Donald J. Antichrist and the End Times

It's Friday the 13th, 2021. Do you know where your Antichrist is?

If you're a believer in absurd things like Christian nationalism tinged with QAnon, Aug. 13 is the day Donald John Trump is to be "reinstated to the presidency of the United States."

Before the end of the day, the twice-impeached abomination of desolation will receive the full constitutional powers accorded every president. He will then pardon his supporters and punish his enemies in the mother of all Twitter rants.

They believe returning Trump to the White House will help usher in the return of the long-tarrying Jesus and get the planet on an even more accelerated timetable of pain.

The Democrats who temporarily thwarted him by rigging the election in November will be rounded up--including the current occupant of the White House and his vice president. Their pedophile ring will be crushed by his attorney general in waiting, Matt Gaetz.

This truth has already been confirmed in prophetic utterances on the internet by godly men and women who understand that Trump has been specifically ordained by heaven itself to be God's instrument in America.

Trump has been raised up in the spirit of that charming but much misunderstood rascal King Nebuchadnezzar. No one disputes that Trump always manages to be evil adjacent, but no matter how devilish his conduct looks to us, his immorality is a designated instrument of God's will.

Yes, God has seen fit to use one Satan to cast out all the others. Quite clever, eh? Trump may have made a mess of things, but his days of iniquity have not been fully completed. That's why he will be reinstalled on Friday the 13th.

The false teachers and preachers who previously prophesied March 4 and Jan. 20 for Trump's reinstatement weren't truly listening to God, so they brought God's prophetic word under disrepute. Today, Donald Trump ascends to the White House--unless he doesn't.

It's also quite possible the "unveiling" of Trump's second term won't commence today as prophesied but instead in September, according to whatever numerology it will be necessary to come up with at that time. That's why God prefers to be vague until things happen--that way truth and facts can be retrofitted for the sake of righteousness.

But who can blame the average American for being confused by all of this? For generations, it was assumed that in the End Times, American Christians would reject the Antichrist--not root for his success.

In the apocalyptic fan fiction of the 1970s like "The Late, Great Planet Earth" and the "Left Behind" series two decades later, Christians were unambiguous in their rejection of "the man of perdition" and his evil ways.

Voting for someone like Trump in numbers exceeding 80% of evangelical votes cast in two elections would've seemed unimaginable when those books dominated the bestseller lists.

Of course we know now that such pious fiction amounted to nothing more than spiritual rope-a-dope and that the Antichrist is the unacknowledged hero of those narratives. In the immortal words of that great theologian Billy Joel, Trumpvangelicals would rather "laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints / the sinners are much more fun."

Tired of waiting for Jesus to "come in the clouds" riding a white horse, surrounded by vengeful saints and wielding a literal sword with his tongue, America's cult of Christian nationalists decided it made more sense to throw in with a charismatic character already on the scene--a godless vulgarian with a blazing orange tan and lying spirit who asks nothing of his followers except a willingness to believe big lies and to regurgitate those lies when called upon to do so.

That's how we ended up with "tourists" on Jan. 6 laying siege to the Capitol. That explains how such a "mighty cloud of witnesses" was able to wave Trump and "Jesus 2020" flags in equal number while they gouged eyes, fought cops, hunted elected officials, ransacked offices, defiled sacred American spaces and smeared feces on the walls in anticipation of how they plan to act once they float up to rowdiest sections of heaven during the rapture.

Since millions of Americans are possessed by the spirit of their personal Antichrist, they continue to do its bidding. Anarchy? What anarchy? What insurrection? Jan. 6 was about love and patriotism! Trump's grip on their psyches remains as powerful as ever more than half a year after leaving office. If that's not supernatural, what is?

Once we stop operating with the assumption that Trumpvangelicals consider the Antichrist the "bad guy," their devotion to someone who is the antithesis of the values they used to celebrate makes sense.

It's not that these folks are unaware of the evil this man has done in the previous four years. They simply recognize the utility of the spiritual darkness he wields so comfortably. They believe they can profit from it as a community that has put itself under his infernal protection.

They believe returning Trump to the White House will help usher in the return of the long-tarrying Jesus and get the planet on an even more accelerated timetable of pain.

A second Trump terms guarantees more climate change denial, more bungling in response to COVID-19, more assaults on civil liberties, more sanctioned corruption in high places, less democracy, more hatred, more chaos, more death.

This is also why so many Christian nationalists are eager to see the Temple of Jerusalem rebuilt in Israel, even if it means demolishing one of the most sacred sites of the Muslim faith to do it. They want the full force of the apocalypse and the mass conversion of Jews to Christian fundamentalism they believe such construction would trigger in response to all-out war in that region.

Donald Trump has tapped into this End Times fever dream, turning his own narcissistic strivings into the doomsday aspiration of millions who want to leave this world and its cultural challenges behind. They want their white clouds, their streets of gold and their white Jesus before their once-white neighborhoods in heaven get too integrated.

These are not folks who are interested in leaving the world a better place than the one they grew up in. Whether through the rapture, climate catastrophe or an all-embracing cloud of nuclear fire, they want to leave this world--period.

Whenever we use the term "death cult" to describe them, they don't see it as a disqualifying characteristic. They recognize its accuracy and take a perverse pride in it. That's why opposition to masks and vaccines are often couched in appeals to "freedom" and conscience. They stock up on more guns and weapons than most soldiers in armies have access to because they believe it's the only thing that makes sense in a multiracial, multicultural democracy.

Their obstinacy and resistance is rooted in religion and a deep pessimism about democracy and whether it is something they should even subscribe to. They've left it to Trump, as God's duly deputized servant in the End Times, to define what truth and reality is.

Once Donald Trump is reinstated in the White House, it will restart the countdown to Armageddon temporarily interrupted by "the big steal" in November.

Once again God, Jesus and their legion of procrastinating angels will be back on track. Only divine intervention can toss a world full of "wokeness," liberalism, mask mandates and critical race theory into the much-deserved fire of Gehenna.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will rejoice once their orange-hued friend raises his right hand, slick with so much blood already, to swear his allegiance over a Bible he hasn't read to a Constitution he will dispose of at the first opportunity.

After "Hail to the Chief" is played, the second coming of Donald Trump will not be punctuated by one of his favorite Elton John songs or one of the muscular classic rock anthems played at his rallies.

No, the next chapter of American history will be inaugurated by the throb and gristle of the Sex Pistols' signature song from that same period: "I am an Antichrist / And I am an anarchist / Don't know what I want, but I know how to get it / I want to destroy passerby / 'Cause I / wanna be / anarchy."

Donald Trump will then spit on his adoring enablers, and they will respond to their spontaneous baptism with cheers.