Is Donald Trump the Antichrist?

Image by Ralf Genge from Pixabay

A listener called into my program yesterday and asked, “Is Donald Trump the Antichrist?”

I passed on drawing a conclusion, but then the lines lit up with a steady stream of people over the next few hours offering their “proofs” that Trump was, in fact, the Evil One come to ravage the Earth. That first caller clearly hit a nerve.

It’s a fascinating question, however, whether put literally or metaphorically.

Asking the question literally requires a belief in the actual reality of a Son-of-God Christ figure and of an Antichrist opponent of nearly equal but opposite power. This sort of thing fills the Bible, and I’ll get to that in a moment.

But first consider the question from the secular perspective, which argues these two terms represent, at their core, metaphors for the embodiment of good and evil.

In this context, then, a more accurate question is: “Is Donald Trump an Antichrist?”

In The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke in the plural when he predicted “false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.”

After warning that grifters and con artists (in secular terms) would try to exploit His followers, He said, “by their fruits ye shall know them.”

Trump’s “fruits” are pretty obvious:

• More than twenty women have accused him of rape and sexual assault.
• Hundreds of contractors, customers and employees have accused him of stealing from them or refusing to pay them (or both), as have members of his own family
• Throughout his presidency, he lied over 30,000 times
• He pit Americans against each other by race, religion and region in an effort to tear our country apart and thus weaken opposition to his authoritarian rule
• He openly encouraged violence against unarmed people at multiple rallies and encourage state violence at a speech to chiefs of police
• He tried to overthrow and end our democracy
• He embraced murderers, kleptocrats and “strongman” rulers while ridiculing western democracies and their elected leaders
• He tried to damage or dismantle political and…