I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth? Luke 18:8 NKJV
Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. Matthew 7:13-14 NKJV
The Courage Tour: Training Christians To ‘Occupy Territory Now’ As Preparation For Ruling With Jesus by Kyle Mantyla
“In 2023, self-proclaimed Christian nationalist and [former President] Trump supporter [NAR heavyweight] Lance Wallnau announced his intention to travel the country ahead of the 2024 elections in order to break the “demonic strongholds” in swing states that have supposedly been preventing Republicans from winning elections.
Wallnau’s vision manifested itself in the form of the “Courage Tour,” which is a series of multi-day events during which attendees hear from religious-right activists who mobilize them politically during the daily sessions, while the evening sessions are dedicated to spiritual revival and miracle healing.
So far, the Courage Tour has made stops in Georgia and Arizona, and it is currently stationed in Michigan, where Wallnau laid out the true purpose of these events: To prepare Christians to rule and reign when Jesus Christ returns by training them to “occupy territory now.”
Wallnau is a leading proponent of Seven Mountains Dominionism, a radical theology associated with the New Apostolic Reformation that advocates having right-wing Christians control all aspects of society. Followers of Seven Mountains theology believe that they are to “do whatever is necessary” to take control of the seven main “mountains” that shape our culture—education, government, media, business, arts and entertainment, family, and religion—in order to implement the will of God throughout the nation and the world.
This worldview is also clearly the foundation of Wallnau’s “Courage Tour.”
“One of the interesting things about the Courage Tour is that we’re unashamed about the role of the body of Christ in the affairs of planet Earth,” Wallnau explained during Monday evening’s session. “We don’t realize that the ultimate role of Jesus is to come back to Earth to rule it. And when he comes back, he’s going to be administrating his affairs over nations with people that get it; meaning they understand that he is a ruler who rules.”
“The Courage Tour is a unique alchemy,” Wallnau proclaimed. “It’s one of the few times where you’re gonna have election integrity, understanding how to vote, understanding how the state works, understanding stewardship, and occupying Michigan for the Kingdom of God. And then you can easily transition right from there into Jesus in the city, Jesus in the streets, worship, evangelism, and healing. Where in the world do you have the Kingdom of God so comfortably folded and naturally folded into ruling on planet Earth? You have it in the Bible, and you have it in the Courage Tour.”
“All of us are going to be invited to rule in the new administration,” Wallnau continued. “You want to be on the left hand and the right hand of Jesus. You want to be close to his administration. The great reward in the next stage isn’t mansions, it isn’t gold, it isn’t endless hedonistic pleasures and delights; it’s proximity to the power that rules the universe. And to him who has an understanding of that, they get more influence. To him who understands they’re stewarding what they’ve got to increase their leverage for his glory, to occupy territory now so that when he returns, you have something to offer him, to them that have that revelation, more resources will be given.”
“I want God to begin to transfer the resources of Earth into the hands of people that get it and that will use that influence in order to expand and occupy territory for the Kingdom of God,” Wallnau declared. “Are you willing to do that?””
NAR apostle takes aim at all swing state counties in the battle for the mountains of government
“The Trump wing of the New Apostolic Reformation is on the offensive once again, waging a campaign in counties they think will swing the 2024 presidential election.
The campaign has two main elements. One is led by Apostle Lance Wallnau, whose campaign is branded as The Courage Tour, while the other is led by a Trumpian think tank, the America First Policy Institute and its political action arm, America Policy Works. The latter’s project has disappeared from public view and may have gone stealth, but Wallnau’s Courage Tour, which appears to be a rejiggered version of last year’s Fire and Glory Tour, remains quite conspicuous.
Wallnau, a strategist and the public face of the revolutionary movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, is best known for his advocacy of the 7 Mountain Mandate, which is the idea that Christians are called to conquer seven “mountains” of society to achieve religious and political dominion: government, family, religion, arts & entertainment, media, education, and business.
Wallnau says he’s engaged in “the battle for the mountain of government.” To that end, he also says “there are 3,143 counties in the United States and the Lord showed us that 19 are going to determine the future of America.” (Last year he said it was 14. But apparently, the lord’s plans changed.) The Lord’s target counties, he says, are now in seven swing states, where evangelical turnout was proportionally lower.
General Wallnau
When the Tour hit Phoenix, the rhetoric and vision of religious war was employed to rally followers to participate in the mundane mechanics of the forthcoming election. All the while, the tour emphasizes the movements’s racial and ethnic diversity. Wallnau called the tour:
A real apostolic team because it’s Asian, Black, and White, and Jew and Gentile, male and female, and Hispanic. And its beautiful. It’s exactly what the Devil hates. It’s his biggest nightmare. We’re like the genuine rainbow coalition.
NAR evangelist Mario Murillo co-headlines the Courage Tour, along with such notable NAR figures as Apostles Mario Bramnick and Jenny Donnelly, Prophet Lou Engle, and Western Journal founder Floyd Brown. The tour has so far come to Georgia and Arizona, with dates already scheduled for Michigan and Wisconsin, four of the six states Axios says are “expected to decide the 2024 presidential election.” Other sites are expected to be announced in the coming weeks.
Herman Martir, president of the Texas-based Asian Action Network led the Phoenix crowd in chanting an imprecatory prayer: “Arise oh God and let your enemies be scattered!” Martir, who identifies as Navajo and Filipino, will be leading Asian American outreach in Minnesota and beyond.
On the final day Apostle Mario Bramnick, a native of Cuba, a Messianic Jew, and President of the Latino Coalition for Israel, declared to a small crowd (what he called a “remnant”): “It’s time to join General Lance Wallnau in this great army to take back America!”
Demonstrating that the tour was not limited to what happens in the tent, Bramnick left early in order to meet with “Hispanic pastors” at Vida Church in Mesa, Arizona—a strategic hub in their electoral mobilization scheme. Similarly, General Wallnau told another gathering at Vida Church, on March 26, 2024 (translated into Spanish by Pastor Benjamin Diaz) that while evangelists will also target other swing states and wage the spiritual “War over America,” the ground game will also be critical. “God sent me here as an ambassador of Heaven to tell you that you are going to be the key to America,” he declared.
Vida Church, it should be noted, is part of the apostolic network of Bethel Church, in Redding, California, led by Apostle Bill Johnson.
General Wallnau added that the top four of the tour’s seven target states are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin. But he stressed that “as Maricopa goes, so goes Arizona [and] as Arizona goes so goes the nation—and God’s going to hold you accountable.” That’s why, he continued, “we are leaving a team behind [to target key precincts].”
Lance Wallnau instructing prospective activists in voter mobilization at Vida Church
General Wallnau further proclaimed that to carry out this stealth political ground game, they have “special intelligence apps” including As One America, which contains the name, address and phone number of Christian neighbors “who are not showing up to vote or who are not registered.” He then showed a map with big red arrows pointing to precincts “within striking distance” from Vida Church to the precincts that are “where the devil’s got a stronghold that God wants to break up.”
The app was developed by Superfeed Technologies, which has also designed apps for such clients as America First Works, Turning Point Action, and the Arizona Republican Party.
The day before, he said, he had been to a gathering of “pastors and rich businessmen” for US Senate candidate Kari Lake, a Republican. The Lord had asked him to deliver a “prophetic prayer” declaring that he would protect Lake and her family from Satan’s attacks and the torments of “Soros demons.”
Closing out the three-day Phoenix event was Jason Yates of My Faith Votes, an organization that has crunched data from the list of inconsistent Christian voters and is waging a campaign to contact them via handwritten letters from fellow Christians.
Yates is concerned that too many Christians don’t vote. He explains that this is partly because they’ve been deceived by the myth of the separation of church and state. (Needless to say, there’s nothing in the doctrine of separation that seeks to discourage or prevent anyone from voting.)
Political training at the tent revival
On the Courage Tour Murillo leads an old-fashioned tent revival at night, while Wallnau and others seek to inspire and instruct followers on political engagement during the day.
One new feature of this tour is that Wallnau and other NAR figures are no longer separating what they call “spiritual warfare” from real world politics. Nor are such displays limited to the Courage Tour. Once again speaking at Vida Church on March 23rd, Wallnau said God told him that the reason some states are electoral battle grounds is because they are “spiritual battle ground states”—where “my people aren’t praying strong in the spirit. And if we don’t have apostles and prophets in the territory, then demons control the territory and the minds of people are under the influence of devils.”
“The Left is loaded with demons,” Wallnau has warned. “I don’t think it’s people anymore; I think you’re dealing with demons talking through people.” This is consistent with the recent escalation in the rhetoric of religious war going on across much of the NAR-influenced religious and political world. It has become de rigueur to cast religious, political, and gender differences as demonic.
This trend is marked by a certain grandiose barrel of contradictions, in which the election can be at once compared to a major religious revival and to the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. The tour website claims that its events will mark the dawning “of our nation’s Third Great Awakening,” though Wallnau doesn’t explain why. He does, however, credit Dominionist thought leader and GOP operative David Barton for giving him “a lot of insight” in determining which places to target, and says that the battles of the swing states are going to be “Gettysburgs.”
Meanwhile, the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a think tank formed in 2021 to promote the Trump agenda, is targeting 19 counties in 9 states. Launched with $1 million from Trump’s Save America PAC, AFPI boasts the involvement of members of the former president’s cabinet, administration and campaign staff.
AFPI is also partly led and staffed by apostolic figures including Trump’s spiritual advisor, Apostle Paula White-Cain who heads the Center for American Values. (She also leads the Trump campaign’s National Faith Advisory Board, an AFPI partner in targeting the 19 counties.)
Wallnau says seven states are key. AFPI says nine. Apparently, the lists of the fateful 19 counties have diverged as they’ve evolved.
In any case, the criteria are that they’re suburban swing counties with a population of 400,000 or more, and where the margin to win the state is less than 2%.
In Arizona, Maricopa County, which includes the city of Phoenix, is the target. Hayek says “We [meaning the Trump campaign] lost the state of Arizona by 10,000 votes in 2020. Think about it.”
Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin complete AFPI’s “Tier 1” states, all of which are, again, among Axios’s six highlighted swing states. Florida, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina comprise “Tier 2.”
The Courage Tour and America First Works are both partnering with Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, which claims to have relationships with 2500 churches across the country that are promoting “an America First agenda.” In any case, it has emerged as a pivotal organization on the Christian and political Right, reportedly employing 450 people. Its Turning Point Faith division seeks to organize conservative Christians around the 2024 election. (Sean Feucht’s ‘unfriending America’ tour of state capitals is also being done in partnership with TPUSA).
The stealth of Project 19
Ashley Hayek, Chief Engagement Officer of the AFPI (who previously served as the National Coalitions Director for the 2020 Trump presidential campaign) took to one of the larger platforms in the NAR world, the World Prayer Network Broadcast in July 2023. There she unveiled (1:08:00) the 19-county campaign they call, rather prosaically, Project 19.
The choice of the platform was, in its way, as significant as the plan itself, as it demonstrated an intimacy between parts of the MAGA and apostolic movements. The WPNB, which is essentially a glorified Zoom call hosted by Apostle Jim and Rosemary Shindler Garlow, was a natural choice for the small world of the Christian Right. Adam W. Schindler, the Chief Digital Officer of AFPI was, with Garlow, a co-founder of the World Prayer Network.
Ashley Hayek explains the “two-pronged” approach of Project 19
On the WPNB Hayek said that Project 19, which began in July 2023, seeks to educate people in 19 counties leading up to the 2024 election. (beginning) She described it as a “two pronged” effort in which they would both conduct issue education “through the churches,” and “voter mobilization” through their c4 arm, America Policy Works. (Incidentally, APW was previously a major spigot of cash for rightist groups after 2016 before rebranding and linking up with APFI).
Hayek outlines the 5-step plan of which Project 19 is just one part
Hayek noted that AFPI would issue a “Tool Kit” on the distinct election rules for each of the target counties, including a focus on mail-in ballots and ballot harvesting (in states where it’s legal). Although AFPI publishes several Tool Kits, they haven’t published their county election manual online. Neither has America Policy Works. This suggests that the campaign has gone stealth since its ballyhooed launch.
Garlow’s Well Versed ministry [Dr. Jim Garlow is the Founder and CEO of Well Versed, a ministry to Members of Congress, Ambassadors at the United Nations in New York City, and other elected officials, bringing Biblical principles of governance to government leaders. He served on President Trump’s Faith Advisory team for four years, and has met in small delegations with 10 presidents and prime ministers and one king from around the world] is listed among AFPI’s ‘movement partners,’ alongside business/libertarian groups like the Club for Growth, familiar Christian Right organizations like the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Family Research Council, and the Family Policy Alliance. Intriguingly, listed among these usual suspects is the American Principles Project, founded by neoconservative Catholic strategist Robert P. George who in 2016, was a Never Trumper.
Garlow, a former California megachurch pastor, says that media should not report on the WPNB calls, because they’ve “morphed into a church service.” In NAR fashion, they begin each World Prayer Network Broadcast by blowing the shofar.
He claims that the prayer calls on Zoom aren’t partisan but that what they’re in fact doing is “looking for Biblical candidates versus those that are anti-Biblical.” Hayek works for both the AFPI, which is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, tax exempt organization, and the related America Policy Works, a (501)(c)(4) organization whose tax status allows it to do some political advocacy work.
While there isn’t a lot of publicly available information, we do know, as Drake Franklin of the Biblical Foundations project staff says in a recent AFPI podcast, that they’ve been meeting with churches in the 19 counties and having the pastor speak from the pulpit about voter registration before getting the congregation registered. Co-host Chad Wolf, who was an Acting Secretary of Homeland Security in the Trump administration, says that some 30-40 million evangelicals “don’t vote, every cycle” and that “if even an infinitesimal percentage of those people get involved, we’ll never lose.”” https://religiondispatches.org/wheres-wallnau-a-nar-apostle-takes-aim-at-swing-counties-in-the-battle-for-the-mountain-of-government/
Except from Donald Trumps speech at the NRB convention in Tennessee
“In an evening filled with apocalyptic rhetoric, patriotic songs and campaign promises, former President Donald Trump promised Thursday (Feb. 22) that he would make a triumphant return to the White House next year and that he would restore Christian preachers to power in American culture.
“If I get in, you’re going to be using that power at a level that you’ve never used before,” Trump told the annual gathering of National Religious Broadcasters at Nashville’s Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center.
Speaking to a packed-out ballroom of radio and television preachers and other Christian communicators, Trump described himself as a friend and fellow believer and someone ready to restore God to his rightful place in American culture.
“With your help and God’s grace, the great revival of America begins on November 5th,” he said…
Trump appealed to the religious audience with Bible verses and promises of world peace. “The Bible says blessed are the peacemakers,” said Trump, quoting from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. “I will be a peacemaker and I will be the only president who can say — and I say this with great conviction — I will prevent World War III.”
Though he admitted that he wasn’t a very good Christian and didn’t know much about the Bible, Trump told broadcasters that he shared their faith and would always stand up for God — lines that brought thunderous applause…” https://religionnews.com/2024/02/23/trump-promises-a-revival-of-christian-power-in-speech-to-national-religious-broadcasters/
The Word of God does not reveal an end time revival or ushering in the Kingdom of God, but rather the very opposite, increasing evil, times of peril, false teachings, false prophets and deceptive signs and wonders.
Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come. Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3 NKjV
The Greek word translated “rebellion” or “falling away” in verse 3 is apostasia, from which we get the English word apostasy. It refers to a general defection from the one true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob the Living Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Bible, and the Christian faith.
In a world full of treachery, lies and deceit it is comforting to meditate on Jesus Christ’s answer to Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” Jesus gave the solution to Pilate’s question in fact before the words even came out of the Roman leader’s mouth. Pilate just refused to hear what Jesus told him. Quoting from John 18:37, “For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” All who hearken to Christ’s Words will be led to the truth of Life and will receive His promise of salvation and deliverance from the wrath which is soon to come. If you have not turned to the Living Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins (for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, Romans 3:23), repent (godly sorrow) and put your complete faith in ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life,” who paid for the sins of the world by His atoning blood sacrifice when He was pierced upon the cross – the Risen Lord Jesus Christ (John 14:6).”
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