The End Days

One of the fantasies driving Evangelists is that God chooses all sorts of flawed persons to carry out his missions.  Moses had killed an Egyptian.  Jacob got drunk and ran around naked in his tent for Ham to see.  Noah was apparently a flawed person as well, although he didn't get drunk until after the flood.  So, why not Donald Trump?

It seems many Evangelists believe God has chosen Trump for a specific reason.  The most prevalent one is that he will usher in the apocalypse they have long waited for, resulting in the millennial reign of Jesus. So, it is not like they really love Trump, but rather see him as an agent of change.  Something Trump obviously doesn't quite understand, as he likes to project himself as both the "Chosen One" and the "King of Israel."

For decades, Millennialists have been looking for the US, and in turn the world, to crumble into a big giant ash heap.  Their support of Israel has nothing to do with any specific love for Jews, but rather they look to see a prophecy fulfilled.  Only when the Temple of Jerusalem is rebuilt will their long-awaited dream swing into action.  This would mean the destruction of the Al-Aqsa mosque, whose shiny gold dome sits atop the ruins of the Temple.  Before you blame the Muslims for the destruction of the Temple, you should check your history books, as it was the Romans who razed it 500 years before Muhammad was born.  It was also written in Revelations.

Many scholars have interpreted Revelations as a response to the sacking of Jerusalem.  Christians actually fulfilled their mission long ago when Rome accepted their religion in the fourth century.  The destruction of Israel opened the door for a new religion to be formed from the ashes of Judaism.  Since then Christianity has been the predominant religion of the world, repeatedly withstanding challenges from Islam, which also uses the Books of Moses as its base texts.

However, Millennialism is something born out of the Second and Third Great Awakenings in America that resulted in the plethora of Evangelical religions we see today.  They take the Bible literally at its word.  There's no room for doubt or for history books.  For them, the Bible is a form of living history that they choose to repeat, oblivious to the fact that all the events took place roughly two millennia ago.

These people are utterly deluded.  None moreso than the Mormons, who subscribe to a companion book to the Bible in which Joseph Smith makes the claim that he saw the spirit of Christ on a rock in upstate New York and that the Mormons were the descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel that came to America after the fall of Jerusalem.

For decades, religious archaeologists from Brigham Young University looked for this lost tribe in the Yucatan Peninsula of Central America.  To their credit they followed conventional standards of archaeology, but a frustrated Thomas Stuart Ferguson ultimately renounced his faith when he could find no evidence of this.  Something the Church of Latter Day Saints doesn't like to discuss, as these archaeological efforts live on the New World Archaeological Foundation.

For Evangelists, faith trumps reason each and every time.  You have to put your hand in the hand of Jesus, a song that was made very popular in the 1970s, and which Anne Murray found herself forced to reclaim. You can argue all you want, but you aren't going to convince ardent Evangelists, and in particular Millennialists, of any fallacies or inconsistencies in their interpretation of the Bible.  They are true believers, or at least they like to think of themselves as such.

For the most part, these persons are exploited by Tele-Evangelists and politicians to further their own interests. Since Jerry Falwell created the Moral Majority in the late 1970s, this conservative religious movement has grown into a major force in American politics.  You might even go so far as to call it the Fourth Great Awakening.

Falwell built a university expressly for the promulgation of his beliefs.  One his son continues to administer.  It has grown into one of the largest universities in the world, thanks in large part to its on-line programs that are accessible to tens of thousands of persons all around the globe.  Liberty University has become the mecca of the Evangelical movement today.  If any politician wants to get Evangelical support he has to speak before the university's mandatory assembly.  Virtually every Republican candidate came through Lynchburg, Virginia.  Even Bernie Sanders tried his luck in 2015, not that it did him any good. 

What makes 2016 all the more odd is that the Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr. had his pick of at least 16 Republican candidates, many of them professed Evangelists, but chose Trump.  Maybe it is as Citizen Donald joked, he put up money for new dormitories on the rapidly expanding campus, or as Jerry Jr. later said, sometimes you have to play hardball.  The Evangelists felt strongly that Trump could deliver where other more devout presidential candidates had failed.

Evangelical leaders tried to get Trump to repent his past sins, as one has to be "born again" to be a true Evangelist, but Trump claimed he had no sins to repent, taking these endorsements as he did the many others that came his way as fait accompli.  The closest Trump came to professing his religious zeal was brandishing his family Bible and quoting "Two Corinthians."  No matter, Evangelists looked the other way once Trump started winning primaries.

Mind you, not all Evangelists were on the Trump band wagon. Max Lucado, a well respected Evangelical minister wrote an op-ed piece for the Washington Post in February, 2016, lamenting the presidential candidate's lack of decency.  He wrote that this is someone he wouldn't trust with his daughters, much less the White House.  Unfortunately, Pastor Lucado spoke for very few Evangelists.

Trump's freewheeling days were pretty much over.  Evangelists saw all his sins in the past, dismissing the numerous sexual abuse allegations brought against him.  This was ironic to say the least, considering Trump had paraded four women who claimed Bill Clinton had sexually abused them, while Governor of Arkansas, before his first debate with Hillary Clinton.  She had been widely portrayed in the conservative media as Bill's "enabler."

The hypocrisy of the Evangelical leaders supporting Trump didn't go unnoticed.  They just refused to acknowledge it.  In their minds, it didn't matter how flawed Trump was as long as he pushed their religious conservative agenda.  He was their Moses, leading them out of the wilderness of social liberal values that in their collective mind had greatly diminished "religious freedom" in America.  Why shouldn't a devout Christian baker have the right to refuse making a wedding cake for a gay couple?

I have no idea how many Millennialists actually believe in the End Days.  I have to think most Tele-Evangelists and politicians exploit this belief for their own celebrity status.  Nevertheless, this belief that the world will come to a cataclysmic end and a new reign of Jesus Christ will prevail appears to drive much of the religious conservative agenda.  Whether figuratively or literally, their goal is to remake this country in a Biblical image, even to the point of reframing the Constitution in Biblical terms.

Few of them actually believe Trump is the Messiah.  Rather, they see him as the man who will bring down government, as we know it, so that a new America can be built on the ashes of the old.  Whether this vision extends to the whole world is anyone's guess, but for now many of these Evangelists appear content to rebuild America in the image of a "Shining City Upon a Hill."

For Trump, it is just one big reality show, like a Tele-Evangelist who seeks to make the most out of his faithful flock as he can.  He loves being the god of chaos.  He thrives on chaos.  His life has been one big giant mess and somehow he came out on top.  If this is all part of God's plan then so be it, as long as he goes out with a big smile on his face.