I’m starting to think my American Pentecostal-charismatic brethren have completely lost it. Our movement was birthed among the poor in Los Angeles in 1906 when the Holy Spirit visited a tiny gathering of what a local newspaper derided as “Negro washerwomen.”
Led by a one-eyed Black preacher named William J. Seymour, the little church that came to be known as the Azusa Street Mission erupted into a worldwide movement that now counts more than 600 million adherents.
Seymour was a follower of Jesus Christ such as we seldom see today. He had no interest in praise from men, and to keep himself from becoming the center of attention in this historic move of God marked by supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit, salvation, and racial reconciliation, Seymour would sometimes preach with his face concealed in a shoebox.
In those early days of the Pentecostal revival, prominent white preachers would show up to sightsee, and some would fall flat on their faces on the dusty floor, repenting of their ego and pride, so great was the weight of Holy Ghost conviction.
So here we are in the Year of Our Lord 2020, and I find myself at another am-I-crazy-or-is-everyone-else moment. I received an excerpt from a bizarre document written by Dutch Sheets, a respected charismatic author and teacher, titled “An Appeal to the Supreme Court of Heaven.” It is a call to prayer to get President Donald Trump back into office for a second term through prophetic manipulation of the Electoral College.
Now Sheets, former executive director of Dallas’ Christ for the Nations Institute, isn’t the only prominent charismatic figure sending out stuff like this. I wrote my last post, Time to Exit the Cult of Trump, after receiving a November 17 email from Gateway Church’s Pastor Robert Morris that sounded similar themes. Morris, one of Trump’s evangelical advisors, signaled a plan to finagle a Trump victory in the Electoral College on December 14 through prayer.
What is so alarming about Sheets’ words is how he instructs readers to repent for “Shedding First Nation Blood” (Native Americans) and “Shedding of Innocent African Nations’ Blood” (African-Americans)—as a bargaining chip in the “Supreme Court of Heaven” to get Trump back in office!
Do I laugh, do I cry, or do I grab a hand-scrawled picket sign and plastic shofar and show up at the door of my local charismatic megachurch? This is such an astonishing blast of hypocrisy that words fail me.
So…after decades of inaction, gaslighting, and outright obstruction concerning our national sin of racism, my white charismatic brothers are now prostrating themselves in repentance—but only to get their way. To maneuver their idol back into the White House. Because I’ve never heard of any concerted effort from Dutch Sheets or his cohort of white prophets to address racial injustice in our nation.
Please, if I’m in error, prove me wrong. And mere talk doesn’t count. Repentance always produces fruit.
Can we please stop this insanity and acknowledge that God simply did not choose Donald Trump this time?
I do understand that many of my Christian friends sincerely believed that Trump was America’s best choice to reclaim Christian values. I’d like to believe that they don’t have the proximity to African-American Christians that would show them any other perspective.
All of my Pentecostal-charismatic friends, whether Black, white, or brown, desire revival in this country. We want to see another great move of God. But there was no chance of revival until voters got our president’s knee off the neck of Black Americans.
Now that they can breathe, perhaps God will visit us again, like he did when the color line was washed away in the blood of Jesus Christ at Azusa Street.
