On the day before the start of “Revolution 2018,” the Museum of the Bible abruptly refused to host the gathering. Right Wing Watch reported on the gathering and its hosts on Monday; on Wednesday, according to Religion News Service, the Museum of the Bible decided, “under pressure” from some members of its own advisory board, not to allow Lamplighter Ministries to hold its gathering at the museum. Museum staff helped the group scramble to make a last-minute move to the Trump International Hotel.
Lamplighter’s Jon Hamill, a self-styled spiritual Paul Revere, had plugged Revolution 2018 during the dominionist Rise Up 2018 gathering at Harry Jackson’s church the day before the election.
According to the Religion News Service’s Yonat Shimron, “a group of biblical scholars, including some members of the museum’s own advisory board, objected strongly to the gathering, saying it betrayed the values the museum says it wants to uphold, including being open to people of all religious faiths.”
It’s not entirely clear what kind of unwritten line Revolution 2018 crossed, given that the Museum of the Bible has hosted events for all kinds of Religious Right groups. In fact, Lamplighter Ministries held Revolution 2017 at the museum last year.
But as Revolution 2018 got under way at Trump International Hotel on Thursday, organizers weren’t looking backward. In fact, several speakers at the afternoon and evening sessions said that the move to the Trump hotel was the fulfillment of prophecy, something orchestrated by God as part of his unfolding plan to bring transformation to the United States.
“We thought we were going to be in the Museum of the Bible tonight launching Revolution. But God had other plans,” Hamill told attendees. “Can we thank God to celebrate freedom in the Trump International Hotel? We are getting back on track! This train has come into station! We are now in the turnaround that God has prophesied, and we are setting a new course, a new way forward for this nation.”
Hamill said the group had made a “hard right turn” that a friend dreamed about last week. And he said that the turnaround people had been expecting on Election Day, a new direction in “governmental anointing,” would instead be coming during Revolution 2018, which was scheduled to coincide with Hanukkah.
During the afternoon, the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Jay Comiskey drew spiritual significance from the fact that a prophetic “Turnaround” gathering took place at the same Trump hotel in February, just after evangelist Billy Graham’s death, and that this week’s event followed the national memorial service for former President George H.W. Bush. The earlier gathering included prayers that God would create new Supreme Court vacancies for Trump to fill. Comiskey declared that God is on task:
Great men and women are going home to be with their reward, and God has his eye on the Supreme Court. Watch out! God is shaking Washington, D.C. and power structures are going down in the Supreme Court, and God has already picked out his next Supreme Court justice.”
Chuck Pierce, one of the big draws at the February “Turnaround” event, was Thursday night’s keynote speaker. He said that God “orchestrated” the group’s shift to the Trump hotel because it was “important to come back and be here and to keep this portal open under this covering.” According to Pierce, we are entering a period of intense spiritual conflict, not just against demonic strongholds, but “demonic confederacies” that need to be “dethroned” all over the U.S. He said the recent earthquake in Alaska was a sign of the “shaking” that America will experience this year because heaven is “penetrating” the earth.
Revolution 2018 will continue all day Friday and Saturday at Trump International Hotel.
