At WND, It's Donald the Divine

WorldNetDaily slandered Barack Obama as the Antichrist, but it's now pushing the idea that hand of God brought Donald Trump's election as president.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 3/22/2017

Carl Gallups -- who was hiding behind the pseudonym PPSIMMONS when he issued a WND-promoted video in 2009 using dubious biblical scholarship to make the claim that Obama was the Antichrist, tried to unsuccessfully walk it back in a 2015 interview with Alan Colmes, insisting that he merely claimed that "Obama certainly displays an alarmingly powerful antichrist spirit."

When Obama was re-elected in 2012 despite WND's best efforts to slander and libel him, WND writers went into a very dark place, led by editor Joseph Farah himself, pronounced it to be "God’s judgment" against America (and not, say, for his and WND's campaign of lies and libel against Obama). A couple days later, Farah smeared Obama voters as having "gone awhoring." A special issue of WND's Whistleblower magazine was themed "The American Tribulation," in which WND purported to speak for "millions of Americans" by calling Obama's re-election "Unthinkable. A cataclysmic disaster. The end of America as we know it."

Fast forward to the results of the 2016 election. Just as WND has flipped on the propriety of likening the president of the United States (perfectly fine when talking about Obama, bad when talking about Trump), it sees the hand of God invervening to save America through Trump.

Farah declared on Nov. 8 that "I like to think God smiled on America, maybe because of the prayers of so many forgotten people – people who began to wake up and realize they just didn’t recognize their country any more. They thought about their kids and their grandkids and what kind of world would be left for them if we kept going down the same road at 70 mph," adding: "The Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways. He doesn’t always use the people you would expect him to use to exercise His will. He often uses people who are, shall we say, a little rough around the edges to bring justice, bring relief to the persecuted and answer the prayer of His saints. He answered mine on Tuesday."

Columnist Michael Brown echoed Farah: "Yet there are times when there are so many odds against something happening, when it so greatly defies logic, that it is easier to recognize God’s involvement. That, I believe, is the case with Donald Trump winning – and remember, this comes from someone who endorsed Ted Cruz and was one of Trump’s stronger conservative critics during the primaries."

Pat Boone chimed in as well, asserting that Obama was a "God-ordained authority the last eight years" as a result of how Americans "have collectively shoved Him aside, disregarded His Word, His expressed will, and let him know we’d rather do things our own way." And Trump is our salvation, apparently:

In the last year, as we faced a stark choice and a likely descent into more unbridled rebellion against God’s will for America, millions of us repented of our sinful apathy and permission of perversion in our midst, and sought God’s face and prayed for Him to heal our land!

And, as He promised, He heard from heaven and has given us authority to heal our land. He chose a most unlikely man to lead us and bestowed authority on him, and on us, to begin the healing and restoration of America to former greatness.

Meanwhile, on the so-called "news" side, WND reporter Garth Kant provided this dramatic -- er, melodramatic interpretation of God's intervention in the election, starring Michele Bachmann:

At 7 p.m., there was no sign of a popular uprising led by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. There was no sign at 8 p.m. There was still no sign as time inexorably marched on.

Something would have to break.

And then it did.

Like a scene out of the film “It’s a Wonderful Life,” people had begun to pray.

But not just in one small town. Across America. And around the world.

Simple acts of faith heralded the first faint wisps of a breeze that would soon become a storm that would shake the world.

It began in Jerusalem.

Christians from many nations gathered in the heart of Israel to pray and fast for the fate of the United States. Americans knelt on stage as the faithful prayed. Organizers instructed them to pray like never before for a just God to deliver his most Christian nation. They called it the Jerusalem Global Gathering.

Christians also gathered to pray for the nation outside the U.S. Capitol. As WND reported, pastor Dan Cummins of the small rural East Texas town of Bullard led prayers for a return to biblical principles.

And it was in Texas that the prayers for deliverance were sent around the world, using modern technology.

A large prayer group had gathered in Dallas, hosted by Ken Copeland ministries. It was broadcast by the Daystar channel. Presenters David Barton and former Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., invited viewers to join in prayer.

Daystar has a global reach of 400 million potential viewers.

As they prayed, something began to stir.

“At the precise moment we began broadcasting on Daystar,” Bachmann told WND, “as the polls were still open, and a national audience of believers joined together and prayed in concert, we literally saw the race break in favor of Trump.”

“At that very minute.”

In a Dec. 16, WND's Paul Bremmer interviewed corrupt former Republican congressman Tom DeLay -- who just so happens to have a WND-published book coming out -- who claimed that "would be a year where God would bring us to a crossroads, where we would have a major debate on the direction of the country: whether we’re going to go to the left, more socialism, more dissolution of the government and the country, or are we going to turn it around and have it go towards God, God-centered constitutional republic." While Trump was not "the godly president DeLay had hoped for," Bremmer writes, DeLay said that "now I think I see what God’s intentions were: Here’s a man that basically is a clean slate, and we – ‘we’ being Christian constitutionalist conservatives – have an opportunity to fill in that slate.”

An anonymously written Jan. 11 WND article told the story of the late "singing prophet" Kim Clement, who purportedly prophesied in 2007 that Trump would become president:

“Trump shall become a trumpet, says the Lord,” the South African Clement bellowed in a recording reportedly made April 4, 2007, in Redding, California.

“Trump shall become a trumpet. I will raise up the Trump to become a trumpet. I will raise up the Trump to become a trumpet and Bill Gates to open up the gate of a financial realm for the church, says the Lord.

But as religion blogger Richard Bartholomew pointed out, the full context of Clement's tapes are that he was prophesying that Rudy Giuliani would be president -- presumably in 2008, when his presidential campaign notoriously crashed and burned -- and that Trump and Microsoft's Bill Gates would become evangelists.

Another anonymously written WND article, on Jan. 15, dug up "a prominent Israeli mystic spiritual leader," Rabbi Nir Ben Artzi, to vouch for Trump's divinely ordained mission: “When Trump takes office, he will receive help directly from heaven that will enable him overcome these obstacles, and bring peace to the world.”

Ben Artzi also expressed his WND-level hatred for Obama, according to the article, calling him a "traitor" and claiming that “Obama, like an injured beast, helped Hillary Clinton whose sole intention was to continue his agenda.”

WND didn't mention that Ben Artzi also once predicted in 2012 that more storms like Superstorm Sandy would hit the U.S. if it didn't help Israel. That hasn't exactly happened despite the rabbi's hatred of Obama.

WND is even looking askance at anyone who criticizes the idea that the election of Donald Trump was divinely inspired. Jack Minor wrote in a Jan. 5 article:

After years of fostering the narrative of President Obama as a messiah, members of the media now seem to have developed a sudden aversion to attributing divine attributes to the leader of the free world.

For years after Obama’s election, establishment media described Obama often with soaring language, sometimes in photographs capturing him in a halo.

But now they seem alarmed by the claim that the GOP thinks President-elect Donald Trump is Jesus.

The issue began when Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus and Co-Chair Sharon Day sent out a statement celebrating Christmas, as the party has done for many years.

Part of the statement read: “Merry Christmas to all! Over two millennia ago, a new hope was born into the world, a Savior who would offer the promise of salvation to all mankind. Just as the three wise men did on that night, this Christmas heralds a time to celebrate the good news of a new King. We hope Americans celebrating Christmas today will enjoy a day of festivities and a renewed closeness with family and friends.”

Some immediately seized on the phrase “new King” to suggest that since Trump was the new president, the passage was a reference to him, and the RNC was comparing Trump to Jesus Christ.

Minor went on to cite various isolated instances in which people have ascribed messianic qualities to Obama. He didn't mention the rhetorical pro-Trump messianic excess that has billowed forth from the place that published his article.

Farah decides: It's Donald the Divine

Since the election ended, Farah has gotten more explicit about proclaiming divine intercession in Trump's election. invoked his favorite right-wing prophet, Jonathan Cahn -- whom WND touted in January as having "hailed the rise of Trump as an example of God’s will": in a -- Farah wrote in his Feb. 27 column:

The dizzying pace of Trump’s complete reversal of the very policies that seemed to be dragging America down into imminent judgment is, after all, remarkable. Who would have predicted it? Did it seem even in the realm of possibility in the near term – in 2017?

Even for me, someone who was deeply moved by Cahn’s message and who predicted Trump would win in a landslide mandate eight months before Election Day, I admit I didn’t imagine just how faithful the new president would be to his campaign promises. I didn’t see how moved he would be by the support of Bible-believing Christians. I didn’t see how radically different he would govern from his predecessors – especially his most recent.

But that’s just what he has done – and, always barring some unforeseen catastrophe, it bodes well for the immediate future of the country.

So that leads me to the inevitable question: Did enough of America’s believers, His people who are called by His name, humble themselves, seek His face and turn from their wicked ways? I know there was a shaking of God as a direct result of Jonathan Cahn’s teachings. I saw it. I heard it. I felt it. But I am not God.

Could it be that a spiritual earthquake took place between 2012 and 2016 just as so many of us had hoped and prayed for individually?

Could the Holy Spirit have used that profound and amazing teaching to shake American like Jonah shook Nineveh – thus buying us time?

Could it be we are reaping the practical political benefit of the individual prayers of millions touched by those teachings?

I don’t know. But I’m throwing it out there for you to consider.

In his March 1 column, Farah got his answer from his hero:

It started with a plea for a National Day of Prayer and Repentance on Sept. 11, 2013, an event that has continued annually since.

The annual Washington Man of Prayer event in the Capitol was inspired by Cahn’s message. Since then, regular prayer meetings in the Capitol have been instituted.

Many other prayer networks and chains have been taking place continually.

With all this in mind, I recently posed the question of whether what is happening right now in Washington, with a new administration, is in direct response to what Cahn started with his book and his unique message and ministry and what grew from it.

So I asked Cahn.

It turns out, he has humbly been asking the same question.

“The main thing I’m convicted of is that God has heard and has given a reprieve,” he told me. “Right now the culture is still falling away. It has to be reversed. If not, the template of ‘The Harbinger’ continues. And if we don’t reach the younger generation, the future then remains unchanged. It may be that God’s people prayed in part – the faithful – and God answered in part. Now is the window. There must be revival.”

Cahn characterizes what happened with the presidential election in November and thereafter “a miraculous reprieve, an opening for national revival.” But, he adds, without that revival, the progression will continue. “We must pray.”

After WND reported that religious-right fave James Dobson has weigh in in the affirmative on the subject of divine Trump intervention as a "reprieve" for America, Farah weighed in once again in his in his March 12 column, declaring that "I now believe with all my heart" that Cahn's book "The Harbinger" and the movie Farah and WND made from that book "turned the hearts of Christians in America to humility, prayer, to seeking God’s face and repentance, just as II Chronicles 7:14 commands in times of national backsliding." (How convenient that a WND-made product and Farah's close friend caused this to happen.) Farah continued:

If I am right and we are experiencing a partial “restoration” in 2017, what better time to explore with me what the full, complete, seldom explored, prophetic story of the ultimate restoration will look like?

Peter said it is what all the prophets from Creation onward were talking about and pointing toward with the greatest of hope.

Don’t get me wrong. We live in a time of conflict, turbulence, maybe even a little chaos. But, don’t you feel a little more hope today than you did last year at this time? Don’t you think we might be getting just a glimpse of the possibility of a national “reprieve” in which God smiles upon His people?

I’m convinced.

It’s why there’s a little strut in my step. It’s why despite a lot of bad news, I feel like I can see a glimmer of hope. It’s why I am so sure things are getting better, rather than worse.

But it’s time to recognize what’s happening and why. It’s not time to cease the humbling of ourselves and the fervent, heart-felt prayers, the seeking of His face and the turning away from sin. It’s time to recognize that it really does work – and pour it on!

Are you with me? Let me know.

We've never seen any evidence that Farah has ever humbled himself before the Lord or anyone else, as his column's plugging of not only Cahn's work (on sale at WND) but his own new book (WND-published, natch) in which he claims to examine "the ultimate restoration of all things that comes with the return of Jesus the Messiah to rule and reign over the whole earth from His throne in Jerusalem." Farah never publicly repented for running a dishonest website and pursuing an agenda of personal destruction against Barack Obama, and there's no reason to think he'll make an about-face and humble himself anytime soon.

There's also no evidence that either Farah or anyone else at WND have apparently considered that the opposite of their biased religious interpretations might be true: that Obama was the blessing and that Trump is the curse, the one who will lead America into the wilderness.

An opposite -- and attacked -- view

It was a bit of a surprise to see an anonymously written Feb. 21 WND article about a Florida pastor, Joel Tooley, who felt "demonic" activity that was "palpable" at a Trump rally he and his young daughter had attended the previous weekend.

But unlike with the pro-Trump pastors and others who see divine intent in Trump's election and actions that WND has published, Tooley's claims were not allowed to stand unchallenged. The anonymous WND writer made sure to note that "Tooley is also an immigration activist" who has worked with "one of the nine agencies that get paid by the federal government to resettle refugees in the United States."

WND also published attacks on Tooley's account that, among other things, called it "BS to the core. Phony and made up" and that Tooley "needs to understand" that the Trump rally was, in fact, a "'deeply religious' experience." WND does not provide the source for these attacks beyond claiming that they were "comments posted online."

But from where? The Facebook post by Tooley on which WND based its article contains no such comments in the 65 attached to it. We also conducted a quick Google search and could not find the comments independent of reposted versions of the WND article.

Are these comments from some super-secret website WND has access to but nobody else does? Or did WND make up these comments as a way to attack Tooley for committing the offense of being critical of Trump?

ConWebWatch contacted WND for an answer as to the comments' original source, but it did not respond.