Catholic Answers apologist Jimmy Akin weighs in on the viral “Bible Brandon” prophecy. In this clip, Akin analyzes the recent prediction of an assassination attempt on former President Trump and subsequent events. Learn about the Church’s perspective on visions and prophecies, and discover why Akin approaches this case with caution. Discover the potential pitfalls of relying on prophetic claims without careful discernment.
Transcript:
Per is watching on YouTube in Sweden at what I would guess is about midnight, but I didn’t look it up. Per, you there with us?
I’m here. Thank you for taking my call. And you’re correct that it’s almost a 1 am.
Thanks for staying up.
I would like to have Mr. Akin’s thoughts on – has to do with a viral clip that’s been going around after the event on Saturday. It’s on YouTube originally. It’s Protestant prophet proclaimed where he describes the assassination attempt in uncanny detail. So he seems to have had some type of vision. Do you have any comments on this clip? If you are aware of the clip I’m talking about.
Yeah. Yeah. I’m aware of the clip and I’m likely to be discussing it on Monday on Cameron Bertuzzi’s channel, Capturing Christianity on YouTube.
Cameron’s having me on to talk about prophecy, including stuff like this, but I’ll give you my impression right now cause I am familiar with the clip. What this gentleman, his name is, he goes by the handle Bible Brandon. So I guess is one of his names is Brandon and he, I don’t know his full name and he says said several months ago that he saw an assassination attempt on president Trump and that he saw a bullet go away. By his right ear and that it then blew out his eardrum causing blood to be on his face. And that’s not quite what happened with president Trump. Uh, but it’s, it’s close enough. Um, one of the things the Catholic church recognizes is that the seers consciousness when someone’s receiving a vision will interpret what they’re seeing. And Brandon has since come out with another video where he said, I interpreted the blood is being due to a ruptured eardrum. And it turns out it was really his ear got punctured. Um, you know, the, the, the exterior of his ear. And, and so I wouldn’t hold that against him. I mean, it’s quite notable to say there’s going to be an assassination attempt on president Trump and it’s going to be a bullet go right by his ear and even intersect his ear or hurt him in some way. And he’s gets blood on his face. That’s notable.
What he then goes on to say is that he saw president Trump and this get down on his knees and really become a fervent believer in Christ.
And so he would have a conversion experience. And that doesn’t mean, you know, the way I would read it, that wouldn’t mean at this moment. I mean, he, president Trump did get down to avoid the bullet, not to have a religious conversion, but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to have a religious conversion in the future. Um, and then he said that if I recall correctly, that he saw an economic collapse in the United States and things like that. Um, okay, fine. Maybe stuff like that’ll happen in the future. I’m open to that. I don’t dismiss the idea that this gentleman, you know, received a vision or had a pre-cognitive experience or something like that. But I also see reasons for caution here because I’ve looked at some of the other videos on his channel and they are not as impressive. They use a tactic that is similar to what professional mediums will use. That’s a form of cold reading. Cold reading is where you don’t, um, do specific research on a person, but you throw up a bunch of possibilities. Like if a, if a medium is, let’s say they’re talking to a whole group of people, they may say, I, I sent someone here has lost someone whose name begins with J and someone here has recently lost a father and someone and they’ll name a whole bunch of things and when they throw out a whole bunch of possibilities, some of those are going to be hits.
If you’re talking to a group of people who have come to see a medium, probably someone lost someone whose name begins with J because J is a very common letter that names begin with in English and probably someone lost a father because they’re here to see a medium. And so just by throwing out a bunch of options, um, some of them are going to be hits by random chance. And what I saw Bible Brandon doing in another video that’s more recent is he starts speculating on what the Democrats are going to do and he throws out bunches of different options. The video is titled something like Kamala Harris replaces Biden question mark. It’s something like that. And it only came out nine days ago, but when you find, when he finally gets to what he saw in his vision about this, he says, Oh yeah, there was a God said, you need to watch Kamala Harris and you need to watch Gavin Newsom and you need to watch Christine Whitmer. And, and I also saw a woman with, uh, with short blonde hair. I don’t know if it was this woman or I don’t know if it was Hillary Clinton, but God showed me something involved. And so he’s just laying out bunches of different scenarios. And no matter what happens, the odds are pretty good that one of those scenarios is going to be correct.
But he’s just, he hasn’t, he hasn’t been specific here. He’s just saying there’s a whole bunch of stuff to watch here, but God didn’t tell him beyond showing him this imagery. And so this makes his prediction likely to be true by random chance alone. And since this is a known technique that scam artists use in other areas, like in mediumship, I, this is a red flag for me about this guy. So yeah, maybe he, I haven’t researched his history thoroughly, but if this is the mode he normally operates in, then he’s probably been spinning lots of conflicting scenarios over the course of his channel. And by random chance, one of them happened to be right. So I, I, although it’s a notable hit for him to have the perception of Trump’s assassination with a bullet going by his ear, it’s not a perfect hit. It’s a notable hit. But given the operation, the motive operation I see him in, he just throws out so much stuff that if that’s his normal mode of operation, he would, he would get the assassination by random chance. And so I don’t see anything here at present based on my present level of study that would suggest anything more than random chances at work here.
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