While counting continues at a snail’s pace in the US election, the world of televangelists and cultists is in uproar. They did not see a Biden victory coming and clearly, they are not coping.
Trump spiritual adviser and televangelist, Paula White took to the pulpit last week with a catchy exultation for angels from Africa to whisk across the Atlantic and provide “angelic reinforcement” to overturn the election result.
With no sign of winged creatures troubling US air traffic control, she doubled down on Saturday, explaining that mere cohorts of Jehovah may not be up to a job of this order. The Big Man himself had stepped in.
“God has already settled his mind,” White said. “We will override any will of man over the mind of God.”
This is an interesting take on democracy. Everyone may cast a ballot, but one great stonking vote can tip things one way or another.
White’s son, Brad Knight, also a preacher, said God had come to him and appointed him his David. Not King David but you know, David. You see, David can’t be King because Trump is king.
Knight called on a vengeful God to smite Biden voters.
“Speak to them in your wrath, God, and terrify them with your fury.”
A look at the deranged world of televangelists would not be complete without Kenneth Copeland.
Exorcising COVID
Copeland “exorcised” Sars-Cov-2 on three separate occasions earlier in the year. On his final attempt he blew a raspberry which summoned, he said, “the wind of God”, expelling the virus to kingdom come.
A quick look at Covid infections and deaths in the US tells us the Copeland exorcism was of the kind that would see a now 61-year-old Linda Blair still lying in bed with an even thicker layer of steaming green vomit and doing the full 360 with her head as a party trick.
Copeland addressed his faithful two days ago and offered a booming fake laugh that lasted almost 12 minutes at the suggestion the US had elected Biden to be 46th President.
Copeland’s daughter, Terri Pearsons, then took to the pulpit to depict God as a sort of electoral scrutineer, both up and down ballot.
“Lord, we don’t just look to the presidency,” she said. “We’re asking you to straighten out every Senate race, straighten out every House race, straighten out every governorship, straighten out every state legislature, straighten out every mayoral election, straighten out every city council. Straighten ’em out. Straighten ’em out. Straighten ’em out. Expose it all. Expose it all. Expose it all, Lord.”
If descrambling the election results was beyond the powers of the Almighty, no worries, Pearson said. He would arrange “another election, another voting day.”
For people who claim to have God on speed dial with an ear open to their almost endless demands, they are not very good at predicting outcomes. Televangelists had predicted a Trump landslide. White predicted a 45 state Trump sweep on the eve of the election. I’d like to be her bookie.
No matter. Prosperity theology means never having to say no to that shiny new Gulf Jetstream.
"The prayer room is the war room." @terripearsons #AmericaStands #Election2020 pic.twitter.com/pVBUtSw3g8
— Kenneth Copeland (@CopelandNetwork) November 4, 2020
In 2017, Mark Taylor, a former Orlando fireman, self-appointed prophet and QAnon grifter, had predicted President Trump would soon order mass arrests of high profile Satanists and paedophiles. Military tribunals would go on for years in a way that would make “Nuremberg look like a cake walk.” That was three years ago.
By the way, Anons have the strangest ideas around the Nuremberg trials believing that there was a wholesale street lynchings, not just of senior ranking Nazis for war crimes but of mass executions across the board. QAnon drips with implicit anti-Semitism.
On the weekend, Taylor looked into his QAnon trademarked crystal ball (price does not include postage and handling) and determined that anyone of the 76,392,207 and counting people who had voted for Joe Biden were “no longer human,” having been so thoroughly possessed by demons that Kenneth Copeland may have to be called to visit them to make some more farting noises.
Cult of QAnon
One can understand why Trump kept these people close enough to continue to vote for him. They make up a fraction of his support but in an election as close as this one, that fraction may have been almost enough to get him over the line.
But why have televangelists and the cultist QAnons so heavily invested in a Trump re-election, knowing that at best it was always going to be a coin toss?
Delusion is a big part of the answer. The other is to keep the cash rolling in and keep the grift alive.
QAnon is a cult and as with all cults, a scam rich in charlatanism. It is designed to put money in the pockets of self-appointed leaders through donations, sales of merch, and through YouTube subscriptions (seriously Google, why haven’t you de-platformed these people? If Zuckerberg can do it, why can’t you?)
The rank and file of Anons are said to be deeply shaken by the election result. As well they should. Of every prediction, every vague prognostication contained in the so-called Q drops from the fictitious anonymous deep state whistleblower, Q, not one has come to pass from Pizzagate onwards.
Yesterday, Brother Copeland said things that some have interpreted to mean he hates Joe Biden. In this video, Brother Copeland apologizes for this and wants to make it clear that he loves Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.â¤ï¸ðŸ¤ðŸ’™ https://t.co/mKM6pNauA7
— Kenneth Copeland (@CopelandNetwork) November 9, 2020
The re-election of Trump was supposed to usher in the Great Awakening, an Armageddon-like version of a near future where only the true Q believers would remain in the upright. God only knows how the QAnon con artists will try and explain this one away.
Meanwhile, the televangelists suspect Biden and the Democrats may strike at where prosperity theologists hurt most – at the piles of cash and prizes they hoard. More than a decade ago, a Senate Finance Committee investigated financial improprieties within six religious organisations including Copeland’s and the group White attached herself to at the time. There was a prospect that Copeland, White and others would lose their tax-exempt status.
In the end it came to nothing but the chance, however minute, that the threat could rear its head again during a Biden administration and cut into their already vast wealth was enough to summon a sword-bearing god to smite and smite and smite and smite the evil doers.
But their more immediate concern is just ten weeks away and how they’re going to rationalise to their much put upon faithful why Joe Biden is standing Bible in hand outside the US Congress taking the presidential oath of office.
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