As is our wont at the beginning of a new year, let’s look back at evangelicals’ prophecies for 2025! This time around, I’m noticing a serious downtick in specific prophecies that can be tested and found invalid. Evangelicals have been getting way more cowardly about their prophecies in recent years. Maybe their god is too busy to talk to them. Or perhaps he simply has the weirdest priorities of any divinity in history. He’s sure not telling.
So hop in! We’re heading to Fundie-Land!
(This post and its audio ‘cast first went live on Patreon on 1/13/2026. They’re both available now!)
SITUATION REPORT: Prophecies, prophecies everywhere in 2025
As we talked about last time, most people assume that a “prophecy” involves a prediction about some specific future event that will take place at some specific time. In years past, certainly evangelicals were bold in these predictions. But these days, today’s self-appointed prophets are cowards. They’re unwilling to sacrifice their reputations and face public mockery when—not if—their predictions fail to materialize accurately.
Today, we’ll check out a grab bag of prophecies about 2025—and discuss their specificity, falsifiability, and accuracy. For our purposes today, the predictions we’ll be examining occurred toward the end of 2024 to January 31, 2025. In addition, I tried to focus on America-based evangelicals, since I’m way more familiar with American evangelical culture and news.
At the end, we’ll also review some of the major stories of 2025 that you’d really think a loving god might have mentioned to all of these totes for realsies prophets of his.
I’ll spoiler with this: It’s a damn good thing evangelicals no longer consider vagueness a problem in the world of prophecy. It’s an even better thing that they don’t feel bound to carry out the Old Testament’s penalty for false prophets.
First up: The encouragers
As we saw last time, most evangelical prophecies focus on encouraging the flocks to keep Jesusing with all their hearts. They’re just rah-rah messages. Indeed, these were the most common prophecies I saw.
Elizabeth Chalker certainly falls into this category. On Twitter, she posted prophecies claiming that TRUE CHRISTIANS™ would finally take control of worldwide governments.
Out of all the sources, JoLynne Whittaker, was the most prolific. She tweeted more than a dozen prophecies across December 2024. They were all the same blahblah, like this one promising her audience that Yahweh would not only help them defeat their enemies, but also give them their enemies’ stuff. Another promised that Yahweh would “elevate and prosper you in 2025.” (Her website reveals she’s a typical prosperity gospel huckster. It’s a pity Jesus isn’t sending prophets to warn anyone about her.)
Jeremiah Johnson is still trying to recapture his popularity after predicting Donald Trump’s election in 2016 (and being dead wrong about his re-election in 2020, whoops). In that pursuit, he informed his followers that Yahweh would send angels to guard them in 2025. Johnson also predicted that evangelicals would magically figure out how to force accountability on their leaders.
Next: Prophecies sounding the warning klaxons
Many prophecies predicted serious political trouble and persecution for all TRUE CHRISTIANS™. These appear to be designed to radicalize evangelicals and foster Christian nationalism in their hearts.
Cindy Jacobs, quoted by Charisma Magazine, warned readers of all kinds of awful things for 2025—and each and every one of her warnings could have been uttered by anybody who follows the news. Here’s a sampler:
- The American economy may get in trouble due to its massive debt load.
- If America doesn’t keep its firm alliance with Israel intact, Yahweh will curse them. (Those warnings always sound like “Santa won’t bring you presents” to me!)
- Christians should keep survival rations in stock. In addition, they need to buy gold and silver to use as money, and maybe learn to barter too. Though her first part isn’t at all unreasonable, she doesn’t offer any reasons why anyone should do the rest.
- If Christians pray against COVID-19, that won’t stop it entirely, but she insists “it does mitigate.” Her god is apparently too weak to entirely defeat a mere virus. Sorry, best he can do is mitigate.
Meanwhile, in another Charisma Magazine post Perry Stone predicts natural disasters for 2025. Some, he warns, will even occur in “coastal areas.”
Uh oh! Folks, only a god could possibly have told him that!
Third: Totes for realsies revival prophecies
Many evangelical leaders predicted revivals across the world.
Malachi O’Brien predicted (in all-caps no less) that “2025 IS GOING TO BE A YEAR OF REVIVAL.”
So did Alan DiDio, as reported in Charisma Magazine.
A traveling preacher-for-hire, JD Shuttlesworth, predicted the same thing in an Instagram Reel (local screenshot archive). His caption reads, “2025 WILL BE A YEAR OF GREAT REVIVAL!” In fact, he’s got an entire website, RevivalToday.com, devoted to selling his books and his services as a preacher. There, we find he’s the full-meal deal for modern evangelical hucksters: magic healing, SPEERCHUL WARFARE, a serious hunger for temporal power over others, the whole nine yards. So I guess his prophecy hinges on churches hiring him. But either churches didn’t hire him, or his prophecy is just dead wrong.
In fact, all of these prophets are wrong. No major or large-scale revivals occurred in 2025. Individual churches or even small networks might have staged revivals, but last year I heard no grand victory stories indicating wider-spread success than that.
In recent years, Christianity’s decline stabilized a bit. But as Gen Alpha ages up, experts expect the decline to continue. Unchurched parents raise unchurched kids. Very few—meaning almost none—of those kids later join churches. At the same time, according to Pew Research, Christian churches’ retention rate for young adults continues to tank at around 56%.
And now, the few specific prophecies
Some prophets shot for the stars with specific prophecies for 2025.
This one’s from Alan DiDio, quoted in Charisma Magazine. He predicted:
- “The Rise of Josephs and Esthers,” meaning people who’d massively influence secular leaders and bring evangelicals’ control to all people everywhere. As far as I can tell, that hasn’t happened. Thank goodness.
- “Renewed Focus on Prayer,” which also doesn’t seem to have happened. I’ve heard of no massive outbreak of prayer on Christians’ own private time.
- “A Generation Rising,” meaning Gen Z will convert/rededicate like crazy. This is likely part of evangelicals’ imaginary “Silent Revival,” which didn’t move the needle at all on young adults’ move away from Christianity. They’ve already lost Gen Z, who are people generally between the ages of 14-29. They ought to be worrying about Gen Alpha kids who are just now entering their teens.
Amusingly enough, in another post he seems to feel very strongly about “false prophets.” Considering he is one himself, it’s an odd look. But Jim Bakker, the grand huckster of all hucksters, seems to like him. So a few false prophecies won’t hurt him at all.
In another Charisma Magazine story, Perry Stone predicted that “‘great revelation’ and ‘mysteries’ will be unlocked this year” (meaning 2025). That didn’t happen either.
On Facebook, Robin Bullock was busy promising that 2025 would be “a year of the prophetic voice, and the global watchman movement arising.” (Facebook link; local image archive.)
Steven Anderson (who is NOT the nutjob preacher and alleged violent abuser) predicted on his own blog, TruthOnlyBible, that he fully expects Israel to tear down the Dome of the Rock, throw out the Muslims taking care of it, and rebuild the Third Temple right there. Once that’s done, other Middle Eastern countries will make peace with Israel and there’ll finally be peace in that region—just in time for the Endtimes! Unfortunately for our prophet, in 2025 Israel didn’t seize control of the Dome of the Rock. They’re edging closer and closer to breaking the rules of the agreements they made about the site, but nothing formal so far. (Bonus: A big Reddit argument about what might happen if they ever did.)
Anderson also thinks somehow the United States will get the entire world to use a single currency, which Endtimes believers incorrectly believe functions as the Mark of the Beast from the Book of Revelation. Oh, and with AI’s help and the ongoing spread of English as a commonly-spoken language, humanity will piss Yahweh off mightily. We could talk about Anderson all day, but I’ll stop there. He’s just amazing. Everything I’ve read of his either didn’t happen at all or could have been easily guessed by anyone keeping up with current events.
The weird omissions in all of these prophecies
And now, here are the stories that none of them predicted. Every one of these stories represents a lost opportunity for Yahweh to warn his people about catastrophes that undoubtedly claimed many Christians’ lives.
Only focusing on natural disasters, here’s a partial list of 2025 events that Yahweh could have warned some of these hucksters about (or mentioned to one of his millions of followers via prayer):
- Southern California wildfires (January 2025; 30+ killed directly, hundreds indirectly)
- A 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar (March 2025; upwards of 5000 killed, many thousands wounded)
- Tornado outbreaks, bad storms, and flooding across the US (March-October 2025; hundreds killed over the year)
- Hurricane Melissa (October 2025; over a hundred killed in Haiti, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic)
- COVID-19 remains a concern, with people still dying all over the world from it (7.1M since 2019)
It’s a dealbreaker of a list. It’s damning in what it tells us about both prophets and their entire belief system.
Not a single one of today’s so-called prophets got a single word from Yahweh about any of these events. Instead, he decided to tell them about their upcoming personal growth, prosperity, dominion, the Endtimes, and recruitment success. As I noticed way back in 2013, he’s sure got some weird priorities!
The problem with prophecies
Some evangelicals are cessationists, meaning they think all the flashy miracles stopped after Jesus’ resurrection. Their opposite, continuationists, think Jesus still grants miracles to today’s Christians. That’s a vast oversimplification, of course. In both camps, we find a continuum of which miracles are off-limits or allowed. But generally, that’s the gist of it. Obviously, the prophets we’ve covered today are continuationists.
This might sound like a ridiculous argument to have, but to cessationists it’s deadly serious. They think that if the flashy miracles still happen today, then it obviously means Jesus wasn’t the final word from Yahweh. (That’s a non sequitur, which means that other explanations could exist. His “then” doesn’t properly follow his “if.”) And if that’s true, then they obviously can’t consider the Bible to be a finished and perfect rulebook. (Another non sequitur, but as the great bard Boon once said: forget it, he’s rollin’.)
But even the strict cessationists imagine that their god communicates with them, guides them, and has a “personal relationship” with them. He just does it slightly differently than continuationists imagine and in more subtle ways.
As long as Christians believe in general that their god dabbles at all in his followers’ lives, that opens the door to miracle-promising false prophets. If he talks to any of them at all, then that opens the door to him whispering prophecies in their ears. There’s no reason he couldn’t, in the belief system even the cessationists favor. Only a nested string of assumptions and logical fallacies stops him.
Of course, most prophets and the flocks they fleece aren’t cessationists. So the brakes are entirely missing from their train. In recent years, those prophets tend to be very careful about testable, falsifiable prophecies. But in every word, they still reveal just how human the source of their promises truly is.
Really, the best-case scenario for Christians is that their god doesn’t talk to, guide, or command any of them. That’d be far better than what all these hucksters say he’s telling them.
NEXT UP: Evangelists continue to trot out the trendiest of all testimonies: They were TOTALLY AN EX-ATHEIST, y’all! We’ll check that trend out and see why it won’t be withering away any time soon. See you next week! <3
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