Getting to Know the Spiritual Leaders Who Have a Vision for Trump’s Second Term – Texas Monthly

Executive Editor Sandi Villarreal on the network of far-right Christian leaders whose global prophecies have an audience in the White House.
Sandi Villarreal is an executive editor for Texas Monthly.
A loosely defined network of far-right Christians, called the New Apostolic Reformation, has gained serious influence in American politics by supporting President Donald Trump. Some have issued prophecies that Trump would serve for two terms,and, after Trump’s loss in 2020, were finally vindicated by the election results last fall. Its leaders include a number of Texas-based preachers, including Cindy Jacobs and Lance Wallnau, who have amassed huge followings online. Executive Editor Sandi Villarreal wrote about this movement in a story in the May 2025 issue of Texas Monthly titled, “All the President’s Prophets“
Listen to the story behind the story. For access, subscribe to TM Audio.
On this episode of TM Out Loud, Villarreal talks about how she reported the story, how this movement plans to use its influence next, and why experienced religion reporters are so vital to media outlets.
This piece was produced by Ella Kopeikin, Patrick Michels, and Brian Standefer. The original story was edited by Ben Rowen and fact-checked by Will Bostwick.
Katy Vine (voice-over): Hi, and welcome to TM Out Loud, exclusive audio storytelling for Texas Monthly Audio subscribers. I’m Katy Vine. 
The 2024 presidential election surprised a lot of Americans. But there are some who didn’t just hope or think that Donald Trump would win—they foretold it. 
These charismatic Christian preachers, who say they are prophets, are part of a movement called the New Apostolic Reformation. They have serious influence in the White House, and many of them are here in Texas.
Texas Monthly Executive Editor Sandi Villarreal covers religion and politics, and for the May 2025 issue of the magazine, she wrote about this movement in a piece called “Meet the Prophets.” (Correction: “All the President’s Prophets”)
This week, Sandi came into the studio to talk about how she reported the story, how this movement plans to use its influence next, and why reporting on religion is so vital.
Here’s Sandi.
Sandi Villareal: I am Sandi Villareal. I’m an executive editor here at Texas Monthly, and I oversee news [and] politics with a big focus on religion coverage. The New Apostolic Reformation has been a topic that’s been covered a bit in national publications.
But I was at a conference last fall, where I heard Matthew Taylor, who is a scholar on this topic, speak. And the level of influence that this movement of far-right Christians had was something that I didn’t realize.
And when I realized how many of these people were Texans, that definitely caught my attention. There are a number of them. So there’s Lance Wallnau who’s probably the most well known of this group of New Apostolic Reformation folks. He’s Dallas-based and he’s probably most well known for his Seven Mountains mandate.
It’s this belief that Christians are called to take over the seven mountains of influence. Things like government, but also education, media, and the arts. Churches, of course. But as I was researching a little bit more and talking to Matthew Taylor about this, Cindy Jacobs was somebody who really stuck out to me.
She is very Texan. She was born in San Antonio. She spent some time in California, but then came back. She is Dallas-based now. So to see somebody in that type of role who had such power and influence and following, who is this very petite grandmotherly-type figure who preaches to stadiums of people wearing red cowboy boots. Like, that’s something that caught my attention. 
Cindy Jacobs: There are some that do and there are some that dream, and there are some that just talk about it. The time for talking is over. We have got to pray and we have got to act. We have got to stir ourselves up. Every one of you has to say what can I do? What can I do to save a nation?
Sandi Villarreal: She’s just a hugely influential figure in this movement, who—as a woman, that was surprising to me. It’s not uncommon within Pentecostal movements or charismatic movements to have women in leadership positions. But as somebody who grew up sort of in both the Southern Baptist and Catholic traditions, it was certainly outside of my experience. 
But she is a prophet and that’s not something I had a ton of familiarity with. I wanted to learn more about that. So the idea of prophets. People who are given the gifts of healing, of casting out demons, of miracles and of prophecy, to help spread the message and to grow the church. There’s this sort of cessationist tradition—that is a lot of Protestant, Catholic traditional Christian traditions—believe that that gift ended, you know, in biblical times.
Charismatic traditions believe that those gifts carry on and that each person has some sort of gifting from the Holy Spirit that they can access. Prophecy is . . . You know, there’s a few different ways to look at it, and I think one thing that’s interesting about Cindy Jacobs is that she embodies very many different expressions of prophecy. 
She believes she is a prophet to the nations, so that what that looks like is traveling around the world, speaking with political leaders, giving them prophecies for how she believes God wants to use their leadership, to use their country in this sort of journey to the second coming of Christ. But she also does personal prophecies, so her new television show, which launched in the end of last year, she sits down with just average people one-on-one and prophesies over their lives and tells them, I see you doing X, I see you getting into acting. I see, you know, the person that God has chosen for you to be with.
Cindy Jacobs: So I want to say to you: This year, there are going to be things unlocked for you that dreams are made of. Now, you clap your hands for that. I’m expecting you to help me preach this morning. (Applause) So there are things that are going to be unlocked for you that you cannot imagine, things that you thought, “Well no, that’s so great and so big.”
Sandi Villarreal: She convenes an international group of prophets. It’s called the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders. It’s about two hundred prophets from around the world who convene, and each year they offer a Word of the Lord prophecy for the world.
For 2024 they prophesied that the U.S. needed to elect a, quote unquote, wartime president. And so they believe that happened. 
Cindy Jacobs was born in 1951. She was born to a Southern Baptist pastor, and she tells the story often in her books, in her speaking, that she can look back and remember times where she prophesied or spoke things into being. So one of these incidents was, she says that she foretold that her mother was going to have her younger sister when she was four years old.
Her mom said, no, we’re done. We’re not having any more babies. And it turns out that she was pregnant at the time. So she tells that story to sort of say, this was like part of me from the beginning. She had this gifting and just didn’t realize it yet. Throughout her life she has these different points of feeling called to something. She thought for a time that that was to be a music minister, and so she studied music in college. And then slowly she realized that the call was to be the leader. Not to be married to the leader, not to, you know, lead children or lead music, but to actually preach and prophesy. And really where her story takes a turn is when she meets Peter Wagner. Sort of by chance.
They share a car after a prayer breakfast in D.C., and she’s talking to him about writing a book. She’s explaining some of her concepts of spiritual warfare to him, and he sort of . . . takes her under his wing. She considers him a spiritual father and he considered her—he’s since died—but considered her a spiritual daughter. 
C. Peter Wagner was a professor at Fuller Seminary in California and he sort of started in the church growth area. So studying ways to expand the church through evangelism and things like that. And through a couple of encounters while he was at Fuller with other charismatic leaders, he starts to form what would become the New Apostolic Reformation theology. And so she sort of got caught up in the movement with him and you know, he really had a lot of faith in her, ends up sort of passing on his spiritual prayer network. And she heads that up. She also takes over the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders. And so that’s where her leadership starts to gain traction.
In this tradition, in Pentecostal and charismatic traditions, it’s not all that uncommon for a woman to be in leadership. Though it was new to Cindy. So she, in, in some of her books, she talks quite a bit about feeling—I don’t think she calls it this—but sort of like an inferiority complex around this and not being sure if she’s the one who’s supposed to lead.
It certainly became clear after time that she very much was. But she talks about how sometimes she felt invited into the room as a woman, as a sort of like, “Oh, we need a woman. Let’s get Cindy Jacobs.” So I think that that did help her be in the room in some of these places. But . . well, she can speak to women, right? In a way that a male leader can’t, and bring them around and show them that they too are gifted and she has a great influence in that way. 
So much of evangelicalism has been dominated by male leadership, and it’s sort of a given in any space, in the Southern Baptist Convention, women aren’t allowed to teach men. They can lead the children’s ministry or the women’s ministry. Maybe music. And so I think that this movement certainly has appeal for many women who, you know, they believe that they’re gifted and in other traditions they’re told, no, you’re not.
So when Trump was elected, one of the things that he did was pull in his spiritual adviser. Her name was Paula White-Cain, and she came on board and he put her into the faith-based office to head it up. 
So she is a charismatic preacher based in Florida. I wouldn’t say that she’s part of the New Apostolic Reformation set. But she knows that world. And so with her influence, she did sort of introduce Trump and brought in more of these Pentecostal charismatic types, whereas before, I mean, some of the people who helped get Trump elected the first time were these very traditional evangelical leaders.
You had the James Dobsons, you had the Robert Jeffress, you had, you know, Franklin Graham, all of these folks that are very much part of the traditional Protestant Baptist establishment. And then with Paula White coming on board, you’re bringing on this whole other set of . . . evangelicals, but a very, very different tradition. The New Apostolic Reformation folks have been around for a while, certainly alongside the rise of the religious right. They just weren’t necessarily invited to the party.
And with Trump pulling in Paula White, they now had invitations to the party and they sort of helped the traditional evangelicals get on board with Trump. Early on, some of those traditional evangelical leaders were not Trump fans, right? Like they had Ted Cruz as an option. They had lots of options, right?
But there were some in the charismatic space who will say, anyway, that they had prophesied that Trump was going to be elected. And so they supported him from a pretty early point. And there was a point in time, it was the summer, I believe, before the election where they all kind of came together. And it was a conversation between Donald Trump and Ben Carson. And this was sort of seen as this come to Jesus moment. Everybody get on board. This is our guy. 
In Trump, lots of folks have found common cause that you wouldn’t necessarily think would get along. But I think that in the grand scheme of things, they know what the goal is and they can line up behind their guy.
Cindy Jacobs: Hello everybody. We are gearing up for the Global Prophetic Summit. It’s right during the election, right after the election.  Who knows what could be going on in America, unrest or whatever. But I want to say to you, we have decided that we are going to put together a massive group of prophets to break open your destiny, God’s plan for your life.
Sandi Villarreal: So the Global Prophetic Summit is something that Cindy Jacobs’s organization, Generals International, puts on every year. This year it struck me that it was going to be two days after the election, and I knew that these were folks who very much—you know, they, some of them prophesied that Trump was going to be elected.
So I made the decision to go before we knew the outcome of the election. I thought it was gonna be an interesting scene, regardless of who won. It turns out, of course, that their guy won, and so it really was a sort of victory party.
They were doing a victory lap and saying, okay, we’re, we’ve won, but we’re not done yet. Here are the next things. Here’s, here’s how we want to influence these next four years and beyond. Here’s how we can organize to make sure that our people keep winning.
Cindy Jacobs: For the nation, in the United States, we are in the beginning stages of a great awakening. And the Lord said not once but several times, there is a patriot that God has waiting to put in the top position, the president of this nation.
Sandi Villarreal: You get a sense using the seven mountains framework that this is a very international group, but at least in the U.S. the mountain of government is in good hands. But there are other mountains out there. And so we’re talking about education, we’re talking about the media.
What’s interesting about the Seven Mountains belief is that it’s not that far off from what Christians are told to do in Sunday school or in a regular church service: It’s to go out and make disciples. It’s to be salt in the world, be light in the world. This is an extreme version of that belief because it’s not just influencing the world. For what Christians believe is good it is taking over the world because it’s been taken from us. So a lot of what these Christians believe—what I would call in some ways, dominionist Christians—they take a portion of the Bible, which is in Genesis, it’s in where God creates man, and then he says they have dominion over the world, over every living creature. And so some Christians will take that to mean we are supposed to be the ones in power in every aspect of society. Probably more traditional Christians take that to mean we are called to be stewards of this world and take care of this world and have influence in it. And so it’s just two different ways of looking at it. 
I have been a religion reporter and editor for most of my career, and I think it’s the most fascinating thing to cover because you’re talking about, you know, what motivates people.
And you know, growing up both in Southern Baptist faith and the Catholic faith, there are really deep things to draw on when you’re reporting out something like this because it’s all a spectrum of belief.
And you’re pulling from the same text, right? So when you know, I’m sitting in this auditorium and praise and worship is happening and people are speaking in tongues and raised hands and all of that, it’s not that different from some of the youth camps that I went to. The speaking in tongues, maybe, the very explicit expressions of political ideology, the prophesying, that’s different. But it’s not that far off from a place that, you know, thousands and thousands of Texans sit right now. 
When I approach a story like this, I really want people to understand someone’s motivations. Religion can get—it’s certainly like a complicated topic because you’re talking about belief systems that, you know, are interpreted myriad ways and different traditions that have very specific beliefs .. . Christianity is based on the idea that a man came back from the dead. So like you’re dealing with some, on its face, pretty out-there stuff, but it is also a thing that motivates billions of people. 
I want people to understand what some of the end goals are. So for example, on politics, the end goal is not just to have power. The end goal for the folks in the New Apostolic Reformation movement is to bring about all of these things that will usher in the second coming of Christ.
And so when you think about what some of the motivations are, I think it’s important for people to understand the end goal was not to get Donald Trump into office. The end goal was all the things that he will do with that power, with their influence. You’re already seeing some of that. You know, his appointments to the Supreme Court, you know, brought about the end of Roe v. Wade, and that was very much one of the items on their checklist. 
A big difference of our current religious leaders versus in the past: Denominationally, there’s hierarchy, right? In a typical denomination, something like the Southern Baptist Convention. There are individual churches that you’re trying to build and grow. You had the whole megachurch movement. Some of these New Apostolic Reformation folks don’t have their own church. They are a ministry that has podcasts, they have YouTube videos, they have prayer networks. They are national and international in a way that sort of divorces it from the idea of the local church. And I think that is a huge difference, and that’s enabling people to do things like rally this huge group of supporters to, what they would say, engage in spiritual warfare. It also drew a bunch of folks to actually go to the Capitol on January 6th. Cindy Jacobs was outside the Capitol on January 6th, praying and asking for an audit and to not certify the election. And so it has expanded the influence of these folks in a way that wasn’t really possible for a traditional pastor in the past.
NAR folks right now, it’s a really interesting time because a lot of these leaders are getting up there in years. Sixties, seventies, eighties. Peter Wagner has passed away. He died right before the 2016 election. And so I think it’s really interesting to see how the leadership gets passed down. You’re seeing a couple of new leaders emerge within the movement that are very much connected to the Cindy Jacobs, Lance Wallnaus of the world.
You’ve got Mercy Culture in the Fort Worth area that’s expanding massively. They now have campuses in Fort Worth, Waco, they’ve got one in Austin now, and they’re launching one in San Antonio. And they are definitely part of this world. Massive influence on Texas right now. And I think as goes Texas goes the U.S.
And then the impact that it has on Christianity more broadly. I think you’re seeing charisms such as the speaking in tongues, those types of things that you would see in Pentecostal and charismatic spaces, you’re seeing that have huge influence on American Christianity. Even within Catholicism, you’re seeing charismatic expressions of Catholicism happen. 
Many publications back in the heyday had dedicated religion sections, had religion reporters and religion editors. Religion and its influence and its reach and the way that it motivates pretty much everything that we do, I think is extremely important. Unfortunately, when publications lost their religion sections, they also lost their religion reporters and the folks that are really, really steeped in understanding those traditions. I think we’re seeing a little bit of a reset of that as people are starting to understand, particularly, the influence in politics. We need people who can explain where all of this comes from. 
Katy Vine (voice-over): That was Sandi Villarreal.
Her story, “Meet the Prophets” (correction: “All the President’s Prophets”), ran in the May 2025 issue of Texas Monthly.
We’ll be back with more from the pages of Texas Monthly next week.
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