Former Alaska governor and failed vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin told New Apostolic Reformation leader Ché Ahn last week that she would run for the U.S. Senate if God wants her to. Palin appeared with Ahn at a leadership conference cosponsored by Ahn’s Harvest International Ministry and Mario Bramnick’s Latino Coalition for Israel. “Prophet” Cindy Jacobs prayed over Palin and declared that God is raising up an army of pastors and intercessors that will take her “all the way to the top" when she takes her next "big step.” Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke to the same gathering.
In January, on the eve of the Capitol insurrection, Ahn appeared at a so-called Stop the Steal rally in Washington D.C., where he declared, “I believe that this week we’re going to throw Jezebel out and Jehu’s gonna rise up, and we’re gonna rule and reign through President Trump and under the lordship of Jesus Christ.”
In an on-stage interview with Ahn on July 22, Palin declared that “America was dedicated to God,” adding that “our charters of liberty are written about and to God.” She warned that a “rapid shift to the left” happening now would lead to the destruction of the country if pastors are not bolder. “How dare we strip from our Creator what our founders had dedicated to him?” she asked. “How dare you try to take that back and change if for mankind, for some kind of secular use, secular enjoyment?”
She returned to the theme later in the interview. “Are we gonna let them fundamentally transform the nation that does belong to God?” she asked. “How dare we take from God what is his and say we’re going to do what we want to do with it?”
Ahn asked Palin if she would consider running for U.S. Senate from Alaska; she said she would have to pray about it, suggesting that it would be a big sacrifice to leave her home in “God’s country” for the hostile “bubble” of Washington, D.C. “If God wants me to do it, I will,” she said. But, she added, Christians would have to do a better job supporting her than they did during her run for the White House.
Palin praised Ahn, who resisted pandemic-related restrictions on church gatherings and, with the help of religious-right legal group Liberty Counsel, won a victory at the Supreme Court. Sounding an alarm about what she claimed was a threat of “potentially forced immunizations,” Palin urged conference attendees to be actively engaged in politics and to “infiltrate” and “influence” the culture.
“We’ve got to get out there,” she urged. “We have to be the ones shaking it up. And essentially, yeah, taking over. Otherwise, what was given to God will be taken away from God.”
After Palin’s interview with Ahn, “prophet” Cindy Jacobs, another leader in the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation, prayed for Palin. Jacobs said that when Palin ran for vice president, the church did not do what it should have to stand with her, telling Palin that things are different now. Here’s an excerpt of Jacobs’ prayer:
But the Lord says, ‘Daughter, I am raising up an army of intercessors, and I am raising up an army of pastors and leaders that are coming around you.’ And the Lord said, ‘When I have you take the big steps, the biggest steps,’ the Lord said, ‘You're going to see a wave of the Holy Spirit hit, and it's gonna hit the church.’ And the Lord says, ‘When this revival comes to this nation, and as it is coming, now, it will come with a reformation.’ And the Lord says, ‘I have created you for that moment in time.’ And the Lord says, ‘You will see what I will do in that moment of time.’ So the Lord says, ‘I have it mapped out, and I have your way mapped out.’ And the Lord says, ‘Just like each time before you knew at that moment, you're gonna know again. You're gonna know in your knower, and when you know in your knower, you’re going to go all the way to the top.”
Last fall, Ahn appeared at the pro-Trump religious-right rally dubbed “The Return.” In October, he called the presidential election a “battle…for the soul of America” and announced that he had launched 1RACE4LIFE, a group designed to “united all races and cultures within the Body of Christ” to bring about “the end of abortion on a local, state, and national level,” “defend biblical family values in our homeland,” and “partner with heaven’s agenda to bring reformation to society and revival to our land.”
The New Apostolic Reformation is not an organization; it is a movement or network of dominionist Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians who believe that God has given modern-day apostles and prophets the same powers as those given to biblical figures, and believe that their mission is to transform the church and whole countries in preparation for the return and reign of Jesus Christ.
In addition to Ahn and his wife Sue Ahn, the group’s advisory board includes Jacobs and her husband Mike, Bethel Church pastor Bill Johnson, Latino evangelical leader Samuel Rodriguez, increasingly far-right pundit Eric Metaxas, Trump-supporting “prophetic” author Lance Wallnau, Jim and Rosemary Garlow, California Republican state Sen. Shannon Grove, actress and “influencer” Marlyne Barrett, author and publisher Larry Sparks, Harvest International Ministry Vice President Mary Quach, Oregon law enforcement officer Derrick Peterson, and Tegra and Marc Little, who run No Longer Bound, a ministry for “women and men who have been emotionally wounded by abortion and/or miscarriage.”
