Trump has been scrambling to justify the war against Iran, and some military commanders, up to and including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have told troops that it is a “holy war,” part of God’s larger plan for America and the world.
The late Prophet Clement and others like him are part of a growing and politically connected movement within charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity called the New Apostolic Reformation. Its leaders, apostles and prophets say they are empowered and informed by direct revelations from God, and they are seeking religious and political dominion over society. (Although the NAR, by design, does not resemble more mainstream religious denominations, its honorific titles are not random or self-assigned.)
Notable apostles and prophets who have gained some public notoriety include Apostle Lance Wallnau, who waged a national voter mobilization campaign among low-propensity evangelical voters on Trump’s behalf in 2024; Apostle Dutch Sheets, who played a role in the planning and execution of the Jan. 6 insurrection; Apostle Ché Ahn, who was a candidate in this year’s California gubernatorial election until the secretary of state barred him from the ballot for neglecting to file the necessary paperwork (he is still running a write-in campaign); and Apostle Paula White-Cain, a friend and spiritual adviser to Trump.
The rise of this movement, its involvement in Trump’s campaigns, both of his presidential administrations and the wider MAGA movement is one of the most important and underreported stories of our time. (Salon has covered the NAR on several occasions in recent years, including my story in the inset above.)
Here’s an example to set Kim Clement in context: He and White-Cain, then a prominent televangelist known as Paula White, appeared on TV together in September of 2005, long before she became associated with Trump or the NAR. White said she was “honored to sit with my dear friend, with the man of God that I labor in the Kingdom of God with, Prophet Kim Clement. God bless you, prophet. … Love you. We go way back.”
Trump’s promotion of the Clement prophecies from nearly 20 years ago is designed to fuel a critical part of his supporter base, those Christians who see themselves as engaged in a biblically-prophesied war leading to the End Times.
Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, sees the Trump administration’s attempt to cast the Iran war as a religious conflict as both dangerous and dangerously out of sync with foundational American values of religious equality and separation of church and state.
“We all know that past is prologue,” Weinstein, a former Air Force JAG officer and Reagan White House lawyer, told Salon. “When we look back at human history, every prior time when an extremist version of any religious faith is inextricably intertwined with that part of the state which makes war, we end up with one thing, and one thing only: oceans of blood.”
From the Crusades of the Middle Ages to “the Inquisition, the pogroms [of Eastern Europe] or the Holocaust,” Weinstein added, “it’s always the same damn thing.”
Some leading voices in evangelical media and pro-Trump influencers have jumped at the chance to amplify Trump’s message. NAR evangelist Sean Feucht posted to Facebook: “President Trump posts the exact prophetic word about him from Kim Clement in Redding, California in 2007.”
Charisma magazine, a publication targeting charismatic and Pentecostal Christians, reported it this way:
For many believers who follow prophetic ministry, Clement’s words have long circulated in Christian circles as a striking prediction about who would one day rise to the highest office in the United States. However, Trump’s decision to highlight the prophecy himself has renewed interest in what the late prophet said nearly two decades ago.
Richard Bartholomew, a British scholar of religion who followed Clement for years, does not believe Clement was talking about Trump in his 2007 prophecies. Instead, Clement almost certainly meant former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was considered the frontrunner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination at the time.
Trump’s promotion of prophecies from nearly 20 years ago is designed to fuel a critical part of his supporter base, those Christians who see themselves as engaged in a biblically-prophesied war leading to the End Times.
A fair-minded reading of the transcript suggests that Bartholomew is right. Clement quotes God as saying, “I will not forget 9/11. I will not forget what took place that day, and I will not forget the gatekeeper that watched over New York who will once again stand and watch over this nation.”
It’s difficult to imagine he meant that “gatekeeper” to be Trump, who had no official role in 2001. Giuliani, on the other hand, made national headlines as “America’s mayor” for his leadership during the 9/11 crisis, and immediately became a plausible candidate for president. In any event, Giuliani’s 2008 campaign was a flop. He dropped out early and John McCain won the GOP presidential nomination, before losing to Barack Obama that November. Trump, of course, didn’t run for president until eight years later.
Clement did indeed mention the man then known as a real estate tycoon and reality-TV host, however. “Trump shall become a trumpet, says the Lord,” he said. “Trump shall 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.”
The “most obvious interpretation” of this deliberately abstruse language, Bartholomew said, is the correct one: Clement was prophesying that Giuliani, “the gatekeeper that watched over New York” on 9/11, would become president, while Trump and Gates would “become evangelists.”
Clement “was fascinated by powerful businessmen,” Bartholomew added, and he “appears to have further believed that their very names are puns that reveal God’s purposes.”
It’s true that trumpets play a significant role in NAR symbolism, as can be seen in their use of the shofar — a traditional Jewish instrument made from a ram’s horn — in ceremonies and events. Bill Gates, on the other hand, has played no role in underwriting or supporting the NAR movement.
Clement’s prophecies over the years, Bartholomew explained, were “often expressed in a vague and obscurantist way,” but “Trump does not appear to have been a figure of particular interest.”
The larger significance of Clement’s prophecies has little to do with whether they are demonstrably true or false, but rather that their devoted fanbase happens accrues to Trump’s political benefit. Clement’s fervid following is somewhat like that of Nostradamus, the 16th-century French physician and seer whose book “Les Prophéties” is often said to have predicted future events, and whose followers continue to seek signs in his elliptical writings.
Indeed, in both cases, followers of the dead prophets are constantly finding new meaning in old prophecies. Clement’s followers look to his decades-old utterances to discern what might happen in 2026 as well as 2027. Some followers of Nostradamus can offer predictions for every year far into the future, sometimes with a contemporary political spin.
Getting Christianity right — or wrong
People in the apostolic movement live in what they consider to be a prophetic moment, when God will reveal what is to come. Their guides are NAR leaders who follow what’s called the “Five-Fold Ministry.” This idea embodies the notion that historic Christian denominations of all varieties have gotten it wrong for 2,000 years, and that the only truly Christian offices are apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor and teacher (as described in the book of Ephesians). They believe that God speaks directly to and through the NAR’s anointed apostles and prophets about current and sometimes future events.
NAR leaders follow what’s called the “Five-Fold Ministry,” which embodies the notion that historic Christian denominations of all varieties have gotten it wrong for 2,000 years.
Clement was deeply involved in this movement. He came to the U.S. from South Africa in 1981 to study at Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas, a leading hub of NAR’s vision of bringing about the kingdom of God on Earth by whatever means necessary, which teaches the doctrine of the Five-Fold Ministry. The Institute says it has graduated more than 40,000 missionaries since its founding in 1970. In addition to Clement, its notable graduates include Apostle Dutch Sheets, Kevin Jonas Sr. (father and manager of the Jonas Brothers pop band) and Vance Boelter, the alleged assassin of Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, who was shot and killed, along with her husband, outside their home in June of 2025. The fact that Clement’s prophecies are now being personally promoted by the president himself is an indication of how much CFNI and NAR have moved from the far-right periphery of Christianity toward the center of American culture and politics.
Facts and false prophesies
As with any revolutionary movement, NAR leaders do not always see eye to eye on everything. In recent years, the movement has become polarized over what many see as false prophecies, including widespread predictions that Trump would be re-elected in 2020. Predictably, some prophets and apostles later insisted that they were not wrong, since that election had been stolen. Dutch Sheets, for example, has been among the leaders of the pro-Trump Stop the Steal campaign.
Trump’s apparent falsification of Clement’s prophecy to justify his war in Iran may widen and deepen the split. Indeed, this comes amid a noticeable rift in the movement, after 92 apostolic leaders issued a statement in April 2021 aimed at establishing “prophetic standards.” Prophets are “to bring correction, instruction, and directional clarity,” they wrote, “but not independent of other leaders, and therefore different from the model of the independent Old Testament prophet.”
Those who wanted to use “Old Testament prophetic texts to exercise influence or authority over their followers,” the statement continued, “should remember that inaccurate prophecy under that same Old Testament standard was punishable by death.” Prophets should not try to “serve as spiritual fortune tellers or prognosticators.” Indeed, every available translation of the Bible holds that false prophets should be put to death by stoning.
Followers of the Clement prophecies, it’s fair to say, appear to have wandered far from scripture at this point.
Trump’s apparent falsification of Clement’s prophecy to justify his war in Iran may widen and deepen the NAR split, and comes amid a noticeable rift in the movement.
Clement’s prophecy also reveals the NAR’s deepening break with all forms of historic Christianity, from the Roman Catholic Church to mainline Protestant denominations and the majority of traditional evangelicals. Clement and his ilk say they routinely receive fresh revelations from God. These extra-Biblical communiqués are not accepted by traditional Christianity, which NAR leaders say is under the influence of a “religious spirit,” meaning that it comprises sinful and arguably demonic obstacles to advancing the Kingdom of God on Earth. The general NAR position is that most or all forms of mainstream Christianity must be defeated, even eliminated.
The full context of the Clement prophecies cited by Trump — which were delivered on April 4, 2007, in Redding, California, and Feb. 10, 2007, in Scottsdale, Arizona — is available in a searchable archive maintained by Clement’s daughter, Donné Clement Petruska. (That may serve as a useful resource for media fact-checkers during the election season.)
For example, the transcript (unlike the video posted by the president) provides a full and unedited passage in which Clement says that God will eventually take full control of the news media, and has had it with institutional Christianity.
In his Redding prophecy, Clement announces that “the Spirit of God says” there will be a “transfiguration, a going into the marketplace if you wish, into the news media. Where Time Magazine will have no choice but to say what I want them to say. Newsweek, what I want to say. ‘The View,’ what I want to say.
“I am God and you have called to Me,” Clement continues, “and many from this Nation have said ‘enough, enough of religion, enough, enough of dead speech.’”
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What he did not say, but his listeners presumably understood, is that in the NAR’s vision of America’s future, it will be apostles, prophets and members of what they call the “Ekklesia” who provide God’s words to compliant media outlets. The Ekklesia comprises Christians — of the right sort, naturally — as the one true church of the End Times and the governing bodies at all levels of society. (We can only speculate about the fate of non-compliant media and unreformed Christians.) All the current and convenient interpretations of Clement’s prophecies that have circulated in charismatic and Pentecostal precincts of the internet for two decades are meant to bring about the NAR’s vision of society, as well as the religious war it believes will be required to get us there.
On the road again
These redeployments of Clement prophecies may not be limited to Trump’s political needs regarding the war in Iran. With its leader now presumably in his final term in office, the MAGA movement could use a booster shot. The far-right ReAwaken America Tour, led by retired general and former Trump White House official Michael Flynn, is holding a two-day rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, entitled The Remnant Rising: Resist the Reset, whose poster features an image of Clement, who died 10 years ago. That’s probably because ReAwake founder Clay Clark credits a Clement prophecy from April 2013, which mentions a “man by the name of Mr. Clark,” as something like a divine mandate.
The host pastor of the Tulsa event, Jackson Lahmeyer, recently announced that he’s running in the Republican primary for the seat of Rep. Kevin Hern, himself a pro-Trump conservative now running for the vacated U.S. Senate seat of Markwayne Mullin, recently appointed as Trump’s new DHS secretary. That GOP primary is on June 16, three days before the Remnant Rising event at Lahmeyer’s church.
Lahmeyer was also the founder of Pastors for Trump in 2024, and helped launch the original ReAwaken America tour through his connections with Clark and Flynn. He has appeared as a featured speaker at multiple ReAwaken stops, often sounding very much like an NAR preacher, although his connection to the movement is not explicit. Rolling Stone reported on the tour event held at Trump National Doral Miami in 2024:
“Satan, right now has an entire political party in this nation doing his bidding — for free,” Lahmeyer told the crowd, referring to the Democratic party, whose president, in truth [meaning Joe Biden], is an observant Catholic. “The battle that we are in is one that is between good and evil,” Lahemeyer added before leading the assembly in a prayer. “Our nation knows a God who rescues his people, when we find ourselves in trouble. We lift up President Donald Trump, and we ask that You would give him divine wisdom.”
The ReAwaken tours have offered a variety show of QAnon conspiracism, Trumpian speeches, election denial and anti-vaccine campaigners, accompanied by the blowing of shofars, casting out of demons and, at times, video clips of Clement prophesies presented by his daughter. Previous events have drawn thousands of participants, and featured such stars of the MAGA constellation as MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, Trump adviser Roger Stone, the late Charlie Kirk and conspiraciy-monger Alex Jones, along with NAR figures like Apostle Lance Wallnau. As one poster for the June event puts it: “We are getting the band back together.”
The speakers’ lineup in Tulsa will reportedly include Flynn, Clark, Eric Trump, Jackson Lahmeyer and his wife Kendra, and a veritable apostolic Lollapalooza of NAR-friendly preachers. Another headliner will be Dr. Stella Immanuel of Houston, an infamous anti-vaccine physician affiliated with the right-wing group America’s Frontline Doctors and a major promoter of two debunked treatments for COVID, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Immanuel made headlines a few years ago for claiming that many of America’s health problems are linked to alien DNA and sperm from demons.
It’s not clear whether Donné Clement Petruska will speak in Tulsa, but her father’s ghost will very much be a presence, both there and throughout this summer and fall, as Trump’s supporters battle to solidify their far-right religious base.
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