Come November 2024, if Donald Trump is on the presidential ballot, he may be your candidate of choice. By then, he may have won the GOP nomination in a landslide. And for you, hands down, he may be your man for any of a thousand reasons. He may even be our next president.
That is not my issue here. In fact, my issue is not political at all.
It is spiritual. It is prophetic. It is about the honor of the Lord and the reputation of the Spirit. It is about credibility.
And if there is a prophetic word that God is speaking now about the 2024 elections it is simply this: “Enough already with the Donald Trump prophecies!”
There is still egg on our faces because of the 2020 debacle. (When I say “our faces” it is because I am a leader in the Pentecostal/charismatic church. And even though I worked hard with others to call for prophetic accountability and to rebuke the false prophecies about Trump, this is my family, so there is egg on all of our faces. This is my mess too.)
Tragically and inexcusably, there is still denial and deception and duplicity about the failed prophecies, all in the name of the Lord.
There is still excuse making and finger pointing and blame shifting without any accountability and integrity, to the point that some of the “prophets” who blew it most egregiously—I mean prophesying specific dates and timelines that flatly did not pan out—have continued to prophesy about Trump to this day, without correction or apology.
To the contrary, they have attacked those of us who have called for correction and accountability rather than humble themselves and say, “We blew it. We were wrong. We need to get our act together.”
Instead, in their eyes, everyone else is wrong. I’ve even heard the accusation that the reason the prophecies did not come to pass was because of people like me who called for accountability and repentance.
Yes, I actually heard this between the 2020 elections and the inauguration, as these “prophets” continued to proclaim that the election had been stolen and that Trump, not Biden would be inaugurated.
When I responded saying that, whether or not the election was stolen, Trump would not be inaugurated, I was called an unbeliever, a RINO (which is funny since I’m a registered Independent), a secret leftist (or Communist), a plant of the Democratic party. (Seriously!)
More to the point, I was told that it was because of cowardly, unbelieving people like me that Trump might not make it. In contrast, the “prophets” were likened to Joshua and Caleb, ready to lead the children of Israel into the promised land. People like me were likened to the 10 spies who, full of unbelief, told the Israelites that they could not take the land (see Num. 13-14).
What deception.
What drivel.
What an insult to the Word of God and the character of God.
What a mockery of the Spirit.
The truth be told, in the midst of the pro-Trump prophecy frenzy, it took far more courage to say he would not be president than to join the prophecy-affirming throngs. Yet for taking a stand and speaking the truth and going against the grain (and losing thousands of social media followers in the process), I was being cowardly. (For the record, the only thing that hurt me was that people were hurting and being misled. Losing followers was not my concern. Losing my ability to help them was.)
Thankfully, a few prophets acknowledged their error in prophesying a Trump victory, yet by apologizing, they came under far more attack than I did in calling for accountability.
That alone illustrated how upside down things had become.
You swim against the tide and challenge the crowd, and for that you are called a coward.
Or you humble yourself and ask for forgiveness, and for that your followers turn on you en masse.
What kind of nonsense is this?
Yet the excuses continued, “Donald Trump did win the election, just as we prophesied, but it was stolen from him.”
Then why didn’t God tell you it would be stolen? This would be like me telling you, “Tomorrow, the Lord will give you a brand-new car”—but I failed to tell you that, as it was being delivered to your home, a thief carjacked it and you will never see it.
Sorry, but I don’t buy it.
It’s like the man standing on a street corner in Manhattan clapping his hands and shouting.
When someone asks him, “What are you doing?” he replies, “I’m keeping the crocodiles away.”
When someone else says to him, “But there are no crocodiles for hundreds of miles around,” he answers, “You see! It’s working.”
It’s the same kind of nonsense with the Trump prophets, many of whom will say, “You see! We told you!” if he is reelected in 2024. (And remember I write all this as a two-time Trump voter, meaning in 2016 and 2020.)
Speaking directly to the Trump prophets, I remind you that many of you told us that: 1) Trump would serve eight consecutive years (he did not); 2) that the courts would overturn the election results, even giving us time frames when certain states would turn from blue to red (this did not happen); and 3) that Trump, not Biden, would be inaugurated and that Biden would never serve a day in the White House (none of this happened).
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And what did some of you say since then?
“It doesn’t matter who’s in the White House because Trump is God’s president!”
Or, “I see a vision of Trump sitting enthroned in heaven, ruling with a golden scepter.”
Or, “There are two presidents now: the false one, Biden, and the real one, Trump.”
Or, “That’s not really Joe Biden! That’s someone impersonating him. Trump is the real president.”
Repent! This is garbage! This is a stench in God’s nostrils! Enough!
The good news is that the deception has only become more blatant over the years.
The bad news is that countless thousands (millions?) of gullible followers still buy into this garbage, which must be fairly lucrative as well.
What the larger body of Christ (and certainly the secular world) may not know is that some of the most respected charismatic prophets did not prophesy a Trump victory. They offered no prophetic words at all about the elections, recognizing that God had not spoken to them about it.
Yet their good names have been marred because of the errors of so many others, which is a real shame.
I even have colleagues who don’t claim to be prophets who reached out to me some months before November 2020, saying that God showed them that Biden would be president, one reason being the degree to which many Christians had made Trump into an idol.
These voices, however, were totally obscured by the landslide of pro-Trump prophecies, and in the days to come, you can expect to hear these pro-Trump “prophets” shouting from the rooftops again.
This time around, let’s ignore them—or, when appropriate, let’s call them to account and expose them.
Go back now and read this article from April 17, 2020, confronting the false “end of COVID” prophecies. (Be assured that critics of the charismatic movement called these failed prophecies loudly and clearly, and they had every right to do so.)
Or check out this article from Jan. 21, 2021, lovingly but forcefully calling on these “prophets” to repent now that Biden, not Trump, had been inaugurated.
Then read this article from May 1, 2021, with a wide-ranging, collective call for prophetic accountability, along with the announcement of the release of the Prophetic Standards document, which has garnered more than 1,000 leadership signatures.
Or go all the way back to 2018 and read my book “Playing with Holy Fire: A Wake-Up Call to the Pentecostal-Charismatic Church” for chapters on unaccountable prophets and mercenary prophets.
These have been issues of concern for years, dating back decades, but things have come to a very public head today.
So, as a tongue-speaking, Pentecostal-charismatic leader who openly embraces the gifts and power of the Spirit without shame, I say this. If there is any word that the Spirit is speaking now, it is simply this: Enough already! {eoa}
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