I preface this with the assurance that I believe President-elect Donald J. Trump is God’s man for this late prophetic hour. Despite his sometimes audacious demeanor, I have no doubt he is precisely the person God has brought to the forefront of what I believe to be the final moments of this Age of Grace for Heaven’s great purposes. And, I’m convinced he truly is a friend of Israel–one who intends to again bring America to genuinely embrace that nation in a manner like before the Obama and Biden administrations that, in my view, acted treacherously against the Jewish state.

At the same time, I’m convinced Mr. Trump might likely be instrumental in bringing about the conditions that will ultimately cause God to gather all nations to the killing field of Armageddon.

I’m aware that this seems incongruent, but such has been the case throughout the biblical history of God dealing with men in leadership positions. The Lord uses men–sometimes terribly flawed ones—to accomplish His holy will and to bring about prophetic fulfillment.

Hopefully, I can make clear how it seems that “your favorite president”—as Trump, tongue-in-cheek, calls himself—will both be God’s man for this prophetic hour and, at the same time, instrumental in bringing about humanity’s most destructive war.

It is just like Lucifer the fallen one to use a word–a concept—that is soothing, pleasant, thus desirable, to obfuscate or camouflage something devastatingly evil. This was Satan’s ploy in seducing the mother of us all in the Garden. He promised Eve that if she ate of the fruit of the tree of good and evil, she would not surely die, as God had said. He said she would gain knowledge—God-like knowledge.

We know the result of that deception from the father of lies. Other than the peace offered by the Lord Jesus Christ, the world hasn’t experienced a moment of true world peace since that seduction and disobedience.

We are told, “and through peace he shall destroy many” (Daniel 8:25). Peace is the operative term being offered to the world’s diplomats by the father of lies today to seduce them into bringing about humankind’s final war. And the peace proposition with which Satan lures rebellious, anti-God forces is front and center as Donald J. Trump prepares to take office on January 20, 2025.

To my way of viewing developments at this early stage of putting his administration together, a trap is being set for Mr. Trump—a kind of trap he doesn’t seem to be aware of. It’s the one Daniel the prophet foretold as given above: “and through peace he shall destroy many” (Daniel 8:25). 

It is a matter of discussion that many prophecy watchers from the pre-Trib view have pondered ever since Trump’s major foreign policy achievement in his first term as the nation’s forty-fifth president. The Abraham Accords, the 2020 normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab countries that were Trump’s signature foreign policy effort, will be among the top priorities of his administration. Achieving permanent peace in the Middle East has been the burning desire of every president of the modern era, with the exception, in my opinion, of Barack Hussein Obama.

The prophecy watchers of our ilk believe the nucleus of any agreement that will bring about Daniel’s prophesied destructive peace will have to include Israel’s land being divided. The Arab-Muslim world will accept nothing less than a state that divides Israel’s land and Jerusalem. And the people within those forces so hate Israel that they will not be satisfied even with a divided Israel. They want Israel erased from the land from the river to the sea.

This dividing is also prophesied to come to fulfillment, which we have covered many times in these articles.

“I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land” (Joel 3:2).

While there will yet be a future dividing of God’s Israel, the world has long since divided and partitioned God’s land. The world of rebels will pay the price for that treachery at the time of Armageddon.

The trap being set is, at this point, only a hint of what is to come as the administration comes together and begins to move into the process of peace-making. Most among the Trump brain trust for the new administration hold to the position declared by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He has declared that Israel and Jerusalem will never be divided.

This begs the question: Will Mr. Netanyahu continue to be prime minister if, as is thought probable by those of us who think the new effort at establishing the Abraham Accords will eventuate in offering the Palestinians some of God’s/Israel’s land in order to agree to permanent peace? –A “peace that will destroy many” eventually, according to the great prophet Daniel?

The following touches on the trap I propose might be in the process of being set to turn the new US presidential administration from no two-state solutions to an offering of land for peace, opposed by Mr. Netanyahu, most of the Israeli people, and, currently, most of Trump’s people.

WASHINGTON — Massad Boulos, President-elect Donald Trump’s advisor on Middle Eastern and Arab affairs, said that the United States would have to discuss laying out a “roadmap” to Palestinian statehood if it hopes to establish relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Saudi officials have long made it known that they would not establish ties with Israel absent progress toward a Palestinian state. But for Boulos — a Lebanese-American billionaire and the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany — to emphasize the point is significant because other Trump appointees, in addition to Trump himself, are seen as close to the Israeli right, which rejects Palestinian statehood.

“I think the issue of a roadmap that would lead to a Palestinian state is an important part of the discussions between the United States and Saudi Arabia,” Boulos said in a wide-ranging interview last week with Le Point, a French magazine. “It is certainly a very important point.”

Boulos, 53, framed the focus on Palestinian statehood in terms of expanding the Abraham Accords, the 2020 normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab countries that were Trump’s signature foreign policy achievement in his first term.

Trump has spoken repeatedly about expanding the Abraham Accords. In the interview, Boulos said that many additional countries would initiate ties with Israel if Saudi Arabia did so.

“It is important to remember that Saudi Arabia is not demanding the creation of a Palestinian state today, but it is asking for a vision and a road map for it, that’s all,” he said. “Today, the president’s priority is to resume discussions on the Abraham Accords, with, of course, Saudi Arabia first. Because we know very well, and the president has said it, that once we agree with Saudi Arabia on Israel, there will be at least 12 Arab countries that will be immediately ready to follow suit.” (Massad Boulos, Trump’s new Middle East adviser, touts roadmap to Palestinian state, By Ron Kampeas/JTADECEMBER, Jerusalem Post)

We can all be thankful for the new direction America is apparently pointing with the election of Mr. Trump, who promises a change from the moral and governance madness experienced over the past number of years. But we can also watch and pray while we work toward pointing out that the satanic trap we might be witnessing being set will be recognized by the new president. I hope some of the Bible prophecy-astute pastors who have Mr. Trump’s ear—the bullet damage of which God used, I believe, in shaping his reelection—will as strongly as possible warn him of the dangers involved in dividing God’s land.

Author’s note: While preparing for the speaking session at the Branson Prophecy Watchers conference Saturday, December 7, 2024, my topic “Rapture Ready!” brought me to revisit this article. I wrote it a number of years ago, but never has the topic been more relevant than at this late hour of the Church Age.

We are on the very cusp of looking our Lord in His omniscient eyes when He calls believers into His presence at the Rapture. What does it mean to be “worthy” in our God’s holy eyes?…

Lately, emails and articles I’ve been receiving are trending toward the thought that Christians not living exemplary lives as believers will miss being taken in the Rapture of the Church should they not be fully “repented up” and ready to go. These will be “left behind,” as the LaHaye and Jenkins novel title puts it. First, it is perhaps best to consider what is meant by the “exemplary life” in terms of prerequisites for making it to Heaven in the Rapture.

Those who insist that one must be living an exemplary life usually frame that as “living a life of holiness” or “living righteously.” By this, I presume they mean, for the most part, that one must be doing “good works” rather than living life in the “broad way” along which the pedestrian world moves. I would, of course, agree that the born-again believer in the Lord Jesus Christ should be doing exactly that every day. There’s no question that God’s Word calls us to that model for life while upon this fallen planet.

However, the question is now raised—and it is closely akin to the question raised whenever the declaration is made that one can lose one’s salvation: At what point does one “lose” salvation? What particular “sin-point” is reached that causes the salvation meter in Heaven to go “TILT,” removing the sinner’s name from the Lamb’s Book of Life? Or, for our purposes here, at what point does one sin enough to be taken off the list of those who hold tickets into Heaven, who will be lifted to be with Jesus Christ in that millisecond known as the “twinkling of an eye” when Jesus calls: “Come up hither!” (Revelation 4:1-2)?

Those who believe the names of the redeemed can be removed from the Lamb’s Book of Life, of course, use the following Scripture as one that proves their position is true: “He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels” (Revelation 3:5).

This is proof, say the “conditional security proponents,” that one’s name can be removed from the Book of Life. But let’s have a closer look to examine whether this is true.

Those who hold that believers’ names can be erased from this blessed Book of Life insist that the born-again must “overcome” sin. In their belief dictionary, this means we must stay sin free—that is, either live above sin or stay continually “repented up” in order to keep our names in the Book.

They miss the point entirely as to who actually does the overcoming. It isn’t the believer who overcomes all sin, but the Lord Jesus who died in order to take sin away from those who believe so that we are no longer separated from God the Father in the eternal sense. This is seen, for example, in the following: “For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5:4-5).

It is simple belief in the Savior who takes away the sins of the world that makes us overcomers. We still sin and come short of the glory of God, but His precious blood shed at Calvary covers all of our sins–past, present, and future. We overcome the world, the flesh, and the devil–all sin in this earthly sphere–only by belief in the only begotten Son of God (John 3:16). Our overcoming is only through God’s great grace, through faith. We can never overcome by our own power.

When we sin, we break fellowship with our Lord, but we never break the eternal, family relationship. We do the following to take steps toward making right the sinful break in fellowship that we have caused. First, we must realize and admit that we are not sinless because repentance cannot truly be made unless we confess that we have sinned. Upon such confession and repentance, there is given blessed remedy: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8-9).

God’s Word shows us that our salvation and our ability to overcome is totally based on what Christ did for us and our faith in Him alone. This brings us to the matter of “Being Rapture Worthy.”

Going to Christ when He calls, as Paul outlines in 1 Corinthians 15:51-55 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, and given by John in Revelation 4:1-2, is a salvation matter. We know that from the overall gospel message and from the total context of God’s dealing with His family. Remember when Jesus prayed that beautiful prayer to His Father, as the Lord faced the cross (John 17)? Read it again, and you will see that it is absolutely clear that born-again believers are forever secure in the Father’s hand, based upon what Jesus did on the cross.

We know with absolute certainty that we are once and forever in God’s family because of the words of the One who created all that exists: “My Father, which gave [them] to me, is greater than all; and no [man] is able to pluck [them] out of my Father’s hand” (John 10:29).

Paul confirms that the Rapture is a salvation matter as follows: “For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him. Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do” (1 Thessalonians 5:9-11).

The Rapture will be Christ keeping us from the hour of temptation or Tribulation (read Revelation 3:10). The Tribulation is the time of God’s wrath–to which Paul tells us we are “not appointed.” However, there are many who insist that Christians who haven’t properly confessed their sins will go through that time of God’s wrath (and the entire seven years of the Tribulation will be God’s judgment and wrath). These use the following verse to make their case: “Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man” (Luke 21:36).

The key word they hold forth as relevant here is the word “worthy.” Does this word not mean that we, as born-again believers, must be good enough to stand before Jesus in that raptured throng? Does this word not mean, therefore, that if we fail to live up to God’s standards while on this Earth, we will (at some point in God’s holy view of what it takes to fall from being Rapture ready) lose our ticket in that translation moment, thus not be taken when the shout is heard, “Come up hither!”?

Like in examining the issue of salvation, in looking at the term “overcoming,” we now look at the word “worthy.” What does it mean to be “worthy,” as given in this Rapture example? Again, the answer is wrapped up in the same name as before: “Jesus.” Jesus is the only person “worthy,” in God’s holy eyes, to be in the heavenly realm.

Remember what Jesus said to a man who addressed Him as “Good Master”? “And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God” (Luke 18:18).

Jesus, the second person of the Godhead, was not seeking to chastise the man for addressing Him in this way. The Lord was confirming through this question that He is indeed God, the only good, the only righteousness. Righteousness is the only ticket to Heaven–either through the portal of death or through the Rapture. Only through Jesus–being born again into God’s family through belief in Him–can a person enter the heavenly realm.

Jesus spoke to this all-important matter by addressing Nicodemus: “Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).

God’s Word says about fallen mankind: “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10) and, “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

So, Jesus is the only person “worthy” to enter Heaven. It is through Him that any of us are worthy to stand before Him in that heavenly realm. That is the truth found in the Scripture in question.

On a less magnificent scale, the word “worthy” in this passage means that we should be in a constant mindset of prayerful repentance. We should always want to be found “worthy”–cleansed of all unrighteousness, as stated in 1 John 1:9, so that we will hear our Lord say to us on that day, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:23).