False Prophet?

You have to admire some people’s resilience in the face of adversity.

Prophecy has become big business on the internet with dozens of self-described prophets enlightening the faithful of the things to come, the imminent movings of the Lord their God that will clearly reveal that nothing is impossible when He is on your side.

YouTube videos are the new street corner where those with direct communication to the Creator shout to a lost generation. With less than 24 hours to go to the inauguration of a new administration, these emissaries of the great beyond are soothing the troubled souls who are sure that Satan has won an election, assuring them that it will all be turned on its head and to “let not their hearts be troubled” as another four years of Trump is a certainty and that very miracle will reveal the glory of God in a way that will be irrefutable to all.

It all seems hilarious, so preposterous in the extreme that it seems like more of a sketch comedy bit than a sincere appeal to the belief system of actual people of faith. But then you look at the numbers.

Some of these “prophets” have hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Let that sink in. Multiple communities numbering hundreds of thousands of people each are clinging to the belief that Donald John Trump will lead the United States over the next four years. They believe this is a foregone conclusion, a certainty that will crush the spirit of the apostates.

I present to you Chris Yoon. He is a self-professed prophet and today, on the day before the inauguration, he is assuring his followers (179k subscribers) that Trump will be president once again, that the military will be involved and that this is an act of God and he is simply the conduit of the Lord’s message. He assures that rationality will simply cause great anxiety, and though you think you know something, you don’t. Relax. Things are going to happen that will amaze you and in this very last moment God will reveal his plan. He soothes the watcher by helping them understand that he is not better than them, he has just been blessed with the gift of prophecy. You have your gifts and he has his. Curiously, his presentation makes him seem completely normal, the young man next door who is not full of bravado but rather is “a regular guy with hobbies” who happens to be burdened as the chosen vessel of the message of the Lord.

While most of you will find this incredible, when you read the thousands of comments that follow you realize he is reaching people. They believe him, they support the channel, they think that what they see with their lying eyes will be revealed as a hoax and the truth of President Trump’s greatness will be revealed and his victory will be certified and that will be a great blessing to the United States.

Sadly, many of these comments are coming from older people who are thrilled that this “young man” has been touched by the power of Yahweh. A devotion adopted as a child remains unchanged, and they are empowered to see another generation accept the baton of a theology as simplistic as could be expected from a Bronze Age consciousness. Perhaps a more considered and subtle Christianity is possible, but they would reject that as strongly as they reject Joe Biden. As the fear of death becomes more real with the passing of the years, the ability to objectively examine our faith narratives becomes arrested, the comfort of the myth far more able to soothe than the confrontation with our own gullibility.

I can’t help but be a bit excited to see how the prophets confront the inevitability of their public humiliation. Young Chris the Prophet is counting on a military coup that has been revealed to him by God. When it does not occur, he will have to admit that he is no prophet or that there is a power greater than God that thwarted the plan. Realistically, he will undoubtedly do what apologists have been doing for centuries. A new, more subtle and nuanced understanding of the revelations that have been received will be crafted, packaged and sold as the therapeutic that will treat the disappointment his followers will inevitably come down with. People of faith can not be wrong, for a single misshapen card can topple the whole tower.

This same willingness to suspend our disbelief has been what has kept Trump going, and what has led to an insurrection-level disconnect from reality for a ghastly number of our fellow citizens. To the great discredit of seniors we have the highest percentage of gullibility of any age group in the land. Somehow the arrogance of age, the idea that our time on earth has provided us the clear-eyed wisdom that can not be challenged, has overcome our capacity to discern the simplest of truths, to parse fact from raw manipulation. We have made ourselves prone to the most ignominious of comparisons, that of the common man in 1930’s Germany, clay being easily transformed into grotesque gargoyles.

This is why I started Progressively Older. You are out there, too. You need to be heard, to have a community of like minded elders that are not ruled by our fears of mortality, but rather are energized by them, motivated to leave the world having done what we could to make it better, more honest, more discerning, knowing that the time for that is, and will always be, now.