So many comparisons between 2020 and the apocalypse. And maybe they’re right. Look at what’s happened:
- A world-wide pestilence, disrupting the everything we consider normal parts of life.
- So much of the west coast is on fire that we see the smoke on the east coast.
- Hurricanes causing flooding along the Gulf coast. So many of them we’ve used up the English alphabet and we’re into the Greek. There is no plan for what happens if we use up the Greek alphabet.
- Upheavals and divisions in politics like never before, politicians grooming their followers with falsehoods, and the two sides can’t agree on what facts are.
- And all of this is hitting us at the same time.
I think Robert Jeffress, one of the president’s go-to pastors, may have been right in his 2014 book Perfect Ending, that president Barak Obama was preparing the country for the Antichrist. In an interview for the National Catholic Reporter, Jeffress didn’t call Obama the Antichrist, “But what I am saying is this: the course he is choosing to lead our nation is paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist.” Maybe Jeffress was right. Maybe that’s what happened.
I heard John Hagee, a San Antonio pastor, explain how all this will come about. He said things would get so bad that we’d turn everything over to a dictator – the Antichrist, quite literally an agent of Satan, who would seem to set things right, but in fact would be paving the way for the worst time in human history – The Great Tribulation. Jeffress makes a similar statement in the interview quoted above, “‘. . . Americans are willingly giving up their freedom for what they’re told is a greater good,’ he said. ‘A future world dictator will assume power under the guise of the greater good of the world.’”
It’s clear that Jeffress and those like him thought that Obama had done terrible things as president, things like allowing same-sex marriage and the passage of Obamacare. We were headed to socialism in a handcar. Then along comes Mr. Donald “I alone can fix it” Trump. He’s the one who will save us from socialism, from foreign hordes streaming across the border illegally, from the gun grabbers, the baby-killers, and anyone else out there to take what’s ours. We can say a lot about appointing judges and Supreme Court justices, a lot about banning abortion, and a lot about tax policy, but we are going through a time of major societal change and there are people who are afraid their world will be swept away by it. Literally afraid. For them, the upcoming election is literally about their survival. They’ll tolerate a lot of constitutionally and morally sketchy things from someone who will save their lives. Things are bad and we now have a leader, a chosen one, doing a lot of sketchy things in the name of making the country great again. A deliverer. Do you see the pattern?
Are Hagee and Jeffress players in their own scenario? Are they enabling the thing they warned us about? The most ironic outcome is often the most likely. Much of what they say about antichrist comes from Revelation 13, but there is a less-popular figure there, too. It’s often called the False Prophet and it forces everyone to worship the Antichrist. I’m not calling anyone any names, but if Trump fits the antichrist pattern, then we should look for a false prophet. It’s there in Revelation.
I wonder why a movement that teaches us that Satan’s agent will work through politics has been so careless with its loyalties. In referring to antichrist, the letter of 1 John tells us to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1). Don’t be too eager to follow what feels good, what confirms your prejudices, what makes you feel safe. In Revelation, it’s the seductive things that lead us to our doom. So that’s my take. In 666 words.
The Feral Deacon 