Right-wing gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano can be heard on a recorded Zoom call with Christian Nationalists praying for the Jan. 6 insurrection to succeed.
Mastriano, a Pennsylvania state senator who won the Republican gubernatorial primary election, held up letters to Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy during the call saying that Trump had personally asked him to tell them about alleged fraud in his state's election and urged Congress to "disregard" the results, and he invoked the Book of Revelations to pray for the insurrection to succeed, reported Rolling Stone.
“We remember the promises of old,” Mastriano says in the recording. “We know we overcome Satan by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony and not loving our lives unto death.”
Mastriano, who is seated before a Revolutionary War-era flag with the motto, "An Appeal to Heaven," says in the prayer that Pennsylvania has long been important to God's divine plan, and he invokes the Battle of Gettysburg to the crashed Flight 93, when he says "a strong Christian man" confronted Islamic hijackers on 9/11.
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“God I ask you that you help us roll in these dark times," Mastriano says, invoking doomed passenger Todd Beamer's cry of "let's roll," "that we fear not the darkness, that we will seize our Esther and Gideon moments. We’re surrounded by wickedness and fear and dithering and inaction, but that’s not our problem. Our problem is following Your lead. I pray that… we’ll seize the power that we had given to us by the Constitution, and as well by You, providentially. I pray for the leaders also in the federal government, God, on the Sixth of January that they will rise up with boldness.”
The call, which took place between the Nov. 8, 2020, election and the Jan. 6, 2021, certification of Joe Biden's election, was organized by Jim Garlow, a prominent leader in the far-right New Apostolic Restoration movement who believes the U.S. government should be organized around his interpretation of biblical principals.
Mastriano has claimed he's not affiliated with NAR and isn't a Christian Nationalist, and it also shows he hoped the protests in Washington, D.C., would deprive Biden of his election win.
The Jan. 6 committee has sought his testimony about his presence at the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection, but Mastriano has sued to challenge the panel's authority to question him.
Rolling Stone was given the full video of the prayer meeting, which runs for nearly two hours, by independent researcher Bruce Wilson, who has chronicled the growing influence of NAR on U.S. politics for more than a decade.
“If Mastriano wasn’t a NAR true believer, why was he there praying before them, and taking on the heroic mantle of Gideon?” Wilson said. “He didn’t just wander in off the street, he was invited.
Wilson noted that Mastriano was seated in front of the pine-tree flag that has been adopted by Christian Nationalists, and he said the candidate clearly understood and articulated their views.
"He speaks their vernacular so well," Wilson said, "it’s hard to imagine he’s not all in.”
Doug Mastriano pre-Jan. 6 Prayerwww.youtube.com
