PHILADEPHIA — Five years before Lance Wallnau joined Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano on the campaign trail, the Texas-based evangelist told his audience in a live-streamed video about how an “anointed cake” baked by prostitutes once resulted in a gay man becoming heterosexual.
“Now, I’m not saying this is going to work for you,” he says in the video, before recalling a story he’d heard of “hookers” in a bar transforming its “very adamantly anti-Christian” proprietor.
“The power of God hit him while he was eating the cake,” Wallnau said in the clip, first reported by the Dallas Morning News in 2017.
That same year, Wallnau, a self-styled Christian prophet whose stump speech for Mastriano blew up on Twitter over the weekend, posted another outlandish rant online, explaining his theory that the Women’s March on Washington and protests of Donald Trump’s inauguration were manifestations of “the spirit of Jezebel.”
“It’s a witchcraft that’s operating behind this stuff … and it’s clearly the work of the devil,” he said.
In 2019, Wallnau made news as a “prayer coin” huckster who claimed God told him that selling coins would help Trump get reelected. The coins — for $45 each — featured images of Trump and King Cyrus.
“When I asked the Lord, ‘Why the coin?’ the Lord said, ‘Because when you take the coin, it’s a point of contact,’” Wallnau said during an online sales pitch.
In the years since, Wallnau has expounded on a range of other topics, from COVID-19 vaccines that might be used to conduct “surveillance under the skin,” to his belief that environmentalists are possessed by “demons.” He has prayed that God would overturn the 2020 election and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “good dictator,” while calling President Joe Biden the “antichrist.”
Wallnau, who grew up in Pennsylvania, recently became interested in Mastriano, who is running a Christian nationalist-themed campaign that has attracted a growing network of self-described prophets, conspiracy theorists, and election deniers. Mastriano, a retired Army colonel, has largely welcomed their support. Some are helping with his campaign.
Friday, Wallnau joined Mastriano and Donald Trump Jr. for a rally in south-central Pennsylvania to support Mastriano’s gubernatorial campaign. He led the crowd, asking them each to raise their right hand, in a prayer for a “new birth of liberty” and a Mastriano victory in November. The video has garnered millions of views online.
“They cannot outflank us if we move as one,” Wallnau said. “And I believe Col. Mastriano is anointed to lead an as-one movement. The whole country will be affected by what happens in Pennsylvania. Do you understand that?”
Mastriano, who is running against Democrat Josh Shapiro, the state’s attorney general, said he appreciated Wallnau’s support.
“Thank you, Lance Wallnau for being here!” his campaign posted on its Facebook page, along with photos of Mastriano, his wife, Rebbie, and Wallnau standing together. One commenter responded: “Oh. My. GOODNESS!!! Three of my FAVORITE people. Rebbie, Doug, and Lance.”
On Monday, Wallnau responded on Twitter to anyone who thought the raised arms at the rally resembled Nazi salutes: “Typical leftist lies on what happens at a Republican event. I should know, I’m the one on the stage. I had the crowd raise their hand and bring it down ‘as one’ to commemorate day 2 Little Round-top at battle of Gettysburg. Nazi? You putz, I’m part Jewish!”
Neither Wallnau nor Mastriano immediately responded Tuesday to requests for comment.
Wallnau, who wrote a book about Trump called God’s Chaos Candidate, is an influential figure in the right-wing movement called the New Apostolic Reformation, and a leading proponent of Seven Mountains Dominionism, which holds that Christians should take control of the seven secular “mountains” — education, religion, family, business, government, arts, and media.
At Friday’s rally, Wallnau likened Mastriano to a Union Army colonel who held off a Confederate assault during the Civil War. (Ironically, Mastriano has come under fire from Shapiro and dozens of veterans for appearing in a Confederate Army uniform for a faculty photo when he was a professor at the U.S. Army War College during the 2013-14 academic year.)
“I love this state. I love this man,” Wallnau said of Mastriano.
