While Ted Cruz had the backing of most Religious Right leaders in his now-suspended presidential campaign, Donald Trump has had his own amen corner among preachers of the God-wants-you-to-be-rich prosperity gospel, including a group who laid hands on him last fall. At that meeting, Florida-based prosperity preacher Paula White prayed that "any tongue that rises against him will be condemned according to the word of God.”
It’s not really surprising that preachers who tout wealth as a sign of God’s favor would line up with a blustery billionaire like Trump, who says his riches are proof that he’s qualified to fix what’s wrong with the country. What is a bit more surprising is the support Trump is getting from a leading advocate of Seven Mountains dominionism, which teaches that government and other spheres of influence — “mountains” like media, entertainment, business — are meant to be run by the right kind of Christians.
Lance Wallnau is an influential leader in the Seven Mountains movement. In 2011, he declared that it is the obligation of Christians to “seize those high places” in order to bring about the return of Jesus Christ — something he has said they should do by both “overt” and “covert” means. In 2012, he said that the mountains of government, media, and economics were currently occupied by Satan.
Wallnau has been pushing Trump for a while now. In November he declared that God has given Trump “an anointing for the mantle of government.” But why would someone who thinks Christians with a “biblical worldview” are supposed to be running the world throw his support to Trump rather than Ted Cruz or one of the other candidates who put their faith at the center of their campaigns?
Steve Strang, publisher of the Pentecostal Charisma Magazine, put that question to Wallnau in a recent podcast interview. Strang had been a Ted Cruz supporter, but after Cruz dropped out of the race he quickly declared that he has shifted his loyalty and support to Trump.
“When God wants to move in history, he doesn’t always pick the favorite evangelical,” said Wallnau. He said that God brought Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill to power at crucial moments in history, the way He is now raising up Trump for our time. And he knows this, Wallnau said, because God told him so.
In a video on his website, Wallnau praised Cruz as someone who “totally gets Seven Mountains” but said he doesn’t believe Cruz could win a general election. Anyway, he said, it’s better for Christians to have someone like Trump in power, because every failure of a President Cruz would be blamed on conservative Christians, something that won’t happen with Trump. And after all, having believers like Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush in office didn’t turn out so well.
Wallnau said God told him specifically that Trump is “a wrecking ball to the spirit of political correctness.” Wallnau has dedicated a section of his website to explaining why “Trump is the guy that God is going to use.”
I ran across a picture of Trump that said “Donald Trump 45th President of the United States.” Immediately the thought hit me “read Isaiah 45!” I was shocked by what I discovered. It’s about a king named Cyrus and he would not appear on the scene for another 100 years. Cyrus was a secular ruler. He was not a believer. He was “anointed” to do certain things “for Jacob my servants sake.”
Like King Cyrus, says Wallnau, Trump is a secular figure who God will use to get things done. And, he told Strang, he told Trump all about the Cyrus prophecy when he met with a group of African American ministers last year.
Wallnau calls Trump a “chaos candidate,” someone who is unconventional enough to push back hard against a radical left that is transforming America into “an increasingly hostile anti-Christian culture.” And Hillary Clinton, he told Strang, is helping take America down the road that Messianic rabbi Jonathan Cahn, author of the end-times bestseller “The Harbinger,” is predicting. Wallnau told Strang:
Hillary Clinton is part of a machine that is taking America socially, spiritually, and economically into everything the Harbinger talks about…the Harbinger has Hillary on it. That’s why I was thinking, I want to do an article called, ‘Lead us not into Trumptation but deliver us from Hillary.’ Because Hillary Clinton is not an individual, she is a machine with an entire ideologic [sic] agenda that goes all the way to the most ghastly interests you can imagine in terms of the survival of Christian civilization.
Trump, warned Wallnau, will not make it without evangelical support, adding, “may we not be the saboteurs of our own deliverance.” Cruz supporters, he said, will have to look at the bigger picture. Cruz, he said, still has an important role to play in history, maybe as a running mate or Supreme Court justice.
As Kyle reported in April, Wallnau is part of the Trump campaign’s “National Diversity Coalition.” He is also a board member of the Oak Initiative, whose bio of him starts, “Dr. Lance Wallnau has been described by People For the American Way as the hidden architect behind the increasingly viral and politically potent seven mountain template for cultural impact.” Wallnau has said that Right Wing Watch is part of a coalition controlled by a secret cabal of funders who are behind the climate change movement and Black Lives Matter.
Wallnau has a history of saying rather unusual things. Three years ago he said God was giving a diabetes cure to Christians, but that they wouldn’t share it with the general public, only with Kingdom-minded believers who would give it to Chinese Communist Party leaders in order to help spread the Gospel in that country. China? Better not tell Trump.
