AMERICAN EMPIRE (Part Two): Holy War

The American Crusader

“It makes America dream again, that we’re not just this sad, low-testosterone, beta male slouching in our chair, allowing the world to run over us,” said conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who accompanied Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., on a visit to Greenland last week. “It is the resurrection of masculine American energy,” Kirk said on his podcast. “It is the return of Manifest Destiny.”

(The first part of this two-part series (titled AMERICAN EMPIRE (Part One): Trumped Again!) covered the secular aspects of Trump’s new vision for expanded American Empire, as captured in the quote above. It was published originally as a Deeper Dive, but is now available to all. This second part covers the deeper spiritual kingdom that is empowering the Trumpian quest for new American greatness.)

Manifest Destiny

Ah, “Manifest Destiny,” a concept so big it begs to be capitalized. A concept so scary because it has always brought great evil upon the earth whenever leaders seized ahold of this concept of the divine rights of rulers and divine destiny of chosen nations to trample over all others with God’s backing.

I am not as concerned with Trump’s secular machinations to bring about an expanded empire, such as tariffs and sanctions and even the military (but only because I THINK the military is a bluff), as I am with the religious furor that infuses and empowers these ambitions. When Captain Kirk (let’s just call him that), quoted above from the first part of this two-part series, talks about this vast imperial expansionism as “America’s manifest destiny,” he is not only dead serious; he is saying the same thing as a huge number of religious zealots who used their influence to bring millions of votes to Trump.

An army of prophets (or, at least, those who claim they are prophets) surround Trump on all sides, except maybe in front of him, given that he goes wherever he wants and does whatever he wants with the prophet’s blessings bestowed. Their millions of followers quickly accept those blessings as God’s divine 3-D plan whenever it doesn’t seem spiritually kind or mindful of the rights of others at the time. They believe the greater good will become evident later.

Now, I make no pretense of knowing what God’s divine plan for Trump & Co. is or even whether he has chosen any of these people as prophets, but I do know from reading the history of such matters and writing a bit about prophetic beliefs, touching on the history of manifest destiny, that this whole concept has always, near as I can tell, resulted in floods of bloody violence that include trampling (trumpling?) all over the rights of others who are not one’s own kind.

Take the Crusades or the Holy Roman Empire as stand-out examples or Protestant Lord Cromwell’s suppression of Catholics in Ireland, burning down their villages and churches, or a few English kings, one of whom the early Americans fought in order to attain religious and political liberty of thought and speech. Consider that Trump is a man who would be king, if he could be more than “czar for a day.” All of those movements were based on the view of the Church Triumphant or Divine Rights of Kings or Manifest Destiny—different names for the same theology in different times.

This movement of divine destiny has spread across the American landscape in recent times to where scenes like the one below, which may seem bizarre to the uninitiated, are happening all over America right now. That is, in spite of the fact, that pilgrims and pioneers came here to escape it. You would think the following quotes describe some kind of cabalistic, secretive, even minor movement inside of churches, but there is nothing secret or minor about it:

On the Thursday night after Donald Trump won the presidential election, an obscure but telling celebration unfolded inside a converted barn off a highway stretching through the cornfields of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The place was called Gateway House of Prayer, and it was not exactly a church, and did not exactly fit into the paradigms of what American Christianity has typically been. Inside, there were no hymnals, no images of Jesus Christ, no parables fixed in stained glass. Strings of lights hung from the rafters. A huge map of the world covered one wall. On the others were seven framed bulletin boards, each representing a theater of battle between the forces of God and Satan—government, business, education, family, arts, media, and religion itself. Gateway House of Prayer, it turned out, was a kind of war room. And if its patrons are to be believed, at least one person, and at peak times dozens, had been praying every single minute of every single day for more than 15 years for the victory that now seemed at hand. God was winning. The Kingdom was coming.

These meetings, filled with fervor, are led by a chorus of charismatic “prophetic” leaders, who join in teaching that Trump is not just God’s anointed, but he is going to bring in Christ’s kingdom on earth. I tend to think that is Christ’s job. I also tend to think anyone who will, as the Bible says, “try to change the set times and the laws” (meaning, I believe, the divine appointed times of the end by way of their own actions or expediency) is also ultimately one who “will speak against the Most High and oppress his holy people” (Daniel 7:25). Both are prophecies usually attributed as a reference to the opposite of Jesus Christ—the Antichrist.

Whether Trump is of that ilk, great is the multitude of Christians who now believe he is not just heralding the advent of Christ’s kingdom on earth but is the one who will establish it as Jesus’ ruling agent. (Agent orange?) Since I have never, in researching history on this subject, seen good come out of that ambition built from the belief in Manifest Destiny, the sweep of this movement through so many Pentecostal churches deeply concerns me, not because of any intended harm I see in those people but because of where this belief has always led historically.

Are these people the prophets they claim to be? For those who are not believers in the Bible, the answer to that is a simple foregone conclusion. For me, it comes with some deep soul searching of my own beliefs in which I ask how can this form of Christianity be rising all over again, given the great harm it has brought in the past? Do we never learn anything from history?

“We have to fight, fight, fight!” a grandmother said as they began talking about how a crowd at Trump’s election watch party had launched into the hymn “How Great Thou Art.”

I almost have to wonder about whom they were singing: God or Trump? I’m pretty sure I know how Trump would take it, having fully embraced the prophets’ repeated pronouncements to their sheep that he is God’s anointed. Clear back in the Sean Spicer days, Trump noted on television that “some say I am the chosen one” and looked up to heaven as he said it outside the White House on his walk to Chopper One.

As the mood in the barn became ever more jubilant, the grandmother pulled from her purse a shofar, a hollowed-out ram’s horn used during Jewish services. She blew, understanding that the sound would break through the atmosphere, penetrate the demonic realm, and scatter the forces of Satan, a supernatural strike for the Kingdom of God. A woman fell to the floor.

“Heaven and Earth are coming into alignment!” a man declared. “The will of heaven is being done on Earth.”

Some of my regular readers might think this is just an odd little cabal of the most spiritually militant Pentecostals. Not so:

What was happening in the barn in Lancaster County did not represent some fringe of American Christianity, but rather what much of the faith is becoming. A shift is under way, one that scholars have been tracking for years and that has become startlingly visible with the rise of Trumpism.

I know this from my own readings and arguments with adherents. I also recognize there are countermovements to all of this among Christians, but the adherents to these prophets would say those are demon-guided Christians. In that case, some here may say that of me after they read this. It’s the risk you take if you write about your serious misgivings. My concern is that, when people get caught up in such religiously driven political movements, they rarely care about the harmful consequences. Because they view their actions as God-ordained, any harmful consequences are just considered a necessary part of God’s judgment.

At this point, tens of millions of believers—about 40 percent of American Christians, including Catholics, according to a recent Denison University survey—are embracing an alluring, charismatic movement that has little use for religious pluralism, individual rights, or constitutional democracy. It is mystical, emotional, and, in its way, wildly utopian. It is transnational, multiracial, and unapologetically political. Early leaders called it the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, although some of those same leaders are now engaged in a rebranding effort as the antidemocratic character of the movement has come to light.

The adherents believe God is speaking through major prophets (most of whom also make major profits … in the millions) to get Jesus’ kingdom ready for him to step into when he arrives. (That religious fervor, I’ll point out, is not unlike Muslim fundamentalists who believe it is their job to bring holy jihad to establish Muhammed’s kingdom before his return.) They believe the Church is an Army of God, not just doing spiritual battle with the demons who control leaders and nations, but, in some cases, even getting ready for physical battle. (Not all go that far, but some do … at least to the point of storming the Capitol to stop congress in its tracks.)

Trump appears to believe it to whatever extent it serves himself. He harnessed this apoplectic apocalyptic energy to win the presidency twice:

If you were questioning why Elon Musk would bother speaking at an NAR church called Life Center in Harrisburg, it is because Musk surely knows that a movement that wants less government and more God works well with his libertarian vision. If you wanted to know why there were news stories about House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Southern Baptist, displaying a white flag with a green pine tree and the words “An Appeal to Heaven” outside his office, or the same flag being flown outside the vacation home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, a Catholic, the reason is that the Revolutionary War–era banner has become the battle flag for a movement with ideological allies across the Christian right. The NAR is supplying the ground troops to dismantle the secular state.

A little chill comes over me when I recall that Trump seemed to have a fondness for Mein Kamph when he said on television that Hitler was a great leader who had some good ideas. He didn’t say all of Hitler’s ideas were great, of course, as Trump seems to like Jews and is more than happy to have one as a son-in-law and to have a Jewish-observant daughter and grandchildren. So, what part does he like? The extreme charisma (the charismatic fervor of the Führer)? The military prowess? The near-absolute power? The conquest of other nations?

The NAR and the NRA

You don’t usually have to be afraid when someone at a prayer meeting says they are going to “lay hands on you;” it typically only means they are going to pray around you as a group with their hands on you; but, in these gatherings, you might wonder if it means they are going to grab ahold of you to prey upon you. It’s not completely unreasonable to feel a little cautious among the even more far-right groups that carry semi-automatic rifles with bump stocks who also talk about being a literal army for God and who constantly are training for combat, who also speak with a religious fervor that layers Christianity over their goals. They may not be a part of NAR, but the NAR is not that far removed in its Trumpian zeal from the most nationalist members of the NRA.

The founder of the NAR was Peter Wagner …

a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, teaching in the relatively experimental field of church growth. He began revisiting his experience in Bolivia, deciding that the overflowing churches he’d seen were a sign that the Holy Spirit was working in the world. He was also living in the California of the 1970s, when new religions and cults and a more freewheeling, independent, charismatic Christianity were proliferating, a kind of counter-counterculture.

From there, he began forming these prayer movements, like the enclave meeting in the barn, across the nation and some other parts of the world to combat the spirits that control nations.

Wagner also became captivated by a concept called dominionism, a major conceptual shift that had been emerging in conservative theological circles. At the time, the prevailing view was that God’s mandate for Christians was simple evangelism, person by person; the Kingdom would come later, after the return of Jesus Christ, and meanwhile, the business of politics was, as the Bible verse goes, rendered unto Caesar. The new way of thinking was that God was calling his people to establish the Kingdom now. To put it another way, Christians had marching orders—a mandate for aggressive social and institutional transformation.

The lure of power is strong, especially when you find a champion willing to feed on the power your numbers give him and willing to use his position to empower you in return. It has always been hard to resist power as the way to transform the world spiritually. That’s where we come to the dangerous part for those who do not believe as the movement does:

By 1996, Wagner and a group of like-minded colleagues were rolling these ideas into what they were calling the New Apostolic Reformation, a term meant to evoke their conviction that a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit was moving around the globe, endowing believers with supernatural power and the authority to battle demonic forces and establish God’s Kingdom on Earth. The NAR vision was not technically conservative but radical: Constructing the Kingdom meant destroying the secular state with equal rights for all, and replacing it with a system in which Christianity is supreme.

I find it doubtful this will become, under human force as is being fomented, anything better than a Christian version of sharia law. Once believers do have a full grasp on power, the historic tendency has always been to use it to push the world into what they think it should be. Jesus, throughout his life, established his kingdom by truth alone. He said his sword was the “word of truth,” and he taught his disciples to lay down their swords as a means of advancing his kingdom.

(Note that Jesus let his disciples carry swords for self-defense. Peter was packing in plain sight in Jesus’ company when Jesus told him that “those who live by the sword will die by the sword” when Peter used his sword to defend Jesus from a Roman guard. That wasn’t how his kingdom was to advance on this Earth. Jesus also taught that “the meek shall inherit the Earth,” and I think he meant that a lot more seriously than the NAR takes it.)

Now, I came to understand long ago that “the meek shall inherit the earth” did not mean “the timid shall inherit it.” It meant those who used no violence to gain control of the earth or to advance their messianic hopes, but only truth, would ultimately be the ones to inherit the earth. Truth did not need force—either political or military—to be victorious. It is not Jesus’ way. If it were, he would have battled Rome, rather than restoring to life the dead son of a Roman centurion. In fact, the biggest reason he was rejected as Messiah was that he refused to use human numbers to take over the Roman world or miraculous power to take charge, and he even refused state power entirely. He relied on truth.

His teaching was really that those who took up swords against Rome as the way to bring in the Messiah’s kingdom, would all die, slaughtered by Rome, as history later proved to be true. Many were the Jews who believed if they showed their faithfulness to God by fighting Rome to take back Israel, God would empower them to win. It didn’t turn out their way. They tried, and they failed badly … very badly. And I’m sure from what I’ve read that Rome was far less godly even than the United States of America.

In my own writing I came to say that I thought (and I may be wrong, of course) that God would let the violent of the earth, who refuse belief in Jesus, have their own way and all finish each other off in the great Battle of Armageddon, just as happened in the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. Then Jesus and his followers would just peacefully sweep in.

The victors would be those Jesus gained as followers by his truth alone. To those peaceful overcomers who had enough faith to believe truth by itself would prevail, given enough time, would go the spoils. After all, if some of those who do not believe in Jesus do turn so evil they finish off all the non-violent believers, they will almost certainly finish off each other next (there being no honor among thieves).

Why would Jesus be morally obligated to step in and save those who reject him from each other? Going by Jesus’ teaching, which makes no sense to the secular world, those who took the path of meekness would be resurrected after death to inhabit the leftover world, returning, perhaps, just in time to watch the violent finish each other off and scare the literal bejeezus out of the unrighteous with their glorious presence. That, at least, became my way of viewing those apocalyptic prophecies.

But that’s just how I came to see it. I’ll go with any version of the meek inheriting the earth as being more than just a nice saying to give solace to the weak and fearful. It’s a statement of faith and trust in truth to have its own power to do its own work in its own time.

Now Wallnau

Wagner, who died in 2016, wrote dozens of additional books with titles such as Dominion! and Churchquake! The movement allowed Christianity to be changed and updated, embracing the idea that God was raising new apostles and prophets who could not only interpret ancient scripture but deliver “fresh words” and dreams from heaven on a rolling, even daily basis. One of Wagner’s most talented acolytes, a preacher named Lance Wallnau, repackaged the concept of dominionism into what he popularized as the “7 Mountain Mandate,” essentially an action plan for how Christians could dominate the seven spheres of life—government, education, media, and the four others posted on the walls like targets at Gateway House of Prayer.

This movement was huge in driving voters to give Trump a triumphant return to power. So, Trump owes them, but perhaps he also owns them, so strongly do they now believe he is their anointed champion. This is the religious force that wholly backs Trump triumphalism—as a latter-day incarnation of the Church Triumphant, at one time a core doctrine of the Holy Roman Empire—now just a lot less Roman.

Churches interested in growing found that the NAR formula worked, delivering followers a sense of purpose and value in the Kingdom. Many started hosting “7M” seminars and offering coaching and webinars….

That included, particularly, coaching on how to become a prophet within the movement. I was not aware that prophets needed to be educated in the art, having seen none other than maybe Daniel and his friends who received that kind of training. (We are told at the start of the Book of Daniel that he was highly educated in all the arts and literature of Babylon, land of the Three Wise Men (or Magi) under the emperor Nebuchadnezzar.)

The rest give no recounting at all of how they came to be prophets. It just seemed to suddenly happen to them through no effort of their own. For Moses, he seems to be just staring at a burning bush. While that could’ve been hypnotic; and acacia, a common bush in that region, mentioned often in the Bible, does burn, I’m told, with a certain psychedelic effect to its smoke, there is no mention of any training in prophecy. For the Apostle Paul, who wrote a number of prophecies, he just came by it on a walk down the road one day with his friends when it struck him like lightning. The prophet Samuel was just a wee lad when he heard the voice of God in the night so audibly he thought it was his nearby priest.

Many other prophets in the Bible recount how they could not miss hearing the plainly audible voice of God. Wallnau doesn’t talk much about an audible voice of God on the rare times you hear him get get specific about how he “received” his revelations, but more about what I would call vague stirrings and alignments of coincidences, such as turning to certain scriptures. I get those, too, frequently; but I have never regarded them as prophecies nor said I speak for God. In fact, I have said clearly I have no reason to believe I speak for God. I do sometimes wonder about such alignments when the coincidences seem highly improbable, but they are far too unreliable to me to call them prophetic.

Regardless, this new latter-day movement trains people in how to hear and “discern” the voice of God, and the initiates sometimes pay for that training. I have to wonder, why do you have to learn how to hear or discern the voice of God when the prophets of the Bible never appeared to need such education and never offered teaching on how to get the gift. A bush simply flamed on and said, “This is God!” It’s my opinion that God can speak quite plainly and audibly if he chooses to, without the believer needing to polish his antennae. Maybe I am wrong; but, as I stated, this new movement is interested in having lots of prophets and maybe in making lots of profits off of them:

After the 2016 election, a group of the nation’s ultra-wealthy conservative Christians organized as an invitation-only charity called Ziklag, a reference to the biblical city where David found refuge during his war against King Saul. According to an investigation by ProPublica, the group stated in internal documents that its purpose was to “take dominion over the Seven Mountains.” Wallnau is an adviser.

By last year, 42 percent of American Christians agreed with the statement “God wants Christians to stand atop the ‘7 Mountains of Society,’ ” according to Paul Djupe, a Denison University political scientist who has been developing new surveys to capture what he and others describe as a “fundamental shift” in American Christianity.

I’m not about to claim God has no prophets in the world, and I’m inclined to think I’ll be excoriated for saying something that 42% of my fellow Christians disagree with me on, but I’ve always found it hard, due to their many mistakes, to believe the prophets I’ve encountered are speaking for God. Maybe they are, and I’m just not in the “invitation-only” circle in order to know who the true members are; and I always expect the true ones to be, well, true … 100% of the time … like the old ones. As I say, I don’t recall any schools of prophecy in either the Old Testament or the New, but I might have missed that page. If anything, it often seemed to be the ones God called “false prophets” who gathered in such assemblies and spoke in chorus with each other.

Where I get concerned is when people who are certain they speak for God also claim it is their manifest destiny to take over the world for Jesus. I’ve always thought that claiming God told me something puts a higher stamp of approval on my words than I have so far been comfortable taking. It seemed to me a dangerous belief that charges forward and tramples over others who are in the way:

“They are taking on these extreme beliefs that give them a sense of power—they believe they have the power to change the nature of the Earth,” Djupe said. “The adoption of these sort of beliefs is happening incredibly fast.”

That is because it is intoxicating. I’d be honored if God spoke to me or, especially through me, and I’m sure that is how those who make that claim feel, too; but I’d be very restrained about making that claim. So, I’ve never made it. Nevertheless, you have already heard of the ways that these beliefs are now advancing into actual American politics in the news:

The ideas have seeped into Trumpworld, influencing the agenda known as Project 2025, as well as proposals set forth by the America First Policy Institute. A new book called Unhumans, co-authored by the far-right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec and endorsed by J. D. Vance, describes political opponents as “unhumans” who want to “undo civilization itself” and who currently “run operations in media, government, education, economy, family, religion, and arts and entertainment”—the seven mountains. The book argues that these “unhumans” must be “crushed.”

This is where the evil happens. Those who are opposed to the movement become rapidly demonized; and, once they are demonized, they are dehumanized, which means you can do as you want with those beasts. I’m not sure the above statement benignly means crushed with prayer. I don’t know how much further they will keep expanding this doctrine and their crushing, but I suspect out to the widening edges of American Empire.

“Our study of history has brought us to this conclusion: Democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the unhumans,” the authors write. “It is time to stop playing by rules they won’t.”

Given the mention of democracy in their cross hairs, that doesn’t sound even slightly safe to me.

NAR fills sprawling megachurches all across the nation. Their training course is called …

Vanquish Academy where people could learn “advanced prophetic weaponry” and “dream intelligence” … where students can learn their “Kingdom Assignment.”

Of course, these teaching materials can be bought for a price, so the kingdom is lucrative, even replete with its own issued gold coins that have the image of Trump and the ancient King Cyrus on them as the heads side of the coin. You can buy them for more than their value in gold.

Given Trump’s recent past, I have to wonder if Trump will gladly step down as king of this kingdom for a peaceful transition of power when Jesus arrives to take over. Or does his belief that God appoints kings extend only one way, leaving out Nebuchadnezzar’s lesson in the early part of the Book Daniel that God also deposes kings? Is this a belief of expedience and convenience that has actually been alluded to by Trump but only when it works to empower Trump?

The militant members of the NAR

While NAR does not specifically advocate physical violence, Trump’s now-triumphant followers did, in fact, played a huge role in the January 6th storming or the Capitol. They …

began embracing prophecies that God was using Trump, telling fellow prophets and apostles that his victory would bring “new levels of demonic desperation.” In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Sheets began releasing daily prophetic updates called Give Him 15, casting Trump’s attempt to steal the election as a great spiritual battle against the forces of darkness. In the days before the insurrection, Sheets described a dream in which he was charging on horseback to the U.S. Capitol to stand for the Kingdom. Although he was not in Washington, D.C., on January 6, many of his followers were, some carrying the APPEAL TO HEAVEN flag he’d popularized. Others from Wagner’s old inner circle were there too. Wallnau streamed live from near the U.S. Capitol that day and, that night, from the Trump International Hotel. Cindy Jacobs conducted spiritual warfare just outside the Capitol as rioters were smashing their way inside, telling her followers that the Lord had given her a vision “that they would break through and go all the way to the top….”

Scholar Matthew Taylor details the role that major NAR leaders played that day, calling them “the principal theological architects” of the insurrection.

So, it did reach some level of physical violence. Whether by the NAR people or others, who can possibly tell in a mob situation? They did help drive congress out of its chambers, stopping it from doing its constitutional duty, which was never to verify that each state took its vote properly, but to verify that the vote was, indeed, the vote the state officially intended to make. Whether states did the right thing was always left up to the citizens of those states to fight out with their state. There was a gallows present, though probably not made by NAR people (but who knows in a mob) and not made to gallows standards to be sturdy for the job. So, maybe more of a violent prop, but who can now … in a mob? There were, however, lots of zip ties brought into congress to use as handcuffs. Were any of those part of NAR? Who knows in a mob?

And so it has come to be that enormous religious fervor now backs Trump 100%, and if the people of the prophets did not carry out any of the violence, the prophets, themselves, certainly gave powerful motivations and cheering to a movement that day that did turn violent and deadly on the fringes with a beckoning to millions to participate and “break through” all the way to the top:

The movement amounts to a sprawling political machine. The apostles and prophets, speaking for God, decide which candidates and policies advance the Kingdom. The movement’s prayer networks and newsletters amount to voter lists and voter guides. A growing ecosystem of podcasts and streaming shows such as FlashPoint amounts to a Kingdom media empire.

And when God has told people to do something—at least in there minds—there is rarely any tendency to stop and reflect on the rights and wrongs of it or the possible harm and often not even on whether God is really the one ordering it! The ego becomes highly caught up in the belief that God is directing and empowering them. The mere thought of that can be highly empowering and energizing.

If God is not directing this massive movement, however, woe be to anyone in their shadow because they are not even questioning themselves or their actions and may strike out defensively at anyone who does question it. In fact, I’d say backed with this intense belief in God’s direction and the sheer numbers in their favor and the religious “grounding,” there could come to be more fervor here than the Führer ever dreamed of.

The tendency in this kind of thinking is to demonize those who question the movement or especially those who stand against them. Those type are believed to belong to the devil:

Wallnau, in partnership with the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, promoted an effort called Project 19, targeting voters in 19 swing counties. He also launched something called the Courage Tour, which similarly targeted swing states, and I attended one event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. It looked like an old-fashioned tent revival, except that it was also an aggressive pro-Trump mobilization effort. Wallnau dabbed frankincense oil onto foreheads, anointing voters into God’s army. Another speaker said that Kamala Harris would be a “devil in the White House.” Others cast Democrats as agents of Lucifer, and human history as a struggle between the godless forces of secular humanism and God’s will for humankind.

Once you start demonizing others at a level of belief that rises above political rhetoric or a level of warfare that rises above prayer, there is no telling how far you’ll go over time. You are, in the very least, likely to inspire those who would be assassins for Jesus.

I’m pretty sure Jesus doesn’t want their help, but that’s my personal opinion as someone outside the invited circle because the meek approach is the only view I ever see in the recorded life of Jesus, who was friendly toward a great many Roman soldiers who occupied his homeland and to Roman tax collectors and even a criminal who was hung beside him. The only ones he was unfriendly toward, in fact, were the conservative religious leaders of his time, whom he chased out of the temple with a whip for capitalizing on religion to make money. I’m fairly confident his kingdom does not need the help of human hands, armed with swords or AK-47s to help him get it established.

I am also concerned that there is no telling how far those who demonize others under the doctrine of triumphalism of Manifest Destiny will go in harming those they demonize, because history says they always go way too far. Historicaly, they do not tend to reign themselves in, once they are certain God is guiding their triumphal movement. All that is needed to use those swords is to complete the job of convincing yourself the enemy are, in fact, all demonic.

Frederick Clarkson, a senior research analyst with Political Research Associates, which tracks antidemocratic movements, has been documenting the rise of the NAR for years, and warning about its theocratic goals. He believes that a certain condescension, and perhaps failure of imagination, has kept outsiders from understanding what he has come to see as the most significant religious movement of the 21st century, and one that poses a profound threat to democracy.

I’m going to stay with the non-militant ways of the Jesus I know from actual scripture and the meekness he taught as the path to the kingdom. He was after all, crucified in part because he refused to take up arms to establish his kingdom, which turned off many potential followers. Even some religious leaders back then were expecting a militant Messiah; but I’ll stay with one who said,

I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. (Revelation 2:16)

That would be, I think, the spoken sword of truth.

There is, however, another kind of leader mentioned in The Revelation of Jesus Christ (the actual name of the book so often quoted for its holocaust passages):

Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make people kill each other. To him was given a large sword. (Revelation 6:4)

Interesting color choice for the man who does not use a sword that proceeds from his mouth, but one wielded in his hand.

There is another passage in the book that talks about the believers in Jesus who will be associated with swords in the last days:

If anyone is to go into captivity, into captivity they will go. If anyone is to be killed with the sword, with the sword they will be killed.” This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of God’s people.

That doesn’t sound like the believers will be the ones wielding the swords since it calls for their endurance. It sounds like an echo of Jesus’ warning that those who live by the sword will die by the sword. Or it could be that the meek believers who refuse to take up the sword will be slaughtered as martyrs because of their beliefs. Either way, in this passage, it is not the true believers who are the ones attacking. They are the ones dying, set upon by one called “the beast,” who will demand the subjugation of everyone on earth to him and his economy.

If anything, the biblical apocalypse sounds to me like Jesus arrives to do cleanup after the armies of mankind and the evil beast have done each other in. (See Revelation 19:11-21.) Whether I’m right about that or not, I’ll take the meeker path, thanks, and stay with what Jesus taught while he was here. I’m sure I can’t do any wrong by staying with love and persuasion and leaving the more intense battle up to God when history as we have known it is winding up.

There is, however, a lot of seduction in the following (moving back to the article quoted just before Revelation):

“For me, it’s part of the story of our times. It’s a movement that has continued to rise, gathered political strength, attracted money, built institutions. And the broad center-left doesn’t understand what’s happening.”

The novitiates of the NAR will let you know what laws God demands, and God doesn’t have to be democratic about it. He’s God and, as far as they are concerned, he speaks through them. I’m just worried that maybe they don’t speak for him. I’m not sure who does in the modern world does. Trump, I guess, according to the NARfolk:

Matthew Taylor told me he sees the movement merging seamlessly into “the MAGA blob,” with the prophets and apostles casting whatever Trump does as part of God’s plan, and rebuking any dissent. “It’s the synchronization with Trump that is most alarming,” he said. “The agenda now is Trump.

In other words, if Trump says it or does it, the prophets will deify it. The zealots, so far at least, seem to take everything Trump says as God’s political plan for earth—the great orange (or red?) leader. (And it’s the theocratic nature of the movement as opposed to a democratic nation that is, for me, a greater concern than any violence fomented by them.)

And that’s how populist authoritarianism works. It starts out as a coalition, as a shotgun marriage, and eventually the populism and authoritarianism takes over….

“Buckle up, buttercup!” Wallnau said on his podcast shortly after the election. “Because you’re going to be watching a whole new redefinition of what the reformation looks like as Christians engage every sector of society. Christ is not quarantined any longer. We’re going into all the world.”

I don’t think he just means good old-fashioned evangelism any more.

On the day after the election, I went to Life Center, the NAR church where Elon Musk had spoken a couple of weeks earlier. The mood was jubilant. A pastor spoke of “years of oppression” and said that “we are at a time on the other side of a victory for our nation that God alone—that God alone—orchestrated for us.”

The movement is nothing if not fully self-assured, but that kind of self-assured furor should possibly make you shiver.

“If you’ve got a child and he says, ‘Come and let us go serve other gods,’ go tell on him. Tell them, ‘I’ve got a kid who is saying we need to serve other gods. Can you help me kill him?’ ” Garlington said he wasn’t being literal about the last part. “But you need to rebuke them,” he said. “You need to say, ‘Honey, if you keep on that path, there’s a place reserved in hell for you.’ ”

Seriously? A sermonizing, self-proclaimed prophet and guest speaker is going to wield words like that to a child as his example? I don’t think that sounds like the truth of the sword that proceeds from the mouth of Jesus, who said, “allow the little children to come unto me because, of such is the kingdom of God.” Does “come to me like children” mean “bring your swords and carve out a path?”

“There’s a lot of people that are going to change their minds,” a man said.

“You’ll be happy with the changes God brings,” a woman reassured me. “You’ll be happy.”

Or you’ll make me be happy with the changes by making them my only options. I am certain I’ll be happy with any changes God brings. I’m just not so sure I’ll be happy with the changes you bring! Especially when you believe you have the divine ordinance of God backing you.

Buckle up!

I am thinking about starting a new publication, completely independent of The Daily Doom that would, among other things, follow the NAR and its many prophets—whether their predictions fork lightning and prove true or only end in nothing and darkness and prove false. While it to some extent will follow the adherents of these prophets, I am thinking of something broader that also covers the ways current events might relate to biblical prophecy and just talks in general about end-time prophecies, as I wrote about long ago in a book published by Putnam that was required to be scholarly but accessible to a general and not just religious audience.

Creating a separate site will allow me to completely separate this kind of writing from my economic writing by giving it a place of its own out of respect to the many who come here only for my economic views. They could find the prophecy-related articles, such as this one, and may follow occasional links to them if they wish to read them or just easily avoid them and read only about economics and a lesser extent politics (mostly as it relates to economics).

I'm wondering about interest in such a publication with more religious content to see if it is even worth pursuing. I am thinking of making all of it free but recommending a level of voluntary support. I have no idea yet what I’ll call it, if I even do it, but any suggestions regarding such a work and its title and subtopics would be welcomed in the comment section, even negative ones, as I am just getting a sense of potential interest. I don’t want to waste my time on it if there is no solid interest. I’d like to hear any thoughts you have about it that might shape my approach. I anticipate writing one article per week, occasionally maybe two. (Your responses in the poll section will remain anonymous, and you can see how the vote is going after you place your own vote.)

Please add any additional comments you would like to—pro, con or guidance—in the comments: