The Last Langstaff Letter, which asked the question, ‘What do you think of President Trump now?’ gave you some background on the issue and stated that I would give you my answer in this follow-up letter. To answer this question, you need to ask another question first – ‘Did God want Trump to be President?’

How do we know the answer to that question? Let me suggest two ways (1) Prophecy and (2) Prayer.

PROPHECY

Steven E. Strang of Charisma Media has written a fascinating book entitled ‘God and Donald Trump,’ that details the events leading up to the 2016 election, specifically in relation to the support given to Donald Trump by Evangelicals. As he writes,“My purpose has been to explore the spiritual dimensions of the 2016 Presidential elections and to determine the role faith and the religious impulse may have played in Trump’s unlikely win.” To understand all that happened you would need to read this book in its entirety. However, let me draw attention to some of the prophetic words, noted in the book, which were given leading up to the election.

There has been a long line of prophetic words about Trump. Back in 2007, well know prophet Kim Clement prophesied, “Trump shall be a trumpet . . . I will raise up the Trump to become a trumpet.” Cindy Jacobs, co-founder of Generals International, also had stated God is “preparing a Patriot” to lead our nation. Other prophets went further and began declaring that Trump would be elected. One of the most unlikely sources, which went viral, came in April 2011, when Mark Taylor, a retired fireman in Central Florida, declared that God had chosen Donald Trump to be the leader of the United States.Taylor went on to state that “there would be a series of dramatic changes around the world – blessings and curses, widespread revival and desperate reprisals unleashed by the enemy of mankind.” African American pastor Darrel Scott, who took part in the inauguration ceremony of President Trump, predicted Trump would win and would be the greatest president in our history. The first part happened, and we will have to wait and see about the second part. Lance Wallnau believed God was raising up Donald Trump as He had the Persian king Cyrus the Great stating, “If God could use a Persian King to restore the nation of Israel, why couldn’t He do it again here in America.”

We could go on, but this much is sure, many prophetic voices were predicting that Trump would be the next President of the United States, even during a time when that seemed unlikely.

PRAYER

I doubt if there has been as much prayer offered for a presidential election as there was offered in 2016. Franklin Graham traveled to all fifty states calling for a ‘Christian Revolution.’ I attended the rally in St. Paul, MN, where he called on believers to pray as never before. On the night before the election, Graham prayed for the country during a Facebook Live event that was watched and shared by an estimated 1.3 million people.

Highly respected journalist and longtime senior foreign correspondent for Time Magazine David Aikman wrote that “‘if reporters who covered Trump had realized what a huge subterranean Christian prayer movement was undergirding the Trump campaign, even if the reporters themselves did not believe in God or the power of prayer, they might have been less dumbfounded by the actual election results.’ This tells us, he said, that many Americans who heard Trump saying he wanted to “make America great again” hoped he was also saying that he wanted to make America “morally great again.” For conservative Christians, this moral greatness only comes from spiritual revival, something many believers had been praying for. They weren’t praying to elect Donald Trump so much as they were praying for a change of direction and a new moral and spiritual awakening. 

For most voters in the heartland, their concerns had little to do with Obamacare, gun control, or defense spending, although most would have an opinion on such matters. Rather the moral issues and downward spiral of the nation had fired them up. Supreme Court rulings taking prayer out of school in 1962 and Bible reading out of school in 1963 were just the beginning. Legalizing abortion on demand under the Supreme Court’s faulty 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade signified a tragedy of even greater magnitude. Removing restrictions on Internet pornography and legalizing same-sex marriage after Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court ruling in 2015 were among the reasons conservatives believed they were under attack. And that’s why the cultural issue was becoming a major issue in the election (Strang, 2017).” As a result, there was a great groundswell of prayer in America prior to the 2016 elections.

These two factors, prophecy and prayer, convinced me that God wanted Trump to be our President.

A BULL IN THE CHINA SHOP

Michele Bachmann, a one-time member of the House of Representatives, in an interview on CBN, referred to the Old Testament book of Daniel said, “The bottom line of the book of Daniel is this – it teaches us that the most high God lifts up who He wills and takes down who He wills.” She went on to say, “I actually supported Ted Cruz . . . . . but I also see that at the end of the day God raised up, I believe, Donald Trump. . . . . I don’t think God sits things out. He’s a sovereign God . . . I think it’s very likely that in the day that we live in that Donald Trump is the only individual who could win in a general election of the seventeen (Republicans) who ran (Strang, 2017).”

“It may well be, as Bachmann and certain prophetic voices have suggested, that Trump was sent by God as a bull in a china shop to break up the globalist agenda and interrupt the Left’s campaign to remake America in their own image. A man with a milder, gentler, less aggressive personality could never hope to take on the forces within the political establishment and prosper, which explains why Donald Trump was the perfect choice for this hour (Strang, 2017).”

SO WHAT DO I THINK OF PRESIDENT TRUMP NOW?

•I believe he was God’s choice to be President at this time.

•I do have real concerns about his character as shown by previous actions and at times in his tweets, etc., but I still believe he is God’s choice for America at this time.

•I believe the prayers of God’s people had a significant impact on the results of the 2016 Presidential Election (Note – we need to keep praying).

•I believe that President Trump has been sent by God to be ‘a bull in a china shop;’ to shake everything up that can be shaken up in Washington and beyond.

•I believe as Lance Wallnau declared, “Trump is a wrecking ball to the spirit of political correctness here in America.”

•I believe President Trump will not change. His personality, his bombastic attitude, his aggressive reactions to others all will continue. I believe that when you get older, you are what you have always been, only more so. President Trump will be Trump, only more so. I do not appreciate the way in which he often talks or even what He says, but we have to get used to it. It is not going to change! It is Trump! He talks like a New Yorker, not Minnesota Nice.

•I believe you have to observe what he does (which the mainstream media does not report or support), more than what he says.

•I say this cautiously. I think that when President has accomplished all that he was sent to do, he will not finish his second term.

Let me repeat a word that I shared back in the Fall of 2016 –

On September 29th, I felt the Lord gave me a word about the upcoming election. I wrote it down, but I didn’t share it with anyone because I wasn’t completely sure it was from the Lord. I thought that maybe it was my own fleshly ideas. I hesitated because so many prophetic presidential predictions have not panned out. Let me tell you what the word was that I received during the week of the first debate, at which time Hillary Clinton was well ahead in the polls. I felt that God was showing me the following –

•Hillary won the first debate, but Trump will win the election.

•It may not turn out the way people think it will.

•It will be a mixed blessing as there will be good things, but there will also be chaos and confusion.

FINALLY, A WORD OF CAUTION

John Stonestreet shared come cautionary advice in a recent Breakpoint article, “Christ-followers must be wary about what French philosopher and theologian Jacques Ellul called the “political illusion”-the idea that our problems are primarily political ones with only political solutions. As Chuck Colson put it, salvation will never arrive on Air Force One.

This time last year, many Republicans were over the moon about their political prospects, and many Democrats were sure the end of civilization was upon them.

As I wrote a year ago after President Trump’s stunning electoral victory: ‘As the Democrats learned the hard way, what goes around comes around. The election was a reaction to extreme secular liberal policies. And after Republicans attempt to dismantle the Obama agenda there may very well be an equal and opposite reaction.'”

Well, there it is. I look forward to reading your responses.

RESOURCES

Strang, S. (2017). God and Donald Trump. Lake Mary, FL: FrontLine.

PHOTO CREDIT – President Donald Trump waves as he walks to Marine One as he departs the White House, Wednesday, July 12, 2017, in Washington, as he heads to Paris for Bastille Day. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)