Delusional thinking, speech, and behavior are proliferating in America to a degree beyond imagination in the earlier history of the nation. The President repeats the same lies and adds new ones almost every day. Some claims are so palpably false that in normal times only the simple-minded would believe them. (Cf. Alternative Fact of the Week: The imaginary wall; Trump’s Metaphysical Wall: An Investigation.) Nevertheless, a significant percentage of the population chooses to believe or profess to believe the man, and defend him with astonishing claims supposedly based on the Bible. The vast majority are Evangelicals and Roman Catholics in alliance. The Evangelicals profess to be great students of the Bible, but betray an abysmal and fatal ignorance of biblical Truth. Their theology is a desecration of the Holy Scriptures, and though a minority in the nation's population their evident thralldom to the unclean spirits of Rev. 16:13-14 has been imposed on the nation at large. Their strong delusion (2 Thess. 2:10-12) is reflected in their commitment to a man thoroughly corrupt and divorced from reality.

The White House Press Secretary, spokesperson to the nation, is an Evangelical. Emboldened by the power now exercised by right-wing Evangelism, she recently made the preposterous statement that God wanted Donald Trump to be President:-

Sarah Sanders: God wanted Trump to become president

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders claimed Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s presidency is part of a higher calling.

“I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times, and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president,” Sanders said during an interview with Christian Broadcast Network News. “And that’s why he’s there, and I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about.” . . .

Trump's multiple divorces and alleged affairs have also not significantly affected the president’s popularity among white evangelical voters.

The sacrilege of charging God with responsibility for the candidacy and election to the presidency of Donald Trump is not new. It has been openly embraced by the Religious Right from the time that he emerged as a serious contender for the office, and into and throughout his presidency to date (cf. A Time of Boundless Delusions.)

Hopefully, we are paying close attention to this phenomenon. With what is happening in plain view, it is unreasonable to think that the Image to the Beast is yet future. Reports such as the following underscore the reality that the Image is formed; although the events prophesied in Rev. 13:13-15 still await fulfillment:

Sarah Sanders says 'God wanted Trump to be president'

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders has told a religious television network that God "wanted Donald Trump to become president".

Ms Sanders made the claim in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), saying it was the reason Mr. Trump was in office.

The press secretary also said it was "very hard" to take morality lessons from the Democratic Party.

Democrats have attacked Mr. Trump's proposed border wall as immoral.

US evangelicals strongly support the president.

The Washington Post reports Mr. Trump won 80% of the white evangelical vote in 2016, a higher share than Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain in previous elections. . .

The interview comes days after Mr. Trump tweeted his support for Bible study.

Several states have legislation pending that would make Bible literacy courses part of public school education. . .

The American Civil Liberties Union attacked Mr. Trump's endorsement.

"More often than not, public school Bible classes resemble Sunday school lessons and violate students' and parents' First Amendment rights," senior attorney Heather Weaver wrote.

"Public schools are for education, not religious indoctrination."

Note the photos in the report which were taken in the White House.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders Pins The Trump Presidency On God

A news story last week raised many eyebrows: White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network Jan. 30 that God wanted Donald Trump to be president.

“I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times, and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president,” Sanders said during an interview with CBN’s David Brody and Jennifer Wishon. “That’s why he’s there, and I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about.”

Sanders’ comments aren’t really anything new. They merely echo statements made by several Religious Right figures since Trump’s election. Evangelist Franklin Graham, for example, told The Washington Post shortly after the election, “I could sense going across the country that God was going to do something this year. And I believe that at this election, God showed up.” . . .

Sanders was criticized for her comments, but the American Family Association leaped to her defense, pointing out that a passage in Romans 13 states that leaders are “established by God.” Funny thing, though, that passage seems to disappear whenever a Democrat is occupying the White House. The same passage also tells people to obey their governments and implies that leaders are to be treated with deference. I don’t recall that being the Religious Right’s line during the Obama years.

Claims that God put someone in office are scary. From the Christian emperors of the late Roman Empire and the “divine right” kings of the Middle Ages up to the theocrats of today, leaders who assert they’re God’s choice are usually just trying to squelch criticism. After all, if God put the ruler there, who are you to question his policies? To do that is to challenge the will of God.

The plain truth is, Trump got into office because he eked out narrow victories in a handful of swing states and managed to get more votes in the Electoral College than Hillary Clinton. There’s plenty of evidence that the Russians had something to do with it – but it’s safe to assume that God’s off the hook. (Underscored emphasis added.)

It is critically important to note the central commitment of the Trump presidency which motivates the Evangelicals', and in a cleverly muted way the Roman Catholic hierarchy, in their unshakeable support of the President. It is ending the right of women in America to terminate a pregnancy:

The Religious Right’s Power Grab: How Outside Activists Became Inside Operatives

Values voters during this election have been quick to sidestep Trump’s spotty personal life and caustic temperament, not to mention his inconsistent positions on important evangelical causes. Instead, Religious Right leaders have offered up a litany of concerns that they say Trump will champion, from anti-abortion measures to sufficiently conservative Supreme Court nominees. . .

GIVEN HOW POWERFUL the Religious Right quickly became, it’s worth remembering the movement’s modest origins. Troubled by the social and cultural changes of the 1960s and the legalization of abortion in 1973, conservative evangelicals organized politically to redeem the nation. Yet they did so shaped by their own historic indifference to and distrust of politics, avoiding what they saw as its distasteful practices and sinful temptations of power and corruption. Overcoming that longstanding avoidance of politics required that Religious Right leaders and laypersons alike imagine their new involvement as outside agitators rather than inside power brokers, lest they become sullied by the process. Mobilized to defend conservative causes and back candidates of character, the nascent Religious Right promised allegiance only to its own conscience. . .

The joy of Reagan’s win, though, soon gave way to the disappointments of politics. Reagan had courted religious conservatives by promising action on their cherished causes: overturning Roe v. Wade, restoring school prayer, and fighting against gay rights and other perceived threats to the traditional family. But once in office, Reagan mostly ignored those issues. His nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor, a moderate pro-choice jurist, to the Supreme Court outraged his evangelical supporters. Sixty-eight percent of pro-life activists deemed Reagan’s handling of the abortion issue as “fair to poor” during his first four years. Falwell publically admitted his disappointment that the president had ignored the Religious Right’s concerns. The fundamentalist pastor Bob Jones sent his complaints directly to Reagan. “Do not take us for granted,” he wrote the president. “We are not going to vote for you in desperation in 1984.” . . .

The evangelical theologian Francis Schaeffer profoundly shaped this shift through his writings and his friendship with Falwell. Schaeffer advocated for evangelicals to practice “co-belligerency” in order to accomplish political goals. “A co-belligerent,” Schaeffer explained in his 1980 book Plan for Action, “is a person with whom I do not agree on all sorts of vital issues, but who, for whatever reasons of their own, is on the same side in a fight for some specific issue of public justice.” When Falwell, a strict fundamentalist independent, initially resisted such advice, Schaeffer set him straight. “God used pagans to do his own work in the Old Testament, so why don’t you use pagans to do your work now?” Schaeffer asked. That thinking broadened the Religious Right—conservative evangelicals could now look to Catholics and Mormons as political allies rather than as religious heretics—but it also altered their relationship to politicians and the political process. Conservative Christians now would work with anyone, including politicians who did not align with all of their values, if that partner held the right position on key issues, especially abortion. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

It is unclear how many Seventh-day Adventists perceive that the central ideology of the Roman Catholic Church and the Evangelicals on abortion and birth control is a deadly snare. It is based on the great lie of the immortality of the soul, propagated by Satan in the Garden of Eden and perpetuated down through the centuries. He now seeks to beguile the world through the Church of Rome and her Evangelical dupes. (Cf. Bookmark "There is more to the story of course" in "Final World Events in Prophecy Foreshadowed 2016".) (NB. A DECEPTIVE TERM MASKING A DEADLY THEOLOGICAL FALSEHOOD.) We have a clear warning from Ellen G. White to be on guard for this deadly error as much as for the enforcement of the false sabbath. Satan is unlikely to present the immortality of the soul in language easily detectable. This is not his modus operandi, especially at this stage of the world's history.

Predictably, the Evangelical fantasy about divine intervention enabling the election of Donald Trump is based on a misapplication of Scripture. Their interpretation of Romans 13:1-7 reveals an abysmal ignorance of the rules of biblical exegesis. The exegesis by a Seventh-day Adventist Church titled THE POWERS THAT BE is an excellent example of sound biblical exegesis. A careful search online found no Seventh-day Adventist article which could relate directly to the right-wing Evangelical interpretation of Romans 13:1-7. However, there are web pages of other Protestant churches which demonstrate exegetical skills superior to those of the Evangelicals. There is still some light remaining in the midst of the gross darkness overshadowing the ranks of contemporary Protestantism:

The Limits of Submission to Man

One of the crucial issues before the church in America today is: Shall we be American with a pinch of religious flavoring? Or: Shall we be Christ's people with a pinch of American flavoring? I think the issue is crucial because there are many in our churches (many of us) who have not seriously and earnestly asked themselves: Am I more American than I am Christian? Are there not impulses in our society which define us in the world as Americans and which influence us daily, but which are incompatible with the Christ-life and the cross-life? Are we not constantly being shaped by forces in our culture which make it almost impossible for the world to see any difference in our values? If we are ever going to appear to the world as aliens and exiles on the earth, then we are going to have to go back and renew the declaration of allegiance by which we became Christians, namely, Jesus is Lord! And we are going to have to wake up to the fact that this is a cultural and political statement. It is a radical declaration of independence from our culture and of absolute allegiance to a foreign king, Jesus. Therefore, the point of my message today is to call us to submit to Christ alone as king; and whatever other submission to man we render, to do it within the limits of the lordship of Christ and always for the sake of his glory.

Romans 13:1–7 has often been used to justify an unseemly conformity to the status quo in this country and in others. It could be used to keep the church docile to the Nazi regime in Germany, and to impede the efforts of those in our own land who worked for equal rights for black people twenty years ago. I want us to look at this text in order to see what the apostle was really teaching.

[The Bible text quoted.]

Paul's argument has three main steps. Step one is found in the second half of verse 1: all governing authority has been ordained or instituted by God. If there is a government, God put it there. Step two is found in verse 2: therefore, a person who resists or opposes governing authorities experiences two things: one is pangs of conscience that he is really opposing God, and the other is punishment that the authorities mete out to those who oppose them. To avoid these two experiences, verse 5 concludes with step three: to avoid wrath and a bad conscience, therefore, be subject to the governing authorities. In summary then, governing authorities are appointed by God; therefore, to oppose them is to oppose God and to incur punishment; therefore, do not oppose them, but be subject to them.

I believe "all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16, 17). That includes this text in Romans 13. But it also includes many other texts which don't seem compatible with Romans 13. So if we want to honor the whole Bible as God's Word, we have to ask how Romans 13 fits in with some other parts of Scripture.

[Examples of Civil Disobedience in Biblical history: The midwives of Exodus 1:15-17; the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the edict of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 3:16–18;) the reaction of Daniel to Darius the King's decree; Peter and John's response in Acts 4:19 to the Jewish authorities' command not to speak or teach in the name of Jesus.]

All of this makes it very hard to say that the Bible teaches that since all governing authority is from God, it must, therefore, be obeyed. Such stories as these make Paul's teaching appear on the surface incredibly naïve. How could Paul say in verse 3, for example, "Rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad"? How could he say, "Do what is good, and you will receive the authority's approval"? If it weren't for some of the other things Paul wrote, we might think that he lived in an idealistic dream world where good is always rewarded and evil always punished by the governing authorities.

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But we know for a fact that Paul was not so naïve. For example, he said in 1 Corinthians 2:8, "None of the rulers of this age understood the wisdom of God; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." Paul was keenly aware that the death of Jesus was the ultimate breech of justice—that the governing authorities did not praise the good and punish the wrong. They did just the opposite. And he knew from his own missionary journeys that the ruling authorities could be a menace to his own ministry (Acts 16:16ff.).

What then are we to make of Romans 13:1–5, which calls for subjection to governing authorities? Is the basic premise wrong? Are all governing authorities really instituted by God? Is all authority from God? Or are only just governments instituted by God? I would say that, given Paul's view of God's sovereign sway over history, he would not give up this truth under any circumstances. Yes, all authority which exists has been set up by God.

The evidence for this outside of Paul's writings is found in Daniel and John. Even though Daniel describes the deeds of very evil kings, he says in 2:21 that it is God who "removes kings and sets up kings," and in 4:32, "The Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will." So, according to Daniel even wicked kings should acknowledge that they have their position and authority only from God. The same thing is taught in the Gospel of John. Pilate, by whose authority Jesus was finally crucified, was a governing authority set and ordained by God (cf. Acts 2:23; 4:27, 28). In John 19:10 Pilate says to Jesus, "'Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?' Jesus answered, 'You would have no authority over me unless it had been given to you from above.'" Therefore, if Pilate, Nebuchadnezzar, and Darius were set in their places and given authority by God, even though they did much evil, then we have no reason to deny Paul's assertion that "there is no authority except from God" (Romans 13:1).

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What does have to be qualified is verse 3. In view of what Paul knows about the miscarriage of justice in the death of Jesus, he can't have meant it to be an absolute fact with no exceptions when he said in verse 3, "Rulers are not a terror to good conduct . . . Do good, and you will receive their praise." This verse and the next one must be a general statement of how governments should and often do function. Paul simply does not have in view the problem of evil governments. Instead he has in view a good government in which doing good deeds will generally find approval and doing evil will generally be punished.

If this is correct, then it will no longer be possible to insist that Christians should always be subject to the governing authorities. As long as authorities punish only what is evil and praise only what is good, submission to God will always conform to submission to the authorities. But if the authorities ever begin to punish the good and reward the bad (as has repeatedly happened in church history), then submission to God will bring us into conflict with the authorities. So the command to be subject in verses 1 and 5 is not absolute; it depends on whether subjection will involve us in doing wrong. The ultimate criterion of right and wrong is not whether a ruling authority commands it, but whether God commands it. The fact that God has ordained all authority does not mean all authority should be obeyed. It is right to resist what God has appointed in order to obey what God has commanded. His appointment of Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, Pilate, Domitian, Bloody Mary, Adolf Hitler, and Idi Amin may be for our testing (cf. Deuteronomy 13:3). Will we save our lives and submit to the ruling authority, or will we say with Peter, "We must obey God rather than men," and thus risk our lives?

When verse 5 says we are to be subject in order to avoid wrath, it means the punishment that comes from wrongdoing, not from obedience to Christ. 1 Peter 4:15, 16 makes this issue clearer. It says, "Let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or a wrongdoer or a mischief-maker; yet if one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that name let him glorify God." In other words, strive to avoid incurring wrath for wrongdoing, but if doing what Christ demands brings wrath, don't have a guilty conscience, glorify God.

We can sum up in several sentences. 1) There is no authority except from God. The greatest human ruler should humbly confess he is where he is by virtue of God's sovereign appointment. 2) Nevertheless, some rules and governments are good, and some are bad. Some reward the right and punish the wrong. Others do the reverse. Most do a little of both. 3) Therefore, the demand for subjection is relative, not absolute. It depends on whether the demands of the governing authorities require us to disobey Jesus. If they do, we will not be subject at that point but will say with Peter, "We must obey God rather than men." We will honor God above the state.

But if the demands of the state do not require us to disobey Jesus (as with speed limits, stop signs, income taxes, curfews, building codes, fishing licenses, and many other laws), we will be subject for the Lord's sake (1 Peter 2:13). And it is very important to stress that, just as we may have to disobey the civil authorities for Christ's sake, so all our obedience should be for his sake as well. We never have two masters. All our submission to man is not only limited by the lordship of Christ; it is also an expression of our yieldedness to that lordship. Every time we say yes to any law, it should be a yes to Jesus.

This is all alien to the power hungry thinking of the Evangelicals.

Another article, while somewhat lacking in biblical exegesis, is strong in its rejection of the Evangelical misapplication of Scripture:

OPINION: Sarah Huckabee’s Trump Pronouncement Amounts To Fraud In The Name Of God

As faith leaders we are both disturbed and alarmed by the manipulation of the Word of God coming out of this White House. In particular, regardless of one’s theology, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ pronouncement that God wanted Trump to be president of the United States showed a deep lack of respect for religion, and it represents a danger to our democracy.

Claims of divined power and divined competence is political subterfuge that manipulates the citizenry by misusing the glory and authority of God. It is fraud perpetrated in the name of God.

Across human history, people have wrongly deified leaders and celebrities, elevating false gods in their own image. Such assertions are far more than foolhardy; they have led to dangerous influence over others and unabashed power grabs. To hear such claims come out of our White House in 2019 assigns a chilling false faith in executive power.

Our concern is not a progressive concept; it is a faithful construct. Christian conservative Rev. Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the moral and policy arm 
of the Southern Baptist Convention, rightly says, “Those who claim earthly rule now by divine appointment are, according to Jesus and his apostles, frauds.”

That’s true whether they are seeking a murderous rule over a nation, or whether in a more benign setting they are trying to use God’s Word to snuggle up to the local powers-that-be by promising a ‘Thus saith the Lord’ in exchange for a place at the table. This is a claim to speak where God has not spoken. God has made clear, repeatedly, what he thinks of such”. . .

To be sure, some conservative faith leaders have also implied that Trump’s presidency is divinely mandated, making his authority virtually unlimited. These are dangerous assertions from Trump evangelical advisors like Paula White and Robert Jeffress, which suggest that if God chose Trump, who are we to challenge him and his policies? But these conservative leaders have the free speech right to their opinions, however radical, and no matter how much we may disagree.

When these radical religious ideologies come from within our government, the phone call, as the horror film says, is coming from inside the house. The White House in this case.

Recall Attorney General Jeff Sessions used Romans 13:1-7 to argue that the Trump administration had the political and biblical right to remove and cage children and parents at the southern border. And that is precisely why when Sanders says that God wanted Trump to be the president — we must resist.

Sanders’ statement is a flagrant breach of the First Amendment’s wall of separation between church and state. So concerned were our nation’s founders about the State imposing or restricting religion that they expressly prohibited the establishment of state religion in order to protect the integrity and free exercise of all religions. Sanders took a sledgehammer to the First Amendment when, as an officer of the state, she declared definitive understanding of the mind of God. (Underscored emphasis added.)

In conclusion, an article by a CNN religion editor quotes an intriguing criticism made by a Notre Dame professor:

Does God really want Donald Trump to be President?

"That's a hard passage," said Michael Rea, a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. "Romans 13 needs to be handled with care."

If you read Romans 13 to imply that God "wanted" or established Trump in office, Rea says, then it also implies the same about every other world leader, including those whose views and policies do not align with evangelicals' agendas.

And Romans says nothing about whether God is happy with the ruler and pleased with his policies, nor whether Christians should legally and peacefully resist the rulers and policies they disagree with.

"So what Romans 13 might invite us to do is just ask what God might be doing with some particular leader," Rea said. "In the case of Trump, I am tempted to say God might have been working to discredit the forces in evangelicalism that contributed so much to his being elected."

This smacks of hypocrisy on the part of a teacher at one of the leading Roman Catholic universities in America. After all, it was the Church of Rome which set the Evangelicals on the path to power in the United States, with the objective of imposing her dogmas, advancing her influence and achieving theocratic government - and what about the claims of the Pope and his hierarchy?

On one point in particular we can agree with Rea that God "might have been working to discredit the forces in evangelicalism that contributed so much to his being elected." This must include Rome as the enabler of the Evangelicals and the primary reason for Divine judgment.