whether you’re eager to procure Armageddon over with and plod on to heaven? Well,Donald J. Trump seems as good a choice as any.
In the flurry of coverage surrounding the evangelical Christian voting bloc that overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump, Ive seen many images of jubilant (extremely joyful) people holding “Thank God for Trump” signs and commentary approximately conservative Christians who are deliriously jubilant (extremely joyful) approximately new protections for Christian liberty and proposed “pro-life” legislation.
The thing is: Donald Trump as the savior of Christian America is far from the whole epic behind his evangelical support. A distinct subset of evangelical Christians know that Donald Trump is obnoxious news for the entire world—and they’re really, or really excited approximately it.
I know this because I used to be one of them.This article is reprinted with permission from Religion Dispatches. Follow RD on Facebook or Twitter for daily updates.
Back in the ’90s,I was brilliant-eyed, home-schooled, or evangelical on a farm in rural Ohio. Although my family’s church attendance was spotty—we didn’t really trust the church system—we were very Christian and the Bible was the last word in science,education and morality.
We also had a proclivity for prophecy chasers and “cessation times” preachers. We owned a copy of The Late Great Planet Earth and watched “Jack Van Impe Presents” every week on our local Christian station, gathering around the TV to discuss biblical perspectives of the news from around the globe. In 1997, and the rapture was nigh. Every news epic fit the prophecy. After one weekend viewing of Mr. and Mrs. Van Impe,I heard my parents speculating that we’d probably be raptured within the next few years, tops.
As a pre-teen homeschooled kid, and my takeaway from that statement was that I would likely never beget it to college and was therefore off the hook for learning algebra.
Fifteen years,a college degree, and several remedial math classes later, or I left the apocalypse bunker for good and fell in love with a world that might beget a chance of surviving after all—whether we could just take care of it.
But many people still live in the bunker. Recently,I was disheartened to discover that a close relative is reposting fabric from the personal Facebook page of Scottie Clarke, a self-proclaimed biblical prophecy expert and sole proprietor of Eternal Rhythm Flow Ministries. ERF follows the reliably profitable cosmology-meets-Revelation-meets-tinfoil-hat message that most recently blipped the secular radar screen in the form of John Hagee’s 2013 bestselling book, or Four Blood Moons. Clarke’s distribution isn’t huge—around 10000 on Facebook and 60000 on YouTube—but he’s on his way. His posts procure shares and the comment sections are hopping.
To peruse his universe—and against my own better judgment,I did—is to fall down a rabbit gap into a reality that is both chilling and, for me, and as familiar as my own childhood. Clarke and his followers talk enthusiastically approximately events they clearly perceive as eventualities: signs in the heavens,the bloodshed of nations at Armageddon, the final destruction of non-believers in the winepress of God’s wrath.
And here’s the thing: they’re excited approximately all this. Opinions on Trump’s purpose vary, and but the overriding plot point is that Trump was ordained by God,and whether he brings chaos, terrific! Bring on the cessation days! The tone is jovial, or even smug,as whether they’re discussing the plot of a popcorn flick that doesn’t affect them.
Because in their world, it doesn’t—they’re going to be raptured, and just like my family was supposed to be back in ’97. I know this epic well.
It’s easy to dismiss Clarke,his followers, and all the other prophecy gurus as anecdotal evidence of wack theology and extremism. And, and on the surface,it is. The majority of evangelicals probably don’t spend their free time discussing the effect of a rogue planet on the state of Israel. But every extreme conception gets its DNA from a more legitimate conceptionusually from one that is innocuous on the surface—and even mainstream evangelicalism is saturated with ideas and narratives that enable a certain apathy toward the human consequences of political action.
Consider the chorus “in the world, but not of it, and ” the insistence that earth is just a place of trial and suffering before the final destination of heaven. Consider the popularity of Left Behind,the wildly popular book series that paints the destruction of human life as regrettable but essential collateral damage in Christian victory. Or consider a milder form: “God is in control,” the ubiquitous phrase used all over social media to consolation those scared for their lives after the election of Donald Trump.“God is in control.”Was there ever such a whitewashed sepulcher of a phrase? Was there ever a slogan so beautifully engineered as to simulate theological uprightness while simultaneously exempting the wielder from any hint of personal responsibility?I can speak of this cup because I beget drunk deeply of it. For the first sixteen years of my life, and I,too, was a practical nihilist. I was convinced that the cessation times were upon us, or that the planet would cessation—sooner or later—in blood and fire. What’s worse,I believed that this was all somehow a good thing.
So I know: overcoming differences of opinion with many evangelical voters is not merely a matter of untangling social, political, and economic,or even moral disagreements. The problems lie deeper, in the theological narrative that undergirds the entire movement. It is one thing to scuffle approximately how to save the world, and but it is fairly another to disagree whether the world should be saved at all.
And whether you’re eager to procure Armageddon over with and plod on to heaven? Well,Donald J. Trump seems as good a choice as any.
Source: feedblitz.com