New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) raised more than a few eyebrows and riled atheist activists after a February address during which he took aim at the separation of church and state and seemingly blamed the absence of school prayer for violence.
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Two months later, Adams isn’t backing away from theological proclamations, revealing on the National Day of Prayer the messages he believes God has given him throughout his life.
The first was a missive decades ago telling him he would one day become mayor. Adams heralded the “power of prayer” was revealing the details during a Wednesday address at the Rev. A.R. Bernard’s Christian Cultural Center in New York City.
“[Thirty-two] years ago, God placed on my heart that Jan. 1, 2022, I would be the mayor of the city of New York,” Adams said. “But God said, ‘Do not be silent, because if you are silent, then when you get there, people are going to believe you stumble there.'”
And he apparently shared that prophecy with many people he met along the way.
“Everyone I saw, everyone that I knew, those who knew me back then, Attorney General James probably thought, back then, ‘Eric must be on medication,'” Adams said. “Everywhere I traveled to as a lieutenant and captain, I said, ‘I’m going to be mayor January 1st, 2022.’ God wanted me to allow people to watch.”
Regardless of where people stand on Adams’ God claim, no one can dispute his comments are bold, especially for someone of his political stature.
The mayor said he believes God wanted to show a “perfectly imperfect person can rise to the highest political power in a city, in the most powerful country.” He discussed being bullied, being arrested, and being on “the wrong side of the law” before transforming to become a cop and now mayor.
“That’s prayer,” Adams said.
The other purported message the mayor said he received reportedly came more recently when the Lord reportedly implored the mayor to share God more openly, The New York Times reported.
Adams, in fact, said this is the reason he’s been so vocal about the Almighty of late.
“You may not have noticed, but the last few months … I have been talking about the need of God being back in our lives,” he said. “And it’s because the same voice I heard 32 years ago spoke to me a few months ago and said, ‘Talk about God, Eric. Talk about God.’ We have been so ashamed of God.”
Adams even declared Wednesday “New York City Day of Prayer,” something the Times noted isn’t too common among city leaders.
As CBN’s Faithwire previously reported, Adams left atheists aghast in February when he said the “mayor of New York is a servant of God.”
“Don’t tell me about no separation of church and state,” he said during the New York Public Library event. “State is the body. Church is the heart. You take the heart out of the body, the body dies.”
Adams also addressed his personal beliefs and how he cannot separate them from his job as mayor, as he said his faith is who he is.
“I can’t separate my belief because I’m an elected official,” he added. “When I walk, I walk with God. When I talk, I talk with God. When I put policies in place, I put them in with a God-like approach to them.”
Adams has since doubled down on his position.
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