A highly-respected Jesuit Catholic priest, bestselling author, and consultant to the Vatican is responding to Mike Johnson after the Speaker of the House likened himself to Moses, said God had charted his path to become Speaker, and in his prayers told him to prepare himself for being elevated to become second in line to the presidency.
Back in December, after being elected Speaker by every Republican member of Congress, Mike Johnson, a Christian nationalist, delivered the keynote address to a far-right Christian nationalist group.
“The Lord impressed upon my heart a few weeks before this happened, that something was going to occur,” Johnson told the group, referring to being elected Speaker. “And the Lord very specifically told me in my prayers to prepare, but to wait. ‘Prepare for what?’ I said to the Lord. You know, I had this sense that we were going to come to a Red Sea moment in our Republican conference and the country at large.”
Johnson continued, saying, “you know, the Lord speaks to your heart. And He had been speaking to me about this and the Lord told me very clearly to prepare and be ready.”
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“Now at the time I assumed the Lord is going to choose a new Moses. And oh, thank you the Lord. Lord, you’re gonna allow me to be Aaron to Moses,” Johnson told the attendees. He continued, explaining, “at the end, when it came to the end, the Lord said, ‘Now step forward.’ ‘Me? I’m supposed to be Aaron.’ Now the Lord said, ‘Step forward.’ Psalm 77 speaks of the Exodus in the 14th chapter of Exodus and it says, ‘Only God saw the path through the roiling sea, we could not see it, men could not see it.’ And I believe deep in my heart, is my core conviction, that God wants us to seek Him for the path through the roiling sea.”
Father James Martin, SJ, editor at large at America magazine, author of ‘Come Forth’ and ‘Learning to Pray,’ consultor to the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication and member of Vatican Synod, responded to video of Johnson’s remarks, and offered some advice.
“A good spiritual director will tell you that insights you feel are coming from God, which are usually subtle, must be carefully tested and weighed,” Martin wrote.
“One red flag for spiritual directors is, ‘Then God said this.’ Not everything that pops into your head during prayer is from God,” Martin added.
Watch a short clip of Speaker Johnson’s remarks from December below or at this link, or his full remarks here.
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