A rebuke and a plea for repentance addressed to the Ecclesiastical Politically Active Republicans who mistook political power for God's power. I have repeatedly warned about this in my journal, my writings, and my public commentary. What?
HUBRIS!
PRIDE!
ARROGANCE!
THE INTOXICATION OF POWER! POLITICS OVER THE GOSPEL!
And above all, the dangerous deception that President Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party somehow represent God’s solution to America’s spiritual condition. They do not.
President Donald Trump is not and was not America’s messiah. The Republican Party is not the Kingdom of God, and the White House is not the throne room of Heaven. Yet an entire ecclesiastical political movement has spent years blurring those distinctions, elevating a political leader to messianic status while proclaiming a national revival tied to Republican success. I call them the ECCLESIASTICAL POLITICALLY ACTIVE REPUBLICANS and the PHOTO-OP PROPHETS.
THE NEBUCHADNEZZAR PARALLEL: PRIDE BEFORE THE FALL
In July 2025, I published Golden Parallels Between Nebuchadnezzar and Trump: The Perils of Pride and Hubris. Nebuchadnezzar built a golden image and demanded reverence. He gloried in his power and accomplishments, looking upon Babylon and crediting his own greatness. Then came the humiliation. Daniel 4 records what happens when a ruler exalts himself until he learns that Heaven, not man, ultimately rules. God resists the proud. Human power is temporary. No ruler is beyond accountability.
Trump’s fascination with gold, his proclamations of a new Golden Age, and the reverence some followers show invite an uncomfortable biblical comparison. I am not claiming that Trump is Nebuchadnezzar or that God has pronounced an identical judgment. I am saying that Scripture’s warning against pride applies to any political leader—and especially to those who claim divine favor. Pride goes before destruction. — Proverbs 16:18.
SPECTACLE, LOYALISTS, AND THE PERILOUS IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY
An administration can generate enormous publicity—through executive orders, elaborate signing ceremonies, press conferences, social-media celebrations, and White House photographs treated as trophies of spiritual influence—without delivering lasting institutional reform.
The same pattern has defined Republican congressional majorities for more than a decade. As I wrote in The Republican Clown Car Road Show: A Decade of Hearings, Histrionics, and Hot Air, their control has often resembled a traveling road show—big on spectacle, short on substance. From Darrell Issa’s IRS and Fast and Furious probes, which produced fiery headlines and little else, to Trey Gowdy’s multi-million-dollar Benghazi committee, which grilled for hours and found no wrongdoing, to the Weaponization Committee under Jim Jordan, which subpoenaed and sputtered without systemic reform, the pattern has been consistent: clowns juggling headlines while the car spins its wheels.
These hearings feed the outrage machine and the cable-news circuit, generating soundbites. They rarely produce convictions, durable statutory changes, or accountability that survives the next administration.
Governing by executive order alone deepens the problem. In The Perilous Imperial Presidency: A Bomb with a Lit Fuse, I warned that the presidency has become a loaded weapon. Executive orders allow presidents to bypass Congress, stretch constitutional limits, and turn temporary power into a tool for political vengeance. History shows the danger: Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, FDR’s internment of Japanese Americans, and post-9/11 expansions of surveillance and detention. Trump’s first term issued hundreds of such orders; his second has accelerated the pattern. The 2024 Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. United States only loaded the gun further. What one administration does with executive power, the next can reverse—or weaponize against its opponents. Congress has largely abdicated its role. The result is not durable reform. It is a bomb with a lit fuse.
The same hubris appears in candidate selection. Trump sought a primary challenger to Thomas Massie, a consistent voice for limited government and constitutional fidelity. As I noted in Obituary: The Constitutional Republic of the United States of America, Massie’s defeat became a poignant symptom of deeper rot: independence treated as a liability, short-term tribal victory prioritized over long-term republican health. The same pattern emerged in elevating flawed loyalists—Ken Paxton over John Cornyn in Texas, and the ongoing embrace of figures like Lindsey Graham and his sister Darlene Graham in South Carolina—candidates repeatedly repudiated or constrained by voters who wanted competence and integrity over personal loyalty. When the standard becomes “loyal to me” rather than capable, character-driven, and constitutionally faithful, the results speak for themselves.
Destroying parts of the 2024 presidential election-winning coalition was more of the same. As I argued in Trump’s Team of Rivals: Why He Needs Musk’s Genius Despite Their Fallout, alienating Elon Musk, undercutting DOGE’s disruptive energy, and sidelining MAHA voices and independents who helped deliver the 2024 victory reflected ego rather than capability. Lincoln and Churchill governed with rivals because crises demand expertise, not yes-men. Prioritizing loyalty over competence invites groupthink and weakens the very coalition that produced the majority. That is not strength. That is hubris.
JUSTICE FOR ME (TRUMP), BUT NOT FOR THEE
The issue has never been whether Trump or congressional Republicans can command attention. The issue is whether lasting justice is achieved. Trump made retribution and vengeance against his personal enemies central to his political identity. There is a vast difference between seeking accountability for genuine misconduct and concentrating governmental power to settle personal scores.
What about those still waiting for justice? Intelligence and FBI whistleblowers whose careers and livelihoods were destroyed? Victims of government weaponization? Military personnel harmed by COVID-19 policies? Individuals affected by January 6 prosecutions who maintain their rights were violated? Under President Trump, it has been “Justice for me, but not for thee.”
Limited clemency and reinstatement processes matter where they have occurred. But clemency is not institutional reform. Eligibility for reinstatement is not the same as making the injured whole. Compensation, record corrections, independent investigations, and remedies for those denied due process remain largely absent. Justice must be more than an executive signature, a television announcement, or another round of hearings that ends in a press conference.
I spent more than eighteen years in the Intelligence Community, including service as an Inspector in the Office of the Inspector General for the Intelligence Community. I became a whistleblower and documented the retaliation, failed oversight, and denied remedies in The Broken Whistle. I have supported accountability for wrongdoing directed against Trump while also demanding it for wrongdoing directed against people like me. That is not a contradiction. That is equal justice. Justice that depends on which political side you are on is not equal justice.
FAILURE OF DHS ICE OPERATIONS AND THE ALIENATION OF LATINO AND MINORITY VOTERS
The same pattern of selective power has appeared in immigration enforcement. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been weaponized in ways that violate the rights of legal permanent residents, individuals with Temporary Protected Status (TPS), and others lawfully present. Enforcement actions have targeted people with protected status, disrupted due process, and treated lawful presence as disposable when it served political or administrative ends. What was sold as restoring order has too often functioned as another instrument of raw power, punishing categories of people while leaving deeper institutional failures unaddressed.
This is not equal justice under the law. It is the further expansion of an imperial executive that treats rights as optional when they conflict with the moment’s priorities. Legal permanent residents and TPS holders do not forfeit lawful protections because an administration prefers spectacle or speed over restraint. When immigration enforcement becomes another tool for retribution or political signaling rather than lawful, even-handed application of the rules, it compounds the very problem already named: power exercised without accountability, and justice that depends on whose side you are on.
The political cost has been immediate and severe. Aggressive ICE operations that swept up legal permanent residents, TPS holders, and mixed-status families alienated Latino voters and other minorities who had shifted toward Trump in 2024. Exit-poll data from the 2026 midterms show the reversal: Latino men, who moved R+33 from 2020 to 2024, swung back D+24; Latinos overall moved from R+27 to D+20; Catholics and other groups followed. The result was a blue tsunami, most dramatically in Texas, where the backlash handed over both the Senate and gubernatorial races. What was framed as strength produced a seismic electoral repudiation among the very voters whose support had been treated as disposable. That is the fruit of hubris, enforcement as spectacle, and vengeance rather than disciplined, rights-respecting governance.
THE IRAN WAR: BROKEN PROMISES, STRATEGIC FAILURE, AND ECONOMIC DEVASTATION!
And then came Iran! Donald Trump campaigned as the president who would end wars, not start new ones. He promised peace, criticized America's endless foreign entanglements, and presented himself as the leader who could restore stability without dragging the nation into another Middle Eastern conflict. Yet on February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched military operations against Iran. What followed exposed the enormous difference between military superiority and strategic success.
WHERE WAS THE STRATEGY? WHERE WAS THE ENDGAME? AND WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PROMISE OF NO NEW WARS?
As a former CIA intelligence and operations officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, I understand the distinction between tactical accomplishments and strategic victory. Destroying targets, eliminating commanders, and demonstrating overwhelming military force do not necessarily achieve lasting political objectives.
And the consequences extended far beyond the battlefield. The disruption of oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz sent energy prices soaring. Gasoline prices surged. Diesel prices reached record levels. The resulting pressure spread through trucking, agriculture, manufacturing, and distribution networks, increasing costs for businesses and consumers.
DIESEL IS NOT JUST ANOTHER FUEL. IT IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF THE AMERICAN SUPPLY CHAIN!
When diesel prices soar, the cost of moving food, agricultural products, construction materials, and virtually every other essential commodity comes under pressure. Those costs ultimately reach American families already struggling with affordability.
The president who promised to end wars instead found himself defending another costly conflict, while Americans confronted the economic consequences at the gasoline pump, in transportation costs, and throughout the supply chain.
In June, Trump disputed that he had guaranteed there would be no new wars. But his campaign rhetoric had unmistakably encouraged Americans to expect a presidency focused on ending foreign conflicts rather than initiating another one. By September, the Iran war had entered its seventh month, and Trump was predicting that it would end after the midterm elections.
THE PROMISE WAS PEACE. THE REALITY WAS WAR, ECONOMIC DISRUPTION, AND AN UNCERTAIN ENDGAME.
The strategic question is not whether American forces can destroy Iranian military targets. Of course they can. The question is whether military action can produce the promised political outcome at a cost the American people and America's allies can sustain. Once again, the biblical warning against hubris demands consideration.
MILITARY SUPERIORITY IS NOT STRATEGIC VICTORY!
POLITICAL BRAVADO IS NOT A WAR TERMINATION STRATEGY!
AND THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF WAR CANNOT BE ERASED WITH ANOTHER PRESS CONFERENCE OR PHOTO OP!
THE BOOMER ECHO CHAMBER
To those Baby Boomers enclosed in an endless political echo chamber where every Trump announcement is celebrated and every criticism is dismissed as betrayal: consider what unquestioning loyalty does to judgment. I am not condemning an entire generation. I am confronting a mindset that refuses to examine evidence when it threatens a favored figure.
Every executive order becomes a triumph. Every press conference a victory. Every photograph evidence of success. Every critic an enemy. Every setback requires an explanation that preserves the image of an infallible leader. That is an echo chamber, not discernment.
A citizen may support Trump and still demand accountability. A Christian may vote Republican and still refuse political idolatry. A genuine follower of Jesus Christ must never surrender Scripture's authority to a president’s personality.
TO THE WHITE HOUSE PHOTO-OP PROPHETS PROCLAIMING REVIVAL
Now the more serious matter—not President Trump, but THE CHURCH. To those claiming prophetic authority while tying America’s spiritual awakening to Trump, MAGA, Republican victories, or White House access: read Ezekiel 13 and Jeremiah 23. Ezekiel condemned prophets who spoke from their own hearts rather than from God. Jeremiah warned against those who offered assurances of peace and divine approval without faithfully speaking God’s Word.
Who authorized you to treat political victory as proof of revival? Who authorized you to treat a presidential administration as the instrument of America’s spiritual salvation? Who authorized you to replace the proclamation of Christ crucified with endless political prognostication?
Political enthusiasm is not repentance. An election victory is not regeneration. A Republican majority is not the Kingdom of God. A White House prayer meeting is not proof of national revival.
To those who have proclaimed political deliverance while neglecting the Scriptural Gospel of Jesus Christ:
EAT IT!
CHEW IT!
SWALLOW IT!
LET IT BE A LAXATIVE THAT PURGES THE DECEPTION, PRIDE, AND POLITICAL IDOLATRY FROM YOUR HEART!
Enough of the religious theater. Enough of the prophecies dressed in partisan garb. Enough of the deception that replaces the PREEMINENCE OF JESUS CHRIST with the prominence of politicians. Galatians 1:6–10 warns against perverting the Gospel. The Gospel is not Jesus plus MAGA, Jesus plus Republicanism, or Jesus plus political dominion.
Ezekiel 22:25–28 describes corrupt prophets, priests, princes, and rulers working together. “Her prophets plastered them with untempered mortar, seeing false visions, and divining lies for them, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD,’ when the LORD had not spoken” (Ezekiel 22:28). The rulers practiced injustice while false prophets provided spiritual cover.
That is the pattern. The White House Photo-Op Prophets have repeatedly supplied spiritual language and public cover for President Trump’s pride, enabling and empowering the very hubris that has marked this administration. When prophets plaster over arrogance, spectacle, and the absence of lasting justice with declarations of revival and divine favor, they do not serve the Church. They do a great disservice to President Trump. And they serve deception.
By refusing to speak truth to power and instead offering spiritual validation for pride, they have left him without the very correction that might have restrained him. That failure is theirs. Trump needs to fire every Photo-Op White House faith leader and hire Nathans—men and women who will speak the truth to him at all times, whether he wants to hear it or not. Anything less is more flattery, more plaster, and more of the same destructive hubris.
WHEN CHRISTIAN ACTIVISM BECOMES A DEFENSE OF WAR
The Iran war also exposed a troubling intersection of political activism, religious authority, and military power. Prominent Christian leaders, including Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Tony Perkins, Ralph Reed, and Christians United For Israel, publicly defended the military campaign, some invoking biblical narratives, spiritual warfare, or just-war arguments. But Christians must ask a question that political enthusiasm cannot answer: DOES SUPPORTING A PRESIDENT'S MILITARY DECISION GIVE ANYONE AUTHORITY TO DECLARE THAT GOD ENDORSES IT? PARTICULARLY WHEN THE PRESIDENT BROKE HIS PROMISES TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE?
Praying for the president, protecting American service members, defending innocent lives, and recognizing genuine security threats are legitimate concerns. They are not the same as transforming a contested military operation into a divinely sanctioned mission. Scripture requires discernment, humility, truthfulness, and accountability—especially when human lives are at stake. The Church must never confuse loyalty to a commander-in-chief with obedience to Jesus Christ.
WHERE WE HAVE ALL MISSED IT: THREE STRIKES—AND THE CHURCH STILL HAS NOT LEARNED—THE GOSPEL IS JESUS CHRIST—CRUCIFIED, BURIED, RISEN, AND LORD OF ALL!
In August 2026 I published The American Church: Three Strikes and You Are Out. The warnings were clear. The response was not.
STRIKE ONE — ORAL ROBERTS, 2004: “THE CHURCH MUST WAKE UP!”
On September 27, 2004, Oral Roberts recounted a visitation from Jesus Christ. The message was clear: the Church had drifted from the Great Commission. It needed to recover spiritual fire, the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and the urgent proclamation of Jesus Christ. Entertainment, celebrity Christianity, and political obsession were crowding out the Gospel. Roberts’s call was simple and direct: Wake up. Preach the Gospel. The Church largely slept on.
STRIKE TWO — RODNEY HOWARD-BROWNE, 2011: “THERE IS NO POLITICAL SOLUTION FOR AMERICA!”
On May 16, 2011, during The Great Awakening — Night 135, Rodney Howard-Browne declared without qualification: “There is no political solution for America.” Not a better politician. Not a stronger coalition. Not another election. None of them can make a dead spirit alive. Only Jesus Christ can do that. Political participation is legitimate. Substituting politics for the Gospel is fatal. The Church heard it—and kept pouring its energy, money, and prophetic fervor into electoral warfare.
STRIKE THREE — REINHARD BONNKE, 2013–2016: “AMERICA SHALL BE SAVED! GO PREACH THE GOSPEL!”
Reinhard Bonnke came to America proclaiming that America would be saved through the preaching of Jesus Christ. He called the Church to mobilize for repentance, the Gospel, and the power of the Holy Spirit—not for political strategies. I personally witnessed those efforts. Many evangelical leaders who could fill arenas for candidates and fundraisers showed little enthusiasm for mobilizing behind Bonnke’s Gospel campaigns. Then Donald Trump entered the political arena. The same leaders discovered urgency, resources, and prophetic enthusiasm. Political rallies attracted religious celebrities. White House access became a trophy. Electoral victories were proclaimed as divine favor. The biblical commission to preach Christ competed with the political agenda for the attention of American Christians. Politics Trumped the Gospel. They failed to rally for Bonnke. They did not fail to rally for Trump.
The record confirms the pattern. In Electoral Triumph, Spiritual Decline: The Paradox of Evangelical Political Power, I traced four decades of evangelical political muscle—from the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition to Project 2025 and the overturning of Roe. Roughly 80 percent of white evangelicals fueled major Republican gains. Policy wins accumulated. Yet church attendance collapsed. The religiously unaffiliated “nones” rose to about 28 percent. White evangelicals fell to roughly 14 percent. As one voice observed: “America didn’t lose its way at the polls. It lost its way when it turned from God and crowned politics as ultimate.”
We learned to win elections while losing generations. We treated spiritual problems as if they could be solved politically. They cannot. Political activism alone will neither save America nor usher in a Great Awakening. Only the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ can do that.
THE CHURCH LEARNED HOW TO MOBILIZE VOTERS WHILE NEGLECTING ITS MISSION TO MAKE DISCIPLES. The Gospel was never a campaign strategy. Jesus never commanded His disciples to seize Caesar’s throne. Three times—before Pilate, on the Emmaus road, and at the Ascension—He pointed them beyond politics to the Cross, to repentance, and to Spirit-empowered Gospel preaching. He commanded them to proclaim repentance and remission of sins in His name to every nation. Three strikes. Three clear warnings. One unheeded call: return to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
WHAT NOW? WHAT MUST WE DO? WHAT IS THE FATHER SAYING? A PLEA FOR REPENTANCE AND COURSE CORRECTION
The question missing from so much modern political prophecy is this: WHAT HAS GOD THE FATHER ACTUALLY SAID? At the Mount of Transfiguration the Father identified His beloved Son and commanded: “Hear Him!” — Matthew 17:5. Not the politicians. Not the election prophets. Not the television personalities. HEAR JESUS CHRIST!
Jesus commanded: Repent. Believe the Gospel. Deny yourself. Take up your cross. Follow Me. Preach the Gospel to every creature. Make disciples of all nations.
The apostles preached JESUS CHRIST AND HIM CRUCIFIED.
Colossians 1:18 declares that Christ must have the preeminence—not mere prominence. Jesus is not a supporting character in America’s political drama. He is the Head of the Church and Lord of all. Acts 4:12 is clear: salvation is found in no other name.
Christians have legitimate civic responsibilities. Vote. Uphold the Constitution. Defend the rule of law. Demand accountability. Pursue justice for victims of wrongdoing. But never confuse those responsibilities with the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ. Government can administer justice. Legislation can establish rights. Courts can adjudicate disputes. Presidents can exercise executive authority. None can regenerate the human heart.
As I have written from From Nineveh to Now and in The Message Is Jesus; Nothing Else in His Place, revival comes through preaching repentance and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not through political movements. The Church does not need another political messiah, another election prophecy, or another photograph with the president. It needs repentance. It needs righteousness. It needs the Word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. Above all, it needs to return to the One the Father has commanded us to hear.
JESUS CHRIST IS THE MESSAGE
The question is not whether President Trump can make America great. The question for the Church is whether we have allowed the pursuit of political greatness to displace obedience to Jesus Christ. We must repent of the political idolatry. Course-correct. Stop preaching political salvation. Stop confusing political access with spiritual authority. Stop giving a president the devotion that belongs to Christ alone.
WE MUST GET BACK TO THE GOSPEL!
GET BACK TO PREACHING JESUS CHRIST!
HIM WE PREACH! — COLOSSIANS 1:28
THE MESSAGE IS JESUS. NOTHING ELSE IN HIS PLACE.
