In the meantime I recommend at the very least a measure of humility in making your pronouncements as if they are Holy Gospel themselves, written on stone and prophetically bound to happen.
The problem with the fundamentalist protestant obsession with the rapture and other end times prophesies is that they require me to believe the following:
That God sent his son to start a club. That membership in this club will, 2000+ years later, mean that one will escape a horror that the all-knowing all-loving God has ordained as impossible for non club members to escape. The argument that all they need to do is accept Jesus allows that the prophesy 'may' be wrong. Since these same fundies (for lack of a better term) believe that the prophesies can't be wrong is to say that God has preordained that a great many people face eternal punishment. It logically follows that they all are not doing this by refusing Him but by the mere accident of birth and geology.
I reject this notion for several reasons. The first is that when God sent his Son to speak to us He did not bring a message of condemnation but rather one of forgiveness. He was a Jew and when He was speaking He was speaking to an already subjugated people. A people in one place in time. Could these prophesies apply only to Jews and not others? In Matthew He speaks of how non believers WILL stand along with believers. Was He confused? He quite specifically said that they would be taken with him based upon their good works not on their particular religious beliefs.
Another reason I reject the obsession with end-time prophesy is that it limits the power of God. Jesus did not intend to box God in with His prophesies. He intended to tell us, metaphorically, that we do not know the time of our end and that whether it is the end of our individual lives or people in a macro sense we should be prepared for it.
Am I to believe that all of the people who have ever lived other than some Christians have been banished to eternal suffering by Jesus? I don't. I do not believe that the gentle animist African villager who died 700 years ago attended by his local holy men has been burning in hell since then. Nor do I believe (if we are to believe in an after life) that God blinked this guy out of existence because....African villager who never heard of any country beyond the hill not to mention a first century Jewish man who God sent to His elect and by extension to us. I do not believe that God has been punishing every person who lived, no matter how good this person may have been, because of the accident of birth. I do not believe that a person in China, who happens to hear a televangelist on TV is condemned to hell because she didn't immediately pick up the phone and answer the international conference call.
Some (particularly atheists who do not understand the nature of faith) will accuse me of picking and choosing the tenants of my faith. Guilty. We all choose how to serve God outwardly; why not inwardly. We are all given the "right" to talk to God privately. It is absurd to imagine that he only answers us through others. I refuse to believe that 2000 years ago God said, "Enough of this chatter. Here is all you need to know. Let me know what you want and I will do it but if you want a personal answer you need to divine it from a Book, hear it from a priest, or give some money to a televangelist and get a bottle of olive oil blessed by me".
So. On Topic. Is Trump called by God to do what he is doing? Certainly he is a cog in God's universe. But so are we all. And that is no claim to fame.
I like the way the Mormons are taught in their D & C: "I, The Lord, Will Forgive Whom I Will Forgive, But Of You It Is Required To Forgive All Men ”
As for the end times. I am not called to bring them about. I am called to care for my fellow man. I am not called to wonder who has been forgiven, will be forgiven or will be banished to hell. I am called to forgive that I may be forgiven.
I am certainly not called (and neither is Donald Trump) to make a blatant political decision in order to hasten the end times. I certainly see how some who believe that religion is an exercise in watching and waiting would like to think so. But their God is just waiting to pounce. Mine is busy today tending his sheep. So I will just keep going. Combining sin and good works until God says it is time for me to go. And in doing this, trust God that at the end of the day I will be just fine.
- By Pants-of-dog
- By ingliz
- By KurtFF8