The notion that God has a unique covenant with America, as Jesse Duplantis suggested in his Flashpoint conference speech, is a gross misinterpretation of biblical truth but a common theme among adherents to the hypercharismatic and adherents to the prosperity gospel. God is indeed sovereign over all nations, America included. His hand has undoubtedly shaped history. But a divine covenant is not a national entitlement, and America is not the new Israel.

During a recent speech at Flashpoint, Duplantis made an absurd claim that God directly altered the U.S. Constitution. Obviously, this is an affront to both sound biblical theology as well as objective history. It’s a fantastical tale, not rooted in the rigorous deliberations of our Founding Fathers, nor in the sacred text of the Bible and it cheapens the grace-filled relationship God established through covenants with His people in Scripture.

His portrayal of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison as mere conduits of a divine script is a gross oversimplification. Again, God is sovereign over the nation and its kings, but these men were not puppeteered by divine strings but were human agents carrying out a plan for a nation. Sure, they may have been guided by their belief in a deity, but they were also guided by their understanding of governance, law, and the lessons of history.

“And then the fourth President of the United States, James Madison,” Duplantis said. “And through those four men, god gave the vision of America about what they should do. And it started out with George Washington, and he appointed Alexander Him, and he appointed the Chief justice and different things of that nature.”

“So what happened was God wanted this vision for this America that he would put his providence in.”

“So what happened when James Madison was authorized called the author of the Constitution?” Duplantis later added. “He he was supposed to say, we the people of free and independent states. That’s the way it was supposed to happen.”

“But God changed the word on the day that he spoke it there for the Constitution.”

The Constitution is a human document, forged in the crucible of debate and compromise. It was not divinely dictated, and to suggest otherwise is to undermine the actual divinely inspired Scriptures which do infallibly reflect and reveal God’s purpose and will. I don’t claim to be an expert on constitutional law, and I understand that there are varying views even within conservative Christianity on its validity and usefulness to the Church. But I do know that when Madison penned, “We the People of the United States,” it was a conscious choice for unity, not a divine alteration of his intended words.

Duplantis’s assertion that God “united this United States together” under the Constitution distorts the divine-human relationship. God empowers and guides, and He does set up and remove kings. But to suggest that God’s purpose for America was to carry out a divine covenant with a nation is simply absurd.

Jesse Duplantis is a showman, peddling a distorted prosperity gospel that is far removed from the humble teachings of Christ. His self-aggrandizing theatrics, whether claiming divine alterations of our Constitution or promising wealth in exchange for faith, are a mockery of the Gospel’s truth. His teachings are not representative of conservative Christianity. They are, instead, the raving distortions of a charlatan.