Sometimes Youtube likes to make suggestions on videos that they think that I’d like to watch. Well, just the other day, a video popped up on my feed called, “God Showed Me a Coming Sign of War in 2022.” This is a prophetic message from a young man named Troy Black. He’s a Youtuber and blogger from Longview, Texas, and appears to have several Youtube channels, the most popular of which is one simply called Troy Black. This channel has over 300,000 subscribers and his videos have generated tens of thousands of views.
Now, I had never heard of Troy Black prior to this video popping up on my feed. He seems to be a very nice young man, and he certainly is focused on evangelism. And I want to emphasize that I am not attacking Troy. He seems very likeable, and I’d love to sit down and actually dialogue with him. Troy, if you read this, please feel free to reach out to me, I’d love to talk to you about this if you like.
But, I don’t want anything I write here be construed as an attack on him as a person. I want to examine his words, not his character. As far as I can tell, he is a brother in Christ, and so I do care for him. That being said I think we need to examine some things he said.
So when YouTube said that I’d like his video I took up their offer and clicked on it. And that has prompted me to talk about a few things here. Now, before I begin, you may remember last year I did some videos and blogs about the dreams that Pastor Dana Coverstone was having. He claimed that God had given him those dreams. I wanted to find out if those dreams were in fact from God. I would think anyone would want to do that. If person A claimed that God was giving them a message, which included some instructions for Person B, then I would think Person B would want to know for sure if God had really spoken to Person A. Seems reasonable to me, but I discovered that many people don’t think like that. Lots of people don’t like thinking about what’s going on, they prefer the emotion of the moment. I, on the other hand, want to know if the message is really from God.
Okay, let’s talk about Troy Black’s video, which contains a prophecy. Troy claimed that he had a vision on Sept 11, 2021, and that it was a prophecy that he felt he needed to share. If God is speaking, then I want to know. I don’t just assume that a vision is inspired because the person who had it told me that it is.
Before we get into the prophecy, I want to talk about some scripture that Troy had used in his video. Troy told us that the Bible tells us that in the end times, or last days, that there will be wars and rumors of wars. He then reads from Matthew 24, verses 6 -13. Now, this is a passage from a very famous section of Jesus’ teaching, which we call the Olivet Discourse. I did an entire video series on that chapter a few months ago in which I went into a lot of detail about that chapter. Feel free to check it out.
To be brief, Matthew 24 begins with Jesus foretelling the destruction of the Jewish temple that he had just walked out of. After He and his disciples left the city, four of his disciples pulled Him aside privately and asked him about what he had just said. I think the idea of the temple being destroyed was frightening to them and so they wanted to know when it would happen, and what sign there was that it was about to take place. And, so in the passage that Troy reads in his video, we find Jesus answering the disciples’ questions. He tells them that there will be wars and rumors of wars as a sign, but that the end was not yet.
Now, Jesus told His disciples that these wars and rumors of wars were something that they were going to see prior to the destruction of the Jewish temple, which occurred it the year 70 AD. Troy tells us that these wars and rumors of wars are something that we should expect to see in the end times or last days. However, Jesus didn’t say that. He didn’t say that His disciples would see it and that the final generation would see it too. He didn’t say that these things would happen twice. You won’t find that written anywhere in the Bible. I know it’s very popular to teach that, but I just want to take a moment to tell you that it’s simply not there.
This is not incredibly important to me, but Troy shared the scripture for what he calls a “foundation” for the vision that he had had. But the interpretation of that passage isn’t agreed upon by everyone. Not everyone sees it the same way as Troy does. So, the foundational text isn’t as firm as Troy thinks that it is. In any event, let’s get on to the vision.
Troy described being in a position high above the earth and seeing a missile heading down to the land from high above. He then said that he was shown an underwater machine digging on the ocean floor and digging up huge metal tubes. It was at that time that Troy said he heard the Holy Spirit tell him, “digging up the past.” After praying about this Troy said God told him, “Some of the things that happened a year after you were born are going to be raked back over the coals again.”
Troy believes this is a reference to the Persian Gulf war that occurred in 1990, and likely involves the nations of Iraq, Kuwait, and the United States. Troy then said that God spoke to him again, saying, “unsettling reports and unrest by January of this next year.”
At a little after the 14 minute mark of the video Troy described another vision in which he saw missiles being launched from what he believed to be a submarine, and an hourglass lying on its side under the water. Now, he seems to suggest that this vision is a prophecy of a coming spiritual war, and that God is calling His people to pray.
In summary, it would appear that Troy is telling us that in January of 2022 we in the United States should expect unsettling reports and unrest having to do with Kuwait and or Iraq. He’s also suggesting that there’s a spiritual war going to take place and that Christians need to pray, evidently for revival.
So …. are these visions from God? That should be everyone’s question.
Well, it’s hard to say anything objectively about the second vision because it’s about a spiritual war that we can’t really know much about. In other words, we can’t see it taking place. We can spend our time praying about it or not praying about it, and there’s really no way to objectively tell what’s going on there. We’d have to rely on Troy to tell us what’s happening, and frankly I’m not really comfortable with that. But, the first vision gives us something to work with.
Before I go on, I want to point out that Troy himself reads from 1 Thessalonians 5 verses 19-22, and then encouraged us to test everything. So, I’m not doing anything here that Troy would not want us to do. And, as I pointed out already, we can’t test the second vision, but the first one gives us something to work with. That’s because Troy told us that something is going to happen in reality in the month of January 2022.
The problem is that Troy’s prophecy is extremely vague. He gave us a time frame, but told us only to expect “unsettling reports and unrest.” Let me ask you, when do we NOT receive unsettling reports from the middle east? Let’s take Iraq for just a moment. During this past year, there was an attempted assassination in November, a suicide bombing in July, protests in May, a huge fire in April, and actually, just before I made this video we heard reports of two rocket attacks in Baghdad.
So, you see, the prediction doesn’t really predict anything at all. We routinely receive reports of unrest from that area. It’s kinda like predicting that Colorado will get snow this winter.
Troy’s vision sounds very dramatic. In fact, he’s studied cinematography and does a great job with his video set, the use of B-roll video, and powerful music. But when you strip all of the drama away and look at what he said through the lens of reality, it’s quite unimpressive. And, the whole thing begs a very obvious question: why is God telling us this? Why is it important for us to know that there’s going to be unrest in the middle east? What benefit does the Church get from receiving this prophetic word?
I think it’s pretty obvious that this prophetic message has a lot of problems for the Christian who does what Troy has asked them to do, and that is: test the spirits. As I said, it’s not clear what benefit we would obtain from gaining the knowledge from this prophecy. But more importantly, the prophecy appears to predict something so vague and routine, that it’s designed not to fail. This leads me to believe that the vision did not come from the Holy Spirit.
I’m definitely going to revisit this prophecy again in February of 2022, and see where that takes us. Until then leave your thoughts below in the comments section and tell me whether or not you think this prophecy is from the Lord.
Dane Cramer is a backpacker, follower-of-Jesus blogger, jail chaplain, amateur filmmaker, Podcast host, and author of two books: Romancing the Trail and The Nephilim: A Monster Among Us , and has worked as an investigator for over 35 years.