Prophetic Update: Donald Trump Delivers “Broadside to separation of church and state”.

The American Civil Liberties Union’s executive director Anthony Romero charged Trump’s action of removing the restriction for churches to endorse political candidates from the pulpit as undoing the separation between church and state. “The actions taken today are a broadside to our country’s long-standing commitment to the separation of church and state,” the statement said. “Whether by executive order or through backroom deals, it’s clear that the Trump administration and congressional leadership are using religion as a wedge to further divide the country and permit discrimination.”

America was established on the principles of separation of church and state. It was not to be built upon oppression, and the U.S.A. was formed largely from the mass exodus out of Papal Europe, where the blood of Bible-believing Christians was shed for over 1000 years. Now, the United States has taken a prophetic step towards patterning after the Papal European model of government. The executive powers of the president of the United States permits him to sign into effect laws binding on the citizens of the United States. Recently, he signed an executive order that took the restraints from the churches advocating and endorsing politics from the pulpit. The United States in prophecy is described as a lamb-like beast (Rev. 13:12), but that it exercises all the power of that beast which came before it. Namely, the power over every tongue, tribe, and people. Church and state power.

Now the Evangelical Protestant churches are uniting, coveting that power and place in America. They have declared themselves to be a prophetic voice of the conscience over America. It is becoming common for the emboldened Evangelical Protestants to call the leaders of America to account. But President Donald Trump is arguably the overtly pro-Evangelical ever to sit in the Executive office, the White House. Trump is so strikingly following the pattern of Constantine, the first pro-Catholic Emperor, it is a sign of the times.

“All the power” of Papal Europe will be exercised in the shores of America. Therefore all the steps by which she came to power must follow. Let us not forget Trump’s promise to Evangelicals on the Campaign trial: “there is nothing the politicians can do to you if you band together. You have too much power. But the Christians don’t use their power,…We have to strengthen …we are getting less and less and less powerful in terms of a religion, and in terms of a force…I’ll tell you one thing: I get elected president…Christianity will have power…Because if I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power. You don’t need anybody else. You’re going to have somebody representing you very, very well. Remember that…”

Trump has made a significant step towards this promise in the signing of the executive order releasing the restrictions of the churches from affiliating more closely with the realm of politics. Like Constantine of old, who ensured tax-exemption to the churches, but also a place of prominence in the Catholics, Trump has promised the churches to keep their tax-exempt status, while using their voice to influence from their congregations, schools, and organizations to have presidents that represent them on the world stage; judges which interpret the Constitution and frame the law according to their ideas; and to overtake the lawmakers in Congress. Now, the churches have become increasingly bold and are proclaiming the gospel of politics and it’s power, instead of the gospel and it’s power. With this restraint removed, this gospel is rapidly exerting it’s influence among the Evangelical majority in the United States, which will be felt on the turning of the tide of religious liberty in the days to come.