DONALD TRUMP RIDES THE THEOCRATIC WAVE TO PRESIDENTIAL POWER
DONALD TRUMP ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
WORLDWIDE FEAR AFTER VICTORY OF DONALD TRUMP!
Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, shocking the nation and the world, with one notable exception being Vladimir Putin. The headlines and the news reports tell the story, and we ignore them at the peril of being overrun by the tide of events because of inattentiveness. Just the upheaval alone speaks volumes in the light of what A. T. Jones pointed out in his perceptive sermon on the Papacy:-
Donald Trump’s Victory Is Met With Shock Across a Wide Political Divide
The American political establishment reeled on Wednesday as leaders in both parties began coming to grips with four years of President Donald J. Trump in the White House, a once-unimaginable scenario that has now plunged the United States and its allies and adversaries into a period of deep uncertainty about the policies and impact of his administration. . .
On campuses nationwide, students marched against Mr. Trump with signs bearing slogans like “Not my president,” and protesters in Oakland, Calif., smashed windows and set fire to garbage bins. On Wednesday night, thousands of people protested in several cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle and New York, where demonstrators converged in Midtown Manhattan in front of Trump Tower, the home of the president-elect. . .
Still, more than a third of Americans said in exit polls on Tuesday that they would be frightened of a Trump presidency. Among those who voted for Mrs. Clinton, the feeling was almost unanimous: 92 percent said Mr. Trump scared them.
Anxieties ran strong among Hispanics, African-Americans, Muslims, immigrants, women and others who had felt disparaged or demonized by Mr. Trump, who used harsh and racially charged language in ways that upended mainstream politics. The fact that Mr. Trump had been endorsed by a Ku Klux Klan newspaper, even if he rejected it, symbolized the sense of shock that he would now lead a vibrantly diverse democracy.
Across the World, Shock and Uncertainty at Trump’s Victory
The election of Donald J. Trump as president of the United States has shocked the world — and has the potential to reshape it. . .
Álvaro García Linera, Bolivia’s leftist vice president, said the voters’ endorsement of Mr. Trump’s populist message shows how Americans, too, are questioning prevailing economic paradigms in “a passive revolution,” this time coming from the right.
Others expressed dismay with the election entirely.
“The excesses of this eccentric millionaire have proven that the number one enemy of the U.S. is not beyond its borders, but rather within,” wrote Vladimir Flórez, a Colombian cartoonist popularly known as Vladdo, in El Tiempo newspaper. “This threat called Trump is a product of American society; a nightmarish mutation of the American dream.”
For Europe, Trump’s Election Is a Terrifying Disaster
No one in Europe truly believed Americans would elect someone who seems so obviously unfit to lead the most powerful nation in the world. And yet, that is precisely what has happened, and now, across the Continent, people are trying to figure out what this will mean. Many fear that Donald J. Trump’s election might mean the end of the West as we know it. . .
But Mr. Trump’s election poses a new systemic and strategic risk. For seven decades, a politically stable United States has been a beacon of democracy and a cornerstone of the liberal world order. When democracy was seriously threatened in Europe, the United States stepped in and stopped the tide of authoritarianism. But now the United States itself has elected a demagogue who seems to have authoritarian tendencies and whose proposals — if he follows through on them — will have huge and disastrous consequences from Lisbon to Kiev.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany knows how grave the situation is. As she congratulated Mr. Trump on his victory on Wednesday, she also lectured him on the elements of liberal democracy that form the basis of the American-European relations. “Germany and America are bound by their values: democracy, freedom, the respect for the law and the dignity of human beings, independent of their origin, skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political position,” Ms. Merkel said. “On the basis of these values I offer the future president of the United States, Donald Trump, close cooperation.”
As of this stage in the writing of this update, President-elect Trump had already begun to flex his authoritarian, racist, anti-democratic muscles by four controversial nominations for his Administration:
Steve Bannon
Fear rises that Bannon could bring the ‘alt-right’ into White House
Trump’s decision to appoint the Breitbart executive his chief strategist stokes warnings across the political spectrum.
Donald Trump's newly named chief strategist, Steve Bannon, came under fire Monday from a wide swath of American leaders and organizations, from conservative operatives to minority-rights groups, all of whom are deeply concerned that Bannon will foster an extremist “alt-right” mentality inside the hallways of the White House and normalize ideas that had thrived only on the fringes of society.
Before joining Trump's campaign as its CEO in August, Bannon served as executive chairman of Breitbart News, identifying his outlet this summer as “the platform for the alt-right,” a group known for white-nationalist and anti-Semitic politics. His appointment Sunday to one of the two most senior roles in the White House was Trump's first major staff announcement, and has united a spectrum of conservatives and liberals, Muslims and Jews alarmed by how much his ideas are likely to shape the administration of the president-elect.
Meantime, representatives from a number of ethnic and religious minority groups are pointing to controversial remarks from Bannon and, under his leadership, Breitbart, about everyone from Jews to African-Americans, arguing that “alt-right” is code for racism and bigotry.
“I know what the alt-right is all about,” said Deborah Lipstadt, a Jewish historian based at Emory University who was a vocal supporter of Hillary Clinton. “It’s a bastion of white supremacists, white nationalists, anti-Semitic, racist, Islamophobic expression, and that a man who has been so closely connected with the alt-right, who has helped propel it into the mainstream, should have the ear of the president, I’m flabbergasted. I’m almost at a loss for words. So far, I find that the most depressing of almost anything I’ve heard thus far.”. . .
THE EARLY TRUMP CABINET CHOICES
Mike Flynn, Jeff Sessions: Meet Trump's Latest Top Picks
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn
Flynn — a controversial figure who has been known to eschew "political correctness" — is a Trump loyalist who stayed by the candidate's side even as other national security experts sharply criticized him during the campaign. . .
As speculation about Flynn's appointment spread Thursday night, critics highlighted some of his controversial past statements. In February, Flynn said on Twitter that "fear of Muslims is rational.". . .
Multiple senior intelligence officials told NBC News on Friday that they have deep reservations about Trump tapping Flynn for the post.
They described him as a "hot head" with an abusive leadership style who would threaten to purge subordinates who disagreed with him. One called him "shallow and reactionary."
Beyond his leadership style, the officials worried that his narrow views of important foreign policy hot spots could lead to long-term erosion of US power and influence overseas.
"He doesn't understand the magnitude of the job," said one former intelligence official.
Senator Jeff Sessions
When he first endorsed Trump, Sessions praised the then-GOP contender as someone who would finally fix illegal immigration. . .
As a current member of the Senate, it's unlikely that Sessions' Republican colleagues will try to block his nomination. But Democrats and liberal groups are sure to focus on Sessions' controversial past.
In the 1980s, Sessions was considered for a Ronald Reagan-appointed federal district judgeship in Alabama, but was blocked by the Senate after a black former deputy, Thomas Figures, accused him of making racially insensitive statements. Figures, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in Alabama, said that Sessions had once warned him to be careful about what he said to "white folks."
Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., said in a statement that, "No Senator has fought harder against the hopes and aspirations of Latinos, immigrants, and people of color than Sen. Sessions."
Mike Pompeo
Trump Picks Pro-Surveillance, Tea Party Hawk Mike Pompeo to Lead CIA
Pompeo, a former U.S. Army officer, was elected to U.S. Congress in 2010 admist a Tea Party wave. Among other things, he opposes closing the Guantánamo Bay military prison, favors National Security Agency (NSA) domestic surveillance programs, and is an outspoken opponent of the landmark U.S. nuclear deal with Iran.
Pompeo wrote on Twitter, "I look forward to rolling back this disastrous deal with the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism."
He has also called for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to receive the death penalty and has mocked hunger striking detainees.
Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said Friday, "Congressman Pompeo's positions on bulk surveillance and Guantánamo Bay...raise serious civil liberties concerns about privacy and due process. These positions and others merit serious public scrutiny through a confirmation process. His positions on mass surveillance have been rejected by federal courts and have been the subject of several lawsuits."
Pompeo also drew fire in 2013 for stating on the House floor that Muslim leaders who do not denounce terrorist acts are "potentially complicit" in the attacks.
Pompeo's Tea Party identification exposes his connection to the right-wing Roman Catholic-Evangelical political alliance, dominated by the Roman Catholics. However, the degree of unity in this religio-political movement for the election of Donald Trump is somewhat enigmatic. Nevertheless, it does not require full comprehension of Rome's part in the election of Trump to be able to predict that she can, and will, take advantage of his presidency to advance, and perhaps complete, the totalitarian theocratic State towards which she and apostate Protestantism have been working assiduously for several decades. The combination of these four appointments to the Trump Administration is ominous. [There have been further questionable and ominous nominations since this passage was written, not least of all the heavy concentration of military men, all of which will probably be the subject of future documents on this page.]
OVERLOOKED: THE GRAVE IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
It is noteworthy that in all of the reports cited above describing the fear sweeping the nation and the world because of the election of Donald Trump, there is no mention of the separation of Church and State. The same applies to most of the major news publications; and yet theocratic governance looms large in the immediate future, and this should be a major concern for all, believers and unbelievers alike, as the Trump inauguration approaches. Interestingly, the magazine of the liberals in the Seventh-day Adventist Church who bear a heavy responsibility for the Denomination's apostasy has recognized the menacing future:
Perspective: Trump and Clinton on Religious Minorities
When Donald J. Trump addressed the Republican National Convention one week ago today in Cleveland, Ohio he promised Evangelical Christians that for their support he would work to remove the wall separating Church and State:
At this moment, I would like to thank the evangelical community who have been so good to me and so supportive. You have so much to contribute to our politics, yet our laws prevent you from speaking your minds from your own pulpits. An amendment, pushed by Lyndon Johnson, many years ago, threatens religious institutions with a loss of their tax-exempt status if they openly advocate their political views. I am going to work very hard to repeal that language and protect free speech for all Americans. We can accomplish these great things, and so much else. All we need to do is start believing in ourselves and in our country again. It is time to show the whole world that America is back, bigger, and better and stronger than ever before.”
The statement brought wild cheers from the Republican audience and foreshadowed a Trump White House in which the religious majority (Evangelicals made up just over 25% of the U.S. population in 2014) would enjoy greater prominence and empowerment.
By contrast, Donald Trump has on several occasions disparaged religious minorities for his political advantage, notably Muslims and Seventh-day Adventists.
THE LIBERTINE CHAMPIONS THEOCRACY
There are publications which sounded the warning before the election:
Donald Trump Will Lead a Theocratic Party Into the Election
Before the Republican National Convention approved what right-wing delegates described as “the most conservative platform in modern history” on Monday, platform-committee co-chair Virginia Foxx announced that the document was “a reaffirmation of the principles America and the Republican Party were founded on.”
Wrong.
The platform is theocratic in its language and spirit, employing arguments never before considered by a major American political party. It’s extremism is such that People for the American Way’s “Right-Wing Watch” team has observed, “Four years ago, we called the GOP platform ‘a far-right fever dream, a compilation of pouting, posturing, and policies to meet just about every demand from the overlapping Religious Right, Tea Party, corporate, and neo-conservative wings of the GOP.’ Yet this year’s platform is even further to the right.”
Yes, the platform has its Donald Trump flourishes. As the New York Times editorial board notes: “Mr. Trump’s anti-Muslim phobia and fantasy wall across the Mexican border are front and center, along with his protectionist views, which deny long- held positions of the party.”
But where the platform veers furthest to the right is in sections that champion precisely the mingling of religion and politics that worried not just the wisest of the founders of the American experiment but also the Republicans of another time—who sought to advance and enhance that experiment.
Congresswoman Foxx did not seem to recall Thomas Jefferson’s observation, as the third president of the United States, that “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
In his letter to the Danbury Baptists, the third president wrote of the separation of church and state as an “expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience.”
Seventh-day Adventists and other Christians who wax enthusiastic about the Theocrats' war against abortion and yes, their campaign against LGBTQ rights, should beware the forces violating Jesus' statement on the separation of Church and State. The abortion controversy is founded on the Roman Catholic dogma of the immortality of the soul. Condemnation of unnatural sexual behaviour and immoral sexual conduct in general is the province of the pulpit under the power of the Holy Spirit, totally devoid of the coercive power of the State ("Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts" Zech. 4:6b; Cf. Jamieson, Fausset & Brown commentary on Verse 4 of 2 Cor. 10.) It is not easy, but the Scriputres constrain us to leave unregenate human beings to the judgment before the Great White Throne, without human intervention (Rev. 20:11-15,) except to purge the Church of open sinners. The words of the Apostle Peter should be kept in mind 1 Peter 4:18; 2 Peter 1:10; (cf. The Danger of Usurping God's Prerogatives.)
Crying out for attention is the fact that with the Trump presidency, Republican control of both Houses of Congress, and the imminence of the appointment of an extreme right-wing Justice to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court created by the death of Antonin Scalia, America is faced with the stark reality that full theocratic government is being revealed; how far short of the tyranny of Rev. 13:15-17 is yet to be seen!
While the nation slept there were those in recent decades who penned warnings. Frederick Clarkson is one, and he wrote recently about Dominionism and the 2016 election:
Dominionism Rising: A Theocratic Movement Hiding in Plain Sight
In June 2016, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) held a private meeting with conservative movement leaders to plot his political future. Attendees afterwards cast him in the role of Ronald Reagan, who’d lost the 1976 Republican presidential nomination to Gerald Ford but led a conservative comeback in 1980 that made Jimmy Carter a one-term president. The thinking was that Cruz did well enough in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries before losing to celebrity billionaire Donald Trump that he could plan to run again in 2020 or 2024. “He was with kindred spirits,” said Brent Bozell, the conservative activist who hosted the meeting, “and I would say most people in that room see him as the leader of the conservative movement.”
The rise of Ted Cruz is a singular event in American political history. The son of a Cuban refugee and evangelical pastor, Cruz was raised in the kind of evangelicalism-with-a-theocratic-bent that has come to epitomize a significant and growing trend in American public life. That is, dominionism: a dynamic ideology that arose from the swirls and eddies of American evangelicalism to animate the Christian Right, and become a defining feature of modern politics and culture.
Dominionism is the theocratic idea that regardless of theological camp, means, or timetable, God has called conservative Christians to exercise dominion over society by taking control of political and cultural institutions. The term describes a broad tendency across a wide swath of American Christianity. People who embrace this idea are referred to as dominionists. Although Chip Berlet, then of Political Research Associates, and I defined and popularized the term for many in the 1990s, in fact it had (along with the term dominion theology) been in use by both evangelical proponents and critics for many years.
In many ways, Ted Cruz personifies the story of dominionism: how it became the ideological engine of the Christian Right, and how it illuminates the changes underway in American politics, culture and religion that have helped shape recent history. . .
Latter Rain theology was revived under the under aegis of longtime Fuller Theological Seminary professor C. Peter Wagner, who organized a global network of hundreds of apostles. Many of these apostles lead groups of non-denominational churches and ministries called “apostolic networks,” which sometimes comprise tens of thousands of members. Today, NAR theology and its apostles and prophets have assumed an increasingly high profile in religious and civic life in the U.S. They were well known in the past decade, for example, for mass rallies named TheCall, led by Lou Engle, who is also internationally known for his anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ activism. They have also gained political influence. For example, several leading apostles were among the three-dozen “conveners” of a June 2016 meeting at which Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump courted the support of some 1,000 evangelical leaders. . .
One contemporary example will suffice. David Lane, a leading Christian Right electoral organizer, declared in a 2013 essay that religious war may be on the horizon. Meanwhile he has shifted the electoral emphasis of his Mississippi-based American Renewal Project. (The group hosts all-expenses paid policy briefings for clergy and their spouses, featuring top politicians like Gov. Mike Pence (R-IN), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Gingrich, Huckabee, Cruz, and often David Barton. Republican presidential contender Donald Trump addressed one such event in August 2016.) They are currently recruiting and training clergy with a dominionist vision to run for office at all levels. Lane’s own pastor, Rob McCoy, won a city council seat in Thousand Oaks, California, in 2016. Lane’s vision is clear: “I don’t think there’s any such thing as a separation of church and state. This was not established as a secular nation, and anybody that says that it is, they’re not reading American history. This was established by Christians for the advancement of the Christian faith. My goal is to return—to restore a biblically based culture and a Judeo-Christian heritage.” . . .
Dominionism now appears to be a permanent feature of politics at all levels. For three presidential elections in a row, dominionist politicians have played prominent roles. Following Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin in 2008, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry in 2012, and the remarkable run of Ted Cruz in 2016, dominionists are among the most prominent politicians in the country and enjoy significant public support and acceptance as a legitimate part of the political mix.
While Senator Cruz’s campaign was supported by leading NAR figures and most other Christian Right leaders, there was always a Plan B as well. One NAR prophet said God had told him in July 2015 that he will use Donald Trump to “expose darkness and perversion.” Donald Trump also enjoyed significant support from other Christian Right figures, notably 7M theorist Lance Wallnau (who also sits on the board of an NAR political arm, the Oak Initiative).
Wallnau sought to explain the paradox of evangelical Christians supporting Trump from early on even though he didn’t seem like a good fit. Trump, as has been much discussed, was a longtime supporter of abortion and LGBTQ rights, a thrice-married philanderer, a failed casino magnate with ties to organized crime, and someone whose Christian credentials were dubious at best. Nevertheless, Wallnau suggested that God could use Trump to achieve his purposes even though he was a flawed vessel. Wallnau recalled the story of Cyrus, the King of Persia in the biblical book of Isaiah who, as had been earlier prophesied, freed the Jews who had been captive in Babylon for 70 years, and helped to build the temple in Jerusalem. God used the pagan Cyrus, as Wallnau put it, as a “wrecking ball” for his purposes. Wallnau thought God would use Trump to challenge “an increasingly hostile anti-Christian culture” and “deliver us from Hillary.”
Wallnau’s story makes clear that at least some 7Mers do not require moral or doctrinal conformity to accept someone as a co-belligerent, or even as a leader, as long as they can help get them part of the way down the road to dominion. It also underscores that while the various doctrines feeding into the dominionist movement are clear, the degree to which they are adopted, and the means and timeline by which dominionists may seek to achieve their goals, will vary according to individual and factional interests.
Dominionism, like the Christian Right itself, has come a long way from obscure beginnings. What is remarkable today is that the nature of this driving ideology of the Christian Right remains obscure to most of society, most of the time. Dominionism’s proponents and their allies know it takes time to infuse their ideas into the constituencies most likely to be receptive. They also know it is likely—and rightly—to alarm many others.
Religion scholar Michael McVicar recounts an illuminating anecdote from that pivotal 1980 gathering of the Religious Roundtable addressed by Ronald Reagan. During the meeting, Robert Billings, one of the founders of the Moral Majority, privately observed to Gary North that, “If it weren’t for his [Rushdoony’s] books, none of us would be here.” North replied, “No one in the audience understands that.” Billings replied, “True. But we do.”
“Insiders knew about Rushdoony’s influence, even if the rank and file did not,” McVicar concludes. That continues to be true. The role of dominionism is largely hidden in plain sight from those most affected, on all sides.
"Those most affected" include the people, Christian and non-Christian alike, who are devoted to the separation of Church and State, and are lovers of liberty of conscience for every individual. The Dominionists are far removed from the principles of Christianity, so deluded that they chose to support a man of corrupt and depraved character as the leader of the American nation. Jesus said, "And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day." (John 12:47-48.) Not even the most morally upright human being has any authority from God to impose his/her beliefs on others.
RELIGIOUS RIGHT DECLARES ITS CHOICE
Dr. Michael Brown is a Jewish Christian, described as "a biblical scholar, apologist, worldwide speaker, and activist." This column written by him for a publication called "OneNewsNow.com," is reflective of the views held across the broad range of misguided "Christians" who deride the separation of Church and State:
Donald Trump - president-elect by the sovereign intervention of God
Certainly, some will say God has raised up Trump not to bless America, but to judge her. But if God has raised him up for certain divine purposes, it behooves us to ask what those purposes are.
As the political pundits weigh in on the many sociological and ideological factors that contributed to Donald Trump's stunning victory, allow me to weigh in on the spiritual side of things.
I believe Trump has been elected president by divine intervention. . .
I'm aware, of course, that some people believe that everything happens by the will of God, which means that whoever wins the presidency wins by God's express will.
Yet there are times when there are so many odds against something happening, when it so greatly defies logic, that it is easier to recognize God's involvement.
That, I believe, is the case with Donald Trump winning – and remember, this comes from someone who endorsed Ted Cruz and was one of Trump's stronger conservative critics during the primaries. Just think of the obstacles Trump overcame . . .
First, consider this post from Pastor Jeremiah Johnson, now just 28 years old, dating to July of last year.
Jeremiah knew very little about Trump when he wrote these words:
"I was in a time of prayer several weeks ago when God began to speak to me concerning the destiny of Donald Trump in America. The Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, 'Trump shall become My trumpet to the American people, for he possesses qualities that are even hard to find in My people these days. Trump does not fear man nor will he allow deception and lies to go unnoticed. I am going to use him to expose darkness and perversion in America like never before, but you must understand that he is like a bull in a china closet. Many will want to throw him away because he will disturb their sense of peace and tranquility, but you must listen through the bantering to discover the truth that I will speak through him. I will use the wealth that I have given him to expose and launch investigations searching for the truth. Just as I raised up Cyrus to fulfill My purposes and plans, so have I raised up Trump to fulfill my purposes and plans prior to the 2016 election. You must listen to the trumpet very closely for he will sound the alarm and many will be blessed because of his compassion and mercy. Though many see the outward pride and arrogance, I have given him the tender heart of a father that wants to lend a helping hand to the poor and the needy, to the foreigner and the stranger.'"
THEOCRAT IN WAITING AND ALREADY EXERCISING INFLUENCE
From the known facts published about Donald Trump, his commitment to the theocratic agenda may be a matter of expediency rather than conviction - not so his Vice-President Mike Pence:
5 faith facts about Mike Pence: A ‘born-again, evangelical Catholic’
He has described himself as a “pretty ordinary Christian” and as “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order.”
But he also once said, “I made a commitment to Christ. I’m a born-again, evangelical Catholic.” . . .
1. He was raised Catholic and later attended an evangelical megachurch. . .
2. He supported causes important to evangelicals as a congressman. . .
5. He signed Indiana’s controversial “religious freedom” law.
Last year, Pence found himself at the center of a storm when he supported Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which would have allowed businesses and individuals to refuse to do business with some people based on their own religious beliefs. . .
Trump's VP: Mike Pence brings political and evangelical credibility to ticket
Two of Pence’s favorite lines are to describe himself as “a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order,” and to offer assurance, “I’m a conservative, but I’m not angry about it.”
He became a born again Christian – and a born again Republican – while at university. “For me it all begins with faith; it begins with what matters most, and I try and put what I believe to be moral truth first,” he told the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) in 2010. “My philosophy of government second. And my politics third.” . . .
Trump himself has been registered as both a Democrat and Republican and voted for both parties over the years. He has contradicted himself on guns, abortion and other social issues. He once raised questions about his biblical knowledge by referring to “Two Corinthians” rather than “Second Corinthians”.
The devout Pence could be a useful antidote. An early advocate of the Tea Party movement, he has voted with social conservatives for nearly his entire time in office, putting him more in line with the far right of the Republican party.
By the time he gave Congress another try, in 2000, it was clear that Pence had changed. He won the seat and held on for the next 12 years, eventually rising to third in the GOP’s congressional leadership. But his faith stayed front and center. Pence refused to campaign on Sundays. He declined to dine solo with women who weren’t his wife. (“It’s about building a zone around your marriage,” he told the Hill.) After 9/11, his first reaction was to gather his staff in prayer. Aides and other politicians often saw him reading his Bible, and Pence would cite specific verses to justify policy arguments. “These have stood the test of time,” he told one staffer. “They have eternal value.” He was frank about the influence of his evangelicalism. “My support for Israel stems largely from my personal faith,” he told Congressional Quarterly in 2002. “In the Bible, God promises Abraham, ‘Those who bless you I will bless, and those who curse you I will curse.’ ”
During his time in Congress, Pence emerged as one of the most privately and publicly devout figures in Washington. But something changed when he ran for governor of Indiana. You could no longer get Pence to address his faith, past or present. When I interviewed him in 2012, I asked about the peculiarities in his religious biography; each time, he evaded. Could he help me understand his strange spiritual journey? “I cherish my Catholic upbringing,” he replied. Could he explain why his faith shifted again in the mid-’90s? “We just felt drawn to worship at an evangelical church.” Could he define himself as a believer? “I’m a pretty ordinary Christian, trying to make that faith real every day.”
It was all pretty stunning to see. The man who once quoted Genesis 12:3 to justify his foreign policy was now speaking in phrases so platitudinous they felt ripped from the chorus of a particularly bad Christian rock song.
But this was all by design. . .
Once elected, Pence began pushing a very different agenda. While the most notorious example came when he signed the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 2015, Pence’s faith has driven decisions big and small. It led him to sign a new anti-abortion law so restrictive that the American Civil Liberties Union is now suing the state. It led him to award a $3.5 million contract to Real Alternatives, a nonprofit that pushes abstinence education and urges pregnant women not to abort.
“My faith,” Pence told me in 2012, “has continued to be what I hope is the most important thing in my life.” Pence’s beliefs have shifted at least twice—from his family’s Catholicism to an idiosyncratic evangelical Christianity, and from that to a more hardened and ideological version of the same. If, as he insists, faith does indeed order his life, why did he stop being so open about it? Why strip the evangelizing from his evangelicalism?
It is clear from the above reports that in Vice-president Pence the nation has a hardline Theocrat a heartbeat from the presidency; but there is an even more immediate threat. Already prominent conservative commentators are predicting that Donald Trump will be impeached early in his presidency. Most notable prior to Trump's election is the proposition by The Federalist, a leading conservative publication:
The GOP Needs To Elect Trump, Then Impeach Him
There is a way out of this mess. It is a desperate plan, but desperate times, desperate measures: Elect-and-Impeach. Elect the ticket. Impeach Trump.
The Republican Party does have an attractive candidate on its ticket. Socially conservative. Economically conservative. Conservative on national defense. Morally and religiously impeccable. The trouble is, that man is the Republican candidate for vice president, Mike Pence.
But if Trump were impeached immediately after he took office, the Republican candidate for vice president would become president in his place. Further, if Republicans take the lead in removing Trump from office, the party might regain some of its lost credibility in parts of the electorate that it is anxious to attract. . .
Mike Pence is poised to exercise the powers of the presidency even if Donald Trump is not removed from the office:
America's Next Chief Executive?
The Constitution assigns executive authority to the president—but a President Trump would hand it off to Mike Pence.
On Wednesday night, America will meet the man who could be the nation’s next chief executive officer—and it’s not Donald Trump.
The Constitution says that “the executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America,” but Trump isn’t one to be bound by tradition. He has, instead, made it clear that he intends to hire “the best” and “the most talented” people to exercise power on his behalf. And right at the top, running the United States government, would be Trump’s pick for vice president: Indiana Governor Mike Pence.
That’s how those closest to Trump have described the role. “He needs an experienced person to do the part of the job he doesn’t want to do,” Paul Manafort told the Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman about the VP search back in May. “He seems himself more as the chairman of the board, than even the CEO, let alone the COO.”
And, The New York Times Magazine reported Wednesday, Donald Trump Jr. described the vice presidency in similar terms to a senior Kasich adviser:
Donald Jr. wanted to make him an offer nonetheless: Did he have any interest in being the most powerful vice president in history?
When Kasich’s adviser asked how this would be the case, Donald Jr. explained that his father’s vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.
This is how close the nation is to a presidency committed to the specific agenda of the Theocrats who are destined to usher in the ultimate tyranny of Rev. 13:15-17.
WHY AT THIS TIME IN WORLD HISTORY?
The question arises: why are these events taking place during this particular period of history. The Christian world was given prophetic evidence that the time for the closing events of this world's history had come, with a warning period extending from 1967 to 1980. This powerful sermon of Elder William H. Grotheer on the fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy recorded in Luke 21:24, Jesus' Own Prophecy, was delivered years ago and therefore does not include the continued unfolding of prophetic events in recent years; but its exegesis is valid and closely related to current events (Cf. A Fearful Warning, which describes successive closings of probation in this world as set forth in the Bible.)
In The Sign of the End of Time, Elder Grotheer makes this statement:
The very least that this fulfilled prophecy of Jesus is saying is that God is no longer restraining the power of Satan in his control of the nations of earth. Even though Satan declared that he possessed such power and could delegate it to whomever he chose (Luke 4:6), the book of Daniel draws the curtain aside and reveals that God "ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will" (Dan. 4:17). When kings and rulers resisted His purposes, Michael, to whom all earthly authority is given (I Cor. 15:27), comes Himself to influence the outcome of human events (Dan. 10:13). That time is now past, and God has stepped aside and Satan is working his will in the nations of earth.
We have not been left in doubt as to what Satan is seeking to accomplish. In the Revelation of Jesus Christ, the picture is drawn. "The spirits of devils go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of the great day of God Almighty" (Rev. 16:14). But you respond, that is the sixth plague after the close of probation. No, it is the cause for the sixth plague, not the plague. Consider the first plague: a "grievous sore" on those who had received the mark of the beast (16:2). Was not the mark of the beast received prior to the close of probation? Just so, the sixth plague. Verse 12 describes the plague - the drying up of the great river Euphrates, and verses 13-14 give the cause in probationary time.
In the context of Rev. 16:14, consider the report of the "Holy Spirit" speaking to Pastor Jeremiah Johnson. A search online will reveal that he was not the only one who received such a message.
The words of Jesus in Luke 21:28-32 clearly define the period of earth's history to which the fulfilled prophecy of verse 24 relates, and verse 32 specifies a time limit for this period. A generation is generally recognized as a period of 40 years.
THE CONDITIONING OF THE NATION
Next, what were and are the conditions which opened the way for the ultimate disaster of a Trump presidency. Logic suggests that this social phenomenon was a contributing factor: DONALD TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT: PRODUCT OF A DUMBED DOWN AMERICA. This content of an earlier update begins to explain the role of propaganda in Trump's victory, and specifically that of the Jesuits, and the papacy's philosophy of degrading the educational system to bring about an ill-informed populace, as applied by Rupert Murdoch's media empire.
Propaganda can be both positive and negative. There are some explanations of this science which hold that positive propaganda can serve a good purpose; however,propaganda is inherently misleading, whether it is positive or negative, as shown in this definition and underscored by this one.
To those who are not deceived, it is readily apparent that the success of Donald Trump's presidential campaign was utterly due to the avalanche of negative propaganda that overwhelmed the Democratic candidate. Trump's campaign was one based almost entirely on virulent negative propaganda, and vague in detailed public policy. In addition, there was Russian propaganda designed to aid the Trump campaign; but above all a vast array of purveyors of right-wing propaganda. The Republicans themselves in coordination with Trump were very effective in smearing and undermining the Democratic candidate, who was not remotely as bad a character as the Republican candidate:
There's Simply No Comparison Between Clinton's Flaws and Trump's
The Democratic nominee’s shortcomings should not blind voters to the catastrophe they’d invite by electing her cruel, undisciplined, erratic opponent.
At The Week, Damon Linker, who is no fan of Clinton, argues that despite all her weaknesses and petty corruptions, the choice on November 8 is an easy one. Trump “is a menace to American democracy,” he writes, “a know-nothing demagogic con man who hasn’t released his tax returns, who brags about assaulting women, who has invited Vladimir Putin to meddle in the presidential election while also suggesting on the basis of no evidence at all that the election will be ‘rigged’ against him, and who regularly uses social media to promote white supremacists and neo-Nazis (who increasingly feel emboldened to spew their civic poison in public). And that's just the most minimal accounting of Trump's offenses.”
As if to agree, Paul Waldman at the Washington Post reviews Trump’s “history of corruption, double-dealing, and fraud” with this “partial list” of his discreditable behavior . . .[the "partial list" is lengthy.]
An elite team of investigators would need months to plumb the depths of all those stories. Individual instances of unethical behavior related to them could fill 100 news cycles.
Trump has escaped a lot of that scrutiny because no one expects any better.
The Republicans have become masters of destructive propaganda:
How did this monster get created?
The decades of GOP lies that brought us Donald Trump, Republican front-runner
How did America get to such a place that someone like Donald Trump can command a lead in the Republican primaries? Trump is the product of a deliberate Republican strategy, adopted by Richard Nixon’s people in 1968, to attract voters with an apocalyptic redemption story rather than reasoned argument. It has taken almost 50 years, but we have finally arrived at the culmination of postmodern politics in which Republican leaders use words to create their own reality. . .
“Voters are basically lazy,” one Nixon media adviser wrote. “Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration; impression is easier. Reason pushes the viewer back, it assaults him, it demands that he agree or disagree; impression can envelop him, invite him in, without making an intellectual demand…. When we argue with him, we… seek to engage his intellect…. The emotions are more easily roused, closer to the surface, more malleable….” Nixon’s people hired advertising executive Harry Treleaven, who believed the new medium of television had changed the nature of politics. For him, politicians were no longer policy wonks; they were actors with a narrative. . .
The Movement Conservative story was never based in reality. Facts repeatedly gave way to the narrative that America was on the ropes because of Democratic social welfare policies that sucked tax dollars and threatened the nation’s safety. Ronald Reagan’s Welfare Queen represented the misuse of tax dollars for lazy African-Americans, for example, but he also incorrectly insisted that President Carter had slashed the nation’s military budget, and warned in his inaugural address that the nation was in a crisis that rivaled the Great Depression, a crisis created by government activism.
To avoid niggling fact-checkers, in 1987, President Reagan’s FCC abandoned the Fairness Doctrine, a decision that meant that public broadcasters were no longer required to provide their audience with opposing viewpoints. Within a year, talk radio had taken off, with hosts like Rush Limbaugh hammering home the vision of a nation gone to ruin, awaiting redemption from the latest Movement Conservative candidate. In 1992, Limbaugh began to broadcast a television show, produced by Roger Ailes, to take the story to viewers. By 1994, the show was carried by 225 television stations. Two years later, Ailes would become the CEO of a new media channel, Fox News, which used the same formula—albeit updated—that Ailes had used to package Nixon’s story almost 30 years before.
By the time of the George W. Bush administration, the Movement Conservatives had erased the line between image and reality. In 2004, a senior adviser to Bush famously dismissed “the reality-based community” to journalist Ron Suskind. Gone were the days when politicians could find solutions based on their observations of the careful study of discernible reality. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore…. When we act, we create our own reality…. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do,” he said.
The "reality" of these times has become so divorced from truth that we are now said to be in "the post-truth era," a manifestation of the delusive power over human minds that Satan has now achieved:
The Post-Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life
At one time we had truth and lies. Now we have truth, lies, and statements that may not be true but we consider too benign to call false. Euphemisms abound. We’re “economical with the truth,” we “sweeten it,” or tell “the truth improved.” The term deceive gives way to spin. At worst we admit to “misspeaking,” or “exercising poor judgment.” Nor do we want to accuse others of lying. We say they’re in denial. A liar is “ethically challenged,” someone for whom “the truth is temporarily unavailable.”
This is post-truth. In the post-truth era, borders blur between truth and lies, honesty and dishonesty, fiction and nonfiction. Deceiving others becomes a challenge, a game, and ultimately a habit. . .
What motivates the casual dishonesty that’s become pandemic? Why do so many, even those with no apparent need to do so, feel a need to embellish their personal history? . . .
We can only understand the motives of such dissemblers by examining the sea in which they swim. Trends ranging from the postmodern disdain for “truth” to therapeutic non-judgment encourage deception. . .
The Age of Post-Truth Politics
Facts hold a sacred place in Western liberal democracies. Whenever democracy seems to be going awry, when voters are manipulated or politicians are ducking questions, we turn to facts for salvation.
But they seem to be losing their ability to support consensus. PolitiFact has found that about 70 percent of Donald Trump’s “factual” statements actually fall into the categories of “mostly false,” “false” and “pants on fire” untruth. . .
The sense is widespread: We have entered an age of post-truth politics.As politics becomes more adversarial and dominated by television performances, the status of facts in public debate rises too high. . .
How can we still be speaking of “facts” when they no longer provide us with a reality that we all agree on? The problem is that the experts and agencies involved in producing facts have multiplied, and many are now for hire. If you really want to find an expert willing to endorse a fact, and have sufficient money or political clout behind you, you probably can. . .
Trump lies about big things (there is no drought in California) and small things (his hair spray could not affect the ozone layer because it’s sealed within Trump Tower). He lies about himself, and the fake self he invented to talk about himself. He’s been shown to lie more than 70 times in a single event. . .
Professional truth-seekers have never seen anything like Trump, surely the most compulsive liar to seek high office. To date, the nonpartisan PolitiFact has rated 76 percent of his statements lies — 57 percent false or mostly false, and another 19 percent “Pants on Fire” fabrications. Only 2 percent — 2 percent! — of his assertions were rated true, and another 6 percent mostly true. Hillary Clinton, who is not exactly known for fealty to the facts, had a 28 percent total lie score, including a mere 1 percent Pants on Fire.
The Washington Post’s Fact Checker has dinged Trump with 30 of its Four Pinocchio ratings — lying 70 percent of the time. Trump cares so little about the truth that when the Fact Checker reaches out to him for an explanation, he never responds, the paper noted. . .
He even lies about his lies. He claimed he wanted to keep a personal donation to veterans private, when in fact he’d boasted in January of a $1 million gift, which wasn’t sent out until the press began questioning him on it months later.
Sadly, a lot of voters don’t care if a candidate is a pathological liar. But most of us should. . .
Mentally manipulated out of sound, rational, judgement, a sufficiently large proportion of the American electorate either did not care and voted for Donald Trump, or did not understand that they should care enough to vote against him. A pathological liar becomes President of the United States on January 20, 2017. Is there any room for doubt "that God is no longer restraining the power of Satan in his control of the nations of earth"? The evidence of the Satan's control is overwhelming. Jesus said of those who are under his influence, "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it" (John 8:44.) Speaking and believing lies is the natural result of coming under the control of Satan. As Ellen G. White described the process by which he has gained control, "he is linking the human mind with his own, imbuing it with his thoughts." In these times protection is found in the promise of Psalm 91:4b: "his truth shall be thy shield and buckler." The Apostle Paul elaborates in Eph. 6:10-17. Note "loins girt about with truth," and "breastplate of righteousness," (here cf. 2 Thess. 2:10.) Note further "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." Wherefore it behooves us to "Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth (2 Tim. 2:15.) This is our protection against our own minds "becoming linked with Satan's, and imbued with his thoughts."
THE FACTOR OF FOX NEWS AND ALLIED ENTITIES
It is highly unlikely that the following headline is a correct assessment of the state of the Republican party; but the article provides facts about the destructive propaganda of the cable news channel which has played a huge role in deceiving the people:
How Fox News Unwittingly Destroyed the Republican Party
The Republican Party has been fomenting anger and discontent in the base of its own Party for years. The mechanism through which this hate has been disseminated has been the network of extremist media of right-wing talk radio and the Fox News Channel, which is essentially talk radio transposed onto television.
Just think of all the right-wing “superstars” who spew messages of anger and hate every single day throughout the land over this enormous megaphone. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Ben Shapiro, Dana Loesch, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, to name a few.
And make no mistake, spewing hate has a significant impact upon society. It is the equivalent of modern-day propaganda where the population is barraged with a stream of consistent messaging. As ordinary people go about their daily lives, they are exposed repeatedly, day-in and day-out, to the same messages in numerous different forms and by numerous different people. Pretty soon, these messages begin to sink in and take effect. The audience begins to adopt a worldview consistent with these messages, regardless of the degree of truth. It is a remarkable phenomenon.
History is replete with examples of how propaganda can be very effective in altering the views of a population. Nazi Germany in the 1930’s is a classic example. How could it possibly be that a maniac like Adolph Hitler was able to convince millions of ordinary people throughout the entire nation of Germany to go to war against the world? Well, propaganda was an extremely powerful component.
Tea Party advocates have proudly boasted of the identification of Fox News with Roman Catholicism and the Tea Party movement: TEA PARTY UNITED!
Then there are the Koch brothers, who are more difficult to nail down than Fox News; but on balance the evidence points to a Roman Catholic affiliation:
Medora is a small, seasonal tourist town in the Badlands of western North Dakota, about 25 miles from the Montana border. It has a population of less than one hundred. It went for John McCain for president by a three-to-one margin in 2008. A handful of small stores are in the center of the town—some gift shops, a bookstore, an ice cream shop, two restaurants, a museum, and a hotel that’s full during tourist season.
Around the corner from downtown is the Rushmore Mountain Taffy and Gift Shop (not to be confused with the Rushmore Mountain Taffy Shop at the base of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota). You wouldn’t know it by looking at it, but the Medora taffy shop was the first legal home of a media organization that now provides a significant amount of political news coverage in 39 state capitals through 55 interconnected news sites, according to a local reporter who was curious about the entity and asked around.
At the start of 2008, the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity had a budget of zero dollars. Its legal home was the taffy shop in Medora. By 2009 the Franklin Center’s budget had jumped to $2.4 million, according to IRS tax records. That’s a spectacular leap for a nonprofit, especially in Medora.
It was almost as if someone wished to utilize the charter concept of the Franklin Center—developing individual but interlinked news centers across the United States that would all promote the same messages—for other purposes and therefore infused it with a mountain of funding and network support. Intriguingly, this was a year before the Tea Party movement seemingly sprang from nowhere and spread like a prairie fire to the thirty-nine state capitals where the Franklin Center now operates its news sites. . .
Its success—basically, the reason that it has no need to fight for its survival when every other local digital journalism effort does—is almost certainly due to its connection to the Koch donor network. Like other related groups with operations in the DC area, the Franklin Center benefits greatly from the Koch donor network’s Freedom Partners.
The Franklin Center’s director of donor development, Matt Hauck, worked for the Charles G. Koch Foundation. Its senior vice president in charge of strategic initiatives, Erik Telford, worked for the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity before joining the Franklin Center. The founding board member who set it up was Rudie Martinson, who helped run Americans for Prosperity in North Dakota. Martinson is still on the Franklin Center’s board. One of the founders of the Franklin Center, John Tsarpalas, is a past president of the Sam Adams Alliance and director of the Illinois Republican Party.
Fox News and the Koch brothers are accompanied by a host of other subversive entities, and talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh. The destructive propaganda of the Republican party and its allies has been combined with deceptive positive propaganda resulting in the consolidation of a GOP hold on a sufficiently large number of voters who have failed to see that the Party's ideology and program are destructive of their own welfare:
Struggling White Voters Who Helped Elect Trump Are Headed for Some Serious Pain
Donald Trump ran on a series of impossible promises, but enough people believed he could deliver on them that he won the Electoral College. His supporters are in for what might be the rudest awakening in recent political history. . .
The exit polls show that Trump beat Clinton among affluent voters, and Americans up and down the economic ladder responded to his dog whistles, or at least voted for their party despite the bigotry displayed by its nominee. But Trump made huge gains over Mitt Romney among those making $30,000 or less, and benefited from a major urban-rural divide. And it’s the rural poor who put him over the top in key swing states who are going to be hit especially hard by the coming bait and switch. . .
ROOT OF THE PERVASIVE PROPAGANDA
The root source and cause of the negative propaganda, with the exception of the Russians, is not readily apparent; but can be deduced from the historical record, (cf. In the case against the Church of Rome . .; The radical religious in our country . . .) By bringing the Religious Right alliance of Roman Catholics and so-called Evangelicals into existence the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops unleashed a monster which they cannot always control. The USCCB is not completely comfortable with the victory of Donald Trump in the presidential election:
Catholic bishops follow Trump’s election with a message of their own
A week after Donald Trump’s stunning election as president sent the country’s governance lurching to the right, the nation’s Catholic bishops sent a message of their own — at least on immigration — by putting Mexican-born Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles in line to become the first Latino to lead the American hierarchy.
But the vote at their annual fall meeting in Baltimore on Tuesday (Nov. 15) also suggested that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is still hesitant to fully endorse the more progressive and pastoral approach to ministry that Pope Francis has been championing since his election in 2013. . .
The statement that the USCCB "is still hesitant to fully endorse the more progressive and pastoral approach to ministry that Pope Francis has been championing since his election in 2013" is related to an ideological struggle between "Liberals" and "Conservatives" in the Roman Catholic Church since the publication of Pope Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum encyclical at the end of the 19th century. Robert P. George is a Roman Catholic Theocon who has a powerful ideological influence over the rightward leaning USCCB, and George Weigel is also a Theocon with similar influence. They both openly opposed the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump. Like most things about the Church of Rome, the ideological struggle between "Liberals" and "Conservatives" is misleading. They share the common goal of world domination, and will reach accomodation with any worldly power that will enable them to achieve that goal.
After an early brush with Donald Trump and a later hint of support for the campaign of Bernie Sanders, Pope Francis appeared to keep his distance from the US presidential election. The following report after the election seems more likely to favor the Democratic candidate than the Republican, given the utter destruction of Hillary Clinton's reputation:
Pope Francis compares media that spread fake news to people who are excited by feces
There’s much too much fake news to go around, but this is real: In an interview with a Belgian publication, Pope Francis reportedly compared news outlets that grab for a juicy story, even when it’s untrue, to those who participate in “coprophilia.” . . .
Crux said that Francis criticized media outlets that look only for negative stories and those that smear people’s reputations, but reserved the harshest criticism for those who report untruths. Spreading incorrect information, Francis reportedly said, is “probably the biggest damage a news organization can cause.”
Whatever the Pope's preference might have been, there is already a search for accomodation:
Where could President Trump and Pope Francis do business?
The natural instinct likely will be to forecast a rocky relationship between the US and the Vatican as long as Donald Trump and Pope Francis are the figures in charge, yet there are at least three areas in which a surprising partnership could potentially emerge.
Defying every last scrap of conventional political wisdom, Donald Trump stunned the world Tuesday night by capturing the American presidency.
Given the role the United States plays on the global stage, actors all over the world right now are scrambling to figure out what Trump’s victory means about the direction America is taking, and how best to react.
One of those actors, of course, will be the Vatican.
To use the categories made famous by Joseph Nye, the Vatican is the world’s most important “soft power,” the only major world religion which has at its core a sovereign state with its own diplomatic corps; the United States, with military expenditures exceeding all other nations combined, is the planet’s most important “hard power.”
Inevitably, therefore, the relationship between these two players is important, and this morning, personnel in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, which has primary responsibility for foreign policy, are undoubtedly trying like mad to get a read on where things stand.
To be honest, at first blush the stars don’t seem aligned for an auspicious relationship between the current administration in Rome and the incoming one in Washington. . .
To be honest, at first blush the stars don’t seem aligned for an auspicious relationship between the current administration in Rome and the incoming one in Washington. . .
The likely flash points between a Trump White House and a Francis Vatican are easy to anticipate: immigration, climate change, anti-poverty efforts, multilateralism in foreign policy, crime and punishment, and on and on.
The natural instinct likely will be to forecast a rocky relationship between the US and the Vatican as long as Trump and Francis are the figures in charge.
On the other hand, Trump pledged in his victory speech to pursue “great relationships” with other nations, and presumably that includes the Holy See. The more interesting question, therefore, is where the current pope and the new president might be able to do business.
Aside from the reasonably obvious life issues, such as abortion, here are three other possibilities.
Anti-Christian persecution . . .
Gender theory . . .
Religious freedom . . .
To what extent the Vatican and the White House will be able to join forces on these or other fronts will depend, to some extent, on choices made on both sides.
It is interesting to note that reaction in the Vatican to the Trump election victory was not uniform:
How the Vatican Views Trump’s Presidential Victory
Views are mixed, ranging from ‘incomprehension’ and ‘shock’ to optimism that a Republican presidency opens new possibilities for cooperation.
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin was among the first in the Vatican to react to Donald Trump’s election as the 45th president of the United States.
Speaking to reporters in Rome Nov. 9, he congratulated Trump and said the Holy See respected the democratic wish of the people. He noted the high turnout and gave the Holy See’s “best wishes to the new president, that his government can be truly fruitful.” The Church would be praying for him, he said, that the Lord “enlighten and support him in the service of his country, but also that he work for well-being and peace in the world.”
“I believe that, today, we all need to work to change the world situation; that is a situation of grave wounds, of severe conflict,” Cardinal Parolin continued. He said the future president had “already expressed himself in terms of a leader,” but it was “too soon to judge” his presidency.
Pope Francis hasn’t commented himself, although he did respond to the prospect of a potential Trump presidency in an interview conducted the day before the election and subsequently published online by the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.
Asked for his opinion about Trump, Pope Francis replied, “I don’t make judgments on people and on political men. I only want to understand the sufferings that their way of proceeding causes the poor and excluded.” The Pope shared his comments with Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari, the atheist publisher of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, in an interview published Nov. 11.
Pope Francis clearly hasn’t favored Trump’s policies on immigration, a subject close to the Pope’s heart. He made this point most directly on the papal plane returning from Mexico in February, obliquely referring to Trump when commenting that people should build bridges rather than walls and that anyone who wishes to build a wall “is not Christian.”
Mixed Views
Generally, Vatican officials have mixed views about the U.S. election result. One senior Italian official in the more traditional wing of the Church said he was “jumping for joy” at the news. Like a number of other Italian officials, he was most pleased because American voters didn’t choose Hillary Clinton, due to evidence of her campaign leader’s dismissive attitude toward Catholicism, her extreme positions on abortion and same-sex “marriage,” and personal corruption. Other well-informed priests saw the result as a clear rebuke to the mainstream media, who did little to conceal their bias in favor of a Clinton presidency.
However, Corriere della Sera reported Nov. 10 that, according to its research, most in the Vatican were backing Hillary Clinton as the “lesser evil.” Trump, on the other hand, was considered “unelectable” due to his “aggressive chauvinism,” in addition to his threats to deport 11 million illegal Mexican immigrants and ban Muslims from immigrating to the United States.
Now that the “greater evil” has won, the Vatican is viewing the United States as “angry and radicalized,” Corriere della Sera wrote. “For the Holy See, it is a bitter defeat, cultural rather than political. Among other things, it indicates that the Catholic Church hasn’t registered the very deep upheavals taking place in the greatest Western country.” A “lot of incomprehension” and “bitter shock” were generally prevalent for many in the Vatican, agreed one U.S. official who spoke with the Register. Based on “failings of reporting,” he said, Clinton was represented as far preferable to Trump, who was portrayed as a “buffoon,” and reporting about Clinton’s shortcomings “never sunk in.” Due to a general lack of understanding in Italy of the U.S. “culture wars,” Clinton’s radical pro-abortion-rights position also hardly figured at all in media commentary. . .
SPIRITUAL DIMENSION OF THE TRIUMPH OF TRUMP AND TRUMPISM
There are profound spiritual factors involved in the astonishing victory of Donald Trump.
Ellen G. White has made this statement about the influence of Satan on the unregenerate human mind:
For thousands of years Satan has been experimenting upon the properties of the human mind, and he has learned to know it well. By his subtle workings in these last days, he is linking the human mind with his own, imbuing it with his thoughts; and he is doing this work in so deceptive a manner that those who accept his guidance know not that they are being led by him at his will. The great deceiver hopes so to confuse the minds of men and women, that none but his voice will be heard. 2SM 352.3
The restraining power of God has been withdrawn. As Elder Grotheer stated in "The Sign of the End of Time," hyperlinked above, "The very least that this fulfilled prophecy [Luke 21:24] of Jesus is saying is that God is no longer restraining the power of Satan in his control of the nations of earth." The validity of this insight has been plain to see since 1980, and is aptly described by this prophecy of Ellen G. White: "After the truth has been proclaimed as a witness to all nations, every conceivable power of evil will be set in operation . . ." In this is also clearly visible the work of the spirits of Rev. 16:13-14. Satan is now applying the diabolical understanding acquired from "experimenting upon the properties of the human mind" for thousands of years. As the prophecy of Rev. 16 elucidates, the ultimate objective is the unifying of the nations in rebellion against God. Although there is not as yet a clear identification of the ten kings of of Rev. 17:12, and indeed the prophecy explicitly predicts their emergence in the very last remnant of time, the final battle between deluded humanity under the leadership of Satan and Jesus Christ "the Lamb" is unequivocally forecasted. The delusions of unregenerate human minds now increasingly manifested in these times was prophesied by the Apostle Paul in 2 Thess. 2:10-12, and expressly related to the events preceding the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the revealing of the papacy, the "man of sin." The delusions are the direct result of receiving his falsehoods as manifested by failure to believe the Truth.
The following statements of Ellen G. White are particularly applicable to the present times, although they clearly were already beginning to be perceptible in 1890 and 1904:
The present is a solemn, fearful time for the church. The angels are already girded, awaiting the mandate of God to pour their vials of wrath upon the world. Destroying angels are taking up the work of vengeance; for the Spirit of God is gradually withdrawing from the world. Satan is also mustering his forces of evil, going forth “unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world,” to gather them under his banner, to be trained for “the battle of that great day of God Almighty.” Satan is to make most powerful efforts for the mastery in the last great conflict. Fundamental principles will be brought out, and decisions made in regard to them. Skepticism is prevailing everywhere. Ungodliness abounds. The faith of individual members of the church will be tested as though there were not another person in the world (Manuscript 1a, 1890).
Everything in the world is in agitation. The signs of the times are ominous. Coming events cast their shadows before. The Spirit of God is withdrawing from the earth, and calamity follows calamity by sea and by land. There are tempests, earthquakes, fires, floods, murders of every grade. Who can read the future? Where is security? There is assurance in nothing that is human or earthly. Rapidly men are ranging themselves under the banner they have chosen. Restlessly they are waiting and watching the movements of their leaders.
An intensity such as never before was seen is taking possession of the world. In amusements, in money-making, in the contest for power, in the very struggle for existence, there is a terrible force that engrosses body and mind and soul. In the midst of this maddening rush, God is speaking. He bids us come apart and commune with Him. “Be still, and know that I am God.” (The Signs of the Times July 6, 1904 paragraph 1.)
PROPHECIES DESTINED TO CONVERGE
The rapid progress of events prophesied to culminate in the tyranny of Rev. 13:15-17 is much too clear to be ignored or downplayed. Rev. 13 involves both the United States and the world at large. Keeping in mind the opening verse of the Book of Revelation, complete fulfillment or even the imminence of fulfillment, of other prophecies covering the period immediately before the Second Coming of Jesus, is not yet clearly discernible. These prophecies involve the whole world, the specific area of Palestine, and the City of Jerusalem. In general terms, Rev. 13:15-17 has clearly been in the process of fulfillment since the end of the times of the gentiles (nations) as Jesus prophesied in Luke 21:24, and the work of the spirits of devils has been manifest in events clearly progressing towards the fulfillment of Rev. 17:1-18a. This has been manifest in the worldwide ecumenical movement. Forward movement in the fulfillment of Daniel 11:45 has been stalled by the Zionist government of Israel, supported by Christian Zionists in America. Vladimir Putin's Russia is an additional complicating factor. Fulfillment of Rev. 17:8b, and 10b-13, coupled with Isa. 14:12-14, and Isa. 2:2-5 is not yet clearly discernible (studies and sermons on these prophecies can be found on this website by using the Search function.) In this last context Pope Francis has made an intriguing statement. Can we afford to relax our vigilance in watching, thinking that the apocalyptic end in the United States as predicted in Rev. 13:15-17 cannot be as close as the recent dramatic events seem to indicate? The significance of the completed fulfillment of Luke 21:24 argues against complacency in thinking that we are not, in the words of Ellen G. White when the Second Coming was last imminent at the end of the 19th century (and before a delay was indicated,) "upon the very borders, of the eternal world;" [and similar phrases.] Those who are looking for the "National Sunday Law" are going to be caught unawares by the final rapid movements closing the history of this world.
Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near (Isa. 55:6)