The other day while driving my "national security risk" car, I happened to see one of those "In case of The Rapture, this car will be unmanned" bumper stickers. And it struck me (a thought, not an unmanned moving car) how such a long-ridiculed concept has become horrifyingly elevated into the heights of American foreign policy goals. Allow me to explain...
For those unfamiliar, the Rapture has been a closely held concept among Evangelicals since the days of Cotton Mather and the Salem Witch Trials. The general idea is that a few scattered lines in the New Testament suggest an event that precedes (or follows, depending on the Evangelical sect) the appearance of Jesus Christ in a Second Coming/Judgment Day/End-Of-World production.
With the stealth and speed of "a thief in the night," the Rapture is a sort of an ecumenical version of the military's "shock and awe" tactic. The trumpets blast, the clouds part, and suddenly Jesus descends from Heaven. All the "blessed dead" rise up from their graves into the air to meet him. Then the "elect" of the living will float up to join the fun. JC leads the elect living and blessed dead in a conga line back to Heaven, where they laugh and eat ice cream all day while listening to Christian Rock.
This means the "un-elect living" and "non-blessed dead", or non-Rapture-believers, will be Left Behind. An awful Tribulation period of seven years will transpire, where every sort of bad thing happens. Those who convert will eventually get to go to Heaven after a thousand years or so. Those who don't convert will join the unblessed dead and be tossed into The Lake Of Fire (my new band name). The world will have ceased but life in Heaven (and Hell, presumably) will go on forever and ever. The End.
Predicted end-of-world dates come and go. And while this all makes for terrific scare tactics that removes believers' money from their wallets, it has never gotten any secular traction outside of the hard-right Evangelical crowd. Until 11/9/2016.
The "miracle" election of Donald Trump is seen by Christian Zionists as a divine sign that the Really Big Show is about to begin. They point to his presidency as the most recent of events that fulfill their version of biblical prophecy. In addition to promising to end abortion, put Christian prayer in public schools, and otherwise weaken the separation of Church and State, Trump pledged to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. embassy there.
That was enough. In Rapture World, the 1948 establishment of Israel fulfilled a significant prophecy that promised many more to come soon. Last year, the momentum towards EndTimes accelerated when the U.S. Embassy moved to Jerusalem.
But hold up, I hear you say. Why do Evangelicals have such a hard on for Israel and Jerusalem if it's filled with Jews? Didn't they kill Our Lord? Good question. The Bible Prophecy Industrial Complex regards the nation of Israel and its capital as key to convincing Jesus to return. Now that the Jews have most of their Promised Land back (hello, West Bank), the conditions are nearly set for Armageddon - the final battle to be fought in the Valley of Megiddo. All the Arab nations will fight Israel there, but lo!! The trumpets will blast and clouds part and, well, you know what's supposed to happen.
What starts Armageddon? A one-state Greater Israel removes Islam's Dome of the Rock shrine and Al Aqsa mosque from atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This creates international furor which intensifies when Israel constructs the "Third Temple" there. This all sets up the Last Battle and subsequent Rapture carnival. In fact, there are activist groups like this one that are actively seeking to push the Rapture date forward:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/a-christian-group-is-building-a-movement-that-could-destabilize-jerusalems-most-explosive-holy-site
Hoo boy, this could all make a cool summer blockbuster! Anyway, you get the picture how Israel is central to all this. And Evangelicals love the Jews and Israel! But only to a point. When Jesus returns, Rapture-style, Jews will need to convert to Christianity, like pronto. Any who don't will be tossed screaming into that big ol' Lake Of Fire. Sorry everyone, thanks for holding down the Holy Land for us goys...
(Interestingly, another high profile group has been seeking a similar long-shot Holy Land confrontation that brings on The End Of The World and their own version of the Messiah: ISIS.)
But wait, you say again, what does this have to do with Trump and American foreign policy? OK, here goes. President ConMan owes his presidency to Evangelicals. When he started his campaign, he was polling about 10 - 15% of Republican primary voters. They were "deplorables", by and large, attracted to his Obama "birther-ism," racist anti-immigration rhetoric, and his overall hateful tone. It was enough to keep him in the early primaries against the other dozen candidates. But he needed more primary voters going forward as the field winnowed.
To increase his base, he courted Evangelical leaders like Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jr., Pat Robertson, Robert Jeffress and John Hagee. Rapture devotees and scoundrels all. After hearing his pledge to Make America Godly Again, they were all onboard. Especially his Make Israel Ready For The Rapture bit. This was not a life or death position for them, it was a life after death one.
Moving forward, Trump had his base secured: Deplorables + Evangelicals + Republican partisans. It's a floor of support that keeps his approval ratings from dipping below 35%, no matter what. And to help keep this post-election base intact, Trump surrounded himself with Evangelical cabinet heads. His original ten Evangelical cabinet appointees obliterated previous numbers. Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson, Elaine (Mrs. Mitch McConnell) Chao, Rick Perry, Jeff Sessions, Ryan Zinke, Tom Price, Scott Pruitt, Nikki Haley, Mick Mulvaney. Wow. Of course, several have since left for various bad/corrupt reasons. But we also now have the biggest Rapture supporter, Mike Pompeo, as Secretary of State!
Mike Pompeo, who in 2015 declared we all need to fight against evil... until The Rapture. And spoke about it as head of the CIA. Pompeo, as the Evangelical point of the spear, is a full-speed-ahead guy regarding Israel pushing its boundaries out to the Jordan River (fulfilling another prophecy). And he is All In for fighting the evil "cancerous" Iran. It's an existential Good v. Evil conflict, don't ya know, with a Final Battle solution. You can almost hear those trumpets blast!!
And to help keep their King Cyrus in line, the Evangelical Council periodically meets with Trump. They pray beside him. They lay their hands on him. It's quite a sight:
As Aretha Franklin once remarked, "Who's zoomin' who?" The problem, of course, is having a president who has very little idea of how the world works. As events unfold, he depends more and more on the Evangelical advisors with whom he has surrounded himself. With an end-game Rapture ever-present in their collective mind, it's not a strain to see foreign policy (and domestic) advice given that happens to coincide with their goal. And with the recent trial balloon plan leaked to put 120,000 U.S. soldiers somewhere to counter Iranian actions... well, you see where this is going. Trump sez, "no that may not happen... but it could." For Trump, it's about adulation and autocratic power. For his advisors, it's about The End.
Oy vey, so much stupid and so much grift. As we ponder how to survive until this dark time passes, let's enjoy the sounds of Debbie Harry as she examines her own incipient state of "Rapture" especially the second half of the song. Yes yes yes!!
