VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The audience of about 1,500 people waved small American flags and chanted “USA! USA! USA!” as television cameras began filming last Friday inside a Regent University ballroom. Many in the crowd wore red “Make America Great Again” hats. Some carried Bibles.
They had paid $60 each to attend a live taping of “FlashPoint,” a national TV program that’s won loyal viewers with a unique blend of pro-Trump political commentary and prophetic messages about God’s divine plans for America.
Over the next three hours, the audience heard the same overarching message that “FlashPoint” broadcasts three times a week on the Victory Channel television network and various streaming platforms: The world has entered its final years. Jesus will soon return. But Christians are not meant to wait idly while evil runs rampant; they are called to occupy positions of power and influence in society. And in the short term, that means putting Donald Trump back in the White House.
“I watch to get the truth,” said one “FlashPoint” attendee, who described a “supernatural” rush of clarity the first time she found the show while flipping channels two years ago.
“This is the only news show where you hear what Jesus thinks,” said another attendee, a mother of three school-aged children who’d driven four hours from central North Carolina for the taping.
Launched in 2020 and hosted by pastor Gene Bailey, “FlashPoint” at times looks and sounds like other right-wing cable programs. But unlike Fox News hosts, the rotating panel of conservative pastors and commentators on “FlashPoint” pepper their political analysis with messages that they say come directly from God.
Viewers hear regularly from Lance Wallnau, a self-described prophet known for popularizing the Seven Mountains Mandate, a philosophy increasingly embraced on the right that says Christians are called to claim positions of power atop seven key “mountains” of society, including government, education, business and media. “FlashPoint,” which presents itself as an alternative to mainstream news, embodies that strategy.
In a January broadcast, pastor Hank Kunneman, another “FlashPoint” mainstay, said the Lord told him that 2024 would be a year of “divine reckoning” and “vengeance against the wicked.” In the months since, the show has portrayed the presidential election as a spiritual clash while depicting Trump as a flawed leader — like a modern King David — who’s been anointed by God to save the nation.
The show draws a monthly cable TV audience of roughly 11,000 households, according to Comscore data, while clips of the program reach hundreds of thousands more viewers online. With a rabid following, it has “become incredibly popular and even gravitational” on the Christian right, said Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the nonprofit Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Maryland. Trump is one of several prominent Republicans who have appeared as guests on “FlashPoint,” including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA.
The program fits into a growing evangelical movement that calls on followers to “think of themselves as soldiers in a cosmic conflict,” said Bradley Onishi, a former megachurch pastor and author of “Preparing for War,” which documents the history and rise of Christian nationalism in America. To “FlashPoint” loyalists, political debates are no longer just about who wins the next election, Onishi said; they are about the fate of eternity.
“When you explain it that way to folks,” he said, “you’re able to prime them, not only for action, but I think for extreme measures.”
Trump has embraced elements of this framing, warning in speeches that the left wants “to tear down crosses” and promising that his return to office would restore Christian power. He also has promised to eliminate the Johnson Amendment, a rarely enforced federal law that prohibits nonprofit foundations and religious organizations — including the one that operates the Victory Channel — from endorsing political candidates.
White evangelical Protestants remain among Trump’s most loyal voting blocs, with more than 80% planning or leaning toward voting for him in November, a recent Pew Research survey found. Hoping to push that number even higher, “FlashPoint” has called on pastors to start preaching a pro-Trump message on Sunday mornings.
Bailey, the “FlashPoint” host, did not respond to messages requesting an interview.
Rick Green, a regular “FlashPoint” panelist, is the founder of Patriot Academy, a Texas nonprofit that teaches courses about what it calls the nation’s explicit Christian origins — an idea disputed by historians. He told NBC News that he believes many critics of the show’s mixing of religion and politics are ignorant “about the founding principles of America.” Others, Green said, harbor “hatred and intolerance of differing views.”
“You get more truth from ‘FlashPoint’ than any news program in the nation,” Green said.
To rally the show’s most loyal fans, known as the FlashPoint Army, the Fort Worth, Texas-based Victory Channel, a Christian network run by the nonprofit Kenneth Copeland Ministries, has hosted tapings across the nation as part of its Rescue America Tour. The live programs, even more than the regular broadcasts, take on the feel of a Christian revival service.
The episode filmed in Virginia Beach opened with brief remarks from each of the night’s panelists, who included Dutch Sheets, a self-described apostle who led a series of prayer rallies in the months after Trump's 2020 election defeat in a bid to keep him in office.
“We are in a dark place in this nation, maybe as dark as it’s ever been,” Sheets told the “FlashPoint” audience last week. “But God is coming with the light of his glory, and he’s going to save this nation through his people.”
A moment later, a husband and wife duo stepped forward to lead the crowd and those watching at home in worship. With hands stretched upward, audience members sang, “There’s power in the mighty name of Jesus. Every war he wages he will win.”
Between songs, Bailey invited anyone suffering from physical ailments to approach the stage. The election was coming soon, the host said, and they weren’t going to be able to save the country if people were sick.
“America needs you for the long haul,” Bailey said, as dozens came forward, including a woman who said she’d been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Bailey, Sheets, Wallnau and the other panelists placed their hands on each person and, one by one, declared them healed in the name of Jesus.
Some audience members dropped to the floor in a euphoric rush that, in some charismatic Christian faith traditions, is described as being slain in the spirit. Others sat quietly in their chairs, tears streaming down their cheeks.
Moments later, the conversation on stage shifted back to politics and the urgent need to mobilize local churches to get out the evangelical vote and re-elect Trump in November.
This seamless weaving of immersive religious expressions, apocalyptic preaching and right-wing political organizing worries some religion and extremism experts, including Onishi, who pointed to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol as evidence of what can happen when people come to believe a candidate has been chosen by God. There’s long been a strain of American evangelicalism that portrays current events as signs of the coming apocalypse. But tying the fate of humanity to a particular candidate is “something new and novel in modern U.S. history,” Onishi said.
Several attendees at Regent University — a private Christian college founded by the late televangelist Pat Robertson — said the show’s blending of prophecy and bare-knuckle politics is what they love most about “FlashPoint.”
Speaking to a reporter outside, Tom Jones, a military veteran from Virginia Beach, said he used to watch Fox News but started watching “FlashPoint” instead after someone at church told his wife about it three years ago. Jones, wearing a “FlashPoint Army” hat, said he likes that the program doesn’t shy away from applying “God’s truth” to current events.
“If you look at what our Constitution says and the rights that we have, they’re all based on the 10 Commandments,” Jones said. “And we’re losing it.”
Terry and Barry Pawelek said they try to attend every “FlashPoint” live event. This was their seventh. The couple had driven 21 hours from Oklahoma to be there.
“They balance both Bible and news,” Barry Pawelek said of FlashPoint. “That’s the thing that we need to hear.”
“It’s encouraging,” Terry Pawelek said.
It’s also inspiring, she said. After hearing MyPillow founder Mike Lindell at another “FlashPoint” taping discuss his debunked theory about rigged voting machines corrupting the 2020 election, the Paweleks said they decided to become election precinct chairs in Caddo County, Oklahoma.
“‘FlashPoint’ encouraged us to make a difference,” Barry Pawelek said.
Several other attendees, citing their distrust of mainstream news, which “FlashPoint” routinely depicts as a tool of Satan, declined to share their names with an NBC News reporter, who bought a ticket to attend the taping. One woman, invoking Wallnau’s Seven Mountains teachings, prayed that the journalist would become an ambassador for God in the media mountain.
Back inside, the final hour of the program focused on the presidential election. The panelists criticized conservative Christians on the fence about voting for Trump — currently on trial in New York on charges of faking business records to cover up an alleged affair with an adult film star — because he hasn’t come out in support of a national abortion ban.
Wallnau, comparing Trump to King Solomon, a biblical figure renowned for his wisdom, said the former president was deploying a complex political strategy that would, over time, deliver major victories for conservative Christians, including on abortion.
Nodding in agreement, Green, the Patriot Academy founder, said he was furious that some evangelicals might turn against the former president.
“If you are so self-righteous as to think, ‘I’m not going to vote for the man because he’s not perfect,’” Green told the audience, “you are helping the destruction of America.”
Pastor Tony Suarez, executive vice president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, acknowledged that he initially didn’t support Trump in 2016. But he said God opened his eyes. Suarez then referred to what he described as a prophecy that says “a certain president” would come to fully embrace Jesus “in a second term.”
“I’m just praying that in that second term,” Suarez said of Trump, his voice raising to a crescendo, “that that Holy Ghost fire will get a hold of him, and we’re going to see something great happen.”
The FlashPoint Army was now back on their feet, hands in air and cheering as Suarez completed his prayer for Trump and for America.
“In Jesus’ name!”
