by Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Forerunner,
"WorldWatch,"
July 17, 2024
On July 14, 2024, a little more than half a day after Republican candidate and former President Donald J. Trump survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a man in San Francisco posted on X: “People just casually walking around SF with Trump hats. Something has changed.”
Yes, just one man’s opinion, but it reflects a more widespread sense that when the twenty-year-old shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, pulled the trigger of his father’s AR-15, missing a fatal shot by just parts of an inch, history took a turn. Whether the turn is for the better or worse is yet to be determined. As one observer, N.S. Lyons, wrote in his July 15 piece, “The World-Spirit on a Golf Cart”:
Already, love him or hate him, many of us can sense that the spirit—the zeitgeist—of the moment has somehow shifted significantly, whirling into yet another a [sic] new configuration around the figure of Donald Trump.
Lyons compares Trump to Napoleon, noting that both men have a reputation for being “lucky.” Both men audaciously lead from the front, seemingly heedless to bullets, adding to their charisma, “the inexplicable sense of unstoppable destiny that [they seem] to exude.” When a bloody Trump rose from behind the lectern and pumped his fist, shouting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” it only added to a growing mythological sense of inevitability.
For the past few years, Lyons has sensed a deeper sea-change happening:
. . . I suspect we’re in a period of change the equivalent of which the world hasn’t seen for five centuries; that the upheaval we’re seeing is not just the tumult of politics and geopolitics as usual but the wider breakdown of Enlightenment liberal1 modernity. And it seems that Trump, like Hegel’s Napoleon [“the world-spirit on horseback”: . . .truly an “epic” figure, the sweep of history seeming to have become “connected to his own person, [to] occur and be resolved by him”], has somehow become a concentrated symbol of these times—of a world-spirit of a global rebellion; of the end of one epoch and the birth of another; and that he is a figure with an historic role that must be fulfilled, for better or worse, come hell or high water.
Only time will tell whether Lyons is right or wrong. However, what cannot be doubted is that a sovereign God directs world events toward the fulfillment of His purposes. He is guiding individuals, groups, governments, movements, and ideas toward the “crisis at the close of the age” and the glorious return of Jesus Christ to put down all human rule and establish His government on the earth. To this end, God intervenes at certain times and situations to turn the course of events toward His ends.
The prophet Daniel includes the prophetic dream of Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar in his book to illustrate this vital principle. In Daniel 4:16-17, an angel announces:
Let [Nebuchadnezzar’s] heart be changed from that of a man, let him be given the heart of a beast, and let seven times pass over him. This decision is by the decree of the watchers, and the sentence by the word of the holy ones, in order that the living may know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, gives it to whomever He will, and sets over it the lowest of men.
Later, after recovering his wits after his seven years of bestial existence, Nebuchadnezzar himself writes, extolling God and His sovereignty:
For [the Most High’s] dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom is from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; He does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. No one can restrain His hand or say to Him, “What have you done?” (Daniel 4:34-35)
The near-miss assassination attempt of Trump could very well be an intervention of the Most High God to direct the course of events and hasten the return of His Son. If nothing else, it upsets the status quo, galvanizing support behind a second Trump presidency and a repudiation of much of the far-left agenda pushed by the Obama and Biden administrations and their allies.
As Lyons hinted, it may also indicate a shift toward an eventual overthrow of the liberal political order that has dominated Western politics for a handful of centuries. As Christians awaiting Christ’s return, we must be wary of what might replace it. Donald Trump is the face of American nationalism, a political idea with a Jekyll-and-Hyde reputation. Depending on its leaders and the people’s mood, a nationalistic country could become a patriotic “city on a hill” (Ronald Reagan’s vision of America) or a self-righteous, hateful, and bellicose terror to its citizens, neighbors, or even the whole world (Nazi Germany). What would full-blown nationalism look like in twenty-first-century America? How would the world react to it? Would the nations try to mimic it, each putting its spin on it? How would that turn out?
Another scenario is that God could use Trump, not as a uniting force, but as a divider, exacerbating the divisions among the American people and weakening the nation. Before the Day of the Lord and the return of our Savior, God prophesies the coming of Jacob’s Trouble, when the descendants of ancient Israel will suffer and fall at the hands of its enemies as punishment for its sins:
Now these are the words that the LORD spoke concerning Israel and Judah. “For thus says the LORD: ‘We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace. Ask now, and see, whether a man is ever in labor with child? So why do I see every man with his hands on his loins like a woman in labor, and all faces turned pale? Alas! For that day is great, so that none is like it; and it is the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.’” (Jeremiah 30:4-6)
In His Olivet Prophecy (Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21), Jesus predicts a time of devastating trouble will come upon the earth at the end of the age. How close we are to it is unknown, but seeing the worsening evils in society, it cannot be far away. What we do know is that God is on His throne, supervising and directing the course of this world toward the completion of His plan. He is involved. He intervenes in this world’s affairs. The entire world may have just witnessed one of His course corrections. If so, hold on to your hats!
1 By this, Lyons does not mean liberal in the modern sense of “progressive” or the opposite of “conservative.” He refers to the political philosophy of liberalism, which advocates for the rights of the individual, liberty, the rule of law, equality before the law, private property, and the freedoms of speech, the press, assembly, religion, etc.