20.09.2025, Aleksandrovskoye.
In other words, to save the US from the “forces of darkness,” it is necessary to focus on the government mountain, otherwise no work in any other area will be successful.
Issue No. 628 of our newspaper published an article entitled “Who stands behind Trump” about the religious movement “New Apostolic Reformation” (NAR), which strongly supports Donald Trump and whose representatives are found in his circle. However, the article did not examine where this organization got its money—it cannot all be explained by donations from citizens. The question of who created the ideological control structure in the NAR, which outwardly appears to be a loose alliance of Pentecostal pastors, also remained unanswered.
How money was raised for the work of the “civil society”
On July 13, 2024, the ProPublica website published Andy Kroll’s investigative report “Inside Ziklag, the Secret Organization of Wealthy Christians Trying to Sway the Election and Change the Country”. The article reported that an organization of ultra-wealthy Christian donors would spend about $12 million to mobilize Republican voters and remove more than a million people from voter rolls in key swing states in order to sway the 2024 election in Donald Trump’s favor. The ProPublica website describes itself as “a nonprofit news service that investigates abuses of power.”
Kroll reported that these previously undisclosed plans are being carried out by a group called Ziklag, a little-known charity whose sponsors include some of the wealthiest conservative Christian families in the United States, including the billionaire Uihlein family, who made their fortune in the office supplies business, the Green family, which runs the Hobby Lobby chain of stores, and the Waller family, which owns the Jockey clothing corporation. Overall, it is a small organization with about 125 members. Among them are business leaders, pastors, media executives, and other prominent conservative evangelical Christians. According to one document, those wishing to join the group must demonstrate an interest in the culture war, confirmed by past donations to religious or political causes, and have a net worth of at least $25 million. In other words, it is by definition an elite organization. The group describes itself as “a private, confidential, invitation-only community of wealthy Christian families.”
The very name of the organization, “Ziklag,” is a reference to the Bible. Sekelag, or Ziklag (“oppressed”), was the name of a city in southern Judea. During the reign of King Saul, it was under the control of the Philistines, and the Philistine king Ankus gave the city to David as a temporary refuge when he was fleeing from King Saul. In other words, it was the place where David managed to gather his strength before becoming king of Judah. So the choice of name hints at the organization’s ambitions to seize power.
In addition to ProPublica, the website Documented is also exposing Ziklag. It also presents itself as “an investigative watchdog and journalism project committed to holding the powerful interests that undermine our democracy accountable.” This website has a special section called “Dump the Info,” which is a so-called “dump tank.”
ProPublica and Documented have published thousands of emails from internal correspondence between Ziklag members, internal videos, strategic documents, and written guidelines for fundraising campaigns. Based on this data, they reported on the organization’s plans for 2024.
In 2024, the organization planned to invest money in mobilizing Republican-leaning voters in Arizona to secure 10,640 additional unique votes — almost exactly Joe Biden’s margin of victory over Trump in the state in the 2020 election. The group also intended to use artificial intelligence to ensure the mass challenge of the voting rights of hundreds of thousands of voters in swing states. This is due to issues with voter rolls in some US states. For example, in Wisconsin, with a population of 4 million, including children, the number of voters on the rolls is close to 7 million. Of course, not all of these voters are active, meaning not all of them vote, but there is clearly a problem with the voter rolls.
According to the Ziklag files that were made public, in 2024, the group was working on three programs targeting voters in swing states:
- “Checkmate” — this program funded groups fighting for election integrity;
- “Hurdles” — this operation was intended to mobilize churches and pastors to attract votes for Trump;
- “Watchtower” — this operation was intended to draw voters’ attention to issues of “parental rights” and opposition to transgender rights, in particular the “right” of a child to change gender without parental knowledge.
It should be noted that it was precisely in these areas that seemingly independent civil activists were active, and it was precisely these topics that were actively covered by right-wing and alternative media, starting as early as 2021. In other words, it appears that the documents are not fake, and that Ziklag is behind the seemingly spontaneous growth of pro-Trump civic activism in almost all US states, especially in swing states.
Ziklag funding was received by the pro-Trump group Turning Point USA, which held rallies in support of Trump throughout Biden’s four years in office, and by numerous right-wing civil rights groups.
However, Ziklag is not a political organization — it is a tax-exempt charitable organization. Such organizations are not required to publicly disclose their sponsors, and donations made to such organizations are also tax-exempt. In return, they are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating or interfering in any political campaign on behalf of (or against) any candidate for elective public office.”
ProPublica and Documented presented the results of their investigation to six nonpartisan lawyers and legal experts. In their opinion, Ziklag violates the rules governing charitable organizations.
However, a spokesperson for the organization told reporters that Ziklag does not support candidates for public office. He also noted that the group seeks to “bring” culture “into alignment with biblical values and the US Constitution” and that it “will serve the common good.”
Incidentally, the official name of the organization under which it is registered is USATransForm, meaning that no one is trying to hide their intentions to radically transform the United States.
Background
The Ziklag organization is the brainchild of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur named Ken Eldred. It grew out of a previous organization founded by Eldred called United In Purpose, which, according to Bill Dallas, its former director, sought to attract more Christians to active civic life. United In Purpose attracted attention in June 2016 when it organized a major meeting between US presidential candidate Donald Trump and hundreds of evangelical leaders.
After Trump’s election in 2016, Eldred had an “idea,” according to Dallas. “He said, ‘I want all wealthy Christians to unite,” Dallas recalled. Eldred told Dallas that he wanted to create a donor network similar to the one created by Charles and David Koch, but for Christians. Recall that the Koch brothers, along with tobacco companies, financed the “tea party movement” with the goal of helping Republicans win a majority in both houses of the US Congress.
According to Dallas, Eldred suggested naming the organization “David’s Mighty Men.” However, the female members objected to this name. Dallas then found a passage in the Bible that mentions David’s soldiers and read that they met in the city of Ziklag, so that name was chosen.
The group’s status grew after Trump took office in 2017. After Trump’s victory, Vice President Mike Pence, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Senator Ted Cruz, Congressman Mark Meadows, and other members of the US Congress were seen at Ziklag events.
In its private newsletter, Ziklag claims that the coalition of groups it assembled played an “extremely important role in the selection, listening, and confirmation process” of Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court at the end of 2020. It should be noted that Barrett is Catholic.
Conquering the Mountains
Andy Kroll, author of an article about Ziklag in ProPublica, citing historians, legal experts, and others familiar with the group, writes that the organization is likely the first coordinated attempt to get wealthy donors to fund an overtly Christian nationalist political agenda.
According to the American Institute for the Study of Public Religion, the Christian nationalism movement has many goals and principles, namely: the US government “must declare America a Christian country”; American laws “must be based on Christian values”; The US will cease to exist as a country if it “departs from its Christian foundations”; being a Christian is necessary to be an American; God “has called Christians to exercise dominion over all spheres of American society.”
One of the conceptual principles promoted by Christian nationalist leaders is the Seven Mountains Mandate. Each mountain represents a major industry or sphere of public life: arts and media, business, church, education, family, government, science, and technology. The goal of Ziklag, according to the documents, is to “take dominion over the seven mountains” by funding Christian projects or appointing devout Christians to leadership positions in order to transform each mountain in a godly direction.
“We are in a spiritual battle and a terrifying conflict with the forces of darkness,” says an internal document outlining Ziklag’s 30-year strategy to “change the trajectory of American culture toward Christ by restoring our nation to biblical structure, order, and truth.”
The theological basis of Ziklag thus coincides completely with the theology of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), which we discussed in detail in issue No. 628. Therefore, we can conclude that Ziklag is an elite part of the NAR.
The Ziklag files describe in detail not only what Christians must do to conquer all seven mountains, but also what their goals will be after they have conquered them.
At the organization’s 2021 meeting, Peter Bolinger, chairman of the Ziklag committee for conquering the mountain of education, stated that the organization’s goal “is to destroy the education system as we know it today.” The organization’s documents state that homeschooling should be a “fundamental right” and that the government “should not favor one form of education over another.”
One of the goals of conquering the mountain of art is that 80% of films produced should be rated G or PG (i.e., meet criteria that make them suitable for children and teenagers to watch) and have a “moral story.” It also wants people working in the industry to “act in accordance with a biblical/moral worldview.”
When it comes to the family mountain, the organization is strongly opposed to same-sex marriage and gender ideology.
One of the recipients of Ziklag’s funds is Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a Christian legal group that led the fight to overturn the US Supreme Court’s decision in the famous Roe v. Wade case regarding the legality of abortion. In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled in this case that the right to abortion is protected by the US Constitution and therefore cannot be prohibited by the federal government or individual states. In 2022, through the efforts of the ADF, another abortion case was brought before the US Supreme Court, which had become more conservative under Trump. Upon review, the previous decision was overturned, and states were given the right to regulate abortion at their discretion, including banning it. This led to protests by leftists in the summer of 2022, which escalated into pogroms against clinics that persuaded women not to terminate their pregnancies. In addition to banning abortion, the ADF opposes same-sex marriage and other LGBT rights (the organization banned in Russia).
It is also known that the producers of the “Sound of Freedom” movie, in which a valiant US intelligence agent fought against child trafficking for sexual exploitation, showed an early version of the movie at the Ziklag conference and requested funding. Apparently, the funding was obtained, as the film was completed, released, and was successful. It was this film that allowed the Trump movement MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) to be gently positioned as fighters against pedophilia.
Regarding the government mountain, one of Ziklag’s key documents states that “the biblical role of government is to promote good and punish evil” and that “God’s word and prayer play an important role in political decision-making.”
Ahead of the 2024 election, Ziklag executive director Drew Hiss warned members in an internal video that “an evil force is looming over these seven mountains and beyond.” He described it as “a controlling, evil, demonic presence, in fact, with tyranny in mind.” In his view, this presence was concentrated on the government mountain, i.e., the Biden administration. In other words, to save the US from the “forces of darkness,” it is necessary to focus on the government mountain, otherwise no work in any other area will be successful.
A key figure in Ziklag is Lance Wallnau, a well-known Christian evangelist and influential figure from Texas, whom Lance Wallnau describes as a “visionary and advisor to the seven mountains.” Wallnau makes no secret of his views: “Yes, I am a Christian nationalist,” he said during one of his live broadcasts in 2021. According to experts, this preacher is one of the most influential figures among Christian right-wingers. More than one million people follow him on Facebook (organization banned in Russia).
Wallnau is called the “bridge” between Christian nationalism and Trump. He was one of the first evangelical leaders to support Trump in 2015, and then published a book called “God’s chaos candidate : Donald J. Trump and the American unraveling”. Interestingly, Wallenau explicitly states in the title of the book that Trump’s mission is to destroy the United States as a nation-state.
Wallenau remained an ally of Trump even after he left the White House in 2021. He called Trump’s time in office a “spiritual warfare presidency” and promoted the idea that Trump was a “modern Cyrus,” referring to the Persian king who defeated the Babylonians and allowed the Jewish people to return to Jerusalem. Wallnau visited Trump at the White House and Trump Tower; last November, he broadcast live from a gala evening at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump was speaking.
As previously noted, Wallnau is considered an apostle and preacher in the New Apostolic Reformation. He and his followers believe that God speaks to and through modern apostles and prophets.
It should be noted that Ziklag is not limited to a gathering of millionaires. The same name (Ziklag) is used for a youth camp where, according to the website, leaders are being prepared for the next 20-30 years. The organization’s website, in the “Mission” section, states explicitly that Ziklag’s mission is to “educate people who radically change the existing order and help them reach their full potential.” This is explained in more detail: “Our higher education system is unable to produce players who change the rules of the game. The church is ill-equipped to create market leaders. We are here to fill the ‘gap’ between them.“
Young people (exclusively young men) who want to change the existing order are offered either an 8-week intensive course or a 9-month stay at a training camp, where mentors will determine which mountain he is best suited to conquer, teach him basic skills, help him develop an action plan, and in the case of a business mountain, even provide start-up capital.
(To be continued.)
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
