God's (false?) prophets: Are cracks appearing in the shield of faith?

(Personal note: I'm not opposed to the spiritual gifts as described in the Bible. Rather, I have known and witnessed these gifts to be wonderful aspects of local church communities. These blog posts detail observations of publicly visible self-proclaimed prophets, most of whom maintain monetized online presences, and their engagement in American politics)

This is the third post in a series of related posts. Here is a link to the original post, and to the second post.

Well it’s been quite a week for God’s (false?) prophets!  All hope was pinned to the January 7th Congressional session and electoral vote count, with the expectation that God would show up just in time to deliver the presidential election victory to President Trump.  

While the prophets were not certain on how God would accomplish this, much attention was being given to Vice President Pence, and his role overseeing the vote count.  Given Mr. Pence’s solid Christian credentials, it seemed a good bet that he might be part of God’s plan.  Others were hopeful that the declared objections to voting in several contested states would produce a path to President Trump’s victory.

Now, two days later, the aftermath is messy and varied.

A small minority of the prophets are repentant.  Two of the self-declared prophets (Jeremiah Johnson and Loren Sandford) issued public apologies for incorrectly prophesying President Trump would win a second term.  Here is Jeremiah Johnson's written apology published on his website. Here is Pastor Sandford's apology video:

I will say that Pastor Sandford is by the far the most reasonable, sincere and Biblically-minded of all the self-proclaimed prophets I've been watching this election season. Pastor Sandford is receiving both encouraging support for apologizing, and significant heat and criticism.  The criticism is coming from two sides - one being Christians and non-believers critical of prophetic voices in politics, and the other side being those calling out Pastor Sandford (and any other wavering prophets) for being unfaithful.  There are many, many followers of the prophets who continue to declare President Trump has won a second term and that God will accomplish a miraculous work just in time before the planned inauguration of President-elect Biden.  It is premature for an apology, they say.

The chat feeds are lively.  There are a few kind people trying to gently persuade these faithful Christians to consider their faith is misplaced, and others are straight up mocking them.  Needless to say, those committed to believing for a Trump victory are having none of it.  Many of their responses are quite angry, irrational and hostile, with common accusations against other Christians that they are working for Satan, by not standing with them for President Trump's victory.  Some of those engaged in conversation are confused and disillusioned, expressing dismay that God has not answered their prayers, wondering if God hears them, and some expressing that they’ve had it with Christianity, indicating they are walking away.

The majority of the prophets are "tripling down" seeing that they already doubled down after the election results came in.  They continue to assert it is God’s will that President Trump will serve a second term, and that in some miraculous way, President Trump will retain the presidency.  Several are utilizing sources of election misinformation popular among supporters of President Trump, repeating debunked allegations, and leveling criticism against the court system, and even Vice President Pence for being faithless.  Their tone of speaking has become more impassioned, and even angry. Several of these prophets got together on the Victory Channel’s Flashpoint program, a subsidiary of Kenneth Copeland Ministries for quite a show Thursday night (January 7th).  You really need to see it to believe it. Here is the link to the entire 90 minute video, although the links below it are bookmarked to specific timestamps of interest.

The host - a Pastor Gene Bailey of Eagle Mountain International Church (Kenneth Copeland's church) addressed the violence at the Capitol, alleging a conspiracy, and using among other questionable evidence, a cell phone video as proof of the conspiracy (even though the video was posted to Twitter on January 3rd, depicting an event taking place in Pennsylvania!). 

It’s worth the price of admission to watch the segment with Kat Kerr.

There’s been some interesting changes in these prophetic businesses in recent days and weeks.  Some have disabled the chat feeds on their Youtube videos - no doubt to the growing opposition posts that were occurring. Some have gone nearly completely, or nearly silent.  A couple (Hank Kunneman, in particular) have recently issued messages that true prophets can make incorrect prophecies from time to time. Hank Kunneman has also extended the timeline for his Trump victory prophecy, declaring that March 2021 will be a "March of celebration". One prophet (Dutch Sheets) who has tripled his Youtube subscribers over the past several months, began scheduling his live video streams for 2am every day.  I suspect this was due to the increasing number of chat feed arguments his new popularity was producing. A very popular prophetic news personality (Sid Roth) has recently announced a new paid-subscription Youtube channel (for members only). Here's his brief announcement video:

A reader may ask why am I referring to these individuals as God’s (false?) prophets.  Well, I guess I’m not at the point of 100% confidence they are indeed false prophets. Many other Christians clearly are asserting that they are. It’s hard for me as a trained scientist to declare 100% confidence in most things. We tend to hold tentative conclusions based on the best available evidence. My tentative conclusion is that these prophetic proclamations regarding the 2020 election results is wrong. But I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.

There is one prophet, Chuck Pierce who has specifically indicated that the election controversies will not be resolved until January 18th! And he declared this BEFORE the November 3rd election day. Here is a brief video of Chuck Pierce declaring this prophesy, posted by a Youtuber interested in prophetic voices. And if you've got 30 minutes to kill, you might find the entire segment of the Sid Roth broadcast where the Chuck Pierce prophesy was broadcast and discussed.

I'm looking forward to inauguration day to learn if we are all in for a big surprise. Well, I guess the faithful prophets and their subscribers would not be surprised, but most people would be!

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