MAGA ‘Prophets’: The Eclipse Is a Warning to Repent — and Follow Trump

Tim Dickinson
·4 min read
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The total eclipse crossing the United States on Monday is more than a celestial marvel. According to MAGA-minded “prophets” with dubious gifts of divination, the eclipse is a signal of God’s design for America, and another marker that former President Donald Trump is heaven’s “anointed” candidate.

Julie Green is a charismatic preacher and self-styled prophet who claims to channel God on the daily, bringing “divine” news to a devoted following from a home studio in Iowa. Green is a viral star on Rumble, where she has more than 200,000 followers, and she’s become a celebrity of the Christianity-meets-QAnon circus known as the “ReAwaken America” tour.

Nevermind that Green’s prophecies are often either vague or preposterous. (She once infamously predicted that Prince Charles would murder his mother in a fruitless attempt to steal the throne.) Green’s influence in MAGA world is strong, and has even included delivering heavenly dispatches to members of the Trump family.

On April 4, Green and a prophetic guest named Larry Ballard — who claims he “died in 1968,” returning to life after a serious accident with supposed heavenly insight — unpacked the spiritual symbolism of the coming eclipse.

Green and Ballard took great interest in the fact that the “path of totality” crosses over Eagle’s Pass, Texas — a border town that’s become a flashpoint in the politics of immigration. Ballard spoke with awe at the eclipse arriving at “the very place that Texas has put a stake in the ground, and said we will defend our nation, our sovereignty, our border, and our God,” insisting, “This is no accident, folks.”

Green agreed. “There’s no coincidence about Eagle Pass,” she said. “God is saying they can’t pass through Me. Because He is our line of protection. God is our border. He’s our refuge. He is our fortress. And God is saying no one can get past Me.”

The higher power that Green and Ballard exalt is markedly aligned with the MAGA agenda — and less so the words of Exodus and Matthew that exhort the faithful to not oppress the foreigner and to welcome the stranger. Indeed, for this prophetic pair, the 45th president seems to be revered almost as a demigod.

“Donald Trump has given us the formula,” Ballard insists later in the broadcast. The seer asserts of the MAGA leader, “Donald Trump is God’s anointed,” adding that Trump is on a divine mission: “He’s going to close that border; he’s going to drill.”

In their conversation, Green and Ballard transform astrological woo into markers of providential preference. They infuse with deep meaning the fact that the path of the present eclipse crosses the path of the 2017 eclipse over U.S. territory, near Missouri. “God is saying this is a time of call of repentance, as a nation,” Green interpreted. “It is simply telling America: Hey, X marks the spot.”

While leading with warnings of divine outrage, Green and Ballard promise great things for America if it follows God — and fights for His man, Trump: “It’s Abraham’s covenant fulfilled. That’s what’s coming in,” Ballard insists. “All we got to do is one thing: Stand up.”

In the tangled theology aired during the hourlong broadcast, Green and Ballard describe an America that is engaged in a dark, spiritual war. According to Ballard, Washington, D.C., is “demonically controlled” and its leaders worship “a phallic symbol, straight from Egypt” — the Washington Monument. Green adds that the “evil” leaders of D.C. seek to appease the pagan gods of Baal and Moloch, and have “sacrificed people” in the capital city. Green claims that God has told her “about the blood that has been shed” and His plans to “destroy certain things.”

It may be tempting to dismiss Green and Co. as crackpots on the lunatic fringe of the religious right. (Ballard is also a Twin Towers truther who claims on his website that “9/11 was a false flag event.”) But Green has the ear of people Trump has promised to appoint to positions of power and prominence in a prospective second term in the White House.

One day after prophesying about the dark implications of the solar eclipse, Green welcomed to her show Gen. Michael Flynn — a fellow traveler on the ReAwaken America circuit, who is about to launch the straight-to-DVD movie Flynn: Deliver the Truth. Whatever the Cost. 

Flynn and Green displayed easy rapport on that broadcast. Green even prayed over Flynn, asking “Father God” to make the Trump-pardoned felon’s movie audience “grow exponentially — even greater than he imagined” in the service of aiding the disgraced former general to “wake this nation up.”

Flynn, in turn, quipped back to Green, displaying a military-industrial sense of piety: “As I’ve always told you, Julie, prayer is still the most powerful weapon system known to man.”

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