Pat Robertson: God Told Me Who The Next President Is, But I'm Not Supposed To Tell You

The Nostradamus of our time.

Pat Robertson, who is batting below the Mendoza line in prophecy, has some new prophecies for 2012.

Pat speaks to the Lord on a regular basis, and gets all kinds of inside information. Kind of like Martha Stewart and Peter Bacanovic.

Today on the 700 Club, Pat passed on some of his inside info. He said that God told him who would be president (but he can't share that info). He also lets us in on the fact that God is not fond of Obama, and that we may be in for some economic hard times. Imagine that.

I spent the better part of a week in prayer and just saying, ‘God show me something,’ some things I’ll share with you. I think he showed me the next me the next president but I’m not supposed to talk about that so I’ll leave you in the dark—probably just as well—I think I’ll know who it will be. I’m going to read just as I wrote down as if I’m hearing from the Lord these words.

Your country will be torn apart by internal stress, a house divided cannot stand. Your president holds a radical view of the direction of your country which is at odds with the majority, expect chaos and paralysis. Your president holds a view that is at odds with the majority, it’s a radical view of the future of this country, so that’s why we’re having this division. This is a spiritual battle which can only be won by overwhelming prayer. The future of the world is at stake because if America falls, there’s no longer a strong champion of freedom and a champion of the oppressed of the world. There must be an urgent call to prayer. The Lord said, a time of maximum stress and peril, greater than at any time since the CBN ministry began. This country will begin disintegrating.

I started thinking, when did we start this place? We started CBN in 1960, you think of all the things that went on, you had the assassination of the president, assassination of Martin Luther King, you’ve got a war in Vietnam, you’ve got all these things, He is saying you will have worse stress than before. So I’m saying, God, let me give you some suggestions and you tell me if any of them is right, pick one. I said, is it an EMP blast? No that isn’t it. Is it a cosmic or solar or radiation blast? No. Is it Mayan galaxy alignment? No. Is it Iranian or North Korean nuclear threat? No. Is it an earthquake or a volcano? No. Is it a massive power failure? No. What is it? It’s an economic collapse. And God said, This is not my judgment, they are bringing it upon themselves.

Rick Perry: The Economic Crisis is God's Way of Bringing Us Back to Biblical Principles

Texas Governor and possible GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry has not been shy about his alignment with the Religious Right. And not just the 'mainstream' Religious Right hate groups like the Family Research Council. We're talking extreme Christocrats.

We also shouldn't forget last month when Perry issued a "Pray For Rain" proclamation. 

If his unapologetic mix of church and state weren't enough to scare you, then how about this? He has the words 'Liberty' and 'Freedom' emblazoned on his cowboy boots. Scared yet? Take a look at the following clip of Perry on James Robinson's Life Today television show, in which he states that the current economic crisis is God's way of making America return to biblical principles and free us from our slavery to the government.

We already had a president who made war decisions based on biblical prophecy. And that didn't work out too well.  

Religious Affiliation and Your Earning Potential

According to data collected by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Hindus have the most college graduates, and Reform Jews make the most money.

Jehovah's Witnesses have the least amount of college graduates and Pentecostals make the least amount of money.

Of course, when it comes to our belief systems, money and education are often of little importance. But we would be naive to think that there are no correlations between religious beliefs and education (and earning potential), just as we would be naive to believe that religious affiliations (and their communities) do not play a part in our employment opportunities (or lack thereof).

As David Leonhardt writes in the New York Times:

The relationship between education and income is so strong that you can almost draw a line through the points on this graph. Social science rarely produces results this clean.

He also warns of making too much of the religious aspect, since there are so many factors at work here:

Some of the income differences probably stem from culture. Some faiths place great importance on formal education. But the differences are also self-reinforcing. People who make more money can send their children to better schools, exacerbating the many advantages they have over poorer children. Round and round, the cycle goes. It won’t solve itself.

The More Money Americans Make, The More Jesus Digs Capitalism

Throughout the history of religion, people have found ways to reconcile views that might be at odds with their religious doctrine.

According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus said, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." (Matthew 19:21)

He followed up with, "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Matthew:19:24)

A new Public Religion Research Institute survey reveals some interesting things about American's ability to reconcile their love of Jesus with their love of money.

Overall more Americans believe that Christian values are at odds with capitalism and the free market than believe they are compatible. This pattern also holds among Christians. Among Christians in the U.S., only 38% believe capitalism and the free market are consistent with Christian values while 46% believe the two are at odds. Religiously unaffiliated Americans look similar to the general population and to Christian Americans, with a plurality (40%) saying capitalism is at odds with Christian values, compared to 32% who say they are compatible; 14% say they do not know. There are significant differences by gender, party and income.

Some interesting findings:

• Half (50%) of women believe that capitalism and Christian values are at odds, compared to 37% of men. 
• A majority (53%) of Democrats believe that capitalism and Christian values are at odds, compared to 37% of Republicans.

The most interesting finding, in terms of illustrating our amazing ability to find ways to reconcile religious views with personal views, was the following:

• Nearly half (46%) of Americans with household incomes of $100,000 a year or more believe that capitalism is consistent with Christian values, compared to only 23% of those with household incomes of $30,000 a year or less.

It's understandable that those with very little would agree with Jesus' words in the Gospel of Matthew. It's also understandable that those who are well off would find ways to interpret those words differently, or deem them as irrelevant in a modern society where we have charities and government programs to assist the less fortunate. (Rush Limbaugh seems to know precisely what Jesus would do.) At the end of the day, these surveys say more about human nature than anything else.

A few other findings worth noting:

• Overall most (61%) Americans disagree that most businesses would act ethically on their own without regulation from the government. Less than 4-in-10 (37%) believe that they would. This holds true across political and religious lines, with the lone exception of those who identify with the Tea Party movement (53% agree).

• Nearly 6-in-10 Americans (58%) believe that the federal budget is a moral document that reflects national priorities while 41% disagrees.

• Overall most (61%) Americans disagree that most businesses would act ethically on their own without regulation from the government. 

There is a problem with static documents such as holy books and founding papers in that as the centuries go by, we find ourselves confronting an increasing number of ideas, conundrums, and complexities that the original writers could not have imagined in their wildest dreams. (Those who believe that The Bible is the infallible word of God would certainly disagree.)  We can no more imagine what the Founding Fathers would think about the regulation of agriculture biotechnology than we could imagine what Jesus would think of corporate tax loopholes. And when we attempt to distill the essence of a text for application in our complex modern world, we end up with wildly differing extrapolations. These extrapolations most often are self-serving and at odds with the basic philosophies exhibited in the text. 

While we can certainly look to founding documents and sacred texts for guidance, there comes a point where the text is limited by its place in time, and we start making our own rules to validate our own actions and desires.  Often a shoehorn is involved.

The PRRI media release can be found here (PDF).