'Flirting with the apocalypse': How Trump’s policy about-face has 'deep roots in Christian theology'

19 June

Donald Trump outside St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. on June 1, 2020 (Wikimedia Commons)

While President Donald Trump may not involve much religion in his personal life, global political analyst Tristan Sturm says he may be following the fervor of powerful evangelicals, who themselves are following a script from Revelations.

“There has been much flirting with the apocalypse lately,” Sturm says, quoting historians, and the president appears to be entertaining it. The House X feed recently posted a letter to Trump from Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel — and “perhaps the world’s most powerful Christian Zionist,” according to Sturm.

“God spared you in Butler, PA, to be the most consequential President in a century — maybe ever,” Huckabee told Trump. "… You have many voices speaking to you, Sir, but there is only ONE voice that matters. HIS voice.”

The White House letter also contained a comparison of Trump to President Harry “Truman in 1945”, a time when Sturm points out the U.S. dropped two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “I believe you will hear from heaven and that voice is far more important than mine or ANYONE else’s,” cheered Huckabee.

This isn’t the first time Trump’s evangelical following have lifted him to Biblical highs, says Sturm. In his first term, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo compared Trump to Queen Esther saving the Jewish people from the Iranian menace. Others compared him to King Cyrus, another instrument of God who freed the Jews.

“Trump is being tasked with a similar biblical mandate. But unlike Cyrus and Esther, Trump’s mandate as envisioned by Huckabee isn’t to save the Jews,” writes Sturm. “Rather, it’s to bring about an imminent Rapture, during which all true believers will be lifted into auditorium seats in Heaven to watch Christ defeat the Antichrist’s armies at Tel Megiddo.”

“In this fable, most Jews die,” he adds.

Sturm says Huckabee’s message urges Trump to join in Israel’s attacks on Iran, and the ambassador’s “belief that this Israel-Iran conflict was foretold in the Bible is on full display: ‘You did not seek this moment,’ he wrote ‘This moment sought you!’”

Evangelicals transferred their concept of the Antichrist from the Soviet Union to the Islamic states after the Cold War, but until now Sturm said their prophecies “could be dismissed as racist geopolitical fables.”

“But now, Christian Zionists with a documented belief in such fables have entered the halls of power — including Huckabee and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth,” says Sturn, and their influence on “a highly suggestable opportunist” like Trump could lead the U.S. into a hasty clash.

Read the full Forward report at this link.

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