Over the weekend a twenty-year-old man perched on top of a building with a semi-automatic assault rifle attempted to assassinate ex-president Donald Trump. The shooter failed in his attempt, grazing Trump’s ear, wounding one bystander, and killing another.
Evangelicals, who are largely members of the MAGA cult, believe Trump was chosen by God to be the forty-seventh president of the United States. Worse, many Evangelicals think Trump won the 2020 presidential election; that Democrats stole the election. Eight out of ten voting white Evangelicals voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, and recent polls suggest that they will vote for him again in November. No matter how many pussies he grabbed, how many women he sexually assaulted, or how many crimes he committed, Evangelicals are convinced that Trump is God’s man for such a time as this. As a result, Evangelicals see God’s providence in keeping a bullet from killing Trump. Evidently, God’s providence didn’t apply to the fireman, a family man, killed at the rally. All Evangelicals seem to care about is their cult leader.
God, of course, did not protect Trump’s life. Trump is alive for one reason and one reason alone; the shooter missed. The fireman is dead for one reason and one reason alone: the shooter didn’t miss. Trump was lucky. Sadly, the fireman was not.
“God protected Trump” is a faith claim, for which Evangelicals cannot provide a shred of evidence. If you believe in a hands-on personal deity who numbers the hairs on our heads and is the giver and taker of life, it stands to reason you believe God providentially kept Trump from having a permanent headache. However, until Evangelicals provide evidence for the existence of God, I am going to say that Trump is one lucky son-of-a-bitch.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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(SLAP SLAP) yea he did.
And there’s more proof for the death burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ than there is for napoleon defeat at Waterloo.
President Trump is bringing hell with him in November. Wish all the liberal baby killing trash could be shipped to a deserted island.
Really? We know exactly where to find the body of Napoleon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon%27s_tomb Can you provide the same evidence for Jesus? Of course not.
Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. Ephesians 4:29
Well buddy boy if you would allow Christ to remove Satan’s blinders from your eyes and back away from the table in the process and do research you will find that it is evidently true.
But because you have made the choice to reject him. No amount of evidence will ever convince you or any other Anti-theist.
And I don’t care if you preached with George Whitfield or DL Moody it is more than evident you never truly accepted him.
In other words, you can’t provide evidence for your claim. You are just a parrot repeating what someone has taught you to say. You have yet to engage in an honest, thoughtful discussion on this site. Worse, you post violent, pornographic, scat-filled comments, revealing you know nothing about true faith in Christ. You are a vile religious fanatic who relishes attacking people and posting awful comments. Your behavior causes harm to the faith you say you hold dear.
Revival Fires, engage in honest discussion or I am ending your commenting privileges on this site.
George Whitfield!
Now that’s a blast from the past.
Whitfield was a true-blue, bona-fide believer, totally sold out for the Lord.
Nobody could possibly question his faith.
And yet this (Wikipedia):
Whitefield was a plantation owner and slaveholder and viewed the work of slaves as essential for funding his orphanage’s operations. Whitefield was at first conflicted about slaves. He believed that they were human and was angered that they were treated as “subordinate creatures”.[35] Nevertheless, Whitefield and his friend James Habersham played an important role in the reintroduction of slavery to Georgia.[36] Slavery had been outlawed in the young colony of Georgia in 1735. In 1747, Whitefield attributed the financial woes of his Bethesda Orphanage to Georgia’s prohibition of black people in the colony.[34] He argued that “the constitution of that colony [Georgia] is very bad, and it is impossible for the inhabitants to subsist” while blacks were banned.[30]
Look who’s talking !! You never acted like a Christian on this site yourself…… you are just NOT qualified to assess whether or not Bruce accepted Jesus. Christians do comment from time to time, and people like you make them ashamed to claim the term,”Christian !” They have SAID so. Trump : The kid, Crooks, had an AR-15, but used a deer rifle to zing Trumps’ ear- I doubt he intended to actually kill the man, or he’d have used the other weapon and wiped everyone on the platform there out. Including the carrot. Being shot at looks like a form of “martyrdom.” As many Southern conservatives have said, this was a boost for both votes and sympathy. Crooks could have even decided to use his marginal life to sacrifice himself, knowing it would draw snipers to him, but it was worth the effort. Fanatics in the Old World do this often. You do it for your leader, for whom you are devoted to. He’s now in the “Oswald” category, and what made me and others suspect this all, is because the better weapon was not used. It was a cause to live and die for….
And his Tomb is EMPTY. 🙂
This is a claim. Please provide evidence for your claim. If you can’t, I have no reason to believe you.
RF, the Romans didn’t let friends and family have the bodies of crucifixion victims unless they were very well connected to someone in authority. There’s only one recorded instance of this happening, and the person making the plea was on very good terms with the local governor (who granted the request).
Jesus was essentially a troublemaking nobody whose only connections were to a seditious group plotting the overthrow of the Romans. The Romans definitely wouldn’t have handed the body over; they would have left it up for weeks until it was rotten and thoroughly picked over by scavengers, as a warning to other troublemakers, and then they would have burned it and dumped the remains into a mass grave.
If there ever was an empty tomb, it was empty because it hadn’t been used.
There’s a tradition of painting Pontius Pilate as a good guy, the decent governor of the province who saw Jesus as innocent and made every attempt to free him, but was stymied by the nasty Jews. Of course this fits in with the Christian agenda of fitting up the Jews as the true murderers of Jesus, and yet nothing could be further from the truth. Pilate was ruthless and was considered extreme even by his Roman overlords. Jesus was executed because he was leader of a faction that threatened Roman rule in the area and it was important he be made an example. His body would have been left on the execution scaffolding for days as a warning to others, then thrown into a mass pit. His body would not have been released to anyone for burial, and the anonymity of Joseph of Arimathea suggests strongly that this was an entirely imaginary character. The only reason some tomb somewhere (nobody even agrees as to the location of the purported tomb) might have been empty (of Jesus anyhow) is that his remains (after the crows had their fill), were never there.
Not any more.
It is now being used as a Starbucks.
Based on faith in a contradictory two-thousand-year-old book? Faith without proof don’t get it.
“Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.’” Assuming for the sake of argument that such a scene took place, Thomas didn’t have to exercise believing faith. The proof was standing right there in front of him.
Show people that kind of concrete evidence, and they’ll flood the churches. Until then, it’s all smoke and mirrors.
No one is saying that his tomb wasn’t empty …. so what does the boy, Crooks have to do with this statement about Jesus’ tomb ??
Regarding Trump being a lucky sonofabitch? Yes, he got lucky not having his head blown off, but, (with apologies to his mamma) it’s well established he’s been a sonofabitch for a very long time.
Christians seem to believe in a god who is not really that powerful or is pretty twisted. You have to wonder about an omnipotent being who uses a firefighter’s head as a shield rather than causing a gun to jam. Kind of like when he wipes out a plane load of passengers so one person can miraculously walk away unscathed. As long as the miracle fits your scenario I guess you can set the bar pretty low.
Bruce –
Where are our hell fire and brimstone Evangelicals when it comes to pointing out this was a “head wound”?
You know where I am going with this. Had that been Biden on the receiving end, how many million “Anti-Christ”
threads, posts and confirmations would there be floating around among our friendly Evangelicals?
Was the first thing I thought of Jeff re: head wound.
Bruce,
I tend to agree with most of the article with one minor exception… You wrote:
“The fireman is dead for one reason and one reason alone: the shooter didn’t miss.”
I disagree because the shooter did miss Trump and hit the firefighter instead. I also don’t believe God saved Trump because Trump appears to me not to be a Godly man… He only gives it lip service to get voters. He doesn’t care about common people any more than the idiot in the White House does.
Our voting choices… Biden (no way)… Trump (can’t stand)… Kennedy (a wasted vote)… We’re screwed.
BTW… What happened to the Dems plan of no more old white guys???
Wow Bruce, some terrible comments on an extremely reasonable post. I know you’re used to it, but how do you deal with these weirdos?
On the subject of divine intervention for Trump, I am always gobsmacked by the “god saved so and so” claims because they throw to the side the billions of people who have undergone some pretty horrific suffering. Many of these people were objectively superior to Trump (who isn’t?) because their entire life’s project wasn’t to deceive, cheat and gain power over others. People who, if you were going to add up good deeds or faith, deserved god’s protection, but happened to live in a time or place where clearly this mysterious god figure couldn’t care less. And of course in this case, an innocent man in the crowd died because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and no one in the GOP seems to care.
Also, the superstitions of religion don’t belong anywhere near our government. No one should even be allowed to call on “god” in public service, but that’s just my fantasy world in which people function through reason and reality.
The more avaricious and corrupt a person, institution or regime is, the more they/it —and whoever follows them/it—needs God’s protection.
So of course the Evangelical/MAGA God saved their king. (snark)
Trump got lucky. The shooter missed – maybe Trump moved a fraction of an inch or whatever. In any case, 2 other people were wounded and another died. If that’s God intervening, he sure did a shitty job by letting 2 people be hurt and one killed. You’d think an omnipotent deity could do better. Maybe he’s getting sloppy, or careless, or something….
Revival Fires is a vindictive SOB, isn’t he? He should go slither back under his rock or into his swamp…..
Yes. RF needs to return to his mom’s basement again. The machine gun would have taken everyone on stage ouit. But, Crooks chose not to use it, and he was an experienced hunter, a good shot. I think he only intended to scare people, yet draw LE to his perch, to be taken out himself. This WAS a gift to the MAGA camp, no doubt about it ! We may yet find out this was the intent all along.