Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts has sent shockwaves across the nation, and — at least according to the religious “prophets” of the MAGA right — across the heavens as well.
A trio of prominent, far-right Christians who purport to channel the word of God as it pertains to American politics are pointing to Trump’s guilty verdicts as a divine head-fake. The woe that has presently befallen Trump, they prophesy, will “boomerang” against his enemies, who will suffer “defeat” as Trump steps again into the “power” God has ordained for him.
One might think that Trump’s having been found guilty — on charges stemming from hush money he paid to a porn star to cover up an alleged extramarital affair — might lead Christian leaders to rethink their backing of the sinful former president. But these self-styled prophets instead see Trump’s conviction as evidence he is a victim — a “political martyr” — or even a biblical figure, a modern “Daniel” or “David.”
Julie Green is an internet preacher from Iowa who hands out biblical prophecy as if it were a daily horoscope. Despite making preposterous predictions, Green is a popular figure on the far right, in particular among the Re-Awaken America set, because the heavenly voice that Green claims to channel makes God sound like a devoted MAGAdonian.
In a prophetic word filmed shortly after Trump’s conviction, Green delivered a message she claimed was sent down from the most high. “Woe to the enemies of Almighty God. You are laughing, thinking you got what you desired,” Green said, voicing her version of the Christian deity. “I will tell you I will have the last laugh. Your verdict is a joke. And an illusion … I will show you whose verdict really counts.
“My son is not guilty,” Green claimed God said of Trump. “And the world will … see your kangaroo courts, and how they are a joke, and how they are nothing against Me.” Casting Trump in the mold of a biblical king, Green continued, “I say, you do not have my David where you want him. But I have you where I want you. I told you you will reap what you have sown … Your show is about to end, and my children are about to laugh.”
Still voicing the Almighty, Green then singled out Trump’s adversaries in New York, insisting of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, “judgment is coming for you,” while claiming of Juan Merchan, the judge in Trump’s case: “You will not stay in that seat. Because I am your defeat, saith the Lord!”
Another MAGA prophet, Hank Kunneman, delivered a similar message on Flashpoint — a Trump-boosting religious news-and-prophecy show produced by the Victory Channel, the broadcast network of Texas televangelist Kenneth Copeland. Kunneman — who sports jet-black hair and curiously groomed eyebrows of the same color — is a pastor from Omaha, Nebraska, who also purports to transmit messages from a God who favors the 45th president.
“God said there would … be a boomerang,” Kunneman said on a show filmed shortly after the Trump verdict was handed down. “In other words, those who would seek for indictments, they themselves would be indicted.” Kunneman then asserted that Trump’s conviction is also set for reversal. “God said, you will see things flop. It will look like it is absolutely over. And then it will flop — and then flip. And it will turn in the way of the favor of God.”
To Kunneman, Trump appears as a “Daniel,” a biblical figure whose faith God rewarded by preventing him from being eaten in a den of lions. “President Trump has been thrown to the lions. But there’s something that happened to Daniel. And that was this: the preservation of God,” Kunneman said. “And in the same way, God is going to close the mouths of these absolute lunatics, who think that they’re going to get by with this. It’s going to reverse — and the lions’ mouths will be closed.”
Kunneman then counseled patience to Flashpoint viewers. “You have to let the prophetic words play out,” he insisted. “This is what the Lord is doing. He wants you to be encouraged. He’s involved. He’s got his hand on this country. He’s got his hand on President Trump. And this too,” he said of Trump’s criminal convictions, “will fail.”
A third prominent prophetic voice in the MAGA movement carried a similar message in the wake of Trump’s convictions. Dutch Sheets presents himself as a modern “apostle” in a Christian nationalist movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation. Sheets was a leading religious figure in the runup to Jan. 6, 2021, incorrectly prophesying that God would return Trump to office. (Sheets has been in the news of late because he’s the modern champion of the “Appeal to Heaven” flag as a banner of Christian nationalism. That flag has been seen flying outside the vacation home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.)
Sheets couched his post-conviction prophetic word about Trump as the dream of an unnamed “pastor friend,” supposedly from 2022. In this dream, Sheets described, the 45th president appeared. “Trump said, ‘I’ll be a political martyr in the next few years, not because of my goodness but because God has put the tools in me to tear down, root up, and confront the system.’”
Sheets related that this dream Trump said his work would take two terms. “It’ll be an eight-year process, and it’ll take two men — me then another — for the full sweep of power.” Sheets then insisted that the new convictions showed Trump “truly is a political martyr,” whose destruction has been sought by “the leftists, globalist, and Dems.”
Sheets closed his words with a prayer “for the dismantling of evil in America from the top down,” asking God to “free the nation from wicked leaders, evil systems, and deception” and to “expose the evil one and his partners.”
Sheets finished with prophecy and a decree: “Trump, he is being martyred politically, but You will raise him up again,” he insisted. “And we decree that darkness will scatter in the light, evil will be shaken down and truth will prevail in America.”
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