Restoring Prophetic Integrity: Lessons from the 2020 Election with Dr. Michael Brown

0:00 We mistook politics for the gospel. What are the prophets saying? If we can't trust the prophets, who can we trust? It is absolutely wrong to say that the prophets got it right in 2020 because Trump was elected a second term. Let me explain why. Dr. Michael Brown, it's great to have you back here on Charisma. You're such a wealth of wisdom and knowledge about spirit-filled things, especially. You have such a great understanding of how to communicate things that are very complex. The thing that we're going to talk about today is the prophetic and specifically relating to what happened in 2020 regarding all these Trump prophecies. Now that he has been elected for a second term, there seems to be some confusion amongst the spirit-filled, charismatic camp, we'll call it that. Maybe we can actually address some of the stuff with the prophetic standards statement, which I've read through it. I highlighted a lot of things that I thought, this actually, if anybody takes the time to read this, they're going to understand a lot better.

1:06 It's not just saying, we want to be in control of the prophetic movement. It's here's guidelines and rails. Dr. Brown, thank you so much for taking the time to help bring clarity to this confusion. Dr. Brown Oh, great to be with you, John. I tell a lot of people that the key to wisdom is you learn from your mistakes. As I approach 70 years old, I've probably made more mistakes than most, bounced off enough walls. If you live long enough and learn from your mistakes, people think you're wise. I'll not hear as the corrector in chief or the watchman over the prophets or something like that, just another brother in the body, another leader that's been around for a while that wants to see some sobriety come. I'm jealous for the reputation of the Lord. I work in a lot of circles that are not charismatic, that are not Pentecostal. They think we're loonies. They think we're off the deep end. Part of it, I say we, because I'm charismatic Pentecostal to the core, we have been lax in many ways. This is as someone who loves the Lord, loves the body, loves the spirit saying, let's really look at this, evaluate it honestly, not to throw stones, but to help build up and edify and be righteous before the Lord.

2:21 John Yeah. After what happened in 2020, I remember it seemed like every other day, there was a new prophetic word that Donald Trump was going to win a second term. A lot of people, I think, maybe added their own spin to it that he was going to win this term in 2020, which as we know historically, factually, that he did not win, he did not become the reelected president in two consecutive terms. Now that he's the president-elect, he will be inaugurated on January 20th, 2025. There's a lot of people that said, well, the prophets didn't get it wrong. Then there's people that are saying, well, they still missed it somehow. Can you just help us understand what happened? I guess that's probably the best way to say it.

3:12 Pentecostal Let's start with the current. Then I want to step all the way back to review 2020. Let's start with the current. No, it is absolutely wrong to say that the prophets, those that are true prophets, not really prophets, God knows, but we'll just say prophets generically, those who spoke as prophets, claimed to be prophets, it is absolutely wrong to say that the prophets got it right in 2020 because Trump was elected a second term. Let me explain why. Number one, there were those who were explicit, he will have eight consecutive years. I watched the videos, I tried to reach out to some of these people, they were explicit. When they said he's going to win, if you ask them, do you mean now or in the future, every one of them would have said now. We all know what we heard. If you warned everyone, a hurricane's coming, a hurricane's coming, a hurricane's coming, board up your house, oh, no, no, we meant a hurricane in six years. No one was hearing that. There were those who guaranteed Biden would not be inaugurated. I watched the videos. Again, I wasn't looking for them, people were sending me these clips. I watched them prophesy by name. I even reached out to them to try to interact without success. I watched them say after the results were given in favor of Joe Biden, I watched them say, no, it's going to be reversed. I watched the quotes,

4:44 the blue states will become red states. It will be a December to remember. Quotes like that, one after another. They were saying the elections will be overturned, that Trump really won. They were prophesying that Trump truly was the president. He was the spiritual president, and the earthly president didn't matter. I had them telling me that there's going to be a coup. You watch, Biden's going to be in, but it's going to happen this month. No, no, this month. No, no, this month. No, no, that month. In point of fact, when they said that he will win, they meant in 2020. When the election results were announced against him, they said the elections were stolen. Some said, you see, God did really show us he would win, but he didn't show them that the elections would be stolen. That's like this, John, you desperately need a car. I said, John, the Lord showed me that a rich man is going to give you a Porsche. It's yours for life. He's going to give you a Porsche. It's going to be delivered to your house tomorrow. He does. He sends it over, but the Lord didn't show me it would be carjacked on the way and you'd never see it.

5:50 That's complete utter nonsense. Again, we'll go back to 2020 and what happened then. Once the elections were announced in favor of Joe Biden, and I voted for Trump, I preferred his policies to those of President Biden. I was hoping the prophets were right, actually. I was hoping the elections would be overturned. I wrote something publicly and I said, listen, if in fact, God really showed you Trump would be reelected, and it's true, and the courts are going to overturn the elections, I commend you for your faith. It's incredible. God bless you for holding on. If in fact, you got it wrong, we're not going to throw you under the bus. Let's find out why you got it wrong, how you got it wrong, make adjustments to move forward and not repeat the mistakes. I said, but please don't do this one thing. I gave an anecdote from the church in which I was saved.

6:48 I don't know if it was a true story or a joke story, but either way, the story was there was a prophetic brother ministering in a church and he had a word for a sister towards the front. He said, sister, the Lord showed me you're going on the mission field and he's sending you to China. She goes, oh, praise God, China. Then there's a brother in the back and he says, brother, the Lord showed me you're going on the mission field. He's sending you to India. India, praise the Lord. Well, they get in the car of the couple and they were doing different parts of the service and the wife says, the man of God said we're going on the mission field. He said, yes, he said it to me also. She said, we're going to China. He goes, no, no, the man of God said we're going to India. She said, no, China. He said, no, India. He said, there seems to be a discrepancy. They go back in the service, the guy is still there and they said, brother, you prophesied over my, because he didn't know they were husband and wife. He thought they were two separate people.

7:40 You prophesied over my wife that she's going to be a missionary to go to China. You prophesied over me, I'm going to be a missionary to go to India. There seems to be a discrepancy. He said, oh, no, no, the Lord is calling you to Indo-China. I said, please, no Indo-China prophecies. Then the Indo-China prophecies began, maybe the notorious from someone with a fairly large Facebook following saying in April of 2021 that God gave him a vision of Donald Trump sitting on the throne in heaven, ruling with a golden scepter, and he was the real president. The fact is, people got it wrong. One last thing, Bill Hammond's network of 4,000 or so prophetic leaders, they issued no prophetic word about the presidency. From what Bill Hammond told me, it's not their policy to do that. He knew maybe one or two that claimed they heard a definite word that Trump would be reelected.

8:35 Otherwise, they don't issue words like that, but across their network, I think they were all pro Trump, but they didn't get that word. Cindy Jacobs told me her network of maybe 70 seasoned prophetic leaders, that only a few claim to hear a word that Trump would be reelected, so they issued no word. But the ones that were the loudest and the most prominent on social media and TV, all to a person, said Trump would be reelected. They meant 2020. So you say, well, maybe they saw in the spirit 2024. Let's make that a possibility. That's why you don't announce times and dates, because prophets always get that wrong or commonly get it wrong. 1 Peter 1 tells us the Old Testament prophets, when God spoke to them about the sufferings of Jesus and the glory that would follow, God told them, no, no, this is not for you. This is for a future generation. Any of us that have heard the Lord prophetically know that timing is very difficult. So unless you have a very specific word from God with times and dates, often something starts and then stops and then picks up later on, or you think it's going to be now, but it's five years down the line. So that's why they could have said, we really believe that Trump is going to be a two term president, whether it's now or in four years. I mean, it seems unlikely, but that's what we believe the Lord is saying. That would have been one thing. They didn't say that. Yeah. And so here's one of the things that I really care about so many

10:05 of the people that were hanging on every word, because we were just so hopeful that things would change and that we would see, you know, the, you know, I know that God hates unfair scales and ways and balances, you know, like God wants justice. And there was a, there was this cry for like, where is the justice where this isn't right? What, what happened? Why is God letting this happen? And so you'd hear this prophetic word and that prophetic word. And I know people in my own life that were just like hanging on to everything. And just like, you could see just how distraught over the last four years they were getting, because they're like, who do I trust? What prophets do I trust? And I would always just say, trust the word of God. Don't go to these people.

10:51 But what, what kind of advice can we give for people that I don't want to say that they were, you know, necessarily thrown around by every wind of doctrine, but maybe they were. We put prophecy in a wrong place. We look to New Testament prophecy as some type of general prognostication. What are the prophets saying for this year, for that year kind of thing? And it's not to say that God won't speak certain things, but it's, it's to say that by and large, it's not the purpose of New Testament prophecy. Most of it is personal. Most of it is for edification, for direction, encouragement, sometimes for rebuke. You do have a prophecy in Acts 11 about a coming famine. And that was so that they could take a collection to help believers in Jerusalem.

11:37 Otherwise you have Acts 21 prophecy about Paul's coming sufferings, if he goes to Jerusalem and things like that. But it's, it's not normally in terms of just, okay, who's going to win the Super Bowl? What's going to happen in the economy? It's, there's a purpose to it. There's a reason God gives prophetic words. Now it may be, I have no problem with the idea that in 2016, in the years leading up to that, God dropped the idea of Trump being elected president. God dropped the idea in a few prophetic people because it was so outlandish. We're used to it now. Second term president, right? He's been before us for years and years now. But when it first came up, it was completely laughable. The idea of Donald Trump being president was a complete joke. No one took it seriously back then, hardly anyone. The idea that he would be elected largely with the help of white evangelicals and would appoint justices to overturn Roe v. Wade, you might as well prophesy the man in the moon would do it. It's completely outlandish. So the first time around I could see that God planted the seed to get some of us thinking. Cause I remember I was on my knees praying. I didn't like Trump. I preferred the other Republican candidates, every one of them over Trump, I think.

12:53 And I said, God, so and so had this words, like a couple of people I knew, I said, I don't say, am I missing something? Am I looking at things in the natural? Cause of all my opposition to Trump. So there could be a purpose for it. But the second time around, it was just like partisan politics. It was partisan politics prophecy. It was prophesying what we wanted to happen. It was now getting close to the seat of power, evangelicals surrounding Trump. It was like the court prophets that would tell the king what he wanted to hear. I know one season prophetic leader with the Lord now, he said he didn't hear God, but because everyone else did, he thought he had to join in and he thought I did hear God and he prophesied falsely. For Jeremiah Johnson, who I've been involved in his life as a mentor for some years, he got caught up in political spirit and he made mistakes. And when he humbled himself, when he repented the right way and took it on the chin, people were furious with him. No, you don't repent once you speak a word, you speak it. Now could be he got the timing off because he had these three things that would happen that Amy Coney Barrett would be appointed to the Supreme court, that the Dodgers was one of the world series and Trump would be reelected. So when the first two things happened in 2020, he thought, okay, Trump's going to be reelected, right? Well, it turns out the Dodgers just won the world series again. So he could have it right, but timing was off. But he said, yeah, he's going to timing was off. But he said, yeah, I got caught up in a political spirit. We've all made mistakes.

14:23 If you minister long enough, you will, we're not to kill each other and throw each other in the bus. We don't have the view that somehow that you stole them and disqualify them for life. We don't believe that. But COVID happens, right? We did not have national warnings from prophets publicly that this was coming. That's the first thing. Then prophets began to say, it's going to diminish April 15th Passover. It's going to diminish of 2020. That should have been our warning. We're off. We're out of our lane. We're not functioning in accordance with God's purpose and plan for prophecy. So when you're out of your lane, you make all types of mistakes. It's like you make me the financial overseer of a bank. The bank will collapse in a day. I'm not a money person. You know, it's so it's the same thing. You're asking for trouble when you get out of the lane. And then when the church is looking to the prophets, what are the prophets saying, as opposed to what is God saying through his word? What is God saying in his relationship with me?

15:23 What is God saying in my local fellowship of believers? No, with what are the prophets saying? Now we make a big mistake. Yeah, we make them soothsayers. We make them fortune tellers, as opposed to people that are speaking for God, that are bringing God's word to society. I mean, if you look through the Old Testament prophets, they're not necessarily just doing predictive. They're saying get back in order, get back, repent. Jonah would have been a false prophet because he said judgment is coming. You need to repent. And so he he they repented. And so God relented judgment did come, but not at the time that he thought that it would happen.

16:04 Jeremiah 18, God lays out a principle whenever he speaks a word of blessing over country, if they then turn and sin, instead of bring judgment. If he speaks a word of judgment, if they repent, he'll bring blessing. So this was in accordance with his will. But yeah, it could have looked like Jeremiah was a false prophet then, but there was a divine principle at work. Here's the other thing that's important. Let's just think of this. A mother comes home and her 14 year old son and her 13 year old son are in the backyard having a fistfight. They got angry with each other about the same size. They're having a fistfight and now they're on the ground pounding each other. Does she say, I predict who will win? No, she says, boys, stop.

16:47 What are you doing? Stop that right now. So I believe that true prophetic voices in 2020 would not be predicting the outcome of the election, but speaking to the condition of the church, speaking to our deep divisions, speaking to the way we were looking to a political savior, speaking to our carnality, speaking to the fact that we were getting caught up at a political spirit. That would be what the Holy Spirit is speaking, not, and I predict who's going to win that the reason again, let me say this again, the reason for prophecy telling us what's going to come in advance. One thing could be to validate the messenger, right? Someone comes and says, the Lord showed me you're going through this miserably hard time, but in three months on this day, everything's going to turn for you. And it does. Now that person has credibility to you.

17:39 When they come to you a year later and say, listen, listen, take this seriously in prayer. I really see a terrible test coming and here's how you can get ready. They have some credibility to you. So on a national level, a prophetic word of significance coming to pass, maybe when that person comes with a warning, we take it more seriously or it's preparation. Like Joseph, you're going to have seven good years and seven bad years. So you're going to have a time of great prosperity, but be wise, be good stewards because hard times are coming. Okay. So it's prophecy to prepare us or prophecy in the Old Testament about the coming of the Messiah to build faith. And so we can recognize him, but prophecy is not just abstract information and telling us what we want to know. So you have to say, what would the purpose have been of all these prophetic voices announcing Trump's victory in 2020? Really? Nothing. In other words, there's really nothing to it. You say, ah, but if the elections were stolen, okay, my faith was if they were stolen, then the courts would overturn it. I believe that God would work through the system.

18:44 And in point of fact, let's say you're really pro-Trump, right? You really believe that he's the best man for the job. Well, if he came in in 2020, he would not have had the mandate that he had in 2024. He would not have so many Americans, whether you like him or not. This is a fact. Americans largely rejected the radical leftism of the Democrats. They rejected the craziness of some of the extremist agendas. That's what they did on a large scale. And because of that, there was a, and now with the Republican controlled Congress and with Trump having been in once before and learned from a lot of the things he did wrong and how much corruption was there within the system, he could actually do a much, much better job now than before. Right? So if the prophets got what they were expecting and we got what many of us voted for in 2020, it would have been much worse in terms of his effectiveness than now, where he could perhaps get a lot of good done and Americans could say, hey, you know, this kind of common sense approach to life and boys aren't girls and girls aren't boys, things like that. Maybe some positive come out of it. Here's the other thing.

19:59 We were worked up into such a frenzy with Trump, only Trump can save America, right? Because he gutted the Republican platform on abortion, because he gutted the Republican platform on same sex issues and things like that and disappointed many pro-life leaders. I think there is a little less he's the savior kind of mentality. Yes, it seems providential that he's alive and then he's back in office. It seems the hand of God, whether you like him or not, it seems to be the hand of God in that regard. But maybe we've learned our lesson a little. Maybe there's a little less Trump is our savior kind of mentality. Maybe there's a little more recognition. Hey, he's a guy with mixed morals and other things, but get a lot of good done and carries a lot of baggage with him too. So let him do what he does. Let's pray for him. And let the church do its job.

20:52 Let's get on with that. Maybe we've learned from our mistakes in 2020 and can get it better in 2024. That's my prayer. I hope so. And I pray so. I know my prayer going into the 2016 election was, I just had this thought of, wow, because normally what happens if a Republican gets in, the conservative church kind of just kind of sits back on their sits back and relaxes in the pews. And they're like, oh, we've got our guy in there. And they lay off the prayer. They lay off that. Whenever there's a Democrat in office and they're pushing these crazy agendas, then Christians kind of get together and pray more. And there's more of that. I thought for 2016, there was no, like, basically if Hillary would have gotten in, the church would have prayed more. If Trump would have gotten in, that there would have been such a wild card that they should have been praying more.

21:47 Unfortunately, we saw some wins quickly. And then we sat back on our heels. And then 2020 happens. And I think what you just laid out, there was really a shifting or maybe a right sizing of our putting Trump on a pedestal, I think. And I think you just articulated that very, very well. So prayerfully, this time that we continue to pray for our leadership that God calls us to do. And we don't back off on that. We don't just say, oh, they'll take care of it. We as the body of Christ need to stand up and actually take our role as kings and priests in this country. I mean, the United States is a different place because we did not have a king that's a ruler so much as, but we are the ones that we're going to be responsible for how we vote and the people that we've chosen to represent us. And consider this. I'm going to give a really plain analogy.

22:46 So I'm broadcasting here from a hotel in San Diego. When I leave the room, if I want the room cleaned, they'll come in and clean the room. Right? That's what they do. But they're not doing this broadcast for me because that's not your job. Laura, am I going to clean the room the way they would? Because that's not my job. So we just have to understand Trump has an important role. Vance has an important role. Congress has an important role. Right down to your local school board. They all have important roles, but that's not the role of the church. The role of the church is to vote righteously and to pray for elected officials and to do our best to hold them accountable. But then we have to do our job. It's not like it's all hand in hand. No, no.

23:29 If I would rather have the worst president in our history in office with the church coming alive, with the fires of revival and becoming the church and bringing awakening to the nation, I would rather have that than the best president in our history and the church backslidden, compromised, worldly. Because we, not the president, not the Congress, not the Supreme Court, we are the light of the world. We are the salt of the earth. We, through Jesus and the Holy Spirit, can bring about change. So politics has tremendous importance. Think of the world as a place where you can't even get out of the church. Think of the implications of the Germans electing Adolf Hitler, the loss of tens of millions of lives in World War II, horrific suffering for so many.

24:18 So for sure, politics is important, like I said, right down to the local school board. But politics is not the gospel. The book that I wrote, The Political Seduction of the Church, I really tried how we mistook politics for the gospel. Politics cannot change a human heart from bad to good. Politics cannot deliver someone from the power of sin and demons. Politics cannot bring someone from hell to heaven through the blood of the cross. So if we could, and there is no more powerful weapon than the weapon of prayer, because we go to Almighty God who rules over the universe, the entire world, the entire globe is not even a speck of sand in God's universe. He rules the world.

25:08 The most effective thing we can do is pray and then turn to God in our own repentance, then evangelize, make disciples, and touch and serve a hurting world. We do that. Everything will work out just fine. Amen. And Dr. Brown, I think probably the best way to end this conversation is to ask you to pray for our nation moving forward and that the church would actually do what God's called us to do in our responsibility. And I did say I just wanted to go back to 2020. So the reason that we wrote prophetic standards, as Charismatics and Pentecostals, you have denominations, Assemblies of God, and different ones like that. But by and large, it's an independent movement, independent churches around the globe or different streams of things.

26:03 And because of that, we don't have standard structures to help us through crises. If you're a Catholic, you've got all the canons of Catholic law and this and that. If you're a more recent denomination of Presbyterian or Lutheran, you still have your order. If you're in the Assemblies of God, you have orders to deal with things. But there's so much now just you could be an internet prophet. You just be out there. So Dr. Joe Matera and I were concerned that we didn't know, the Lord didn't show us who was going to win. But we were concerned that if the prophecies prove false, that it would be a crisis, that some believers would question God entirely. If we can't trust the prophets, who can we trust? Others would question the Holy Spirit. Others would say, you see, all this is bogus. The gifts are not for today. So what we wanted to do on the one hand was put a safety net out. If it happened to have a safety net where people could have a place to, oh, okay, it's not the end of the world. There's a place here. And then to say, let's affirm the importance of prophecy. Let's affirm prophetic ministry and prophetic gifts and prophetic people. Let's talk about the importance of it. But let's just establish guidelines for accountability and that we can all go by. One prophetic leader said, Mike, you don't want to do things where people are afraid to make one mistake because you have to stand out in faith when you prophesy, right? You have to believe and be free in the Spirit.

27:34 On the other hand, it can't be anything goes. So we really tried to encourage, be positive. And yet say, here are standards, here are ways to deal with things. And all of us, one way or another, public, private, all of us will show up one way or another. Let's be merciful. Let's learn. And let's now grow and move forward. So with that, my joy to pray. Yes, please. Father, we love you and we honor you. And we ask you, Lord, to help us bring you joy, to help us bring you honor, to be people that you look down and say, that's my girl. That's my boy. I'm pleased with them.

28:17 May we be a source of joy to you. And may we lift up the name of your son, Jesus Yeshua, in the midst of a dying, hurting world. Lord, we come to you with humility and brokenness, thanking you for your mercy and grace and say, Lord, speak through us, move through us, release the prophetic gifts in a way that will bring glory to your son, that will bring the fear of the Lord to the church, that will even touch a watching world. And Lord, we pray for President Trump. We pray for his cabinet. We pray for this new administration that you would superintend decisions for the good of America, for the good of the world, for the good of Israel. And we put our trust and hope in one place only, that is in you, your faithfulness, your goodness, in Jesus' name. Amen.

29:04 Amen. Dr. Brown, thank you so much for taking the time to help us understand more about how we can trust the prophetic, trust that God does still speak today, even when there was confusion in the past and the clarity that you bring. You know, we just prayed, but this reminds me, I went through a crisis not long ago, one of the most intense spiritual attacks I've ever endured. And one of the things that got me through it was the most precise prophetic words from people who knew nothing of what was going on or very little of what was going on, or people who knew what was going on, getting identical scriptures at identical times. In my entire, almost 70 years now, I never experienced anything like it. Prophetic ministry when it's on is amazing, beautiful, and wonderful. And with that, for everyone that listens to podcasts on Charisma Media, we just released our Courage in the Line of Fire podcast. Courage in the Line of Fire. You can listen on Charisma Media. All right. Dr. Brown, thank you so much for joining us today.

30:07 My joy. God bless.