Last time we met up, we talked about one evangelical’s abysmally-inaccurate 2022 prophecies. Even by evangelicals’ alarmingly inexact standards, this guy didn’t issue a single accurate prophecy out of 15+ guesses pulled directly out of his hind end. But an evangelical faux-reviewing his past prophecies sure thought he was the real deal. Indeed, most evangelicals believe that prophecy is real. Prophecy fulfills a very important role in evangelical culture, one that they can’t bear to lose even if it means countless failures and humiliations. They’d rather keep prophesying than stop and miss out on those many benefits.
As we’ll discover, though, it’s not about any of their prophecies being nice and accurate. It’s about how prophecies make evangelicals feel.
(This post first appeared on Patreon on 2/14/2023. Its audio ‘cast lives there too.)
Many evangelicals believe in divine prophecies
A prophecy is divinely-granted foreknowledge of a specific event that is going to happen very soon. It’s not an educated guess or a rah-rah message of encouragement. Prophecies are not just warnings to the believing flocks, but also stupendous and undeniable shows of majesty from the Christian god.
Of course, evangelicals themselves have been trying to redefine this term for decades now. I found a 1988 column in Christianity Today that completely defangs prophecy:
An examination of the New Testament teaching on this gift will show that it should be defined not as “predicting the future,” or “proclaiming a word from the Lord,” or “powerful preaching”—but rather as “telling something that God has spontaneously brought to mind.” Once we understand prophecy this way, we can allow our churches room to enjoy one of the Holy Spirit’s most edifying gifts.
However, that’s definitely not how our Prophecy Lad last week defines his own bad guesses. It’s certainly not how most prophecy-believing evangelicals clearly define it.
And a whole lot of evangelicals believe that prophecies, as I’ve defined the term, are real and happen today. Not all of them do, of course. Some believe that Yahweh/Jesus stopped handing out prophecies after the conclusion of the New Testament. I guess they think he blew through all of his Jesus Power after the Book of Revelation. These evangelicals are called cessationists. As you might guess, there is absolutely no clear indication in the Bible that prophecy ever ceased or should be discontinued.
I reckon that about half of evangelicals buy into prophecies to some extent. In some denominations, like the Southern Baptist Convention, the percentage may climb much higher. In others, obviously, it’ll be much smaller.
These evangelicals also tend to buy into other similarly-showy-but-fake practices like speaking in tongues and magic healings. These practices define them as charismatic Christians. That said, I’ve long noticed that even evangelicals who think of themselves as far too sensible to babble in tongues seem to put great stock in prophecies.
When we look at Christianity as divided between high Christianity, that meticulously-ritualistic, devotions-focused, more educated and Bible-literate form of the religion, and low Christianity, that spontaneous, orgiastic, feelings-focused, less educated and almost completely Bible-illiterate form, it’s quite clear where prophecies belong.
The main forms that prophecies take
Prophecies come in a few different forms:
Shoehorning Bible verses into the latest headlines. Evangelicals do this to scare themselves and their audiences silly with visions of the Endtimes. They also do this to claim that the Bible is totes for realsies true in every way. This is why we see evangelicals breathlessly declaring that every earthquake that ever happens is totally a sign of the world’s end getting closer and closer. Really, it’s simply a form of confirmation bias writ large, and it appeals mightily to evangelical conspiracy theorists. Normies might know about this kind of prophecy, but they likely perceive it as an extreme, fringe activity.
Retrofitting any and all Old Testament prophecies to make them seem like they totally applied to Jesus. These same evangelicals also laboriously pore over Old Testament verses to shoehorn them into the mythology around Jesus, thus making the Bible true in every way and a stunning example of centuries of prophecies all foretelling the Messiah’s arrival on Earth. Unfortunately, evangelicals have to take quite a few liberties to get to that conclusion. As well, from the get-go almost all Jews have completely rejected the results of this labor—which is why they didn’t convert en masse to the religion that formed around that mythology. Normies do not tend to know much about it, but almost all evangelicals buy into this form of prophecy. (They call it types and shadows.)
Spouting prophecies on the fly. This kind of prophecy is likely what most normies think the term means. To do it, a Christian (usually someone who holds leadership status in their group) proclaims that Yahweh/Jesus totally told them that a particular event is going to happen at some particular time. Or that Yahweh/Jesus wants them to relay a message that he’s too shy or busy to give the flocks himself. Or that an event only might happen—if the flocks don’t obey the prophet’s commands.
Regarding that last type: Officially, the Bible says that false prophets should be put to death. Naturally, evangelical prophets and prophecy-lovers have done their level best to muddy the waters on that uncomfortable rule!
Why evangelicals say they think prophecies are important
Evangelical leaders have spilled no small amount of digital ink explaining—at length—why prophecies are super-important to their flavor of the religion. Here’s a small-town evangelical pastor to explain his reasons for thinking so:
Prophecy is used as proof of the inspiration, inerrancy, and authority of God’s Word.
Prophecy should produce hope in the life of the Christian, which, in turn, promotes purity and perseverance. [. . .] The assurance and hope which prophecy produces should cause us to live in this world as though its pleasures were temporary and to invest in the world to come, where its blessings are eternal.
Prophecy tells us the goal of human history. Prophecy tells us where God is going in history. It informs man of God’s purposes and exhorts men to conform their lives to God’s goals.
Prophecy should create in us a sense of urgency. One of the most common maladies of the Christian life is apathy. Unbelieving scoffers reject the warnings of future judgment, secure in their self-delusion that everything is continuing on as it has from the beginning.
Another source tells us that prophecy fulfills “four distinct purposes” for Christians:
- Encouragement
- Conviction, admonition, correction
- Inspiration
- Guidance
Still another adds to this list by claiming that studying the so-called prophecies in the Bible will “protect [Christians] from false teaching.”
Gosh, Christians sure think that prophecy offers a load of benefits! You’d think they’d have done studies about these claims to make sure they’re true, right? But I’ve sure never seen anything rigorous out of them. These supposed benefits only exist between Christians’ ears.
But there are other reasons, real ones, that Christians barely ever mention for their prophecy obsession. I can see why, too. They don’t make Christians look very good at all.
The unsavory reasons evangelicals have for loving prophecies
Only one of the sources I consulted really touched on those less-savory reasons for glomming onto prophecy. You probably already caught it in the above quotes, too:
One of the most common maladies of the Christian life is apathy. Unbelieving scoffers reject the warnings of future judgment, secure in their self-delusion that everything is continuing on as it has from the beginning.
So prophecies not only goose the flocks into getting more serious about their devotions, but also give the flocks a reason to look down on the unwashed heathens surrounding them. Don’t you feel the Christian love radiating out from this guy as he calls us “scoffers” rejecting his loving “warnings of future judgment,” as he declares that we are delusional for thinking his predictions won’t actually ever happen?
I bet this guy fantasizes every day about screeching I TOLD YOU SO one day as his culture-war enemies plunge into the abyss of Hell forever, there to burn for his entertainment for eternity.
However, most of these essays don’t talk much about the other reasons. Insulting non-believers and openly hoping to scare the sheep into obedience is one thing. But Christians don’t tend to like confronting their deep-seated need to control others. And that’s another big reason why they embrace all these ridiculous prophecies year in and year out.
Prophecy as a reflection of evangelicals’ insecurities and fears
I’ve noticed that when really authoritarian evangelicals start feeling particularly challenged and defied by others, they tend to unleash tons and tons of prophecies. Just before the 2022 midterms, Slate noticed that books about prophecy and Endtimes predictions were dominating Christian publishing. Slate theorized that this glut of prophecy books were a reaction to evangelicals’ shocking political losses in 2020 and 2022. I think they’re on to something.
These numerous prophecies that evangelicals keep making are, then, a way to re-cast their losses into solid wins. They’re a way to regain power, to feel powerful again, to feel like their side really is the winning side forever. Their enemies might win a few fights here and there. Maybe those enemies will win a whole bunch of fights in a row. But eventually, all those ickie heathens will draw the universe’s biggest L once evangelicals’ magic wizard friend finally kick-starts the Endtimes.
In a very real sense, then, prophecies are about restoring a comfortable equilibrium in evangelicals’ minds. The flocks get quite restive when they start wondering if they’re really on the winning side after all! Just imagine if the guy who tweeted this bit of bullshit realized just why he needs to talk like this:
That restoration of equilibrium may well have been John Nelson Darby’s unintentional goal in popularizing Rapture theology back in the 1830s. At the time, England (where he’d moved a few years earlier) was going through a lot of unrest and reform. Having the hope of Rapture happening Any Day Now™ likely alleviated a lot of stress for Darby and his followers. Like yes yes, Industrial Revolution, yes yes, new queen on the throne, yes yes, tons of new laws and whatnot, but look at that divine squirrel outside the window! We’ve got this!
Why failed prophecies won’t change anything
In the wake of humiliating prophecy failures from years past, many evangelical prophets have retooled their approach. Instead of predicting specific events happening at a specific time, they make super-vague educated guesses about things that might happen. Or they tell the flocks that if they pray a whole lot or follow the prophet’s other commands, they can drastically mitigate the damage promised by prophecies.
And even then, their prophecies fail utterly. Of the list we examined last week, not one prediction came even close to being a miraculous show of divine might. Some even backfired entirely when contradictory events transpired instead. That’s how it usually goes with these prophecies.
But prophets have always known that their predictions serve a much-needed purpose in evangelical life. They always have. Thus, failed prophecies may drive away some sheep, but many others will simply drill down harder.
(We learned this exact lesson in When Prophecy Fails (1956). The Wayback Machine has it as a free download, too!)
It’s not about the prophecies themselves. It’s about how prophecies make Christians feel. And it always has been.
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