(RNS) — As Donald Trump gets closer to the presidential election, the more he appears to be talking about America’s “final battle” against “sinister” and “dangerous” forces working to subvert the nation from within. This kind of language owes much to a certain set of ardent supporters who see the United States engaged in a spiritual battle, led by the well-marketed ideas of a charismatic Christian named Lance Wallnau.
The day in July when Donald Trump was shot in the ear by a 20-year-old would-be assassin in Butler, Pennsylvania, Wallnau, who lives in Texas, got a push alert on his phone. He didn’t turn on the news, but dropped what he was doing, he said, and went straight to his prayer closet, where he keeps a cardboard cutout image of Trump.
Recalling the moment for his million Facebook followers, Wallnau said that as he prayed, he cupped Trump’s cardboard ears with both hands — still not knowing, he claimed, where Trump had been wounded.
“Nothing but divine intervention can explain the nuances of what happened,” Wallnau said in his 32-minute account. “That’s how you know you’re praying, and the Holy Ghost makes sense.”
The moment for many Wallnau followers was an uncommon moment of vulnerability for Trump. For a decade, Wallnau, 68, has played a vital role in building the myth of Trump as a strongman anointed by God, the message of a loose but influential network of Christian leaders who call themselves the New Apostolic Reformation. The group is held together by its charismatic faith that God, in the Spirit, still speaks through modern-day apostles and prophets.
Trump, the thrice-married former reality TV star with a habit of dodging questions from reporters about the Bible, is not sold as a spiritual heir to the prophets, but as a modern-day King Cyrus, the Persian monarch who makes an appearance in the Bible as a liberator of the Israelites in exile. God works through Trump, the NAR leaders say, because the former president is powerful enough to rebuild his kingdom in America and in the world.
As much as he uses talk of the Spirit to build up, Wallnau can channel the Spirit to tear down. When Kamala Harris shot to the top of the 2024 Democratic ticket, he disparaged it as her representing “something which is an amalgam of the spirit of Jezebel in a way that will be even more ominous than Hillary (Clinton) because she’ll bring a racial component and she’s younger.” And he added, “This is going to be a real thing to rise above that. In the Spirit as a Christian I’m describing warfare on two levels.”
Wallnau’s credibility as a prophet stems mostly from his 2016 prediction that Trump would win the presidency — before Trump’s candidacy was taken particularly seriously. Wallnau has since helped direct support toward Trump from the charismatic sector of evangelical Christianity, which includes Pentecostalism. More influential still, he has fomented the spiritual frenzy of the broader MAGA movement.
In so doing, Wallnau has helped move NAR’s theological ideas from the fringes into the belly of the modern Christian right, where it has manifested as “Christian nationalism.” Matthew Taylor, senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore and author of “The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy,” compares Wallnau’s trajectory to those of Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Roger Stone.
“These are once-fringe figures who, a decade ago, you’d think were really out there,” said Taylor. “And through Trump, the fringe has become the carpet. Far-right ideologies that were seen as being anti-establishment are now the new establishment.”
Since the assassination attempt, that has become even more abundantly clear. Besides Trump, who claimed “God alone” saved his life, his supporters say the shots that killed a bystander and injured two others but only grazed Trump are further “proof” that Wallnau and other religious leaders have been right all along — that God is working through Trump.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump gestures as he is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, Saturday, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Wallnau grew up in Bucks County, the prosperously suburban region of eastern Pennsylvania near Princeton, New Jersey. His father, Carl Wallnau, a mechanical engineer, trumpet player, World War II Air Force major and, later, a cigar-chuffing oil executive and lawyer, had a Jewish father but raised his four children in the Episcopal Church to protect them from the prejudices of the time.
The Wallnaus were not particularly religious, according to Lance’s estranged brother, Kurt, 65, who is a principal engineer at the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute in Pittsburgh. But while at Valley Forge Military Academy and College in Pennsylvania, Lance was drawn to Christian fundamentalism. He then attended Lebanon Valley College, and after dropping out, he worked in marketing in a Fortune 500 oil company until the 1990s, when he moved to Rhode Island to start his own church.
But his congregation was stagnant, according to “Charismatic Revival Fury,” a six-part podcast written by Taylor, which traces NAR’s origins. By 2000, Wallnau had gotten onto the motivational speaking circuit and eventually founded several companies, some of which he still runs: the Lance Learning Group, 7M City Corporation, Ninja Sheep Marketing and Killer Sheep Media, a publishing company. Lance Learning Group sells media bundles with titles such as “Doing Business in the Supernatural” ($97), “Breaking Controlling Thought Patterns” ($127) and the “Celebrate America Bundle” ($97).
Wallnau’s spiritual exhortations retain a marketer’s buzz. His brother Kurt said he’d seen one video published a few years ago by extremism watchdog Right Wing Watch. “I thought it was a hoot,” said Kurt. “He was telling people that Christians had found a cure for diabetes, but they were withholding it. Strange stuff by my ear.”
Lance Wallnau in his studio in 2020. (Photo courtesy LanceWallnau.com)
Kurt sees his brother repurposing his marketing acumen to push charismatic Christianity instead of oil. “He’s a very persuasive person, and that’s how he makes a living. He’s a businessman, but he may be sincere, too; I don’t tend to question other people’s sincerity,” Kurt said, adding, “The things he traffics in, and deals, and sells to people—I don’t understand. It’s not my thing.”
While he and Lance had never been close — he doubted that either would attend the other’s funeral, he said — Kurt was surprised to learn about his brother’s influence in spreading Christian nationalism.
His rise to fame began in 2013, when he published, with Bill Johnson, “Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate.” The book built on Dominionist theology, which holds that nations should be governed by Christian-derived laws and Christians ought to dominate seven spheres of human endeavor — family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business and government — and free them from demonic influence.
At that time, C. Peter Wagner, an NAR thought leader, was strengthening his “spiritual oligarchy,” an elite network of apostles and prophets charged with waging spiritual warfare to ensure the return of Christ. Wagner glommed onto the 7 Mountain Mandate, calling it a “significant paradigm shift.”
Wallnau’s pivot to Christianity has paid off. Lance Wallnau Ministries, tax-exempt since 1998, reported revenue of just over $1 million and net assets of negative $66,849 in 2011, according to tax filings archived by ProPublica. By 2022, revenue was above $2.5 million, with net assets over $2.5 million. Lance and his wife Annabelle took a combined salary of $445,000 that year.
In 2007, according to public property records, Wallnau swapped out the 2,700-square-foot home he’d bought for $160,000 in 1994 in Johnston, Rhode Island, and purchased one twice as big for half a million dollars in Keller, Texas, recently ranked the 45th wealthiest city in America.
But it wasn’t until 2015, when Wallnau met Trump, that his empire truly took off. Trump had set out to court evangelical Christians from early in his presidential run. He contacted an old friend, televangelist Paula White, who organized a prayer session at Trump Tower in September 2015. Wallnau recalled in a lengthy post on his website how Trump had suggested that Christianity was under attack and asserted that Christians had “gotten soft in terms of taking your ground and holding it.”
“Donald Trump is more prophetic than people think,” Wallnau later wrote. “There is a Cyrus anointing on this man. He is like a Reformer in secular garb.” In his e-book “God’s Chaos Candidate,” Wallnau predicted Trump’s victory, one of three self-proclaimed prophets to do so.
Lance Wallnau, right, meets Donald Trump in 2015. (Photo courtesy LanceWallnau.com)
“I had the strangest sense that I was dealing with something different,” Wallnau told CBN News after Trump’s victory. “I was dealing with someone who wasn’t an evangelical Christian, who was anointed for an assignment, and I didn’t know what way to go with that. So I went home and all I heard the Lord say is Donald Trump is a wrecking ball to the spirit of political correctness.”
The NAR was still considered very fringe then, but the billionaire was willing to embody the theology as the GOP candidate. By March 2020, Denison University political scientist Paul Djupe found that almost half of white evangelicals who attended church regularly believed God meant Trump to be president, up from 30% the previous year.
Since Wallnau’s “prophecy” came true, his influence has only grown. “Ten years ago, I’d say (Wallnau) was too wacky for evangelicals,” said Taylor. “But he’s pulled mainstream evangelicals in his direction.”
Wallnau has become prolific on social media, sounding off on X, boosting predictions of other NAR prophets, going live on Facebook, cross-posting episodes of the “Lance Wallnau Show,” or uploading clips of his frequent appearances on Flashpoint, a prophecy commentary show. He has a frenetic rhetorical style, weaving through current affairs, prophesies and conspiracy theories at breakneck speed, adopting different voices, his gold wristwatch glinting as he points to diagrams on a white board.
Lance Wallnau in a promotional video for a Feb. 2024 FlashPoint LIVE event at Charis Bible College. (Video screen grab)
He kept up his teaching about Trump cosmology in the months before Americans went to the polls in November 2020, when Wallnau claimed that “fighting Trump is fighting with God.” When Joe Biden was declared the winner, Wallnau’s explanation was that demons had hijacked the election.
Using his vast media ecosystem, including FlashPoint, Wallnau was “one of the key Christian mobilizers for January 6th,” according to Taylor. Damon Beckley, who was later arrested for storming the Capitol, said in an affidavit that he and his wife were listening to the “Lance Wallnau prophecy program” on the night of Jan. 5 and claimed they only made the decision to travel to D.C. on Wallnau’s word that legitimate rally permits were in place.
Matthew D. Taylor. (Courtesy photo)
According to Taylor, after attending the Trump rally at the Ellipse, Wallnau walked across the National Mall to the U.S. Capitol and “observed the rioting for a while,” before returning to his room at the Trump International Hotel. “That evening he would participate in a special broadcast of FlashPoint, commenting on the events of the day and encouraging Christians to keep fighting,” said Taylor.
Some weeks before, at an event in Washington called “Let the Church ROAR,” Wallnau joined Alex Jones, Michael Flynn, Ali Alexander and other speakers across Christian denominations. In his speech he called for a “Christian populist uprising” to “see America Restored” and predicted that people would “come out of the shadows” to fight for Trump.
Wallnau and his allies are again laying the groundwork, via the language of demons and spiritual warfare, to discredit the results if Trump does not win, teaming up with MAGA-world personalities such as Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk and U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. He is doing what he can to make sure nothing of the sort happens. The “Courage Tour” is visiting 19 “bellwether counties” in nine states to break “demonic strongholds” and ensure victory for Trump. It features evangelical A-listers, NAR influencers, as well as former Oath Keeper and former Arizona State Representative Mark Finchem.
Wallnau has said that the tour is designed to train Christians to “occupy territory for the kingdom of God,” and, at a tour stop in Michigan, said, “One of the interesting things about the Courage Tour is that we’re unashamed about the role of the body of Christ in the affairs of planet Earth.”
Lance Wallnau, top center, during a Courage Tour event in Phoenix, Arizona, in April 2024. (Video screen grab)
Karrie Gaspard-Hogewood, a Ph.D. student at Tulane University who studies Christian nationalism, attended a Courage Tour event in Georgia earlier this year. She said the speakers were more diverse than the crowd of about 300 mostly white people in their 50s — a reflection of the NAR’s efforts to recruit pastors from minority groups, particularly Hispanics and African Americans.
“This was definitely an election mobilization effort, to mobilize churches and people in the community that would vote the way they want them to vote,” recalled Gaspard-Hogewood. “But it’s positioned within this larger eternal narrative, which is that this is a battle that’s been going on between good and evil for some time.”
Gaspard-Hogewood said speakers galvanized the crowd with much of the same fear mongering that Trump employs in campaign speeches. “There was a lot of arm-twisting; people were told, not only will you not have America anymore as you know it if you don’t act, but your kids won’t have it either,” Gaspard-Hogewood said.
Like his frequent collaborator Jones, Wallnau broadcasts an underlying paranoia. When he turns on the news, he’s said, he feels “slimed by the presence of demons.” It’s reminiscent of the rantings you might hear from Jones as he rails against the “Deep State” — a shadowy cabal of government operatives — as well as secret marxist agendas, false flags, mind control and more.
Wallnau, like Jones, has found a way to monetize his dark views. In July, he prophesied a “major economic upheaval” in the aftermath of the election. The parts of the U.S. that have “rejected God’s rule” would be hardest hit, while red states such as Texas and Oklahoma will function as “economic safe havens.” That’s why, Wallnau went on to say, it’s important to invest in gold, silver and other precious metals, and soon. He then provides a link to Birch Gold, a company that has forged partnerships with a number of right-wing influencers.
Lance Wallnau sells a gold coin featuring King Cyrus and President Trump on the Jim Bakker Show in May 2019. (Video screen grab)
To sustaining his various streams of popularity, prophecy and revenue, Wallnau must keep moving into different spheres — not the 7 Mountain Mandate, but deeper veins of radicalism.
“Charismatic spirituality is chaotically blending with QAnon and other conspiracy theories; militia groups are adopting charismatic practices and rhetoric of spiritual warfare (and) anti-government; and anti-vaxx sentiments are being pushed by charismatic preachers and prophets,” said Taylor.
If it just fed Wallnau’s personal agenda, as it has other prosperity preachers and charismatic Christian telemarketers, there would be little new or worrisome about Wallnau’s “potent and very volatile mix of radicalisms and detachments from reality,” Taylor continued. But “as we saw on January 6th, that mixture can break out in very dangerous real-world violence, and those conspiracy theories can be easily weaponized for political ends.”
(This story was reported with support from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation.)