This Is How Religious Propaganda Works in Realtime

Wrongly Allying the Word of Truth

I am writing this as a followup to a post in which I stated it was, as an effort of mass communication, extremely confusing and understatedly irresponsible for Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee to guarantee President Trump that the Christian God would speak to him to give him divine war orders, and then for the president to publish Reverend Huckabee’s prophetic guarantee on social media (see at bottom). The following is not an attempt to address the particulars of this war, in this case, but the particulars of propaganda—war propaganda, Christian propaganda—in realtime.

I’m not even suggesting, necessarily, this propaganda is intentional, per se, but in the age of uploading, where everyone-and-their-uncle has an opportunity to retweet and chime in, it’s important to see how we are both propagandized and self-propagandized, wittingly and unwittingly, and so ever increasingly “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Eph. 4:14) by indeed the “Prince of the power of the air[waves]” (Eph. 2:2).

May God help us to discern news from propaganda, to “rightly divide the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15, and to “speak the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15) as we announce the return of Israel’s already-reigning Messiah who will judge for himself who listened to his voice or not. Until then, we each are reminded, indeed warned, to “work out []our own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12) 🙏🏻

---

Now is the dilemma: Ambassador Huckabee guaranteed to President Trump that God would speak to him about his decision, receiving a war policy like Moses on the mountaintop, all the while invoking [ahem!] President Truman, no less(!). President Trump then posts the text from Reverend Huckabee in agreement, obviously indicating to the entire world he would proceed by listening for the voice of the Christian God Mike Huckabee represents. Now we're at war, again.

Am I required to conclude, therefore, that Jesus ordered President Trump to drop bombs in Iran today? Many Christians will feel pressured, if not obligated, to accept that conclusion, sadly. This is how we, evangelicals, constantly get manipulated into christening things that Christ gave us no permission to associate with his name. It should go without saying: this is why I rejected this public display a divine-political alliance making in Christ's name in the first place.

Now what? If we sanctify this "divine order," per Huckabee's guarantee God is speaking in the President's ear, we can't stop here. President Trump has a direct line to hear from God specific instructions that the rest of us can't hear. As far as this war is concerned, we have a new mediator between God and man, so we'll have to rely on him to witness God’s acts in history (until Jesus comes back? where's Jesus?).

🚫 Can we please leave the name of Jesus out of anything He has not already explicitly associated with himself or commanded us to associate with his name? 🙏🏻

---

God gave us the Bible not only to reveal the future, but also to reveal what he would not reveal about the future until he comes back—like a Thief in the night—precisely to keep us from killing each other to master our future and avenge our past.

We are not like the Mormons who listen to prophets to declare God's new will for the times detached from Scripture. God's specific will for human history has already been revealed at precisely the resolution God intends to show, and to not show, us. We see his will for human history precisely as much as he wants us to see it *in and through Scripture.*

Let me state it plainly: I believe anyone who goes around claiming God will reveal his *specific will for human history* anew, untethered from any Scriptural basis—in this case whether one Gentile nation should go to war with another—and that he will reveal it into the consciousness of Donald Trump, so that we all must trust whatever decision he makes concerning this war, is leading people away from the God of Scripture (see Postscript: Taking the Lord’s Name in Vain in the Church Age). I'm pretty sure such a person qualifies as a false prophet by scriptural standards. He should at least be regarded as a liar. That's how I see it.

And to do so to the effect that it now serves as a public Christian endorsement, at the level of principalities and presidents and powers, for the execution of Donald Trump's will as an extension of the divine will of Jesus Christ enacted through great acts of international violence, goes beyond what I believe both Scripture and orthodox Christianity permits.

The book of Acts begins with precisely this tension—and it is still to this day about a confusion between the same two kingdoms mentioned in the Introduction:

"Jesus presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about *the kingdom of God*...So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore *the kingdom *to* Israel?”* He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth" (Acts 1:3-8).

It's time for the witnesses of Christ to stop declaring times and seasons with respect to God's will for Israel and America alike. Whenever people start dragging the name of Jesus into geopolitics, it always betrays a displaced trust in political power over the power of the Holy Spirit to transform the world. The former depends on the law and the sword, the latter on the Gospel and the Spirit. The former advances the kingdoms of this world, the latter advances the kingdom of God. The Church needs ever and again to ask ourselves which power and by what means are we attempting to change the world? Which kingdom are we seeking to see built?

It's not for us to know times and seasons of geopolitical regime changes; rather, we have been sent across all geopolitical barriers and borders to bear witness to the King of kings and Lord of lords, to declare the salvation for the world through the forgiveness of sins and the inclusion of the Gentiles into the covenant family of God through Israel's Messiah, who was condemned and murdered through a collusion between Sanhedrin and State, Jew and Gentile, but who has forgiven both and so broken down the dividing wall of hostility between all peoples, Jews and Palestinians alike. The call is for all to repent and believe the Good News of God's Gospel to the world.

Hallowed be the name of Jesus today and forever.

Postscript: Taking the Lord’s Name in Vain in the Church Age

The will of the President has an impact on the entire world. For the President of the greatest super power on earth to claim publicly God is revealing his will to him for the world is, however unwittingly, a messianic claim. This is the model of the old monarchy, under the Old Covenant, which, according to New Testament, has been fulfilled and reconfigured around the King of kings—the crucified-and-risen King of mere-mortal-kings—Jesus Christ, who established a New Covenant concomitant with a new means of international kingdom advancement-without-empire.

Jesus’ kingdom doesn’t advance like military tanks but like mustard seeds, and it’s always worth a reminder that we are under the New Covenant, and we can read all about what God is doing under the New Covenant through his body by the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. There’s even instructions for us to join! So if we want to see God act in history, we will look only in those places Jesus specifically associated with his name, where we will witness him act and become his witnesses.

In my reading of the New Testament, I’m led to this conclusion: Go to church. Be the church, the body. You (y’all, rather) are the body of Christ, the temple of God’s action, the living stones of the Spirit, being built up and building up the body of Christ until he returns (Eph. 4). until then, don’t attach Christ’s name where he hasn’t. Trust that God makes kingdoms rise and fall—“He changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings” (Dan. 2:21), from Nebuchadnezzar to Nero to Biden to Trump—pray for your leaders, and leave the rest to God and mystery. Anything else is presumptuous blasphemy. Anything else is taking the Lord’s name in vain. I really believe that. I really believe God is calling the evangelical church to repentance over all this reckless and perhaps demonic rhetoric. I hope I’m wrong. I hope I’m just being overly “pious” and paranoid on this particular issue, but I think I’m just being biblical.