Apparently, there is an increasing number of prophets emergent in the last couple of years. As there have been a number of self-titled prophets of the gods or a god, or most-often the Abrahamic God, there is an increasing emphasis on making political predictions.
Ruth Graham in The New York Times reported on the proliferation of the ‘prophets’ in the period of the Trump Administration. They are a select group of people within Christian circles.
Those individuals who are part of a hardline Evangelical Protestant Christian movement who believe sincerely in the supernatural powers of their purported prophets.
Those who can see into the future. Those who can make political predictions. Those have some ethereal ability to foretell the future. There is a tendency to promote conspiracy theories amongst these people.
These individuals, interestingly enough, neither offer institutional church life nor a place of life.
“They operate primarily online and through appearances at conferences or as guest speakers in churches, making money through book sales, donations and speaking fees. And they are part of the rising appeal of conspiracies in Christian settings, echoed by the popularity of QAnon among many evangelicals and a resistance to mainstream sources of information,” Ruth wrote.
These are individuals prone to honestly believe in prophetic powers of online ‘prophets.’ One is a 33-year-old Jeremiah Johnson, who predicted former President Donald Trump would win the 2020 election.
As Trump did not win the election, Johnson failed in the prophetic vison of a win. Many others predicted an end to the pandemic by April, 2020. Those failed too.
Graham points to 33-year-old Jeremiah Johnson as one of the many “self-described prophets” who predicted that President Donald Trump would be reelected in 2020 — only to be embarrassed when Joe Biden, now president of the United States, defeated him. Other evangelical “prophets,” according to Graham, predicted that the COVID-19 pandemic would be long gone by April 2020.
AlterNet’s Alex Henderson said, “It is within evangelical Protestant Christianity specifically that the “prophet” phenomenon has caught on in such a big way. Evangelicals are distinct from Mainline Protestants, who range from Lutherans to Episcopalians to the African Methodist Episcopal Church. While evangelicals have strict fundamentalist views and believe that salvation can only come through Christianity, Mainline Protestants tend to be more accepting of non-Christian faiths and are more likely to engage in interfaith activities.”
Allegedly, Graham received death threats when Biden won. Graham said, “I was wrong. I am deeply sorry, and I ask for your forgiveness. I would like to repent for inaccurately prophesying that Donald Trump would win a second term as the President of the United States.”
With files from AlterNet and The New York Times.