# Lance Wallnau — "God's wrecking ball" > [!quote] "I heard the Lord say, 'Donald Trump is a wrecking ball to the spirit of political correctness.' ... I heard the Lord say, 'Isaiah 45 will be the 45th president.' I go check it out; Isaiah 45 is Cyrus." > — Lance Wallnau, *God's Chaos Candidate: Donald J. Trump and the American Unraveling* (2016); repeated on CBN News, 2017 ## Context [[Lance Wallnau]] is one of the most consequential figures in the [[New Apostolic Reformation]], the charismatic movement built by [[C. Peter Wagner]] around the claim that God is restoring living apostles and prophets to govern the global church. Wagner took Wallnau on as a protege in 2001. Wallnau then sharpened the movement's political ambitions by popularizing the [[Seven Mountain Mandate]] — the doctrine that Christians must conquer seven "mountains" of cultural influence (government, media, education, family, religion, business, and the arts) to establish God's dominion on earth. His 2013 book *Invading Babylon*, co-written with [[Bill Johnson]], recast that framework as an explicit program for institutional takeover, making him what the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty has called "the father of American [[Dominionism]]." In 2015, with the evangelical establishment repelled by [[Donald Trump]]'s casinos, bankruptcies, and serial marriages, Wallnau found a way around the problem. He reached back to King Cyrus — the pagan Persian emperor whom God uses in Isaiah 45 to rescue the Jewish people — and cast Trump in the same role: a deeply imperfect man whom God had nevertheless chosen as His instrument. This is the [[Flawed Vessel]] theology in its purest electoral form. Wallnau claimed direct prophetic revelation: God told him Trump would be a "wrecking ball to the spirit of political correctness" and that "Isaiah 45 will be the 45th president." He published these claims in his October 2016 book *God's Chaos Candidate*, which told wary evangelicals that voting for Trump was not a moral compromise but an act of obedience to divine will. The Cyrus framing solved a theological problem that no amount of political argument could fix. It transformed Trump from an embarrassment into a prophetic fulfillment, giving the [[MAGA]] movement a cosmic mandate rooted in [[Spiritual Warfare]] rather than conventional politics. ## Why this matters This is the prophetic authorization of Trump's candidacy — the moment a charismatic preacher with deep roots in [[Dominionism]] and the [[New Apostolic Reformation]] gave millions of evangelicals permission to vote for a man whose personal life violated everything they claimed to stand for. The theological argument is potent precisely because it does not require Trump to be righteous: God used Cyrus, God used Nebuchadnezzar, and now God is using Trump. The vessel's flaws are not a bug but proof that God, not man, is directing events. This framing bridges [[Dominionism]] and electoral politics by translating the [[Seven Mountain Mandate]]'s abstract program for cultural conquest into a concrete presidential vote. It gives [[Christian Nationalism]] the structure of prophecy: Trump is not merely a preferred candidate but a divinely anointed wrecking ball sent to demolish a corrupt order so that Christians can claim the "government mountain." Wallnau connected this to [[Spiritual Warfare]], later claiming on Jim Bakker's show that Trump had knocked a "spirit of witchcraft" out of the Oval Office. The trajectory from Wallnau's 2016 Cyrus prophecy to the [[Donald Trump - Jesus healer image]] of later years is direct. Once the [[Flawed Vessel]] theology established that God was working through Trump, each subsequent crisis — impeachment, electoral defeat, criminal indictment — became further evidence of spiritual persecution, pushing the imagery from "imperfect vessel" toward something closer to messianic. Wallnau himself exemplified this escalation: by 2024 he was running a [[Ziklag]]-funded revival tour through swing states, recruiting poll workers, and calling Kamala Harris a demonic Jezebel on his daily broadcast. ## Verification - **Primary source:** *God's Chaos Candidate: Donald J. Trump and the American Unraveling* by Lance Wallnau (October 2016). - **Contemporaneous broadcast:** [CBN News interview, 2017](https://cbn.com/news/us/lance-wallnau-why-trump-gods-chaos-candidate-and-wrecking-ball) — repeats both the "wrecking ball" and "Isaiah 45" claims verbatim. - **Investigative profile:** [GPAHE, "God's Chaos Prophet," June 2026](https://globalextremism.org/post/lance-wallnau/) — comprehensive sourcing on Wallnau's NAR role, Ziklag ties, and political operations. - **NPR reporting:** [NPR, Oct. 2024](https://www.npr.org/2024/10/04/nx-s1-5123626/christian-nationalist-election-workers-lance-wallnau) — documents Wallnau's influence on evangelical voter mobilization and January 6 connections. - **Status:** Verbatim, undisputed. Wallnau has repeated and expanded these claims publicly for a decade. ## Related quotes - [[Donald Trump - Jesus healer image]] — the endpoint of the trajectory Wallnau's Cyrus theology initiated: from [[Flawed Vessel]] to messianic figure. - [[Mike Johnson - go pick up a Bible]] — the [[Seven Mountain Mandate]] expressed from inside the government mountain itself. - [[Pat Buchanan - religious war for the soul of America]] — the 1992 [[Culture War]] speech that presaged the theocratic-political fusion Wallnau would complete. - [[Jerry Falwell - you helped this happen]] — the [[Moral Majority]] era's attempt to theologize political outcomes, a direct predecessor to Wallnau's prophetic framing. ## Part of collections - Featured in [[Politics as Holy War]] — the prophetic-authorization entry in the Manichaean-politics arc.