At last week’s POTUS Shield gathering at Trump ally Frank Amedia’s church in Ohio, preacher and author Mani Erfan declared that Islam “has to be completely broken down” to bring about the return of Christ. The Trump-supporting “prophets” and “apostles” of POTUS Shield believe the church must build God’s kingdom on Earth to usher in the return of Jesus Christ. On his ministry’s website, Erfan says he believes we are in the end days and that “the Lord is coming back.”
Erfan, a member of the POTUS Shield council, described himself at Amedia’s church as an Iranian-American half-Jew, half-Muslim who became a Christian. He said that the Christian church is growing faster in Iran than anywhere else in the world, a development he connected to an ancient biblical story in which Cyrus, a Persian king, released Jews to return to Israel. (Many of Trump’s Christian supporters described him during the campaign as a modern-day Cyrus.)
If God can bless Iran 25 centuries after one or two acts of favor to Israel, Erfan asked, how much more will God bless the U.S. for its support of Israel? American Christians, he said, must resist attempts by “the enemy” to diminish U.S. support for Israel. POTUS Shield, he said, is fighting “for the very survival of our nation at the seat judgment [sic] of Christ.”
Erfan declared that Islam must “crumble” and be “completely broken down” for Christ to return. He repeatedly slammed down a gavel used at the POTUS Shield gathering when one of the speakers was making a declaration or decree for something they were asking God to bring to pass:
What am I fighting for? As a part of POTUS Shield, I have to always ask: what is my part in this? I’m an Iranian. I’m an American, I’m Iranian, but my calling has come, a two-fold calling. I know that at this time and this season, God’s last major mission effort, the last major wall that has to come down before the return of the Lord, is the wall of Islam. It has to crumble. It has to come down. This is part of the whole process of the return. This is the one last false religion that is raising itself as a standard against God, and has to crumble. It has to be completely broken down, like the walls of Communism had to come down, walls of Islam have to come down. This cannot be done in isolation. Nations have to join forces. Churches have to join forces. We have to understand the times and seasons we’re in. Islam, Islam has to crumble…I decree that, the walls of Islam have to come down [slams gavel]. I decree that the walls of Islam have to come down [slam]. I decree that the walls of Islam, the false religion of Islam, have to come down [slam].
