Trump vs. the Prince of Persia?
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was on the Newsmax This Week on Capitol Hill program with host Tony Perkins. They were discussing the agreement with the Iranian regime President Trump announced late in the week previously—the agreement the president declared to be a “great deal.”
The senator is one of this president’s most ardent supporters, particularly in foreign policy, and even more specifically in terms of Trump’s declaration that Iran will never get a nuclear weapon. Trump has said emphatically that Iran—neither through developing one through nuclear material enrichment nor through receiving such a weapon by being given it by or purchased from a source such as Russia, North Korea, or some other such entity—will never have a nuclear weapon in its military arsenal.
I, myself, have held out hope that there are numerous unknown elements in this “deal” that will indeed accomplish great things for America, Israel, and the world. So, I was surprised that Lindsey Graham, who is supposedly deeply in the president’s inner circle of knowledge about the “deal,” was so on the cusp of being highly critical of this arrangement the president has apparently made with the terrorist regime.
Graham and Mr. Trump are close personal friends; they often play golf together and are supposedly on the same page in most all things regarding America’s military involvements around the globe.
Senator Graham said something to the effect that he loved President Trump as a close friend, but that America’s security and that of Israel takes priority over all else. And there are things in this agreement, he intimated, that he isn’t certain about. He will have to learn the final agreement’s details.
I’ve always somewhat respected Senator Graham because of his pro-American, conservative stance. But I’m also a bit wary because he is a close associate of those in government who are involved in the military-industrial complex. These are too quick, I believe, to get the US involved in foreign conflicts. Many accuse this agglomerate of being in it largely for the US tax dollars that fund their ambitions.
All of that said, I believe it’s time to assess, in terms that matter, what these intrigues might mean in thinking on Bible prophecy.
A long-time Christian friend from India recently expressed in an email to me his, and I presume many of his fellow countrymen’s, fears about what this agreement with the Iranian regime might entail.
Whether it is my friend’s words or some he gathered in his news sources, here is what he sent.
We all know what Trump did, namely deserting Israel. People are talking of reasons unknown to us. Some say it is fulfillment of prophecy in the last days.
U.S.-Iran agreement to extend the ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. That is not victory. Not if winning is still the main metric of victory. That is a wounded serpent being allowed to crawl back into the rocks to reload, rebuild, rearm, and reactivate. That is why this proposed deal is so dangerous. A ceasefire with a defeated enemy is one thing. A ceasefire with an undefeated terror regime is something else entirely. It is not peace, it is a pause button, just as Obama’s 2015 Nuclear Deal with Iran only allowed them to get closer to a nuclear weapon.
Trump’s Iran peace deal is not resolution, it is reload time. It is not the end of the war; it is the intermission before the next act. There’s a reason why Iran is mentioned in the Bible and the United States is not. Trump is preparing to send billions of dollars to Iran if this ‘peace deal’ goes through, and that is bad, bad news on any level, and on every level. Today we bring you everything you need to know about what will possibly be the worst deal America has ever struck with a foreign adversary…
My concerned friend from India expresses fears from his part of the world. It is a sort of fear that one can sense growing.
Senator Graham suggested there must be clarification to assuage such fear—or, I sense he was saying the deal must be scrapped and other avenues pursued. (Graham reportedly has since softened his opinion of this fourteen-point plan in making a deal with the Iranian regime. He now, the report says, has endorsed fully that document.) Talk-show host Mark Levin (“on the other hand”), who is Jewish and a Trump supporter for the most part, also sees the current situation with negotiations with Iran’s untrustworthy regime as problematic.
As for this writer, I know that our God has placed Donald J. Trump in this, the most powerful geopolitical position on Earth. And I do believe this president is a negotiator who’s unparalleled in the history of presidential diplomatic undertakings. However, it comes to the forefront of thinking in the spiritual and prophetic sense—this is, if looking at it as a human president dealing from his own thinking and stratagem, a very dangerous negotiation. In other words, if God in Heaven isn’t at the center of the negotiations in this case, Mr. Trump and the “great deal” he has, he believes, made is destined to fail.
This, in that case, is President Donald John Trump vs. the prince of Persia (Daniel 12). It is “the art of the deal” vs. “the black art of deception.”
The supernatural dealer in deception has been at it a long, long time, Mr. President. Be sure you are on God’s side, not merely negotiating from your own experience as a dealmaker.
One other element that has prophetic import is that this is being praised as the greatest “peace deal” of all time. If Middle East peace can be achieved, it will be like no other negotiation in history, it is being touted.
To me and to other prophecy watchers from the pre-Trib perspective, this boast harkens to the apostle Paul’s warning in God’s Word: “When they cry peace and safety, sudden destruction comes” (1 Thessalonians 5:3).
Regardless, God is always in complete control, and this “deal” hasn’t and won’t take Him by surprise. We as believers can take great comfort from that reality because it all means Christ’s call to us might be the next voice we hear.
Paul tells us of this comfort in his revealing of the mystery of the Rapture of the Church:
“But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.
“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).
—Terry
Our Stability in Perilous Times
I’m not sure how they do it; I know I couldn’t. During the past several years, I have listened as both pastors and believers plan years, even decades, in advance, seemingly oblivious to the dark clouds that threaten to crush all such dreams in the very near future.
The problem is not with the planning or the setting of goals, but with the underlying belief that the next event on God’s prophetic calendar is Jesus’ far distant return to wrap up human history and inaugurate the eternal state. There’s no thought of the Lord’s intervention in their lifetime either to take them home to glory, or to intervene in a world in the throes of lawlessness, corruption, and violence driven by the “reprobate” mindset that Paul so well describes for us in Romans 1:28-32.
I cannot look at our world apart from what the Bible tells me about the Rapture, yes, the Rapture, without falling apart. It’s our “blessed hope” that enables me to retain my sanity amid the vile wickedness of our day and the daily disappointment I feel with our nation’s elected leaders.
It’s my hope of meeting Jesus in the air that also sets my heart on eternity when fears besiege me in the dark hours of the night. Despite over five decades of eagerly waiting for an event that has not yet happened, I have discovered that there’s unspeakable comfort in knowing that it will happen, that there will be a time when Jesus will give me, and all who believe in Him, immortal and incorruptible bodies (1 Corinthians 15:50-55). Jesus is the substance of my hope amid a world that is growing darker by the moment.
Eternity Amnesia
Our expectation of the pre-Tribulation Rapture is the best cure for what Paul David Tripp describes as “eternity amnesia.” Although he doesn’t mention Jesus’ appearing in his discussion of this malady, for me it’s the only remedy for it. Here is a sample of what Tripp wrote about this disorder in his book, New Morning Mercies:
“You and I simply cannot live as if we were put together to live without forever. But so many people try. They put all their hopes and dreams in the right here, right now situations, locations, possessions, positions, and people of their daily lives…. They demand that a seriously broken world deliver what it could never deliver even if it were not broken….
“Your eternity amnesia makes you unrealistically expectant, vulnerable to temptation, all too driven, dependent on people and things that will only disappoint you, and sadly susceptible to doubting the goodness of God. Recognizing the eternity that is to come allows you to be realistic without being hopeless, and hopeful when things around you don’t encourage much hope.” (emphasis added)
There’s no better way to avoid “eternity amnesia” than that of anticipating the time when we will meet Jesus in the air. That’s why Jesus instructed believers to “watch” and “be ready” for His return. Even amid the long delay, now about two thousand years, He knew it would result in a needed glory awareness versus that of forgetting His precious promises of forever.
Blindness to the Signs
There’s another problem that results from adhering to the widely held belief that removes the possibility of Jesus’ imminent appearing; it blinds people to what’s really happening around them. They see the same dilemmas that we do, but they place their hope that, somehow, the darkness of our day will reverse itself, resulting in a greater sense of normality. Such normality bias blinds multitudes to the dark clouds that threaten to squash all their dreams and aspirations.
A multitude of signs tell us that the time described in Revelation chapters 6 to 19 is rapidly approaching. I just want to focus on one of them, the vast preparations currently underway to put in place the beast system that will enable the antichrist to control all the buying and selling worldwide. Besides AI, this will require a massive amount of computing power, and today, it’s being put in place. The evidence is right before our eyes, quite literally for me.
A couple of weeks ago, I saw five semi-trucks carrying large, oversized loads. It was the sight of the huge box that appeared on each of the trailers that caught my attention. I had often seen them during the past several months, but it was the sight of five of them in a row that alerted me to their local source.
I soon discovered that the gigantic white boxes were coming from Hennig, a company in nearby Machesney Park, Illinois. Hennig specializes in enclosures to house massive diesel and gas backup generators as well as the switch gear needed for data centers and large hospitals. A business, just a few miles from my home, is building a piece of the infrastructure for these massive data centers, which are necessary for the fulfillment of Revelation 13:16-18.
We live in a day like no other. There has never been another time when believers have witnessed so much evidence pointing to Jesus’ soon appearing. There have never been so many reasons to avoid the trappings of “eternity amnesia” and live in expectation of Jesus’ soon return. Yet sadly, a great many Christians ridicule our hope in His imminent appearing and live as though this life is all that they have, even though they profess to believe in eternity.
For me, the Rapture also provides stability during the perilous times in which we live. It not only keeps my heart focused on eternity, but explains so much of what I see around me, even that of what I see on the roads where I live.
-Jonathan