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Sorry to Break the News, but There Is No Middle Ground

I’ve been thinking about how to write this post for days. On October 20, I had the most horrifying prophetic dream I’ve ever had, and it concerned former President Donald Trump and his Christian followers. I am certain the dream was an urgent warning from God. But I also know that many of my readers come from traditions that dismiss or at least downplay the possibility of God speaking to us through dreams. I get that. That is why I am going to write this post from two angles: What I see and hear with my natural eyes and ears,

The Terrorists Are in the House

You might have noticed that I have been quiet for several months, and that was not entirely intentional. I’ve had a heavy workload with seminary and freelance assignments and just couldn’t locate time to write outside of that. (Those first few weeks of Hebrew—whew.) I also felt a need to step back and regroup. Watching The New York Times’ outstanding documentary on the Kyle Rittenhouse killings in Kenosha, Wisconsin, reminded me of something the Lord showed me in a dream exactly one week after the Capitol Riot. The gist of it was this: The terrorists are in the house. I

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Derek Chauvin’s Eyes

Derek Chauvin’s eyes flashed, cutting through the judge’s bland intonation of guilty…guilty…guilty. That moment in a Minneapolis courtroom on April 20 signaled what I believe to be a historic shift: Twelve ordinary Americans—six people of color, six white—reached unanimous agreement about what they saw in the killing of George Floyd. They called it murder. These everyday folks, with a decidedly mixed bag of preconceptions about race, were able to process two weeks of testimony from 45 witnesses, reason together face to face, and arrive at the same conclusion. This happened in a nation with a history of aggressively denying the

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The Trump Prophets Repent, All Hell Breaks Loose

The day after the Capitol riot, a prominent charismatic prophet named Jeremiah Johnson repented for prophesying that President Donald Trump would be re-elected in 2020. The response was immediate and devastating, according to a Facebook post from Johnson: “Over the last 72 hours, I have received multiple death threats and thousands upon thousands of emails from Christians saying the nastiest and most vulgar things I have ever heard toward my family and ministry. I have been labeled a coward, sellout, a traitor to the Holy Spirit, and cussed out at least 500 times. We have lost ministry partners every hour

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Repentance Is Not a Bargaining Chip

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

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Time to Exit the Cult of Trump

Here is the good news: God is moving in people’s hearts. I have personally witnessed and heard of many people who’ve repented of their involvement in our national sin of racism. These weren’t folks who climbed on a stage to make some big public pronouncement, just everyday Christians who humbled their hearts and were moved by the Holy Spirit to confess their sins one to another. I hope this is an encouragement to the African-American Christians who’ve cried out to the Lord for justice for many years and have seen so little fruit. I pray it is also a salve

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The Ginormous Blind Spot

A pastor friend of mine in Africa sent me yet another Trump prophecy video and asked what I thought. These videos really get around! This particular prophet promised a flood, fire, and lots of other bad stuff if we don’t re-elect Donald Trump as president today. Add this to the asteroid Pat Robertson prophesied even if we do re-elect Trump. Hey, why not just give up now? Surveying all of the Trump prophecy videos and articles I’ve read in the past four years, I ended up with one burning question: Where are the Black prophets? How come they’re not getting

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Beware the Prophets of Fear

Not too long ago, I was an avid reader of Charisma magazine, the voice of the Pentecostal-charismatic churches. I loved columnist J. Lee Grady, who was editor for many years and served as the conscience of my high-risk, high-reward Christian faith tradition. Take a look today, though, and here’s what you might see: A Biden win will signal the end of America as we know it. My question: Is that a bad thing? There are quite a few things I’d love to see the end of in the America I know. I’d be happy to see the end of economic

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Revisiting the Trump Prophecies

One of the more remarkable aspects of Donald Trump’s rise to the presidency is that at least two prominent Pentecostal-charismatic ministers publicly foretold it. Another individual, a retired fireman, also prophesied that Trump would become president, and his “word” circulated widely in Pentecostal circles. Since that time, we’ve seen many leading Pentecostal-charismatic figures become deeply entwined in Trump’s presidency. Preacher, pastor, and author Paula White; Robert Morris, pastor of Gateway Church, the biggest Pentecostal-charismatic church in the Dallas-Fort Worth area; Cindy Jacobs, who leads a Red Oak, Texas-based prophetic ministry with an international profile; and Lance Wallnau, a Dallas-based author

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Get Off the Fence

I was in the beautiful Northwoods of Wisconsin in July 2019, spending time with my family. I could tell you all about the crystal-clear lake, the dozens of whitetail deer, and the bald eagle perched in the tallest tree—oh, and the German food. But that isn’t my point. Before I drove to Wisconsin, I turned in a cover story to the Dallas Observer about a Christian racial reconciliation conference that had crashed and burned. The two white leaders of Sparrow Women had a mess on their hands, but they refused to discuss it publicly. Now a good journalist tries to

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