President Donald Trump's spiritual adviser, megachurch pastor and televangelist Paula White-Cain, led a prayer session Wednesday night in an effort to assure Trump's reelection.
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White-Cain requested “angelic reinforcement” from the continents of Africa and South America during the service, which was streamed live on Facebook.
“I hear a triumphant sound, and the Lord says it is finished,” she said. “Angels are currently being transported from Africa… They're coming here in the name of Jesus from South America.”
White-Cain is also heard speaking in tongues during her prayer, which is when a speaker speaks in a language they don't understand, frequently during a religious experience. Multiple Christian denominations, as well as other religions, have practiced speaking in tongues.
Where does Paula White live?
The night before the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump approached Chris Coons, a Democrat and Presbyterian senator from New York, about expanding abortion rights in the state. Evangelicals like White despise the law.
“So, you can do that to a baby…,” Trump said in his ear, thrusting his face over the Democrat's shoulder, almost cheek to cheek. Isn't that something else than a human? And it's not a problem for you?” “Isn't it called murder?” he inquired.
White, leaning over her elaborate dining room table in her almost 6,000-square-foot house in Florida, claimed Trump was “just right in his face, and I was like, ‘Whoa.'”
White is the pastor of a megachurch in Florida and serves as a bridge between the evangelical community, which she has steered for decades, and a president who, she says, does not understand “Christian-ese.” Despite avoiding the relentless scrutiny of some in Trump's orbit, she is a divisive figure who claims to have frequent phone talks with the president and his family's ministers.
White's decision to relate this story highlights why she could be valuable to Trump, whose record as a Manhattan playboy with numerous marriages may not appeal to the Christian right.
Unnamed individuals told Politico about the altercation weeks after the event. Although at least one Republican senator in attendance contradicted the tale, it had already gained traction among Trump's evangelical constituency, implying that his anti-abortion rhetoric stems from a personal belief rather than political pragmatism.
“What was amusing about it is that Trump didn't go out and specifically target evangelicals,” she remarked. “It's not like he went out and said, ‘Deliver evangelicals,' because he wants their vote.”
White frequently attests to the president's real and deep faith, and she has described her work as a counselor to Trump as “a divine duty.” She gave the invocation during Trump's inauguration and has since become a regular at high-profile events like Trump's “state-like dinner” for 100 evangelicals last summer. She also participated in a small, influential group conversation prior to the supper. She assists with the planning of White House events for the Christian community and contributes to policy choices.
White, like many of the people Trump surrounds himself with, is a divisive personality. She has been referred to as both a “charlatan” and a “lady who lead Trump to Christ.” Her teleevangelism and Florida ministry made her a fortune, and she was investigated by congressional investigators. Trump's connection with evangelicals is seen by some political observers as a marriage of convenience: he needs their votes, and they need someone to carry out their agenda.
She stated, “He sincerely cared about the community.” She recalled a 2011 meeting in which Trump requested her to “bring a group of pastors to pray” about running for president.
She stated, “We had around 25, 30 pastors come up and we prayed for six hours” in Trump Tower. She claimed Trump prayed for nearly half of that period. “He was truly interested in hearing what God had to say. … To him, truly making America great is not a slogan, but a genuine goal.”
White's initial church, a storefront ministry in Tampa, Florida, has gone a long way.
White's current residence is Bluegrass Estates in Apopka, Florida, which is close to her Pentecostal church, New Destiny Christian Center. A gated community with million-dollar homes and private stables sits across a highway from algae-covered trailers. There is a lot of security. When I first arrived at Bluegrass Estates, a Cadillac Escalade with flashing blue lights trailed me.
“Can you tell me who you are?” A man demanded as he rolled down a tinted window. “I'm going to ask you a question,” he said, threatening to call the cops. He referred to White as a “lovely lady” when I mentioned her name.
White has no official religious background, but she claims that when she was 18 years old, she received a vision from God telling her to go preach the gospel. Brad Knight, her son, was born the same year. She divorced shortly after that. She “did nothing” but study the Bible for two years before starting a ministry with her second husband, Randy White.
Randy told the Tampa Bay Times in the early 2000s, as the church grew in popularity, that churches needed to “believe in their product.” “My product is Jesus,” he remarked.
By that time, White was appearing on BET and regional Christian television, which also aired in Mar-a-Lago. Her congregation had swelled to about 20,000 people, making it one of the country's largest. She claimed Trump contacted her out of the blue one day and declared she had the “it factor,” repeating three of her televised lectures “verbatim.”
She began spending more time in New York and finally purchased an apartment with Randy in Trump's Park Avenue skyscraper (it is currently on the market for $3.9 million; the price has recently been dropped).
White credits the relationship to a “mission” from God, who told him to “show him who I am.”
“I meet thousands, if not millions, of people during the course of my ministry, but there have been a number of people who I knew were on a direct assignment,” White stated. God's call to her was “specifically addressing Trump,” she stated.
Part of the controversy surrounding White, and maybe why she appealed to Trump, stems from her teaching of “prosperity gospel,” which claims that religion and donations to religious causes can improve members' financial as well as spiritual well-being. Last year, White urged members of her church to contribute their first month's wage to her ministry in order to reap the benefits of God's blessings.
The conservative billionaire elite in Florida is a tight-knit group, and White appears to have found company among Trump fans. David Siegel, the timeshare magnate whose wife was documented in the documentary Queen of Versailles as the family erected an 85,000-square-foot copy of the French palace, was White's former landlord.
White is now married to Jonathan Cain, the keyboardist for Journey, and the two frequently travel together, including to Washington, D.C., to see President Obama. Two congressional investigations, one in 2004 and the other in 2007, came up empty-handed.
On different humanitarian situations, White coordinates meetings with church leaders in the White House and with the Office of the Public Liaison, including the Venezuelan crisis, which we discussed during our conversation. She has provided advice on specific topics, such as the relocation of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (which she assured Trump was “the appropriate decision, sir”).
Outside of Washington, she also defends the president. When it was revealed that the Trump administration had separated children from their parents at the border, White told the Christian Broadcasting Network that if Jesus had “violated the law, He would have been sinful and not have been our Messiah.” White told Charisma News that she “worked daily with the White House on relief efforts” when Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, killing 3,000 people. Officials on the island praised “how magnificent our government, our military, and our national guard are.”
During our discussion, White praised Trump's attack on the Johnson amendment, which prohibits religious organizations from openly expressing political views, and expressed her hope that abortion will be “overturned,” alluding to the US Supreme Court ruling that made abortion legal nationwide.
“People ask, ‘Would you pray for Hillary if she asked you to?' Of certainly, but I don't have a romantic relationship with her. “This has been an 18-year romance,” White stated. Importantly, White stated that she had never asked Trump for a favor or accepted payment for her work with him.
“I've been under Bush's courting, Clinton's courtship, Obama's courting, and Mitt Romney's courting,” White added. It was all part of her job as a megachurch pastor and televangelist, she explained. “Bernie Sanders has never asked me to pray for him, but I'm just saying that if he did, I would,” she remarked.
Do Baptist believe in speaking in tongues?
After the death of Jesus' apostles, the practice, also known as glossolalia, came to an end for Southern Baptists. The prohibition on speaking in tongues became a method for the religion to set itself apart from others. A Southern Baptist preacher had previously been required to baptize missionary hopefuls who had transferred from another denomination.
What happens to the brain when you speak in tongues?
Scientists know relatively little about what happens when people “talk in tongues,” despite the fact that the practice has been around for thousands of years. Glossolalia is currently seen among Pentecostal and Charismatic Christian cults, where those who are affected feel they are speaking directly to God. Glossolalia has been caught on brain scans, according to experts, who link diminished frontal lobe activity to a loss of self-control.
Psychiatrist Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and his colleagues selected five African-American women from a local Pentecostal congregation to participate in the study. For the previous 5 years, they had all been speaking in tongues “nearly on a regular basis,” according to Newberg. Subjects stood and sang gospel hymns with musical accompaniment as a control activity, swinging their arms and swaying. The researchers next invited them to replicate the activity, but this time they were urged to speak in tongues instead of singing.
In each example, the researchers gave the participants an intravenous injection of a radioactive tracer, which served as a kind of freeze-frame of which brain areas were most active throughout the behavior, as seen by increased blood flow. The women's brains were then scanned in a single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) scanner to record this.
The team reveals in the November issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging that Glossolalia caused a considerably different pattern of brain activity than singing. According to Newberg, the most significant change was a decline in frontal lobe function. “The region of the brain that ordinarily gives them a sense of control has been turned off.” Increased activity in the parietal region of the brain, which “takes sensory input and tries to develop a sense of self and how you relate to the rest of the world,” according to Newberg, was another significant alteration. Speaking in tongues requires losing control while receiving a “really intense experience of how the self relates to God,” according to Newberg. He points out that the glossolalia reactions were the polar opposite of those reported in meditative participants. Newberg discovered that when people meditate on a religious object, their frontal brain activity increases while their parietal activity decreases. This is consistent with the idea that in meditation, one maintains a steady focus without losing one's sense of self.
According to psychologist Michael Persinger of Laurentian University in Ontario, Canada, who has done brainwave research with glossolalia, “it's an amazing study.” “Each of Dr. Newberg's findings has its own set of ramifications,” he explains. Increased parietal activity, for example, would correspond to a feeling of being “touched by the spirit.”
Who is Jonathan Cain wife?
Cain has had three marriages. Tané McClure, a singer for whom he penned the smash song “Faithfully” in 1983, was his first wife.
He married his second wife, Elizabeth Yvette Fullerton, in 1989, and they have three children: Madison, born in 1993, and twins Liza and Weston, born in 1989. (1996). At the end of 2014, he and Elizabeth divorced. Trev Lukather, Steve Lukather's son, is Madison's fiancée.
He married Paula White, a priest, in April 2015. For both of them, this is their third marriage. They live in the town of Apopka, Florida.
In Nashville, Cain and David Kalmusky conceived and built Addiction Sound, a recording facility.
Cain is a committed Christian, and his faith is reflected in his work as a Christian musician.
Where is Todd White?
Todd White is a pastor and evangelist from the United States. He is the Senior Pastor of Watauga, Texas' Lifestyle Christianity Church.
White is best recognized for his work as a gospel preacher and faith healer in the Word of Faith movement. In the documentary ‘American Gospel: Christ Alone,' he was chastised. White, on the other hand, publicly apologized in July 2020 for not preaching the entire Gospel. However, many others misinterpreted it. Todd White notes that when his relationship with God grows, he learns new things about God, which he incorporates into what he shares when he goes on evangelistic missions. He didn't mean he hadn't been preaching everything in the Bible on purpose.
White, a former drug user and atheist, dates his conversion to 2004 and provides a testimonial of how an encounter with God's Spirit changed his life. Life is Short – Leave a Legacy is his first book (2020).
How many times can you be baptized in the Holy Spirit?
1272. The individual baptized is configured to Christ after being incorporated into Christ by baptism. Baptism imbues the Christian with an indelible spiritual imprint (character) that identifies him as a follower of Christ. Even if sin prevents Baptism from reaping the fruits of salvation, no sin can erase this mark. Baptism is a one-time event that cannot be repeated.
Baptisms conducted using the Trinitarian formula are considered valid for people being welcomed into the Catholic Church from other Christian communities.
As the Catholic Church's Catechism explains:
The bishop and priest, as well as the deacon in the Latin Church, are the ordinary ministers of Baptism. In an emergency, anyone, even a non-baptized person, can baptize using the Trinitarian baptismal formula if they have the required intention. The desire to perform what the Church does when she baptizes is essential. The Church bases this possibility on God's universal saving will and the requirement of Baptism for redemption.
1284. Any person can baptize if necessary, as long as he has the purpose of doing what the Church does and pours water on the candidate's head while saying, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
When the legitimacy of a person's baptism is questioned, the 1983 Code of Canon Law (1983 CIC) addresses the following situations:
If there is a doubt about whether a person has been baptized or whether baptism was bestowed legitimately, and the doubt persists after a thorough examination, baptism is to be conferred conditionally.
2. Those baptized in a non-Catholic ecclesial community must not be baptized conditionally unless there is a serious reason to doubt the validity of the baptism after an examination of the matter and the form of the words used in the conferral of baptism, as well as a consideration of the intention of the baptized adult and the minister of the baptism.
3. If the conferral or validity of the baptism remains in doubt in the cases mentioned in 1 and 2, baptism is not to be conferred until the doctrine of the sacrament of baptism has been explained to the person to be baptized, if an adult, and the reasons for the doubtful validity of the baptism has been explained to the person or, in the case of an infant, to the parents.
When a valid baptism is done after an invalid attempt, it is assumed that just one baptism took place, namely the valid one.
As a result, baptism is never performed again.
What do evangelicals believe about speaking in tongues?
70% of evangelical churchgoers claimed that speaking in tongues enables them to let go of all their emotions, even when they are praying. And after they told me this, I began to see a difference. Almost everyone who did it on a regular basis appeared to be truly happy. They also mentioned that they felt lighter, freer, and more concentrated by the end of the practice. “When you run out of things to pray for but still need topray,” one of my friends explained, “you speak in tongues to let all these feelings run out of your head and body.”
What churches speak tongues?
Pentecostal Protestant denominations such as the Assemblies of God, the United Pentecostal Church, the Pentecostal Holiness Church, and the Church of God are among those who practice it.
What's the unforgivable sin in the Bible?
Eternal sins, unforgivable sins, unpardonable sins, or ultimate sins are transgressions that will not be forgiven by God, according to Christian hamartiology. Several passages in the Synoptic Gospels, including Mark 3:2829, Matthew 12:3132, and Luke 12:10, as well as other New Testament passages like Hebrews 6:46, Hebrews 10:2631, and 1 John 5:16, specify one eternal or unforgivable sin (blasphemy against the Holy Spirit), also known as the sin unto death.
Christian theologians understand the unforgivable sin in different ways, but they all agree that someone who has committed the sin is no longer able to repent, therefore someone who is afraid they have committed it has not.