cox, Maryland Republicans’ pick for governor, shared a stage with prophetess Julie Green. The events Wallnau attended included appearances by long-established right-wing prophetic figures including Dutch Sheets, Mario Murillo and Hank Kunneman.
Wallnau, 66, grew up as the son of an oil executive in Philadelphia and says he became a Christian at a young age, when he was in a military academy, and began to believe strongly in prophesy. At first, he worked in corporate marketing for the company where his father worked, but gradually shifted into business consulting and public speaking, with a religious bent. His persona is high-energy, chatty and very anti-liberal, with a ribbon of conspiracy theories running through, like a less angry, scripture-citing Rush Limbaugh.
In 2015, he began publicly sharing his thoughts about the future. In the months before the 2016 election, 4 million people watched his videotitled “Prophetic Word on Donald Trump.”
But Wallnau’s public profile then “was small potatoes compared to now,” he said in an interview.Two million people combined on platforms including Rumble, Facebook and Audible — where he hosts a podcast, “The Lance Wallnau Show”— now follow him for his mix of theories about shadowy schemes by “the elites”; advice on digital currencies; and what he says are words, warnings and prophesiesfrom God.
“It’s market demand,” Wallnau said. “Confidence in institutions is at an all-time low. In our community, there is such a need for knowing; the psychological need for certainty is a human craving, for consistency. You have to have a meaning for something, or it scares you.”
On that, Sutton agrees.
“Prophesy gives comfort in the sense that it can tell us how the future will be. For these folks, it’s affirming a positive vision in which they always will triumph. It’s a way of affirming their choices and values and bringing them comfort in a world with values that are different from their own,” Sutton said.
At the Mastriano campaign event in September, the nominee was onstage, as was keynote speaker Donald Trump Jr., but neither was the person Dori Groff drove from West Virginia to see. When Wallnau took the mic, Groff, 45, excitedly grabbed her little daughter’s hand and ran forward. Years ago, when Groff worked in multilevel marketing, she had come across Wallnau on a cassette tape. Now she listens to him daily.
“He was into how to motivate people, but he was a preacher, too,” said Groff, who says she is now a home-school teacher.
Groff, who said she was raised in Pennsylvania by Mennonite parents who had Limbaugh on every day, says she finds Wallnau funny and honest about what she sees as a moral decline in the country. She feels comforted by prophetic words. When she thinks of modern prophets, she thinks of the role of prophets in the Bible who warned and protected Israel. Prophesy, she says, isn’t about giving people answers to mundane questions.
“The prophetic isn’t like: ‘God told me you should take I-95,’ ” Groff said. “They are warnings to get your life back in order — to people, to the church, to the political scene.”
In 2022’s diffuse religious marketplace, it’s hard to measure what these self-avowed prophets can deliver, exactly, for politicians. Polls of the Pennsylvania governor’s race show Mastriano, whose events declare thatGod is on his side in an existential fight against evil, trailing Democrat Josh Shapiro significantly.Mastriano’s campaign did not respond to a message seeking comment.
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