The Antichrist and Trump

One of the things I see on Facebook feeds coming from leftists - both those I know and those I don't - is a sense of incredulity that people can call themselves Christian and keep supporting Trump, a man who admittedly has had multiple affairs, apparently paid for sex with porn stars, imprisons children in cages, mocks those with physical differences from him, and seems to call for his followers to murder journalists.

Unfortunately, having come from a right-wing evangelical upbringing, I understand all too well.

Our chief concern, when I was a part of that ideology, was that nations were trying to bring about Armageddon.

We believed that things such as the nationalization of services and identification (e.g. Social Security and the REAL ID Act) were tools that would give the Antichrist the ability to track and control us as predicted by certain interpretations of Revelation.  Specifically:

The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.  It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.

This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666. (Revelation 13:15-18)

They believe that a national ID and nationalized services are the tools by which an antichrist could prevent people from making purchases.  Imagine if cash was done away with (as seems to be happening in many places), so that you were required to carry a credit or debit card to access your money.  In such a case, all transactions could be forced to go through a federal database, and such a database could approve or decline transactions based on criteria other than whether or not the owner of the card had money in an account.  Basically, they believe the antichrist would achieve power by starving people into submission.

Furthermore, they also believe that Europe is heavily involved in bringing this about, based on other interpretations of Revelation:

The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. (Revelation 13:1)

The "ten horns ... with ten crowns" they believe are European countries (I'll come to more of why in a moment) or possibly a combination of European and American.  NATO plays into this for Evangelicals in that it is an organization already combining European and American nations in mutually-binding agreements.  There are, of course, many more nations than 10 in NATO, but they look instead to the largest countries of NATO, which are (statistically):

1. The United States
2. Germany
3. Turkey
4. France
5. The UK
6. Italy
7. Spain
8. Poland
9. Canada
10. Romania

Sometimes they group up all the Scandinavian countries together instead of worrying about Romania.

These countries are European countries for a few reasons.  #1: Because they've got a notion that only the most technologically advanced countries could achieve the whole 666 tracking thing I mentioned above, and #2: Because they interpret Revelations 16 (quoted below) as saying that there will be a great war between the armies of the East and the armies of the West (that is, NATO vs China/Russia/Communism) at Armageddon:

The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East. (Rev. 16:12)

Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon. (Rev. 16:16)

Euphrates was mentioned earlier during a scene that might be war:

The sixth angel sounded his trumpet, and I heard a voice coming from the four horns of the golden altar that is before God.  It said to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.”  And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind.  The number of the mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand. I heard their number.

The horses and riders I saw in my vision looked like this: Their breastplates were fiery red, dark blue, and yellow as sulfur. The heads of the horses resembled the heads of lions, and out of their mouths came fire, smoke and sulfur.  A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths.  The power of the horses was in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails were like snakes, having heads with which they inflict injury. (Rev. 9:13-19)

So... yeah.  

As you can imagine, Evangelicals fear the European Union was a step even further in the direction of reaching the "ten crowns."   They feared the US joining the EU, and cheered for Brexit to hopefully stop it somehow.

So when Trump goes to Europe, goes to NATO meetings, and lambasts Angela Merkel and others, the Evangelicals who make up his base cheer and believe that he is doing God's work.  He is actively trying to break up NATO and prevent the coming of the apocalypse for a little while longer; or, if not delaying the coming of the apocalypse, then perhaps preventing the US from being one of the ten crowns.