Missed the AMA? I made a rather big announcement about the site’s paywall coming down, which you can read here.
“In approximately 95 AD, John of Patmos wrote the Book of Revelation. This, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, has made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”
So opens the first section of my new feature for The New Republic, entitled We Need To Talk About The Apocalypse, which explores just how much influence end times prophecy has over American domestic and foreign policy right now. The short answer, I'm afraid, is “more than one might like.” A longer answer answer: one third of Americans—not conservatives, not Christians, but all Americans—either partially or fully agree with the statements “The US Government should declare America a Christian nation” and “God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.” These beliefs are linked with Christian Nationalism generally and the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) specifically: an apocalyptic movement that believes God has restored the offices of apostle and prophet to help us move rapidly into the end times and bring to fruition God’s plan of a fully Christianized earth and, eventually, the Second Coming.
Getting the secular world to take an apocalyptic Christian movement seriously is very, very difficult. This is a movement that travels around the world to exorcise “temporal spirits” that exert demonic influence over population centers, that believes in prophecy and miracles and magic. Whether they're right or wrong does it matter: enough people believe these things, the effects are very real. To paraphrase a very old blog, however: you may not believe in the apocalypse, but the apocalypse believes in you.
To report this story, I attended the Intercessors for America’s Rededicate America conference on July 3rd and 4th — not be confused with Rededicate 250, the government-sponsored prayer revival on the Washington Mall way back in May (which I also went to). The similarity between these names is no coincidence: the themes and even speakers overlapped considerably. Point is, I spent Fourth of July weekend in the Museum of the Bible to learn God’s past, present and future designs on America. I learned that the Great Awakening led directly to the revolutionary ideas of individual rights and religious freedom, that the planting of a cross in Jamestown created an unbreakable covenant with God that grants Him dominion over the entire country, and that we can reclaim God's country from the demonic left by doing things like celebrating Thanksgiving, using money with “in God we trust” on it, and constant intercessionary prayer, which eschews the traditional humble request prayer model in favor of commanding God to do tricks on command like an especially powerful Golden Retriever. We also received prophesy from Cindy Jacobs herself, perhaps the most prominent modern-day prophet in the game, heard a glowing report of TPUSA’s hyper-successful fundraising in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, and watched a live performance of American Idol contestant Danny Gokey that included a music video about being imprisoned by scary trans antifascist clowns (look up “makeup” if you want to watch it, I refuse to provide a link).
Anyway, it's not exactly a cheerful article, but I do think it's an important one and I'm happy it's out before the election. Please check it out if you would like to.
And with that…I'm off. If you watched the AMA, you already know I'm about to go off grid for a month, starting tomorrow and ending on October 21st. No phone, no Internet, no news, just the wilds of [REDACTED], a wood stove, and a mountain of books about the world we live in. I'd intended to have a bunch of Substacks ready to fire off in my absence, but that did not happen. I'm burned out in a way I've never experienced in roughly three decades of workaholism, and frankly there's nothing like watching someone die horribly at 60 to provide some perspective on what is and is not worth fighting through. I'll be back at the end of October, (hopefully) refreshed and ready to go just in time for the midterms. Keeping my schedule clear and my Frontier GoWild pass close at hand.
Speaking of which: if any news happening happens over the next month that you think I should probably read about when I return to the world, please leave a comment with a link. I'm already bracing myself for the sheer volume of horrors likely to transpire before I again check a phone.
The wilds are calling. Please read the article if you would like to, and take care of yourselves. See you in a month.
It’s jarring to frame-shift from AI Apocalypse to Christian Apocalypse