Julia Duin writes:

Perched on a cream-colored armchair, Johnny Enlow, a 61-year-old, California-based Pentecostal pastor with short-cropped gray hair, a trim beard and Tom Selleck-style mustache, looked into the camera and prophesied that Donald Trump would become president again.

Not in 2024. In 2021.

“The January 20 inauguration date doesn’t really mean anything,” Enlow said in the January 29 video, which has gotten north of 100,000 views on YouTube. According to Enlow, more than 100 other “credible” Christian prophets around the world had likewise declared that Trump, somehow, would be restored to power soon.

Indeed, Enlow was not alone out on that limb. Greg Locke, a Nashville pastor with a massive social media following, said after Trump’s loss that he would “100 percent remain president of the United States for another term.” Kat Kerr, a pink-haired preacher from Jacksonville, Florida, declared repeatedly last month that Trump had won the election “by a landslide” and that God had told her he would serve for eight years. In his video, Enlow went further. “There’s not going to be just Trump coming back,” he said. “There’s going to be at least two more Trumps that will be in office in some way.” Donald Trump, he proclaimed elsewhere, was “the primary government leader on Planet Earth.”

Enlow, Locke and Kerr are among dozens of Christian prophets in America—religious leaders with followings among Pentecostal and charismatic Christians who claim the ability to predict the future based on dreams, visions and other supernatural phenomena. Some prophets are church leaders, while others operate independently. There are no official requirements for prophet status, though followers generally expect prophets to get at least a few prophecies right.

But, lately, that standard has come under duress—particularly when it comes to Donald Trump.

In 2015, spurred by the lengthy prophecy of a 27-year-old wunderkind named Jeremiah Johnson, many Pentecostals and charismatics embraced the idea that God had chosen Trump to restore America’s Christian moorings. Trump’s surprise win in 2016 offered a dramatic validation, and in 2020 dozens of prophets declared that he would win election again. This time, they were wrong. Yet, in the wake of Joe Biden’s victory, instead of apologizing or backtracking, a number of prophets continue to assert that it is God’s will for Trump to be in the White House and that a miraculous reversal is nigh. Enlow, who did not respond to a request for comment for this article, has said Trump’s victory will be made clear by March.

With only two-thirds of voters—and one-third of Republicans—expressing confidence that Biden won a free and fair election, many observers worry that these prophets are sowing more confusion, blurring the line between misinformation and religious proclamation. They are spreading their message to wide audiences—some preachers who amplify these prophecies have followings in the millions—that increasingly exist in an echo chamber of like-minded religious YouTube channels, Instagram feeds and websites such as ElijahList, host of the YouTube channel ElijahStreams, where Enlow’s video aired.

It’s well known that Trump received strong support from white evangelicals in the 2020 election; estimates hover around 80 percent. But the role that prophecy plays in that support might be underexplored. In a survey conducted last year, two political scientists found that nearly half of America’s church-attending white Protestants believed Trump was anointed by God to be president—a portion of the population that other scholars have dubbed “prophecy voters.” The share is likely higher among charismatic Christians, who skew more politically and theologically conservative than evangelicals as a whole. And although this population is only a subset of American Christianity, it’s a large one: Some estimates hold that as many as 65 million Americans could be counted as Pentecostals or charismatics.

Not all prophets have doubled down on their Trump prophecies since the election, however. And as some have backed away from Trump, a schism has emerged. At least six recognized prophets who initially predicted a Trump reelection have acknowledged those prophecies were wrong. They now say they are deeply troubled by their peers’ refusal to acknowledge the same—and worry that allegiance to Trump could threaten the prophetic tradition itself.

To every leader who prophesied that Trump would remain in the White House, this is not about you now. This is about the name of the Lord being mocked and His people left in confusion and disappointment. I urge you to put your focus there, not on your own ministry or reputation.

— Dr. Michael L. Brown (@DrMichaelLBrown) January 23, 2021

In a December 15 article, Michael Brown, a longtime charismatic revivalist and scholar in Charlotte, North Carolina, had sharp words, warning co-religionists: “There is no reality in which Trump actually did win but in fact didn’t win. … To entertain possibilities like this is to mock the integrity of prophecy and to make us charismatics look like total fools.” After apologizing on January 7 for his own prophecy that Trump would be reelected, Jeremiah Johnson called parts of the prophetic movement “deeply sick.” In early February, he released a new YouTube series called “I Was Wrong: Donald Trump and the Prophetic Controversy.”

“I believe that this election cycle has revealed how desperately we need reformation in the prophetic movement,” Johnson said in a February 8 video. “I have serious concerns for the charismatic-prophetic world that if we do not wake up, if we do not humble ourselves, there is greater judgment to come.” [Continue reading…]