https://godanddonaldtrump.com CONCLUSION FOR SUCH A TIME ★★★★★ MOST EVANGELICALS BELIEVE our nation was founded on a love for God and rever- ence for His Word, and because of that we have experienced the undeserved favor of God upon our country. Robert Jeffress, pastor of the prestigious First Baptist Church, made this point on the weekend of the first Independence Day celebration of Donald Trump’s presidency, when he gave a rousing introduction before the president spoke. Addressing a packed house at the Kennedy Center in the nation’s capital and an audience of millions around the world via the Daystar television network, Jef- fress said that while it’s true the founders gave us a nation built on Christian prin- ciples, “it is also an indisputable fact that in recent years there have been those who have tried to separate our nation from its spiritual foundation. And that real- ity has caused many of us, many Christians, to despair and to wonder, ‘Is God finished with America? Are our best days over? Has God removed His hands of
blessing from us?’ But in the midst of that despair,” Jeffress said, “came Novem- ber the 8th, 2016. It was on that day, November the 8th, that God declared that the people, not the pollsters, were gonna choose the next president of the United States. And they chose Donald Trump.”¹ In these few words Jeffress summed up the point of this book. My aim in tak- ing on this project has not been to write Donald Trump’s spiritual biography— that would have been a fairly short book. Rather, it was an attempt to look at the dramatic events of the 2016 election, and perhaps the most extraordinary candi- date in our nation’s history, not through the lens of what happened politically but through the lens of what happened spiritually. I know there are those who will disagree with my premise, but there are many people who are more than a little curious about how this whole episode happened. And it’s for them that I’ve writ- ten this book. Few people outside the four walls of a church pay much attention to what God is doing in the world. To them, acts of God are what you call tornadoes and hurri- canes. But is it possible God has a plan for this nation? Is it possible He has a plan for His people? I’ve tried to make the case that President Trump won the
evangelical vote by the largest margin in history because, as Jeffress said, Chris- tians understood that he alone had the leadership skills and the unwavering per- sistence to reverse the death spiral of our nation. In his remarks Jeffress referred to the surprise and enthusiasm of the people he has encountered since the election. He said, “Everywhere I go I find that people are even more excited about President Trump than they were on Election Day. And it’s easy to understand why. President Trump has not only met but he has ex- ceeded our every expectation, in reviving the economy, rebuilding our military, re- specting our veterans, and restoring our greatest freedom of all, the free exercise of our faith. President Trump has done more to protect religious liberty than any president in United States history, and we are grateful to him for that.”² When the president took the podium, he affirmed what Jeffress said. “My admi- nistration will always support and defend your religious liberty. We don’t want to see God forced out of the public square, driven out of our schools, or pushed out of our civic life. We want to see prayers before football games, if they want to give prayers.” Before he even finished the sentence, the Kennedy Center audience members were on their feet with loud and resounding applause. They had seen
too many examples of secular schools stamping on the beliefs of religious stu- dents. Then Trump added, “We want all children to have the opportunity to know the blessings of God. . . . .As long as I am president, no one is going to stop you from practicing your faith or from preaching what is in your heart.”³ As I listened to those words, I wondered if people were asking themselves why Donald Trump was saying such things. For most of his life, as I’ve pointed out, he has not been very religious. He was more interested in making money—lots of money—than defending religious liberty. But just as millions of Christians were praying for someone to stand up and help turn things around, here came Donald Trump, seemingly out of left field. At first most Christians didn’t think much of him. Perhaps they didn’t believe him. But now they’re happy to know he has their back. Not everyone appears so happy about this new Donald Trump, however. If you’re secular, you see the world through a different lens. You may not even be- lieve God exists. And if that’s the case, you feel there’s no reason to be concerned with such things. While people such as Jeffress decry “the downward spiral,” call- ing for restoration and renewal of the culture, Hillary Clinton and her supporters
evangelical vote by the largest margin in history because, as Jeffress said, Christians understood that he alone had the leadership skills and the unwavering persistence to reverse the death spiral of our nation.
In his remarks Jeffress referred to the surprise and enthusiasm of the people he has encountered since the election. He said, Everywhere I go I find that people are even more excited about President Trump than they were on Election Day. And it’s easy to understand why. President Trump has not only met but he has exceeded our every expectation, in reviving the economy, rebuilding our military, respecting our veterans, and restoring our greatest freedom of all, the free exercise of our faith. President Trump has done more to protect religious liberty than any president in United States history, and we are grateful to him for that.
²
When the president took the podium, he affirmed what Jeffress said. My administration will always support and defend your religious liberty. We don’t want to see God forced out of the public square, driven out of our schools, or pushed out of our civic life. We want to see prayers before football games, if they want to give prayers.
Before he even finished the sentence, the Kennedy Center audience members were on their feet with loud and resounding applause. They had seen
too many examples of secular schools stamping on the beliefs of religious students. Then Trump added, We want all children to have the opportunity to know the blessings of God. . . . .As long as I am president, no one is going to stop you from practicing your faith or from preaching what is in your heart.
³
As I listened to those words, I wondered if people were asking themselves why Donald Trump was saying such things. For most of his life, as I’ve pointed out, he has not been very religious. He was more interested in making money—lots of money—than defending religious liberty. But just as millions of Christians were praying for someone to stand up and help turn things around, here came Donald Trump, seemingly out of left field. At first most Christians didn’t think much of him. Perhaps they didn’t believe him. But now they’re happy to know he has their back.
Not everyone appears so happy about this new Donald Trump, however. If you’re secular, you see the world through a different lens. You may not even believe God exists. And if that’s the case, you feel there’s no reason to be concerned with such things. While people such as Jeffress decry the downward spiral,
calling for restoration and renewal of the culture, Hillary Clinton and her supporters
have been saying that everything is just fine. When Trump raised concerns about the moral decline in America, he was lampooned by the media as a hypocrite. Leftists, meanwhile, were marching in the streets for abortion on demand and celebrating the right to take the life of an unborn child right up to the moment of birth. They were glad same-sex marriage has been validated by the Supreme Court and that marijuana is being legalized in state after state. And when it comes to old-fashioned morality, the mantra of the secular culture these days is simply “anything goes.” But most Americans recognized the problems; they didn’t have to be religious to perceive that something is wrong with the way this country has been going. WHERE THERE IS LIBERTY For a very different view of Donald Trump and his faith, you need to go no further than a feature on CNN’s website published a couple of weeks before Trump’s in- auguration called “God and the Don.” The article is somewhat less biased than most of the reporting we’ve come to expect from CNN, but it was a typical elitist, dismissive interpretation of the faith of Donald Trump and bore the subtitle
“Presidents often turn to faith in times of crisis. That seems unlikely for Trump.”⁴ In the story the writer reported on a meeting between Trump and a couple of Presbyterian pastors in New York City: Rev. Patrick O’Connor, senior pastor at the First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica, Queens, where Trump was confirmed as a child; and Rev. Scott Black Johnston, senior pastor of Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, located within sight of Trump Tower. During the conver- sation Trump made the comment, “I did very, very well with Evangelicals in the polls,” at which point both ministers informed him that neither of them is an Evangelical.⁵ “Well,” Trump responded, “what are you then?” The pastors told him they were mainline Protestants, Presbyterians, from the same tradition in which Trump had been raised and in which he still claims membership. The unstated assumption of the article, of course, was that Trump was so clueless he didn’t know the differ- ence between an Evangelical and a mainline Protestant. There were several exam- ples in the piece aimed at catching Trump on little things in order to undermine his Christian credentials.⁶ In this book I have tried to report on the miraculous way Donald Trump
became president and what that means for America. I haven’t tried to analyze his spiritual condition—only God knows the heart. Yet I’ve been told that the way of salvation has been explained to him, and if he believes in his heart that Jesus Christ is risen and the only begotten Son of God, then he is a Christian—and an evangelical Christian at that since that’s what evangelical Christians believe. Maybe Dr. James Dobson was right when he said during the campaign that Trump is “a baby Christian.” Johnston made the same point to the writer of the CNN article: “It just clicked into place in my head, where I was like, ‘Oh, this is a new Christian,’ He is a Christian who’s what I would call a young Christian. He is early on this journey. He has not spent a lot of time exploring the faith.”⁷ Very likely true, but a more in- sightful perspective comes from Professor David L. Holmes, professor emeritus of religious studies at the College of William and Mary, in an interview for U.S. Catholic magazine. “Journalists are often secular and consider religion relatively unimportant,” he said. “But virtually every president of our lifetime would tell you that religious faith does matter. Most presidents would tell us that they actually prayed in the
Oval Office. Presidents are required to make decisions daily that affect millions of lives. They are often uncertain about what is the right thing to do. In those cases, they draw on their religious background.”⁸ Holmes summed up his assessment of Trump’s religious beliefs by quoting the words of political scientist David Innes and said, “Trump’s religion ‘seems to be a sincerely held, vague, nominal, but respectful form of old-school Protestantism.’”⁹ And that’s about right. But the emphasis ought to be on the words “old school.” Like many segments of the mainstream culture, and many Christian denomi- nations for that matter, the mainline Presbyterian church has drifted leftward over the years. The faith Donald Trump grew up in was more conservative, believed in biblical inerrancy, and would likely be considered “fundamentalist” by today’s standards. The Presbyterian Church (USA) hardly resembles the early expression of that denomination, which is why denominations such as the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), the Evan- gelical Presbyterian Church (EPC), and others have broken away from their main- line roots to embrace a more traditional understanding of the faith. Historically all of America’s presidents have turned to their faith in moments of
crisis. Bill Clinton, a Southern Baptist, called on Rev. Jesse Jackson to counsel his family during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The night before announcing his resignation, President Richard Nixon, a Quaker, is said to have wept and prayed on his knees in the Lincoln Sitting Room of the White House.¹⁰ Well-informed students of American history know that George Washington prayed when it looked as if the American Patriots were losing to the British. And Abraham Lincoln turned to prayer again and again and spoke about it often, call- ing the nation to prayer during the darkest days of the Civil War. President Franklin Roosevelt read a powerful and moving prayer over the radio while all of America listened on the night before the climactic D-day Invasion of June 6, 1944. All of this suggests that President Trump is in very good company. SPEAKING FROM THE HEART Many Bible-believing Christians who feel they’re being bombarded by an avalanche of godlessness hardly know where to turn these days. At one time many Evangelicals believed that if they could just put a born-again president in the White House, everything would be fine and the nation would return to its
former glory. However, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush both claimed to be born-again, but not much changed. For that matter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama talked about “my Christian faith” with little evidence to support the claim. Christian author Lance Wallnau, interviewed in part 2 of this book, quotes the late Chuck Colson, who went to jail for his part in the Watergate scandal of the 1970s. After his born-again experience Colson went on to found a dynamic prison ministry and a Christian worldview institute, and he became one of the world’s most respected evangelical thinkers. Colson wrote that most Christians are famil- iar with the doctrine of “saving grace,” which is the mercy extended by God to all who believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus. But Colson explains that there is also an even broader form of mercy known as “common grace.” Wallnau told me on a podcast before the election that “common grace” is the way the Reformers grappled with how the Word of God applies to all of life, not just to church reform. A key aspect of the concept holds that secular leaders are raised up in times of great historical consequence to protect God’s agenda and His purposes. Such leaders are chosen for a unique role, whether or not they may actually know God or even care about doing His will. They are people, as Cyrus
mentioned earlier, who have the capacity and the motivation to fulfill a divine plan. “This is the proposition I give to Christians who are dispirited by the failure of their favorite candidate to capture the nomination,” Wallnau said. “Don’t ask, ‘Who is the most Christian candidate?’ Instead, ask, ‘Who is the one anointed for the task?’” As an example, in 1860 the pious evangelical Salmon Chase was a bet- ter Christian than the men he ran against, but the wily outsider Abraham Lincoln ended up with the nomination. Chase couldn’t understand why God had denied him the privilege of leading the nation, but in the end the country lawyer from Springfield, Illinois, proved to be the vessel God had chosen for the coming chaos.¹¹ R. T. Kendall, a respected theologian and author who is also a longtime friend, dealt with common grace in a blog shortly after the election. In his witty style he told how his seven-year-old grandson, Toby, had asked out of the clear blue, “Grandpa, is Donald Trump a Christian?” Kendall replied, “I don’t really know for sure.” “Well, then, Grandpa, can God use someone who is not really a Christian to do His work?” Toby asked. Kendall replied, “Yes, through God’s common
grace.”¹² Kendall explains: “Common grace is God’s goodness to all humankind. John Calvin called it ‘special grace in nature.’ We call it ‘common grace’ not because it is ordinary but because it is given commonly to all people of all ages in all places in the whole world. It is a creation gift not a salvation gift. It is what keeps the world from being topsy-turvy. It is why there is a measure of law and order in all countries. It is why we have traffic lights, hospitals, firemen, policemen, nurses and doctors. It is the basis of one’s IQ, their ability for poetry, science, botany, as- tronomy. It is what gave Albert Einstein what is (perhaps) the highest IQ in his- tory. It is what gives an Arthur Rubenstein an ability to play the piano, Yehudi Menuhin to play the violin, Rachmaninoff to write a concerto. It has nothing to do with whether you are a Christian. Being a Christian is not what gives you your IQ; you would have had the same IQ whether saved or lost.”¹³ He continued: “Perhaps Donald Trump is a Christian. I have heard rumors of this person or that person who led him to the Lord Jesus Christ. I hope they are true. But if not, one should have a theological rationale for God using people like him to be used of God in this wicked world of ours. Yes, Toby, God can use
someone who is not a Christian to do His work in the world. And if Donald Trump is truly born again, all the better for us all!”¹⁴ Wallnau surprised me when he said that Donald Trump is more prophetic than most people realize. “In fact,” he said, “he is Churchillian in this regard. He sees the threat nobody else has courage to talk about until it’s too late. He sees it with radical Islam; he sees it with the soaring nineteen-trillion-dollar debt; and he sees it in America’s tinderbox of the inner city.”¹⁵ Trump accurately described Brussels as no longer being the same city he knew years before. The press was picking apart his statement at the very moment Brussels became the epicenter of a shock- ing round of organized terror and death. Likewise, Trump predicted that English voters would pass the contentious “Brexit” referendum, separating Britain from the European Union. When that actually happened as Trump had predicted, gov- ernment officials and the media’s expert commentators were stunned. After the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, July 18–21, 2016, the media quickly described Trump’s message as “dystopian”—meaning dark and pessimistic about America’s future. Those who agreed with Trump’s vision for America, on the other hand, found his words encouraging, largely because
someone was finally speaking the truth. When a full 70 percent of Americans be- lieve the country is on the wrong track, it can be very encouraging to have a candi- date who shares their opinion and has the courage to speak about it. In that respect Trump resembles the indefatigable British Prime Minister Win- ston Churchill, who often went against convention, decorum, and his own party to badger the people of Great Britain into defending their country against Hitler’s Third Reich. Churchill was viciously attacked by the media in his day. Today Don- ald Trump invites the same kinds of bitterness and resentment by raising alarms about the unraveling of America’s society at a time when our political elites, but- tressed by the media, are denying that anything is wrong. Like Churchill, Trump is the target of opposition forces seeking to silence him for his bluntness and to stop him from speaking from the heart about problems the political estab- lishment has been sweeping under the carpet for generations. A NEW AWAKENING Pastor Robert Jeffress said in his July 1 remarks that “millions of Americans be- lieve the election of President Trump represented God giving us another
chance—perhaps our last chance to truly make America great again. And how grateful we are. We thank God every day that He gave us a leader like President Trump.”¹⁶ But Todd Starnes, a popular Fox radio host and blogger, says that get- ting another chance may not be enough. In an article for Charisma magazine, Starnes writes that America is engaged in a war of worldviews. “In 2008,” he said, “President Barack Obama promised to fundamentally trans- form the United States of America. And ladies and gentlemen, he fulfilled that campaign promise. In less than eight years, our former president turned the most exceptional nation on earth into a vast wasteland of perpetually offended snowflakes.” Then Starnes said, “You would think at some point in this story, the church would stand up and shout, ‘Enough!’ . . . [but] these days some churches resemble the Cowardly Lion more than the Lion of Judah.”¹⁷ In his book The Deplorables’ Guide to Making America Great Again Starnes wrote about how to be a Christian citizen in a nation under attack by secularists. “If you and I don’t do something, there’s nothing the White House can do by it- self. If we don’t get on board and row—hard—we could find ourselves drifting back to where we were. These opportunities don’t come along often. It’s time to
call this what it is: a historic moment in the life of our country.”¹⁸ I believe Starnes is right, but I also believe that Christians are waking up. The evidence we’ve seen in these pages tells me that there is a new optimism and a new spirit rising all across the land. Many Christians believed they had to vote for Donald Trump, or the downward spiral of the past eight years would continue. There is no doubt that things would have gotten worse under Hillary Clinton’s adminis- tration. If you’re old enough to remember the difficult days of the 1960s, you may remember the race riots, the protests against the Vietnam War, and the violence at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. Who can forget the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, followed five years later by the assassi- nation of his brother Robert as well as civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In the midst of all the mayhem, the younger generation was turning to sex, drugs, and rock and roll as the antidote to the pain in their lives. But what happened next was surprising. Two of the greatest revivals of our lifetimes took place, involving, of all people, the same young people who were part of the tune-in and dropout youth culture.
Many of those same hippies and dropouts suddenly found Jesus and got so turned on to Him that they were called “Jesus People.” In fact, many of today’s Christian leaders, including me, trace their spiritual roots to the Jesus movement of the 1970s. While I was raised in a Pentecostal home, I had strayed from the Lord at a secular university, but I gloriously saw my life transformed as a result of the revival that swept hundreds of thousands of young people into the kingdom of God. Even though our own culture and all of Western civilization remains in a down- ward spiral, there is at least a hope that we may be in a similar moment of history. Two years ago I would never have suspected that God would raise up a brash bil- lionaire from Queens, New York, to undertake the transformation of America, not only politically but also spiritually. I expected to vote for Ted Cruz in November, but when he left the race, I had to reconsider my options. Now I have a better understanding of why that reorientation was necessary. Could it be that this intersection of God and Donald Trump as well as the simultaneous shifts in the United States of America and the kingdom of God are much more than random anomalies of coincidental occurrences? Is it possible
that Donald Trump was raised up suddenly out of the obscurity of a business and entertainment environment with what Frank Amedia called a “breaker anointing” that was activated to make a way for our nation to return to God? Is it the Cre- ator’s plan that the diverse factions of the Christian church be united in a way to take back our country for God?¹⁹ The prophet Amos declared, “Surely the Lord God does nothing without reveal- ing His purpose to His servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). What also makes this election unique is that the declarations of a few Christian prophets were remark- ably accurate and bold to declare that Trump would win. That is past. What’s the future, and how can you be involved? Frank and other faith leaders decided the day after the election to organize a group of prophets and intercessors who could speak to power in our country and who could also be a spiritual shield for this new president. They called it POTUS Shield after Prophetic Order of the United States. A potusshield.org website and regional conferences are ways you can be involved.²⁰ Not everyone is happy with this. Already voices from the Left, specifically Peo- ple for the American Way and Right Wing Watch, complained in August 2017 that
POTUS Shield was trying to establish a prophetic order to continue to be a spir- itual force in the nation, adding they have never seen anything similar in terms of an organized Pentecostal prayer shield for a sitting president before!²¹ It was as if the prophetic word gained momentum throughout the election process, but pundits and critics mocked the word that declared Trump was sim- ilar to Cyrus and that he would win by an electoral college majority. In various places in this book I’ve written about my conversations with Mark Taylor, Frank Amedia, Lance Wallnau, Chuck Pierce, and others who prophesied that Donald Trump would be the next president. I know each of those men, and I trusted their insights, but I’m not a prophet. I wouldn’t begin to forecast what will happen tomorrow, but I am convinced that God has a plan for America, and I’m equally convinced that, for this moment in our history, He has lifted up one of the most unlikely leaders anyone could imagine to guide the nation. Knowing that, the very best thing I can do now is pray for the safety and success of President Trump and hope that millions will join me.