| "I give this book to all the girls in my strip clubs!" |
Here's what you're getting into, in biblical terms.
(1) The prophet Nathan famously told King David, "You are the man!" when he pointed to David's most terrible sin by telling the story of the rich man who stole a lamb from his poor neighbor to host a visitor.
Donald Trump is also that man. He brags about stealing mens' wives from them, in his autobiography.
(2) But don't think, "Ah-hah! So Trump is like King David, eh? And wasn't he one of the most successful of Israel's rulers? So if Trump commits David's sins, perhaps he, too, will be a great ruler?"
Never mind the abysmal logic of that "argument," you have overlooked the word "brags." David never bragged about stealing Bathsheba from her lawful husband. Even as king, he hid his crime in shame. Then when called on it, he repented in tears.
But Donald Trump says he has never asked God for forgiveness. Observe the smirk that almost never leaves his face: he does not appear to think he needs to repent.
But you will need to repent, if you knowingly vote for a man like that to lead the United States of America. Because you will be sharing with Trump the sins he models, and in so modeling, yet receiving votes from 37% of "evangelical Christian Republicans," in effect tells the rest of the country that God is now OK with those sins. Clinton taught America's youth new sins, and new defenses of their sins. Martin Luther King, for all his virtues (which Trump does not share, like forgiveness), probably harmed the black community by offering a secret example of a profligrate sexual life. Now you're doing the same thing, if you support so shameless and immoral a reprobate to lead the United States of America. You're telling the country, "Tom-catting, serial marriages, selling sex, these are all no big deal for Christians," never mind that family breakdown is tearing the nation's children apart, and robbing the joy of stable family life from millions of innocent children.
So by voting for Trump, you are lowering the Gospel, and the notion of family, into the mud, in the eyes of non-Christians. Why should they take us seriously about sin, after we vote for a man like that? You'll probably never meet a more shameless and successful sinner than the man you're putting into the White House. And that's BEFORE he gains ultimate secular power.
(3) David's kingdom was broken in two as a consequence of his sin, and his children carried on that tradition. Don't imagine God is now ready to be mocked if we put a far more shameless stealer of mens' wives into the White House.
(4) Nor is David the only Old Testament parallel. Remember Ahab and Jezebel? They were among the most evil of Israel's rulers.
Ahab was having a pity-party because his neighbor refused to sell him the vineyard that had been in the family for generations. Jezebel told him, "Aren't you the king? Just use eminent domain -- it's not just for bridges and railways, you know -- kill the little SOB, and grab his grapes and build yourself a nice limosine parking lot for your new casino."
Well, that's what Trump did, only the neighbor was a widow, and he didn't have the actual power to have her killed, just seize his land for a parking lot so rich people could gamble more conveniently.
Would you have voted for Ahab and Jezebel for president? Well here's your chance. Pull the lever and find out what God thinks about the abuse of power to oppress the weak for personal ends when you explain your choice to Him on the Judgment Day.
Or have we forgotten that God does not smile on the exploitation of the weak? Do you imagine all that is a joke, which fills the prophetic works of the Old Testament?
(5) Speaking of which, Christians used to see casinos as evil, predatory, showing lack of trust in God. How many stories did we tell about those who have lost their life savings to this "sin?"
Those old Christians were right. Trump made a living out of seducing the gullible and greedy, and peddling lust of the flesh and the pride of shallow, flashy "life."
(6) Donald Trump calls himself a "strong Christian," and even has the gaul to claim that the IRS has audited him, not because he is a crook (see 8), but because of his "strong Christian faith."
Doesn't that make you gag? And don't give me that "Only God sees into peoples' hearts" nonsense. "By their fruit you will know them," said Jesus, and the fruit of this man's life is more than obvious if you open your eyes.
So what does Trump, a shameless liar, think about Christians who support him? Does he respect you? Did he respect all the women he cheated with? You can know the answer to that question, by considering how long he stayed with them after he had his way. Unless a tiger can change its stripes (Donald himself admits he's not interested in repentance, though), don't think that you're not being screwed, too.
(7) C. S. Lewis called pride the "Great Sin." Have you ever met a man more full of himself than Donald Trump? Nothing is more obvious, than that Donald Trump is a raging egomaniac. Like Alexander the Great he calls everything he makes by his own last name -- "Trump Tower," "Trump Air," "Trump University." Why would you want to willingly, knowingly put a man possessed by the deepest sin, the sin "that made the devil the devil," as Lewis put it, in the White House? What is going on between your ears?
No wonder Trump has no time for God -- as proven by the fact that he has never confessed his multitude of sins. "A man who spends all his time looking down at others has no time to look up."
(8) Speaking of Trump University, would you use your good name to give ambitious students the shaft, lying fluently to coax them out of their hard-earned money, as Donald Trump did?
Do you like that in a president?
(9) Paul advises us, "Whatsoever things are honorable, noble, of good report, think on these things."
Would that be like, paying women to take their clothes off for money? Trump sold sex for a living -- strip clubs. Is that the kind of man eminent Southern Baptist pastors should be supporting? Or are Trump's "honorable" thoughts more centered on mocking the disabled? (Yes, he did, don't be gullible.) Or mocking a war veteran who volunteered for dangerous flight missions, broke his arm and leg being shot down over Hanoi, and refused to be repatriated, accepting torture rather than a life of ease at home for his country? (While you were getting a deferment for a bone spur -- you forget in which leg?) ,
Oh, but McCain criticized Trump, so he had it (scurilous lies) coming! And Megan Kelly asked him tough questions (as she does with everyone), so she deserved to be called a "bimbo!" And everyone else Trump mocks and spits bile at, all deserved it for they punctured the godhood of this man-child.
What are you getting out of it when Trump roasts someone he hates on a verbal grill? Do you find it "entertaining?" Are you vicariously glorying in, and enabling, this man's calumny and lies?
Noble? Honorable? Good report? There is much to be said about many of the men and women who ran for the Republican Party nomination. But all that has been sucked up and blown away by those who choose to think only evil of anyone who looks at Donald Trump and sees him for the perverse, self-centered little wounded demigod that he is.
Where are the "fruits of the spirit" in this man's life? If you can't point to any (and you know you can't), what lie are you telling yourself, to see someone that vile who calls himself a "strong Christian," as anything but the most shameless panderer?
(10) Amazingly enough, Trump is being promoted as a "straight shooter." Like many liars who maybe do, after all, feel some covert shame, he covers that shame by pointing the finger at others and calling them "liar."
I am not a great fan of Ted Cruz, at least not as a presidential candidate. He does seem overly ambitious, and may cut a few corners. But Donald Trump does not cut corners with the truth, he has been lying like one speaking his native language, for years.
(11) Aside from crudity, most of Trump's insults are unrelated to truth, or are even designed to protect himself from the truth. For example, is Megyn Kelly really a "bimbo?" I know of no evidence for that. But if "bimbo" means "a person who engages in loose sexual behavior," then Trump himself is the true offender.
(12) Not only to God, but to others as well, Donald Trump seems unable to say, "I was wrong" in the sense of "I sinned." That is what Jesus accused the Pharisees of -- they "claimed to see" which is what made them truly blind.
This is not merely a moral failing, it is dangerous character flaw, especially in a leader.
(13) And Trump does, indeed, seem to be surrounded by syncophants and yes-men.
No doubt Trump, as a successful businessman, has learned to listen to some experts, to engineers and bankers, for instance. But he does not seem able to say when he was rebuked and admitted his error. When David was confronted by Nathan, he listened, if too late to escape dire consequences for Israel and himself. Abraham Lincoln was a strong president, but he was also one who listened even to his harshesh critics, and seemed to recognize his faults.
Evil sometimes hides in cracks and crevices, seeking darkness for its cover. At other times, it glories in the light of day. The Aztecs built their pyramids like Trump built his towers, in the central squares of their cities, to sacrifice the innocent (if there were any, in such a civilization) before gods that gloried in murder, depredation, and cruelty. They mocked God openly, until He sent a cruel tribe from a distant peninsula, covered in armor and loaded with plagues, to strike that nation down in a few shortmonths.
If you vote for this man, you are voting for lies, calumny, sexual perversion of the lowest order, and the state of mind that makes man out to be a god, that builds Towers of Babel to heaven, to be erected in the central temple of the American civil religion - the White House.
A vote for Donald Trump may not be a vote for the anti-Christ, but it is a vote to place the anti-Christ state of mind, at the heart of American culture.
And no, he won't build the damn wall and make Mexico pay for it -- as if that silly and impossible lie (sell your birthright and you don't even get the stew!) were worth the soul of American Christianity.
(That's all I have time for today, folks. I may add more tomorrow -- the list of this man's villainies seems inexaustible. The Christian sociologist George Yancey has been chronicling many of them over the past few weeks, and I haven't even gotten to his links, yet.)
10 comments:
Friend of truth, your article rings true in every part no matter how imperfect our foreknowledge is. The Lord will judge His people without respect of persons. Nevertheless, He raised up Pharaoh and Moses to glorify His Holy Name around the globe and for ages to come. We must not let our anger toward sin cause us to strike the rock in our limited perspective of God's plan. I financially support Cruz for President because it's the right thing to do. We should fight for the good at all times. Yet, if my effort fails to bring him to the nomination, only then must I vote for the party's actual nominee. I would not fail a second time by refusing to vote at all, or throw away my vote. My party-chosen vote would likely be simply heaping coals of fire on its leaders' heads. And, I will still be looking out for a 'Moses'.
-Mr. Farid
Would you join Loftus in voting for Bernie Sanders, if he were the alternative in the general election? :)
Victor: Are you asking me, or Mr. Farid?
As for me, if Donald Trump is the nominee, I will sit out the election. I am a conservative Republican, find Hilary Clinton about as noxious as Trump, and no, do not intend to vote for a socialist.
One need not sit out the election--vote for a third-party candidate, vote for a write-in candidate, or (if the voting mechanism permits), skip the presidential/vice-presidential box and complete the remainder of the ballot as seen fit. There will likely be plenty of down-ballot candidates worthy of our support.
Ken: That's true. I am hoping, that if worse comes to worst and it's T vs. C, enough Americans will be horrified that it will turn into a three or four-person race, it'll be thrown to the House of Representatives, and in the end, we'll get a decent human being in the White House, after all. It's a long-shot, but for some weird reason, these have somehow become desperate times. They remind me of when the Athenians were winning the Peloplenesian War, then decided to go attack Sicily for no good reason and lost their fleet.
I can Biblical Prove Alexander The Great is saved based on Daniel 7, Acts 16 and Josephus.
Trump will not have my vote in any general election. But I will absolutist support him over the Dominionist Ted Cruz if he still a chance come the Wisconsin primary. Otherwise my vote goes to Sanders.
Glad to hear the inside scoop from beyond the Pearly Gates. I'll look forward to asking Al about his campaigns, and finding out if he really did meet the queen of the Amazons.
The Thalastris legend was know is fictional from the testimony of Lysaimchus.
Your words sting me and my family, because they are truth. A truth that is painful to grasp, but which would be even more painful to do so. I for one support Cruz as well, and previously liked Carson and Fiorina. I do NOT trust or like Trump, especially since he is caucusing for the party opposite his real convictions purely out of pride and lust for power.
I do believe you when I say I would have to repent if I vote for him. But if for some reason he is not tossed out of the top spot or there is a decent alternate candidate compared to Sanders or Clinton, I will feel obliged to vote for him AND Repent to God for it.
Maybe this is just me, but as God told us that we should serve his will- and thus serve the Good- I believe that sometimes means supporting the least awful option.
Because I decided long ago that I am opposed to Socialism of any stripe, and I do not even know to trust Sanders's claims about being a "Democratic Socialist" (after visiting the nightmares of the uSSR, Sandinista tyrannized Nicaragua, and the Castro Brothers' private slave estate). And above all, I have committed myself to voting for Almost Anyone before Hillary Clinton.
While your words hit true about Trump and how he imitates many of the worst sinners of the Bible, I believe that Hillary Rodham Clinton is an even better fit, and has even done so. While I cannot speak to Clinton's sexual perversions, I believe her lies and calumny are of an even lower rank than even Trump's.
At least David cared on some level (even if it was unholy lust) for Bathsheba before he sent her loyal, Godly husband and others to die uselessly and avoidably. The result for the poor Americans in Benghazi was just as lethal- if not moreso- but for the incredibly petty reason of letting Hillary peddle a lie even she did not believe in. All while she lied and stole from the American government in the form of its' most vital intelligence.
To say nothing of the other crimes she has committed.
Trump has been bad, make no mistake about it. But to the best of my knowledge she has not openly, directly let people die unjustly in service of his sins. That is why I believe h er as even lower than Saul and Herod. And why I will not vote for her.
That and maybe something of an irrational hope that is still more than I can muster for the Clintons, which I believe the show (inaccurate and mucky muck as it was) The Borgias summarized.
Giuliano della Rovere: The King of France must be aware, Ambassador, that we have placed the papal mitre in the hands of an ape.
French Ambassador: He has hopes, Cardinal, that the office brings its own grace with it, and that the grace of God can transform the worst of men.
della Rovere: And if it doesn't?
French Ambassador: We will observe with interest what harm a mitred ape can do.
della Rovere: Hm.
This is not that biblical or supported in scriptures, but I do believe in God's ability to transform people, and I hope that maybe the experiences of holding power and actually being responsible for something more than his own sex pots may yet open Trump's eyes, at least a bit.
Naive? Sure, I'll cop to that. It's one heck of a long shot. I would not rely on it.
But the kicker is that it is still far more than I have for the Clintons, or Sanders. They've already Tasted political power, Hillary has even been in the White House. We know it will not mellow them because it Already Has Not transformed them.
So that is my reasoning, such as it is. I am well aware that God will have his say for this, and I will repent as I must. But I feel that in a match up against Sanders or especially Clinton it would be the lesser evil. And perhaps a lsser sin.
I can understand that reasoning. I'm not sure you're right, and frankly doubt that either Trump or Clinton could be the lesser of two evils -- no guessing who will do worse. If those are the choices, I'll be hoping for a third party. If the third party wins even a small number of votes, he may throw it into the House of Representatives, which would likely go for a decent person over either T or C. A long-shot, but that's what I'd be shooting for.
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