#2967: Bill Hamon

Another day, another raging fundie. Bill Hamon is a fundie, self-declared prophet and founder of the Christian International Ministry Network. Charisma’s Steve Strang has described him as “one of the fathers of the modern prophetic movement”, and Hamon could, in fact, be described as the founder, with C. Peter Wagner, of the New Apostolic Reformation: the motivation for Hamon being his conviction that Christ can’t return to Earth and bring about its end until Christians form a “militant” army led by modern apostles and prophets that will physically subdue Earth and start establishing God’s kingdom in the Earth’s governments. Hamon is also the founder of Christian International School of Theology, an international network of Bible Colleges that has ostensibly “trained and activated thousands of ministers and saints across the world”, and author of a number of books with titles like God’s Weapons of War and Seventy Reasons for Speaking in Tongues.

 

Hamon is, moreover, a promoter of the weird genre of Trump-finds-God fan fic, the idea that Donald Trump himself is some sort of deeply committed religious figurehead – indeed, Hamon has contributed to the subgenre Melania-finds-God fan fic (an example), the most famous example of which being perhaps Paul Begley’s idea – spun entirely from febrile imagination – that First Lady Melania Trump refused to move into the White House in 2017 until it had been “completely exorcised.”

 

In any case, Hamon is convinced that Trump is doing God’s work and hence is, indeed, a major success story for his movement to put secular governments under the control of militant prophets. And as Hamon sees it, Trump’s primary agenda as president is to combat the forces of darkness commanded by Satan who are trying to take down God’s own cherished and carefully crafted project, the US. Said forces of darkness are of course identical to those who disagree with Hamon on political issues or who vote in ways that are contrary to how he wants them to vote. For if you do, perhaps because you “don’t realize this is a spiritual war”, God is ready to punish you (or other random Americans – God apparently doesn’t care much about precision). Hamon has, as a prophet, a direct line to God that allows him to reveal the workings here. For instance, in 2017, Hamon could reveal that Hurricane Irma was a sign from God that President Trump’s opponents will soon be exposed (just like Q also prophecied). As Hamon sees it, Trump is “God’s man for this time and God’s going to use him to restore America back to its true destiny and purpose”, and like many other fundie Trumpists, he has compared Trump to the biblical Cyrus, an ungodly man raised up to carry out God’s will: “The fact is that God raised him up, and God didn’t ask our permission which man He would bring, but it’s God’s time,” said Hamon (meanwhile, “everyone knows that if Hillary had gotten it, we would be a socialist nation and we’d be so far from our purpose” that we’d have invited the “judgment of God” … which, through hurricane Irma, we received anyways? Who knows.)

 

At least Hamon’s views on Trump reflect his general theological views as laid out e.g. in his book Apostles, Prophets and the Coming Moves of God: God’s end-times army (the one led by Trump and himself) will achieve victory by striking God’s enemies with blindness and natural disasters, which will eventually lead entire nations to convert to Christ. And the apostles and prophets (like himself) will be so powerful that Christians who come into their presence with sin in their lives will be struck dead, and eventually achieve immortality (this is his take on the idea of the Rapture). Now, many of Hamon’s ideas and doctrines can of course not be found in, say, the Bible, but the reason is obvious: As an apostle and prophet, Hamon has, through apostolic intuition, insights into new doctrines that supplement those given by the original apostles and prophets, or, in short: if you make it up as you go, it is really information directly from God.

 

Diagnosis: He’s old, but seems to be as insane and dangerous as ever. To minimally reasonable people, it remains unfathomable that anyone could take this cartoonishly laughable drivel seriously, but they do, and possibly because it is as crazy as it is: the sort of militant Taliban-style fundamentalism, complete with prophets, apostles and superheroes, has gained serious momentum around the world lately.