And the saga worsens. Our national nightmare gets darker.
In the middle of last week, Rudy Giuliani admitted on television that Trump did, in fact, pay hush money to buy silence from Stephanie Clifford, a.k.a. Stormy Daniels. By Friday, Trump announced that Giuliani didn’t have all the facts, but he’s a “great guy.” The Russian collusion probe continues to deepen as Donald’s lies grow more unbelievable, and his rhetoric more egregious. It’s gotten so bad that even Fox "news" has started to reach a breaking point. Although to be fair, Neil Cavuto is one of the few Fox pundits who is still tethered to reality in any sense.
Yet all Mr. Cavuto succeeded in doing in his observation was pissing off his listeners. Rather than ask themselves why they were okay with being lied to, or question what it means to have a president that can’t be trusted, they attacked Cavuto. No matter what Donald Trump does, his popularity among Evangelicals doesn’t waiver. He said it himself. He could step onto Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, and nobody would bat an eye. Instead, they support him, defend him, rally behind him, and no matter what he does, they will always have his back.
But why? Seriously, WHY? How is it that the one man who has so flagrantly violated everything Jesus stood for in life cannot offend those who call Jesus their Lord and Savior. Even a child in Sunday school would recognize this cognitive dissonance. It’s obvious to anyone who’s read the Gospels that Jesus would be aghast at what this president has done.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, and one answer that occurs to me is: Antichrist. And I’m not being hyperbolic. Having grown up in the Evangelical tradition, the Antichrist was discussed as often as the Christ Christ. There was no more horrifying figure than the guy who would “look like the lamb but talk like the dragon”. The irony, though, is as much as they loathe and fear this unnamed creature (unnamed until now), they elected him president. It’s the psychology of evil: when we create monsters outside of ourselves without bothering to look at the monsters within, then we become that monster, which is on full display in the White House today.
Before we go down this road, I need to point out that I’m not going to hit all that information in this one post. It would be pages and pages, but I will make my case through a series of posts. First though, it’s important to point out that the ‘antichrist’ doesn’t look evil to those who worship him. That’s why he’s called ‘antichrist.’ But who would worship such a creature?
Jesus’ biographers give us an idea of who Jesus considered the most vulnerable, and Matthew 24 sets up the discussion. (I’m not going to quote all of 24, but I’ll hit the highlights).
“For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”
Matthew 24:24
This word “elect” is an important term. In Jesus day they were the Jewish elite, those put in power by the Romans to quell any insurrection among the Jewish people, as well as collect taxes and move money away from the poor and into Rome’s coffers. The High Priest, most of the body of the Sanhedrin, Herodians, Sadducees, lawyers, and anyone else who’s money was tied to Rome. In our society, we call them Evangelicals: Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Jr., Robert Jeffress… all put in power by the Romans, a.k.a. Wall Street, to keep the peace among the people while the oligarchy ravage the poor to its own ends.
I don’t have to time to into detail how that happened, but historian Kevin Kruse documents this in his book, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America. He begins after the Great Depression in the 1930s when most Americans wanted to fillet the corporate pirates who wrecked our economy and devastated the poor. To protect themselves—and their wealth—Wall Street turned to what would later be called Evangelicals for help. They created a new doctrine, The Prosperity Doctrine, which stated that Jesus wanted his people to be rich, and if you weren’t rich, it was because you had some sort of sin in your life. In other words, if you were suffering, it was your fault—the exact antithesis of everything Jesus said.
This comes from the back cover of the book:
The assumption that America was, is, and always will be a Christian nation dates back no further than the 1930s, when a coalition of businessmen and religious leaders united in opposition to the FDR's New Deal. With the full support of Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, these activists—the forerunners of the Religious Right—propelled religion into the public sphere. Church membership skyrocketed; Congress added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and made “In God We Trust” the country's official motto. For the first time, America became a thoroughly religious nation.
Thus, creating our own version of Jesus’ Elect: those who were put in power (and/or kept in power) by Wall Street to subjugate the populace and prevent an uprising.
Jesus and his disciple would not fall for such a creature because they had such a clear image of God. They would see an imposter coming an apocalypse away. Jesus talked at length about God’s love for the poor, his compassion for those who struggle, his hatred of the rich. He gave his disciples a clear picture of how he saw his God and the Kingdom of Heaven which existed both on earth, and in God’s heavenly realm. But the Elect, with their greed, hubris, avarice, and lust for power—well that’s exactly the man they would fall for. That’s the man they would put into power. That’s the man they would worship. Someone who wouldn’t hold them accountable to God’s Kingdom of Heaven.
So the argument I’m making here is that Christians created the antichrist, but evangelicals have brought him to power and they keep him in power for the very reasons Jesus warned us about (this isn’t the first time they’ve done so, only the latest time).
In Matthew 24, as Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives, his disciples came to him privately and asked:
“Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many…
Today we call those men and women televangelists.
You will hear of wars and rumors of wars…
Evangelicals love war. They love it in the reality, and in the abstract. They want to go to war against Iran, North Korea, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan… (it’s a long list!) In the abstract, they want a war against Islam, against ‘socialism’ (a.k.a. liberalism and progress), against abortion, against homosexuality, and against poor people getting help. But it doesn’t stop there. They’re also victims of their wars: they’re in a war on Christmas, a war on Christianity, a war on conservatism… War! What is it good for… keeping the Evangelicals occupied.
Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.
Persecution has become substantive under the Elect. They openly call for the killing of gay people (I wrote about that here). The alt-right has ratcheted up their violent attacks against black and brown people. We are witnessing unprecedented imprisonment and deportation of those who are not white, and therefor considered “un-American.” The bottom line is the Elect have gone after everybody Jesus considered his people. And as all nations look on, our nation has gone from being a net-positive influence in the world to a net-negative—and drastically. It’s barely year since the Antichrist took office and look at the damage.
At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.
We call these people Televangelists, Fox “news” pundits, family values groups, and Teabaggers.
Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold…
No place is this more obvious than the halls of Congress where Evangelicals hold power. The attempted repeal of the Affordable Healthcare Act, the tax cuts that gut the poor and push money upward to the super rich. The myriad of attempts to strip any social net that would protect Jesus’ people. A Republican congress refusing to even hold a hearing on a president’s pick to be a Supreme Court Justice because he might be reasonable and open to helping Jesus’ children. Paul Ryan and his animosity toward “inner city” people. The defense of weapons of war that kill our children. Calls to build a wall to keep the stranger out. The love of the elect has grown cold.
If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you ahead of time.
And this is the state of America today. False prophets are everywhere, doing their best to defend their Antichrist. False messiahs lead massive churches and preform “astounding” miracles and people everywhere are slain in the spirit. And the antichrist sits exalted, opposing everything that is called good, proclaiming himself to be God.
But this isn’t the end. The story of the Antichrist has much more too it… and I’ll attempt to show his rise to power (according to the Evangelicals), and his demise (again, according to Evangelicals).