Who’s crying now?

Last week I tore a Trump bumper sticker off a fleet car that I had picked up for work. The bumper sticker read: “Trump 2020 — make liberals cry again!” (The paper’s editorial board endorsed him for president.)

I thus note, with some irony, just how many people are crying now that he lost that election — and I don’t feel sorry for them. Not one bit. Not only are they crying but they’re also raging, many making the baseless (as it turns out) charge that the election was “stolen,” echoing their fearful leader.

Because if your only or primary purpose in engaging in an election is to humiliate your opponents, you have no business being in power. Folks understand that, which is why he engendered so much hatred — enough to cause those hated liberals to organize against him, beginning in 2018.

And this is what Trump supporters simply don’t care to understand, which is why they’re complaining, essentially, “We wuz robbed!” No, they weren’t. They tend not to talk or listen to anyone else and thus have no idea how much his policies, let alone his attitude, hurt others.

Some people are saying that Trump critics should reconcile with Trump supporters so that we can have a “United States of America” again. I don’t favor that because we’re still dealing with sore losers who see anyone who disagrees with them as an enemy — which is why we’re in this pickle to begin with. Many of these same folks made largely baseless claims about Bill Clinton, wanting him taken out for far less than Trump has admitted to, and hating Barack Obama without cause.

Should the legal challenges to the election stand, and I expect them to, and Joe Biden becomes president in January Trump and his supporters will still be crying. Frankly, they brought that upon themselves; as Jesus Himself said, “The measure you give will be the measure you get back” (Luke 6:38).

False prophets, false prophecies and false prophecy

Probably the biggest earthquake with last week’s election of Joe Biden as president surrounded those in the Christian realm who confidently predicted a landslide by Donald Trump, who they were convinced was God’s “anointed.” When it became clear that he was falling behind in the polls, likely thousands of Trump-supporting Christians fell to their knees in prayer and Paula White, a member of his religious advisory team whom he had known for a decade, called on spirits from Africa and South America to intervene. Indeed, the night after the election several red-hatted believers were spotted praying on the steps of the courthouse in Clark County, Nev. (where Las Vegas, one of the swing regions, is located and votes were being counted).

What that instead resulted in was an embarrassment to the Body of Christ in America, especially since many are still in denial about the outcome.

The first thing to understand about “prophecy” is that it is not “fortune-telling” or “soothsaying” — it’s about declaring the heart, mind and intention of Almighty God in a specific situation. For that reason, prophecy can at times be jarring and, depending on the situation, downright insulting, which is why some of the prophets of old met early deaths — they are as likely as any to say, in effect, “You missed the boat.” Basically, if a “prophet” tells you what you long to hear, you should question whether the person is really speaking for God.

More accurately, the true prophet really doesn’t care whether he or she has an audience or not. When I hear about these so-called prophets with huge followings I immediately become suspicious, wondering if they’re giving the people what they want in order to fleece the flock.

Moreover, a lot of these people take Scripture out of context. Some have referred to Trump as a latter-day King Cyrus, the Babylonian king who allowed Israel to return to her land and try to, shall we say, “make Israel great again,” ignoring the fact that she was sent into exile in the first place for disobedience to the Law of God, and showing no repentance anyway for their gossip toward and character assassination of political opponents. Some even denounce the Democratic Party as “of Satan,” which certainly doesn’t help matters because that expresses a certain arrogance and bitterness that shouldn’t exist in their hearts.

Another major issue is Trump’s incompetence when it came to governance. We saw that specifically during the Black Lives Matter protests over the summer and, more importantly, his inadequate response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has by now cost over 200,000 lives — I’m not saying that no one would have died, but most of those deaths could and would have been prevented with stronger measures earlier as well as coordination with state governors. See, in this country, we have presidents, not kings who rule by decree, and just because the president wishes something would just go away doesn’t mean it will. After all, we’re not talking about God here.

As things stand now, even though votes are still being counted (and a manual recount ordered in Georgia, where Biden is ahead), it’s likely that Biden still defeats Trump. And if that be the case, what happens to the prognosticators who clearly failed? It’s not that God has — perhaps He’s elevating Biden to that office for His purposes. Furthermore, hopefully such folks would learn to hear from God rather than project their desires for political and cultural power onto Him, because when you do that you negate the Power of the Holy Spirit.