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Tuesday August 23, 2022
image above: Alexa from Pixabay
WN: The article highlighted below is fascinating, as is the video below! I long-since abandoned a (pre)millennialist theology that conjectured about who is “The Anti-Christ.” But the discussion in the article highlighted below is indeed fascinating.
My personal belief? There are many anti-Christs littering history, who represent the complete opposite to Christ. Trump is high on that list. Or, in the words of the writer below:
But for me, all the proof I need that Trump, if not the biblical Antichrist, is at least a political one, is what he says and does.
Ari Melber yesterday opened his MSNBC show, The Beat, with a fascinating rant comparing Donald Trump and his lawyers to the role Al Pacino plays as Satan in the movie “The Devil’s Advocate.” A movie, Melber notes, that was shot in Trump’s apartment in Trump Tower where the devil lived.
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Commentators across the political and religious spectrum are pointing out how “Christian Nationalism,” as promoted in Germany in the 1930s and today by Republicans, is undertaking an effort to rewrite our constitution, our laws, and even our social compact.
Which raises the difficult question: “Is Donald Trump the Antichrist?”
When a caller to my radio/TV show asked this question recently, I passed on drawing a conclusion, but then the lines lit up with a steady stream of people over the next few hours offering their “proofs” that Trump was, in fact, the Evil One come to ravage the Earth. That first caller clearly hit a nerve.
It’s a fascinating question, however, whether put literally or metaphorically.
Asking the question literally requires a belief in the actual reality of a Son-of-God Christ figure and of an Antichrist opponent of nearly equal but opposite power. This sort of thing fills the Bible, and I’ll get to that in a moment.
But first consider the question from the secular perspective, which argues these two terms represent, at their core, metaphors for the embodiment of good and evil.
In this context, then, a more accurate question is: “Is Donald Trump an Antichrist?”
In The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke in the plural when he predicted “false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.”
After warning that grifters and con artists (in secular terms) would try to exploit His followers, He said, “by their fruits ye shall know them.”
Trump’s “fruits” are pretty obvious:
*More than twenty women have accused him of rape and sexual assault.
*Hundreds of contractors, customers and employees have accused him of stealing from them or refusing to pay them (or both), as have members of his own family
*Throughout his presidency, he lied over 30,000 times
*He pit Americans against each other by race, religion and region in an effort to tear our country apart and thus weaken opposition to his authoritarian rule
*He openly encouraged violence against unarmed people at multiple rallies and encourage state violence at a speech to chiefs of police
*He tried to overthrow and end our democracy
*He embraced murderers, kleptocrats and “strongman” rulers while ridiculing western democracies and their elected leaders
*He tried to damage or dismantle political and military systems designed to keep peace in the world, including the UN, NATO and the Iran JCPOA
*He reaches out to Jesus’s followers and then directs them toward bigotry, violence and hatred
*As an object of admiration and a role model, he’s replaced Jesus in many white evangelical congregations
*He delighted in tearing children from their parents and putting them in cages
*He tried to end Americans’ access to lifesaving medical care by killing Obamacare and privatizing Medicare
*He watched on TV, like a delighted child, as his followers killed a police officer, sent 140 other police to the hospital, and tried to murder the Vice President and Speaker of the House
*He lied about Covid (after disclosing the truth to Bob Woodward in February, 2020), causing more disease and deaths in America than any other nation in the world
The main reason many Christians freak out about an antichrist running around loose is that following him will get you banned from heaven or even cast into hell.
But what did Jesus — the guy Trump’s white evangelical followers claim as their savior — say was actually necessary to get into heaven?
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When we spoke privately after the concert, His Holiness’s forceful comments reminded me of Jesus’ words in Matthew 25, the “parable of the sheep and goats.” It’s an amazing 2,000 year-old story that tells us everything we need to know about today’s “Christian” politics:
Jesus’ disciples had gathered around him in a private and intimate setting.
Finally, they thought, they could ask him, straight up, the question that had been haunting them, particularly now that the Roman authorities were starting to talk about punishing or even executing them: How they could be sure to hang out with him in the afterlife?
Jesus told them that at the end of days he’d be sitting on his throne separating the sheep from the goats “as a shepherd divideth.”
The nations of “sheep” would go with him to heaven, the “goats” to hell.
“For I was an hungred, and ye gave me food,” he told his disciples he would say to the sheep. “I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”
At this point, his disciples — who had never, ever seen Jesus hungry, thirsty, homeless, sick or naked — freaked out. Whoa! they shouted. We’re screwed!
“When saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee?” they asked, panicked. “Or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? Or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?”
“Verily I say unto you,” Jesus replied, reassuring them, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
This is the only place in the Bible where Jesus explicitly tells his disciples what acts they must perform, in their entirety, to get into heaven.
Feed the hungry, care for refugees, house and clothe the homeless, heal the sick, have compassion on those in prison.
Wayne Northey was Director of Man-to-Man/Woman-to-Woman – Restorative Christian Ministries (M2/W2) in British Columbia, Canada from 1998 to 2014, when he retired. He has been active in the criminal justice arena and a keen promoter of Restorative Justice since 1974. He has published widely on peacemaking and justice themes. You will find more about that on this website: a work in progress.
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Could American Evangelicals Spot the Antichrist? Here Are the Biblical Predictions: . . .
