Donald Trump and the Spirit of Absalom
Far from being the “law ‘n order” candidate, Donald Trump has long been inciting sedition against the United States.
First published at DonClasenSeriousGuy.com, Oct. 25, 2020
Every now and then a fad phenomenon blows through the Church world, often recycled from earlier times since there’s nothing new under the sun (Eccl 1:9). Unfortunately, since Church-goers are so ill-taught and served by their leaders nowadays, they usually lack the discernment to know whether it’s a genuine “move of the Spirit” or just the latest mass delusion running its course.
When I came to the Lord in the mid-1970s, much of the Evangelical/Charismatic Church world was caught up in the midst of one of these winds of doctrine (Eph 4:14) known as “submission to authority.” In fact there was a whole suite of these fad teachings. One was “Chain of Command,” a phrase coined by Bill Gothard the creator of the wildly-popular Basic Youth Conflicts seminars. The idea to it, common throughout all these teachings, was that God’s way is not to rule over His people directly but indirectly through human authorities, which form a “chain of command,” military-style, upwards to heaven.
This worked fine for Church people who tended to look upon former hippies like myself as “rebels” who came out of a lifestyle of “do your own thing” and a stunning lack of discipline. That much was true enough, but discipline of any kind including spiritual discipline is the very human condition we all struggle with. But in the face of a generation of protestors who were easy targets, this made Church people feel better about themselves.
This worked for Gothard’s subject matter as well, simply because the Bible does tell children to “obey your parents” (Eph 6:1-3). When they grow up it’s modified to just, “Honor thy father and mother,” the Fifth Commandment (Ex 20:12). And since most of his students were technically still children (teenagers) it wasn’t too problematic. For a guy pushing 30 like myself it felt simultaneously quaint and intimidating as I sat listening up there in the bleachers.[1]
Beyond that, Gothard’s teaching was, as one Asbury seminary professor put it, “One of the purest forms of Calvinism” he’d ever heard of. (Not to mention that it’s also a hierarchical, Catholic philosophy of authority). The idea that God can consistently and infallibly communicate His will to the believer through human authorities assumes a lot of things. One, that He doesn’t want direct access to the believer, one of the great objectives of the New Covenant (II Cor 6:16; Heb 9:8). Another, that human authorities are infallible, or God is a control freak Who makes men behave the way He wants. Or that men cannot have hidden motives is all they do.
It also conveys the image of a capricious Deity[2] whose perfect, secret will is constantly unfolding in the form of this dismal tale we call human history. I never could understand how Calvin’s perverse interpretation of existence could ever inspire faith and trust in the believer.
A Full Plate of Them
So everything then suddenly had to become something about submission— submission to government officials (unless they’re Democrats of course), bosses at work, parental authorities, husbands and especially Church authorities.
There were similar concepts going around too such as “headship,” the idea that God’s will for the wife always comes through her husband.[3] There were various discipleship teachings including the usually benign group discipleship or “accountability groups” wherein men say, open their lives up and confess their most intimate sins. Then there were the more problematic personal discipleship models after Paul’s example with Timothy and a few others who travelled with him. The idea was that of a more mature person “pouring their lives into” that of another.[4]
The worst of them though were schemes of submission to Church leadership such as “Shepherding” propagated by the “Fort Lauderdale Five” and others.[5] This was so radical a form of discipleship or submission as to lead to charges of cultism and excessive control, even to the point of destroying marriages. It led to a huge stink in the Charismatic world and was covered in the Christian press with luminaries like Kathryn Kuhlman and Pat Robertson weighing in forcefully against the five who were basically spreading Catholic thinking.[6]
And Sloganeering. There’s Always Sloganeering
For me however, true to form, I was largely unaware of this storm going on in the Christian media since the Bible school I was going to at the time was a part of it with their one-on-one discipleship model. The tendency was to either keep us in the dark, spiritualize the whole thing away as gossip, or insinuate that such questions only proved what a rebel you are. It was like a modern form of witch dunking. If you survived the water, it proves you’re a witch. If you drowned, you were probably innocent.
There were a number of phrases and Bible stories that went along with this mentality. One of them was the horror of being “a Lone Ranger,” a guy I always took to be a real hero. But that’s the difference between then and now. Today people have a heart attack when they hear the word “collective,” as in “group effort,” which is why they’re always invoking the specter of “Saul Alinsky-type community organizing.”[7] Nowadays Libertarian “rugged individualists” are encouraged to kidnap “Demoncrat” governors they allege are “tyrants” for making them wear their masks. You can almost hear the voice of their mothers lecturing them about eating their vegetables. How the pendulum swings.
Another was the attitude of David while being hunted down by King Saul, nobly refusing to “lift up his hand” against “the Lord’s anointed.”[8] This was copiously applied to the idea of never questioning leadership, even though the original idea of the Church was that of a family model of little local communities of like-minded faith who would meet as brothers, sisters and friends for fellowship, worship, teaching and good deeds. No less than the Apostle Paul was careful not to “lord it over” others” (II Cor 1:24). Why then should the under-shepherds of Jesus who are sheep themselves?
Another was a famous verse that came out of King Saul’s failure to carry out the command of God through Samuel the prophet. It was, “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry” (I Sam 15:23a). To my untrained ears at the time, I assumed what it was saying is that rebellion is somehow a form of witchcraft. How, I couldn’t figure out. But in time I came to realize it means rebellion is as serious as witchcraft in the sight of God, since it refers to a willful challenge of God’s authority. After all, Samuel didn’t charge Saul with disobeying him, but the commandment of the Lord. “Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king,” is how the verse finishes.
Acknowledging Degrees of Wickedness
In time I came to realize how much their interpretation was trivializing the sin of rebellion, limiting it to a clash with human authorities. But in essence it’s an animosity directed at God Himself ultimately. On one level, rebellion is a universal tendency in the human race (Ro 5:10), but on another, few people go out of their way to defy God deliberately, though it’s something growing exponentially in the last days. As such it is a serious charge to make to someone, in spite of how casually people were using it back in the 70s, terrorizing new believers especially who were simply trying to understand God’s will for their lives.
It is a fault also linked to a stubbornness and willfulness that just won’t quit as Samuel formulated it. The irony of Saul’s transgression was that he had shown too much “Christian mercy” if you will, to the wrong person.[9] King Agag was a man God had “appointed unto utter destruction,” as the phrase puts it elsewhere (I Kings 20:42). He was the head of a nation so brutal that they are the only people in the Bible whose name God swore to “blot out from under heaven” (i.e., exterminate—Deut 25:19).
In a day in which Church people are so schizophrenic, referencing “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” one minute and condoning political sedition the next, we tend to forget that the One Who is the same “yesterday, today and forever” treats different people differently. Although we all once were “enemies of God” (Rom 5:10), some go on to become the 5% of society known as sociopaths.
David called them “the wicked of the earth” and often meditated on their ways in the Psalms. While a shallow Church world loves their stock formulations (“all have come short of the glory of God,” e.g.), God does grade sin by its seriousness. Jesus for instance was compassionate and patient with the common people Whom He likened to “sheep without a shepherd.” Yet with the religious leaders He could be very blunt, strident and provocative (Mt 23).
That phrase I mentioned, a man “appointed unto utter destruction” (I Kings 20:42) was not Agag whom Samuel “hewed in pieces before the Lord” after dealing with Saul (I Sam 15:33), but Benhadad of Syria. He too was spared by king Ahab of Israel who in a fit of misplaced compassion referred to him as “my brother.”[10] After a prophet told Ahab that therefore his life would go for that of Benhadad’s, Ahab went home and walked right into the incident with Naboth (I Kings 21) that eventually led to his God-ordained death (I Kings 22:34-38).[11]
The Rebel Type
Thus there are a number of classic rebels in the pages of Scripture. A list of just some of them would include,
–Nimrod (“let us rebel”) who built Babylon around the Tower of Babel and the purported founder of the Babylonian mystery religions, the nemesis of Yahweh worship (Gen 10:8-10).
–Korah and the 250 “princes of renown” who led a populist revolt against a man who had gone through hell and back to become God’s chosen leader of the Exodus, falsely accusing him of “tyranny” (Num 16:3,13). This in spite of all the miracles God did through Moses to confirm him. Unfortunately one last one (vss 31-33), sealed the eternal fate of these “sinners against their own souls” (vs 38).
–The rest of the congregation who thereafter falsely accused Moses again of “killing the people of the Lord” (vs 41).
–Jezebel with her 85 prophets of Baal and the grove who was a constant enemy of Yahweh (I Kings 21:25; 19:1,2).
–Queen Athaliah, “that wicked woman” (II Chron 24:7), the mother of king Ahaziah who was his “counselor to do wickedly,” to “walk in the ways of the house of Ahab” (II Chron 22:3). After he died she rose up and murdered “all the seed royal” (i.e., her own grandchildren, vs. 10), that she might reign in their stead.
–King Manasseh who committed a laundry list of evil (II Kings 21:1-9) before he repented (II Chron 33:12), the most amazing turnaround in the Bible.
–Haman, a survivor of Agag’s line who wanted to kill all the Jews (Esther 3).
The Classic Case of Absalom
One of the most classic examples in the Bible however is that of Absalom, and a case often referenced in submission to authority teachings, and rightfully so. Absalom was one of David’s sons who according to the Law of Moses, actually became guilty of pre-meditated murder of his half brother Amnon who had raped his sister Tamar (II Sam 13). Yet David, feeling guilty over these sexual sins creeping into his family because of his own treachery with Bathsheba (II Sam 12:10), refused to do his kingly duty and bring his son to justice.
That was his first mistake. He may have added to it by being seemingly unable to fully forgive Absalom and restore him to favor, even though there’s no evidence it would have made a difference anyway. Although we don’t really know all that transpired between them, the account being simply too sparse at the end of II Samuel 14, we do know the basic bent of Absalom’s character though. And that was very obvious:
And it came to pass after this, that Absalom prepared him chariots and horses, and fifty men to run before him.
2 And Absalom rose up early, and stood beside the way of the gate: and it was so, that when any man that had a controversy came to the king for judgment, then Absalom called unto him, and said, Of what city art thou? And he said, Thy servant is of one of the tribes of Israel.
3 And Absalom said unto him, See, thy matters are good and right; but there is no man deputed of the king to hear thee.
4 Absalom said moreover, Oh that I were made judge in the land, that every man which hath any suit or cause might come unto me, and I would do him justice!
5 And it was so, that when any man came nigh to him to do him obeisance, he put forth his hand, and took him, and kissed him.
6 And on this manner did Absalom to all Israel that came to the king for judgment: so Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel. – (II Sam 15:1-6)
Absalom the Great
Absalom is the classic example of a rebel in the Bible, a “rebel without a cause” to be precise, because sometimes rebellion can have a legitimate purpose. Like the Reformers who tried diligently to find a way to stay within Roman Catholicism, or the Founding Fathers who sought to get redress of grievances, real “rebels with a cause” are brought to a matter reluctantly, because their bent is towards reconciliation and peace (Ro 12:18), not strife (Ja 3:14,16). They are also careful to guard their own deceitful hearts (Jer 17:9) against “overweening ambition” (Phil 2:3). Moses for instance had a zeal to liberate his people that God couldn’t use at first because it wasn’t His way or His timing. By the time Moses had spent another 40 years humiliated as a shepherd in the back of the beyond (Gen 46:34), he had a very different attitude (Ex 4:13),[12] closer to where God wanted him to be.
David too being a shepherd probably came across as an arrogant young upstart for wanting to take on Goliath. His own brother even accused him of as much (I Sam 17:28). And I’m sure Jesus Himself was accused of the same given all His charges that the Pharisees were not just adding to the Law of Moses, but burying the people in a blizzard of new obligations God never required, the true definition of legalism (Mt 23:4).
But all of Absalom’s problems began and ended with himself—his own self-regard, vanity and ambition:
“But in all Israel there was none to be so much praised as Absalom for his beauty: from the sole of his foot even to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him.” – II Sam 14:25
He even had great hair!:
“And when he polled his head [cut his hair], (for it was at every year’s end that he polled it: because the hair was heavy on him, therefore he polled it:) he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels after the king’s weight” (vs. 26).
Yeah, this guy was really impressive. Charismatic, handsome, empathetic; he knew exactly where you hurt and how to rub that wound just right. He knew just how to connect with people and insinuate himself into their hearts, mostly by falsely accusing his famous father.
And just in case you didn’t notice his special greatness, he was careful enough to hire 50 men to run in front of his chariot to sing his praises, maybe even blow a trumpet. Being the son of the king he could afford to do that. He understood PR and image long before Hollywood ever did.
And not only so, but he was real pious too:
7 And it came to pass after forty years, that Absalom said unto the king, I pray thee, let me go and pay my vow, which I have vowed unto the Lord, in Hebron.
8 For thy servant vowed a vow while I abode at Geshur in Syria, saying, If the Lord shall bring me again indeed to Jerusalem, then I will serve the Lord.
9 And the king said unto him, Go in peace. So he arose, and went to Hebron. (vss. 7-9)
Like the Church Lady would say, “Isn’t that special?” He needed to go “pay a vow,” and after that he would come back again “to serve the Lord.” And yet the next thing we learn is that instead, he treacherously “sent spies throughout all the tribes of Israel, saying, As soon as ye hear the sound of the trumpet, then ye shall say, Absalom reigneth in Hebron” (10). He also had “two hundred men out of Jerusalem, that were called [paid]; and they went in their simplicity, and they knew not any thing.”
That inclusion of “forty years” in verse 7 may not be an ancient typo. Scholars have speculated as to what it refers to, but the best explanation I’ve heard is that the writer was underscoring the high-handedness of what Absalom was doing. Forty in the Bible is a number of judgment and completion of testing. It may mean this was the fortieth year since David’s anointing to be king, or figurative of the same. The implication is that Absalom was doing this not only against his own father, but a man “better than him” who had been tested and tried by God.
And What A Fan Base!
“You shall not follow a multitude to do evil; nor shall you bear witness in a suit, turning aside after a multitude, so as to pervert justice” – Ex 23:2
As the story proceeds, Absalom’s rebellion picks up speed and spreads rapidly like a virus. “The conspiracy was strong; for the people increased continually with Absalom” (12). He successfully recruits Ahithophel, one of David’s counselors.
All this led directly to a civil war, with David and his supporters forced to flee Jerusalem. But Absalom was not finished with his brash audacity. As the poison of pride and self-righteousness spreads out from a rebel, Ahithophel himself suggests, “Go in unto thy father’s concubines, which he hath left to keep the house; and all Israel shall hear that thou art abhorred of thy father: then shall the hands of all that are with thee be strong” [i.e., be emboldened to be as reckless as their new hero/gang leader]. “So they spread Absalom a tent upon the top of the house; and Absalom went in unto his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel” (I Sam 16:21-22), defiling these innocent women for life.
The fate of this reckless young man came swiftly thereafter, with that great hair of his becoming his ironic undoing. As he tried to flee a bloody battle he lost, it got all tangled in an oak tree and Absalom was suspended between heaven and earth. At that, Joab and his men surrounded him and did him in, Julius Caesar style (18:4,15).
Joab seemingly did this in a fit of rebellion himself, seeing as David straitly charged him to “deal gently with the young man” (i.e, let him live—18:5). And yet it may have been necessary. When David heard about Absalom’s fate, he wailed and sobbed uncontrollably. At that point, Joab told him:
“Thou hast shamed this day the faces of all thy servants, which this day have saved thy life, and the lives of thy sons and of thy daughters, and the lives of thy wives, and the lives of thy concubines;
6 In that thou lovest thine enemies, and hatest thy friends. For thou hast declared this day, that thou regardest neither princes nor servants: for this day I perceive, that if Absalom had lived, and all we had died this day, then it had pleased thee well. 7 Now therefore arise, go forth, and speak comfortably unto thy servants: for I swear by the Lord, if thou go not forth, there will not tarry one with thee this night: and that will be worse unto thee than all the evil that befell thee from thy youth until now.” –(19:5-7)
Joab could see he was making the same mistake all over again. Overcome with guilt for having started this tragedy in his own family, David was unwilling to face that his little boy had now added sedition to murder and got what he deserved. As such he was reluctant to face the line between being a father and a responsible king.
Abimelech
Just one more human example to the setup of our subject. The famous hero Gideon, judge over Israel had died and left 70 sons to scramble over who would replace him (Jud 8:32,30). The one with perhaps the least stature, Abimelech, the son of a concubine and not a wife, conspired with the men of his mother’s hometown of Shechem to kill off the 69 others (9:1-4). Yet the youngest named Jotham escaped this treacherous deed (vs 5).
It wasn’t enough for a rebel so entitled as Abimelech to make himself the chief judge in the land. No, the men of Shechem and the house of Millo had to take him and anoint him king, don’t you know (vs 6)? When Jotham heard of this, he did a most brave thing by running up to the top of Mt. Gerizim, the Mount of Blessing (Deut 11:29), to render one of the most profound parables in all the Bible to the conspirators down below:
7“Hearken unto me, ye men of Shechem, that God may hearken unto you.
8 The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the olive tree, Reign thou over us.
9 But the olive tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honour God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?
10 And the trees said to the fig tree, Come thou, and reign over us.
11 But the fig tree said unto them, Should I forsake my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees?
12 Then said the trees unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us.
13 And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?
14 Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou, and reign over us.
15 And the bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow: and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon” – (Jud 9:7-15)
Talk about nailing the essence of a rebel! Great leaders have humility and a deep sense of responsibility toward others. Those who aren’t, but are blinded by their own pride are like a bramble, a tumbleweed. And yet this shrub had the temerity to demand that all the other trees put their trust in him implicitly and unthinkingly, like true cult members. And if they didn’t, may fire come out of the bramble and devour even the cedars of Lebanon!
The cedars of Lebanon are trees of renown in the Middle East. Fragrant, tall and majestic, their wood is coveted to this day in the making of cedar closets. They are obviously symbolic of men and women of well-earned stature and reputation in the world. And yet bramble bushes, arrogant and self-exalted, demand the most unquestioning fealty out of even them.
Satan, The Grand Prototype
All these people were patterned of course after their father, that first and ultimate rebel in the Bible, Lucifer who became Satan (“the adversary”) and the Devil (“the slanderer”). I see Satan as the quintessential “rebel without a cause” of all time, the Great Black Hole Of Protest against All That Is and all that God ever created and sustains.
Lucifer was not content with his place in the created order, a place of singular honor and exaltation. One of only three of God’s archangels along with Gabriel and Michael, no, that wasn’t enough for him. He wanted to be God himself, a role no one simply and by definition can fulfill except the Almighty Himself.
12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:
14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.
15 Yet [I will] thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
-Isa 14:12-15
In this passage God shows us what’s at the heart of all rebellion—willfulness, a simple refusal to do God’s will, pursuing instead one’s own will. “Do as thou wilt,” said that infamous rebel Aleister Crowley, one of the most evil men of the 20th Century. Interesting how he couldn’t resist the temptation to coin the phrase in King James English, the faith of his youth, because Crowley in spite of all his pretentiousness knew that God and the Bible are real, no matter how much he tried to avoid it (Ro 1:18-20; 2:15).
It also involves a quality of self-exaltation, a refusal to abide by one’s ordained place in the created order. The audacity of Lucifer was that there was no other created being more exalted and honored than him, and yet still he was not satisfied. He literally had that classic trifecta so coveted in Hollywood, “beauty, brains and talent” (Eze 28:17,13). His fate stands as a stark reminder that the more God has “well favoured” you (Gen 29:17; 39:6), the more you must guard your heart against pride and contempt for others.
This is indeed what happened to Lucifer. The early Church considered self-exaltation to be the essence of Satan’s kingdom. As a result of just all the precious stones (“merchandise”) that covered him he became lifted up in his heart:
“By the multitude of thy merchandise, thy inner parts were filled with iniquity, and thou hast sinned: and I cast thee out from the mountain of God, and destroyed thee, O covering cherub, out of the midst of the stones of fire” (Eze 28:16, Douay-Rheims, 1899 American edition).[13]
In other words, the original sin of the Bible was not committed by Adam but by Lucifer, and it was the sin of pride, one of the seven deadlies of the early Church, the sin that all other sins have in common. And it’s a subtle and deadly one. Ironically one of the most profound things I ever heard Bill Gothard utter was his formulation that “arrogance is pride on steroids.” So true. And so is presumption, vanity and high-handedness. And that negative version of hutzpah I discussed in another article.
Donald Trump and the Spirit of Absalom
In Is Donald Trump Running For The Office of Antichrist?, I made an assertion I still hold to this day—you either get who this man is or you don’t, and if you don’t, maybe it’s because you harbor that same spirit of rebellion he manifests so openly and casually.
Every week in the unending soap opera called The Donald brings yet another outrage, any one of which would tank the career of any other politician. Somehow he thinks that because he commits his crimes out in the open that somehow that makes them okay.
And apparently millions of Americans agree with him. Yet in spite of all the mind-boggling revelations that have come out just this year, 40% of this masochistic nation is prepared to vote for him again. Just consider the things we learned about him during September alone:
–Michael Cohen his former fixer in his book Disloyal writes of his former boss:
“I knew him better than even his family did, because I bore witness to the real man, in strip clubs, shady business meetings, and in the unguarded moments when he revealed who he really was: A cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.”
David Cloud of the Los Angeles Times says, “It’s Cohen’s inner life that gives his book its considerable power.”[14] Esther Wang in her review puts it more bluntly—it’s “terrible stories about terrible people doing terrible things.”
One of the less sordid but politically-chilling ones is why Trump admires Putin so much:
“Trump’s model of a man in power, according to Cohen, is Vladimir Putin, and Trump is described as enamored of Putin’s wealth and unilateral influence, and awestruck by what he sees as the Russian president’s ability to control everything from the country’s press to its financial institutions. ‘Locking up your political enemies, criminalizing dissent, terrifying or bankrupting the free press through libel lawsuits—Trump’s all-encompassing vision wasn’t evident to me before he began to run for president,’ Cohen wrote.”[15]
-Then Jonah Goldberg of all people, one of the hardest of the hardcore neocons, came out with a stunning Atlantic article, “Trump: Americans Who Died In War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers.’”[16] Just the title alone says it all. To this day I still don’t understand how he wasn’t tarred, feathered and driven out of town by all these military-worshipping Republicans for that alone. Why? Because we’re all trained to be his doormats now.
-Then the New York Times published another series on Trump’s business dealings—“Long-Concealed Records Show Trump’s Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance,” based on his actual tax returns. It showed that he’s far from being a billionaire; in fact he’s broke. At least this is what he keeps pleading to the IRS every year, that’s he losing money on all his write-offs—I mean businesses—while he PR’s the public to death with all the money he’s made.
“One of the most stunning revelations—beyond the headline figure that Trump paid only $750 in taxes in 2016 and again in 2017—is of Trump’s attempt to get a refund from the IRS for $72 million in 2010 by claiming $1.4 billion in losses in 2008 and 2009, which would not only justify the refund but also wipe out any income tax he would owe for years to come. This request apparently triggered the audit we’ve heard so much about.”[17]
According to Cohen, Trump told him that he “could not believe how stupid the government was for giving someone like him” that $72.9 million refund.[18] He also explained to Ari Melber that Trump’s taxes run 20,000 pages long every year and that they are placed in piles on a 30-seat conference table at Trump headquarters. He also said he has 970 sub-corporations, probably mostly as tax write-offs, to hide money, or to bury investigators in a labyrinth of complexity no judge or jury could follow. It’s a very Talmudic thing—bury your adversaries in a blizzard of legal minutiae, the complete opposite of the Messianic ethic of “provide things honest in the sight of all men” (Ro 12:17).
Worse Than Watergate, But Who Notices?
Then came Bob Woodward’s second book on Trump, Rage, wherein the author has provided tapes to the media of conversations he had with Trump!
Tapes! The very thing that brought down Nixon and covered by the same journalist 45 years ago! There has to be some sort of Divine irony here. And these tapes reveal that Trump knew all about this Coronavirus and how deadly it was back in January. In fact you can fairly hear the glee in his voice as he typically tries to scare Woodward with the whole thing while impressing him with all his insider knowledge.
Feb 7, 2020: “It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. The touch, you don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus. People don’t realize, we lose 25,000, 30,000 people a year here…This is 5% versus 1%, and less than 1%… Who would ever think that, right?”[19]
Yes, who would Mr. Trump? Except for you who knew this and went out and told the public the complete opposite all year long and continue to do so. “I chose to downplay it,” he told Woodward. Indeed you did. You also chose to claim it wasn’t the federal government’s job to coordinate the effort, telling those governors to go scrounge for supplies on their own even as that no-goodnik son-in-law of yours sold off federal stockpiles for personal profit. Just like you keep choosing to hold these super-spreader rallies which seemed designed by you, God, the Devil or some combination to kill off your followers, Black Widow style. Illuminati population-reduction style? Russian subversion style?
Sympathy For The Devil
Which brings us to one of the latest spectacles, the weekend flight off to Bethesda and back at work by Monday, hawking some drug cocktail he’s now touting as a miracle cure and probably invested in. We are supposed to believe this because obese men 74 years old are routinely medevacked to hospitals, recover within days, declared to be immune, not infectious to others, and be back to work on Monday.
Color me a godless skeptic, but I just don’t believe it, any of it. More P.T. Barnum from the guy who aches deep inside to be known as a great actor. I don’t believe he ever was sick, that it was all a stunt to push media discussion about his disastrous debate performance a few nights before off the front page. That plus a play for a sympathy vote with the audacious hutzpah only Donald Trump is capable of. “By his cunning, he shall cause deceit to succeed under his hand, and he shall magnify himself in his heart. He shall destroy many in a time of peace. He shall also rise up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken, not by human hands” (Dan 8:25 Modern Engish Version).
One detail to support this outrageous conspiracy theory of mine. His team of doctors had to sign their NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) last November in that mysterious other trip to Bethesda, the one where many people wonder if he got vaccinated against the coming pandemic planned by his QAnon (probably Israeli) intel operatives (my opinion). Trump has a long history of corrupting doctors and forcing them to do his will.
And he did this with the connivance of his witchy wife too.
Besides, “Who gives a f*** about Christmas stuff…it’s such bullshit,” after all.
Yes, color me. And others.
Just Choose Your Daily Humiliation
The spell this man has put people under is so impenetrable it seems no detail large or small makes any difference. Another little one I thought was so telling was an admission Jared Kushner made to Woodward. Kushner proudly admitted to Woodward that the strategy of the administration and the President especially is summed up in their slogan, “Controversy Elevates Message.”
What he means by this classic bit of sanitized Washingtonian-speak is “Lying Guarantees Press Coverage.” In other words, the cynical game is to show up everyday, spew out a flood of lies into the public space—it doesn’t matter what the subject is—and they know that the press, the “Enemy of the People” according to these workers of iniquity, will do their Constitutional duty to cover it. And they will also feel obligated to fact-check and deconstruct all the provable lies for the sake of the public’s very sanity.[20]
This has at least three objectives. One, it guarantees the President’s pride-on-steroids vanity will fill up the news cycle for that day. Two, it distracts attention away from coverage of foreign affairs and the ways his financial dealings especially, may be endangering our national security. And three, it hides all the ways this gang of grifters and their mobster backers are looting the collective wealth of the American people every day, just like they looted (and are still looting) Russia. It’s the same basic people, after all.[21]
And their ignorant, rabid followers want to arrest the Democrats!?
“Resistance to [Demoncrat] Tyrants Is Obedience To God”
Which brings us to the whole question of masks. Does anyone remember the rationale behind wearing masks? It’s not to protect the mask wearer himself, but those he comes in contact with. No one is denying that these minuscule viruses cannot pass through these kinds of masks. They can, and thus they don’t protect you. But they do protect others, at least when you cough or if you’re a big mouth who talks loud and projects a huge “COVID plume” all the way across a stage.
What masks can do is reduce the “viral load” in the air, one of the ways people get infected. The smaller the “dose,” the better chance your immune system can develop antibodies before it overwhelms your body. It can mean the difference between survival or death, and is why public gatherings where people are singing, laughing, cheering raucously or shouting over one another (like in bars) are the biggest super-spreader events.
This is why Donald Trump can’t be bothered to wear a mask, because he couldn’t care less about anyone but himself, the very definition of sin.[22] It just isn’t his style you see. It damages his precious image of being an invincible young stud with Absalom hair. You know, that special creature of evolution blessed with “good genes”[23] which gives him the right, I’m assuming, to humiliate those who don’t, Nietzsche-style?
Unfortunately, in the absence of a vaccine we simply don’t have any other way to combat the spread of this deadly disease at this time.[24] You would think then that a President would at the least set an example like he’s expected to. Instead we find the exact opposite. Trump has positioned himself as the Mocker-in-Chief who “downplays” the seriousness of the pandemic, even calling it a “hoax,” insinuating that anyone who wears a mask “too much” (like Biden) looks ridiculous, is a real pussy, and “has some serious psychological issues.” This is why we never saw him in a mask until July, and only because it was, according to CNN, “primarily motivated by floundering poll numbers.”
So Let’s Rip The Chinese Once Again…
In his typical routine of slandering the innocent and blaming everyone except himself, Trump insists on calling Corona “the China virus” in spite of all the evidence it was a attack by the US on China as I reported earlier this year. Yet as of this month, Taiwan has had a grand total of 458 cases of COVID-19 and 7 deaths.
Yes, you read that right. Seven deaths! In a population of almost 24 million. America’s population is 328 million, about 14 times theirs. A “Taiwan death rate” here would be about 96 people. As of the time of this writing it is 224,000. Because Taiwan had a plan in place (an Obama one here Trump dismantled). They use contact tracing and other measures because they’re actually trying to protect their people rather than destroy them.
Oh wait, I’m repeating myself.
And Michigan Too For Good Measure
12 A worthless person, a wicked man,
Is the one who walks with a perverse mouth,
13 Who winks with his eyes, who signals with his feet,
Who points with his fingers;
14 Who with perversity in his heart continually devises evil,
Who spreads strife.
–Prov 6:12-14 NASB
Someone did a deep study of Trump’s most hardcore supporters recently and discovered some surprising results. Authoritarian leaders like him are always control freaks, but authoritarian followers are very submissive, even robotic about “obeying orders.” Trump’s fanatics however, are actually motivated by extreme ideas of “freedom.” They’re the “Don’t Tread On Me” crowd who resent the government telling them to do anything.
Thus in their paranoid thinking, governments who make them take reasonable public safety measures are “tyrants,” out to take all their freedoms away.[25] And Trump, Living Incendiary Device, just loves to stoke that fire.
Michigan, by the way, is not “locked down.”
Thus we shouldn’t have been surprised to find a militia group of 13 arrested for plotting to kidnap and possibly execute Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer for “tyranny.”
Apparently they are tired of waiting for the “military tribunals and executions” which QAnon has been telling them for 3 years now is “right around the corner.” Interestingly enough, hardly anything can be found online about any of these 13, suggesting they’re private mercenaries hired by right-wing billionaires to “create chaos” so they can bring in their “new order.” But of course.
By the way, if you’ve ever wanted a quick, clear explanation of who QAnon really is, here it is:
The Church’s Ever-Embarrassing Witness
“Cast out the scorner, and contention shall go out; yea, strife and reproach shall cease.”
-Prov 22:10
What I find most disturbing about all this is how many churches seem to think right along the same lines. Church meetings are super-spreader events for obvious reasons.[26] And yet in the face of a loss of revenue from services being shut down coupled with endless scoffing by our Russian-Israeli-Illuminati Agent of Chaos, many churches have murmured about what the “right thing to do” about all this is.
Obviously, it is to cloak your rebellion against the Word of God in the “beautiful garments of righteousness” as Martin Luther King once coined it. This is “‘resisting tyranny’ which is obedience to God,” or so they claim.
And yet what argument can’t be proven from the Bible by appealing to some collection of Scriptures? Is not the issue here one of the most basic ones discussed in the New Testament—our relations with the outside world? The New Testament has a lot of enjoinders for the Church to do everything in our power to maintain a good witness before “them that are without” (I Thess 4:12), including a reputation for being good citizens (I Tim 2:1-4).
Why is this so hard to fathom? Because the fast-talking dandy from the Bronx with the pompadour resonates with so many rebel hearts in this country. He’s the Eddie Haskel of American politics. Past is prologue.[27]
Why He’s Only Lost 5% of the Evangelical Vote
The last time he ran, Charismatic “prophets” fell all over themselves to declare Donald Trump “Gods Chaos Candidate” to shake things up in Washington. They may have heard correctly but misunderstood God’s warning. He’s the Chaos Candidate alright—for Israel, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and whoever else own him and wants to see this country cracked in half.
The second time around though will be no turning back as the birth pangs leading up to the Four Horsemen War begin to intensify. The aftermath of an election the Republicans are now openly subverting will guarantee an unclear verdict.
This chaotic situation could lead to a civil war with crazed extremists on both sides and lots of bloodletting. Yet if it weren’t for the Evangelicals’ wholesale sellout to one party, he wouldn’t be a blip on the screen this time around.
They will support him based on two sticking points in their minds—abortion[28] and Israel, both of which hold their consciences in bondage. In fact, their support of this guy is going from tragedy to farce now. He supposedly recovers from COVID-19 with Regeneron, a treatment derived from an aborted fetus, and at the hand of 10 doctors, a profession built upon science, a field he openly trashes.
“His credibility is so destroyed now that many think he faked he and his wife having a virus as a way to market his miracle cure, which will somehow be free for all Americans despite the company’s claim that it cost $96,000 per treatment. The treatment is based on stem cells from aborted fetuses, and Trump forgot to explain where all the stem cells would come from.”[29]
As far as Israel goes, while outright enemies of the United States consider Donald Trump the gift that keeps on giving, the Israelis want to use him to break our back but keep us alive enough to be their “hammer of the earth” (Jer 50:23). To this end they and their proxies among the Christian Zionists issue dire threats about “what will happen to America the day it turns its back on Israel,” etc.
The answer is nothing. Almost all the earth opposes Israel in the UN and none of them is buried under ashes and brimstone the last I checked. On the other hand, God calls Jerusalem “Sodom and Egypt” at this time (Rev 11:8). Only the United States is going straight down due to our support of this false version of “Zionism.”[30]
Yes, it’s true. Judgment must always begin at the house of God (I Pet 4:17). And if you think this country doesn’t hate us enough already as it is, then just keep raving after Absalom. You’ll end up with his fate.
Notes:
[1] Thankfully my parents were supportive of whatever I wanted to do in life, pretty much. They educated me and felt they had done their part, and if I wanted “a career in religion” as my mother later put it, that was OK with them. I had to explain to my Mom that it wasn’t a career but a calling, although by that point, three years into the Faith and already on the ropes, it was a bit of a technicality.
[2] In spite of Calvin’s claim that his theology posited a Deity Who was Almighty and sovereign to the nth degree, it suggested that God is incapable of creating truly autonomous creatures, so the best He could do was put on a gruesome cosmic puppet show. For Himself.
[3] In the ancient world women were usually treated like little more than property and often abused. In the Pharisee world it was scandalous for a rabbi to even lower himself to talk to a woman. Jesus not only did so but He allowed them to be His disciples too (Gal 3:28). The Me Too movement has reminded us of how far we have to go.
Tribal peoples were also in constant survival mode with a stark separation of duties between men and women. In the modern world where women can do more than just stay at home and raise children, it’s seen as very limiting and often brings reproach down upon the Christian faith. Some aspects of the feminist movement have been necessary and benevolent.
[4] Some people swear by this, pointing out that it results in faster and deeper growth and rapid multiplication than mere addition. Jesus’ Himself trained His 12 Apostles this way. It is probably especially attractive to people with the gift of exhortation who love to counsel others.
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepherding_movement
[6] Much of the obsession over “unity” in the Church world can be traced back to Catholic Charismatic circles who were trying to find a way to “bring back the wayward brethren” of the Reformation. (Amy Comey Barrett, our new Supreme Court justice comes from one of these Catholic charismatic fellowships). However the Reformation was no mistake and much of the logic of these teachings came from Catholic philosophy. https://donclasenseriousguy.com/the-significance-of-the-reformation/
[7] Saul Alinsky was just another Marxist/Zionist tool of the Hegelian squeeze of democracy in the middle. But at least Alinsky had the effect of empowering poor people to have a stake in New Deal egalitarianism. Likudnik Zionism understands the power of collective action. The “Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations,” all 52 of them, doesn’t even include the minor ones. The American right seems to want everybody to live in their little Libertarian cubicles doing everything for themselves as disenfranchised “rugged individualists.”
[8] David showed great wisdom and set a great example with this policy, knowing one day he would be king himself. Besides, he loved his father-in-law and wanted to see him repent which he eventually did (I Sam 24:17).
[9] The harshness of God’s judgment on Saul seems baffling upon first reading. After all, kings have all kinds of faults and do not get deposed by God for showing too much mercy. But God’s case against Saul didn’t start with this incident. In previous events he showed a distorted understand of Who God is. When Samuel didn’t show up in time he “forced himself” and offered a sacrifice before battle himself, as if God were a legalist Himself and needed a ritual before protecting His people (I Sam 13:12). In the next chapter he shows he was taking the cause against Philistia way too personally. “Cursed be the man that eateth any food until evening, that I may be avenged on mine enemies” (I Sam 14:24).
[10] He probably meant it in the sense of “a fellow king,” but Ahab had more in common with Benhadad than perhaps he realized.
[11] It’s hard for me to determine how much of a rebel Ahab was. He struck me more as a weak man, a sulker and easily manipulated by his wicked wife Jezebel who definitely was a rebel.
[12] In fact, it may have worked too well. God got angry with him for being too humble!
[13] Ezekiel 28:16 seems to be one of the most tortured verses in the Bible with the vast majority of translations mangling the sense of it. In my own limited understanding, the best sense I have of it is that the “merchandise” (some say commerce, trade, etc) refers to the precious stones God covered Lucifer with (vs 13). Others translate it as trade or commerce, but we know the King of Tyrus here couldn’t have been a mere man as it says he was in “the garden of God” (vs 13) and was an anointed cherub (14). As a result, he became filled with iniquity (inequity, injustice, lawlessness) in his heart. Many translations render it “violence” which is pretty accurate since it refers to a spirit of violating the rights of others, in this case, first and foremost God Himself.
[14] https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2020-09-11/in-a-crowded-field-of-trump-exposes-only-michael-cohens-shows-how-he-corrupts-souls
[15] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/05/politics/michael-cohen-book-trump-white-house/index.html
[16] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers-and-suckers/615997/
[17] “The Most Brazen Trick Trump Tried To Pull On His Taxes,” https://slate.com/business/2020/09/trumps-taxes-audit-loss-irs.html
[18] https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trumps-seventy-three-million-dollar-tax-refund-is-the-biggest-outrage-of-all
[19] https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-bob-woodward-conversation-transcript-trump-playing-down-coronavirus
[20] 28,000 now I recently heard, according to the Washington Post.
[21] A few other examples—the selling off of America’s national parks https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/10/us-national-parks-dismantling-under-way, the dismantling of the Constitutionally-mandated Post Office, and bailing out Wall Street using COVID as the excuse. https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-trickle-up-bailout
[22] The great American evangelist Charles Finney defined sin as selfishness in a wide spectrum of manifestation, and I agree with him.
[23] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-president-superior-genes-pbs-documentary-eugenics-a7338821.html
[24] There is always boosting your immune system, but preventive or natural health proscriptions just aren’t in sync with the for-profit model of our health care system.
[25] That powerful and dark forces may have had exactly this kind of motive in mind is beside the point. Victimized public officials have no choice now but do what they can to protect society.
[26] One choir member interviewed by the 700 Club said he knew the moment he got so sick from COVID that he nearly died. It was back in February at a choir rehearsal where 45 members later tested positive. Sorry, I can’t find the video anymore.
[27] Talk about dating myself. Eddie Haskel was a character on Leave It To Beaver, a 1960s show about two typical American teenagers and their two-faced friend Eddie. The personality parallel between Trump and Eddie is so close it’s scary. He even has a father who’s the spitting image of Fred Trump Sr. If you want a real hoot, check out this episode from a 1988 redux of the show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjlKRV7uKl0&t=380s
[28] Like everyone else, I too think it’s a tragedy when a woman wants to end the life growing inside of her, and I’m sure the baby can feel the pain of being killed, though I’m not sure at what point that happens. But Christians assume too much when they throw out that glib statement, “Life begins at conception.”
On the face of it it’s a statement true enough, but what they mean is “human life begins at conception.” That’s much more speculative. A fertilized egg may be a form of life with the potential to become a human being, just as an egg has the potential to become a chicken. But at what point does that happen? At birth with the first breath? Is that when God gives the body a spirit and the baby becomes a living soul (Gen 2:7)? After the first trimester? The second? What happens to the fertilized egg when there’s a miscarriage? Does it die and go to heaven? If so, what form does it take? A baby? A full-grown adult?
The truth is, no one really has these answers except God Himself. There’s nothing in the Bible that settles these things. It simply wasn’t an issue until modern science became advanced enough to make it one. When Roe v. Wade was first passed, you could hardly find an Evangelical leader or group who condemned it.
At present, about 8300 babies in the US are killed in the third trimester and the laws are a complicated mess state by state. If Christians wanted to solve this problem politically, they could have invaded the Democratic Party too. But they chose a stance of divisiveness by selling themselves to not just one party, but the one that has become the most craven collection of traitors to the US Constitution by far. If you don’t believe me, watch the Bill Maher video.
[29] Jim Dean, “Is the U.S. facing a political civil war,?” https://www.veteranstoday.com/2020/10/17/is-the-u-s-facing-a-political-civil-war/
[30] Zion in the Bible is symbolic of God’s chosen (and justified) people, and under the New Covenant that’s the Church, both Jews and Gentiles in one body (Heb 12:22; I Pet 2:6, etc).
