There are still some fellow citizens who insist on telling me and others that we are going to hell because of our support for Mr. Trump, the GOP presumptive nominee. In their judgmental ‘Christian’ estimation, Trump is not worthy of their holier- than- thou vote.

These are the same Christians who like on the Titanic, furiously scrambled as the ship was sinking into the depths of its ocean grave and who listened as the orchestra played ‘Nearer My God To Thee’ while they awaited their imminent death.

This week in New York City, an estimated 1,000 Evangelical leaders made a pilgrimage to the Marriott hotel in Times Square to meet with Trump to decide whether they should support him in his bid for the presidency. After removing the plank from their eyes (Mathew 7:3), most were able to discern that Trump shares many key conservative stances with them and according to Tim Wildmon, President of the American Family Association, several people he met who have known Donald Trump personally for several years said he is not the brash, arrogant, sometimes rude person he appears to be on television. “I will say without the media cameras in his face, he was pleasant, relaxed, funny and more thoughtful.”

Trump is not a Saint, nor does he profess or aspire to become one; there are Saints, there are sinners, there are the weak and the strong, and there are those chosen by God to rise above the multitude to help fulfill His Divine purpose and mysterious plan. As every Christian knows, God changes times and seasons; he deposes kings and raises up others and gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. (Daniel 2:21) It is during this chaotic, fragile time in American history, that God has chosen to raise up Donald Trump to be his appointed avenger and warrior.

However, in recent months the clergy, who are servants of God, have rebuked God’s chosen combatant, Donald Trump, because he hails from a more secular world and they would prefer a candidate who can deliver a stronger moral message from the oval office. Well Hallelujah, but isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?

Where have the clergy been for the past few decades? Will America continue down the slippery slope of sin because a president is not able to rattle off scripture? No! America is in moral decline because many members of the clergy have been negligent in their duty to spiritually feed their flocks and teach them that someday God will hold them accountable for their actions…or lack of!

Right now, every pulpit across America should be bursting with fire and brimstone sermons meant to awaken and energize the populace, but that is not happening! Instead of being fiery, sermons are indifferent, smothered by the fear of losing tax exempt status, or of losing federal refugee resettlement and grant money that keeps the church coffers filled to the brim!

Jonathan Mayhew, a Congregational minister known for his viewpoints pertaining to the principles of political freedom, preached perhaps the most important sermon in pre-Revolutionary American history, “A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers.”

Mayhew was a proponent of the right to disobey unjust laws and when presented with tyrannical authority, he argued that citizens should resist oppression. According to Mayhew, a tyrannical government was like a father trying to murder his children and must NOT be obeyed!

In the sermon, his central idea was that the Christian duty to submit to governments that govern justly creates a correlative duty to resist and overthrow governments that are tyrannical, since unjust government is the very antithesis of true Christian government!

Mayhew preached that people must use the means “which God has put into their power, for mutual and self-defense,” (the very thought behind the Second Amendment), and it would be highly criminal in them, not to make use of this means! It also would be “stupid tameness, and unaccountable folly… and more rational to suppose that those who did not resist, than they who did, would receive to themselves damnation.”

To Mayhew, resisting a just government was “rebellion” against God, but to resist tyranny was “self-defense,” required by God, because tyranny was not real government…the entire premise for the American Revolution!

Before dying at the age of 46, in his last sermon, “The Snare Broken,” Mayhew likened Americans to birds who had escaped the trap of their British hunters!

It was Mayhew’s opinion that a standing army of soldiers and a standing army of bishops threatened liberty in the same way, by centralizing and monopolizing power. “The Snare Broken” is one of many examples of the way in which pre-revolutionary Americans identified connections between religious rights and other rights, and it is not a coincidence that the constitutional amendment guaranteeing freedom of religion was placed adjacent to the constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to bear arms.

Mayhew warned that Americans would always need to be vigilant about their liberties, for “Power is of a grasping, encroaching nature…power aims at extending itself, and operating according to mere will, wherever it meets with no balance, check, control, or opposition of any kind.”

Mayhew also expounded on the natural law theory of government; “God himself does not govern in an absolute arbitrary and despotic manner. The Power of this almighty King is limited by law—by the eternal laws of truth, wisdom, and equity, and the everlasting tables of right reason.” Because God is no arbitrary tyrant, no human tyranny can comport with his eternal laws. Therefore, “disobedience is not only lawful but glorious” if it is against rulers who “enjoin things that are inconsistent with the demands of God.”

It is time for every Christian to rise up against the current tyrannical government and lay claim to their rightful inheritance; life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, unalienable rights that have been given to all human beings by their creator, God.

It is also time to have faith in God’s plan for America! We must pray that Trump remains safe and receives the gift of Divine providence coupled with the power and position to help make America great once again! May God continue to bless America!

I pray you’ll be our eyes
And watch us where we go
And help us to be wise
In times when we don’t know
Let this be our prayer
When we lose our way
Lead us to a place
Guide us with your Grace
To a place where we’ll be safe
La luce che tu dai…