Is Donald Trump the Man of Lawlessness?

An Antichrist wears a red tie.

When you start to see a reference not once, or even twice, but three times, it might make sense to stop and focus on what’s going on.

In the last month, three different writers have talked about President Donald Trump as the Antichrist, the false messiah. This is a personal issue for me in some sense. There is a lot good about the evangelical culture I grew up in during the late 70s and 80s, but there were also some not-so-good things and one of those was a focus on the end times. I can remember sitting in a church basement watching the 1972 movie A Thief in the Night which talked about the Rapture, the Great Tribulation, and the Antichrist. I can also remember the fear that the movie instilled in 9-year-old Dennis, worried that I might be “left behind” and have to end up facing the tribulation.

And now, nearly 50 years later, we are talking about the Antichrist again, but now, it’s not a movie anymore and more than a few people are talking about it.

Back in March, Jeff Giesea talked about the Antichrist in somewhat secular terms in “The Antichrist Wears a Red Tie.” For Giesea the Antichrist is a figure that seems to be a savior of society, but in reality, is working to undermine society:

Trump, like an Antichrist, mimics the spirit of Western civilization while pulling out its foundation stones, brick by brick. He wraps himself in the language of strength and tradition but leaves chaos and cynicism in his wake. Like a serpent dressed in robes of virtue, he slithers beneath banners of greatness infecting others with the MAGA mind virus. He presents himself as a bulwark against Western decay, as an alpha male with the backbone to deter enemies, yet has a pattern of appeasing Putin and other autocratic flatterers.

I once believed Trump might be a disruptive force who could jolt stale institutions back into relevance. But disruption without strategic vision and moral clarity isn’t renewal — it’s just chaos. Just as the Antichrist denies God and threatens the end of the world, Trump’s inability to look beyond his ego is putting the global order and future of humanity at stake. His transactionalism, absent a broader vision, is not leadership but a sort of sorcery. It is an approach to foreign policy without God or a sense of the good. Some might characterize it as “retail sanity and wholesale madness.”

Trump has taken the vocabulary of the West — strength, sovereignty, identity, civilization — and reduced it to a hollow chant. A simulacra. To my ears, he sounds more and more like a false prophet. A deceiver. One who speaks strong words in front of the Warsaw Uprising Monument but doesn’t abide by his words when push comes to shove, as with Ukraine.

Pastor Richard Beck looks at the “Man of Lawlessness.” This man is found in Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians. Here is the exact passage for reference:

³ Let no one deceive you in any way, for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one^[a] is revealed, the one destined for destruction. ⁴ He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God.

2 Thessalonians 2:3-4

Beck references the Man of Lawlessness talking about the cracks in American democracy and how the President is straining our democratic system.

The January 6th riot and Trump asking Pence to overturn the election. Trump refusing to comply with judicial orders and Vance openly declaring that the executive branch can ignore the courts. But the trigger for me recently was Trump openly talking about various ways to run for a third term…I'm just here to confess that, when Trump started ruminating aloud last week about how "there are methods" for running for a third term, the image of the "man of lawlessness" from 2 Thessalonians popped into my head. Because that's how it starts, it seems to me. That is how the long fuse gets lit.

Susan Bagwell rounds out the Trump as Antichrist writing with probably the most literal take of the bunch. Refusing to even name Trump, she talks about the Man of Lawlessness as a test for Christians, a test that many Christians are failing:

Are we in the time of the apostasy, now? Are we seeing a “falling away” of those who have claimed to be followers of Christ, but who are more closely aligned with the world and all of its adulteries?

I see so many "Christians" rejecting the lessons of Christ [while still claiming to be Christian] to chase after their worst, most flesh-driven impulses. They've rallied around a man who has referred to himself as "God," on more than one occasion and who is treated as a messiah-figure by many professing Christians. The more cruel, destructive and profane he is, the more they adore him and cling to him. There is no amount of pain he can cause that will untether them from their devotion to him. There is no proof of wrongdoing you can lay out for them that they will not excuse, ignore, or deny. He is infallible. He is divine. Loyalty to him, above kin and country, has become their whole identity.

So, what are we to make of all of this? Is Trump the Antichrist, the Man of Lawlessness?

The interesting thing about these references to the Antichrist is how similar they are to those who see the President as some kind of second Hitler. There are tons of references to Dietrich Bonhoeffer or Martin Niemoller, two Lutheran Pastors who resisted the Nazis as a nod to our current times where MAGA and Trump are the new Nazis and the Furher. I’m wary of going down the Trump is Hitler route mostly because I don’t know how it furthers to conversation on how to deal with him and the movement he leads, other than the fact that people get to use the resistance moniker and think they are somehow akin to the French Resistance as they worked to thwart the Nazis.

Another reason that I am wary of calling Trump the Antichrist is that it harkens back to my childhood when some conservative religious figures would look at the news of the day and try to fit into the book of Revelation. I can remember talking about the European Common Market as some nefarious beast and a sign of Christ’s return. There are references somewhere about a bear and I remember people saying this was the then Soviet Union. One could easily say that Hitler was the Antichrist. It’s too easy to look at the current news and try to shoehorn it into the Bible. But Jesus says that no one knows the end of time, so we can’t say with certainty that anything or anyone is a sign of the end times.

But as much as I think the Hitler references are silly, it would be the height of arrogance to dismiss the reference entirely. The appeals to Hitler or Stalin or in this case the Antichrist all point to something rather important: that Donald Trump is one of the most influential political figures. People’s lives are centered around this one man whether we like him or not. Trump and other leaders remind me of the 1989 song “Cult of Personality” by Living Colour. “I exploit you, still you love me, I tell you one and one makes three,” lead singer Corey Glover sings reminding us of the power these men have and how they reshape reality.

I don’t think Trump is Hitler, but he is a figure that millions take seriously. He is someone as Beck notes who is willing to defy the law and find “methods” to skirt the Constitution.

I don’t think Trump is the Antichrist or Man of Lawlessness, but I do think he is an Antichrist or Man of Lawlessness. I am not God and can’t say for sure that the man who is the 47th President is the False Messiah of Scripture, but he does act like many people of history who act like an Antichrist.

I believe from time to time Men of Lawlessness arise and challenge society. The question for today isn’t if Donald Trump is the Man of Lawlessness, but to discern how to respond to someone like Trump who acts like an Antichrist. How do Christians respond to someone who seems to act against the practices of Jesus? Giesea is spot on in talking about the double-tongued nature of his talk, speaking in ways that seem to uphold American values, while undermining them. This trickery of the tongue allowed millions of Christians to see Trump as a man of God when his actions are the exact opposite.

I’m currently reading Karl Barth’s Emergency Homilietic: 1932-1933 A Summons to Prophetic Witness by Angela Dienhart Hancock. I’m still early in the book, but the great Swiss theologian was faced with the rise of the Nazis in Germany where he was teaching and sought to teach students a counter preaching course to Nazi-influenced German Christianity. I don’t share this to say Trump is a Nazi, but to say we are faced with a movement that is challenging American democracy and civics. And the way Barth challenged the Nazis reminds me of one thing that seems to come up in the Bible over and over: “do not fear.”

Not being afraid has never made sense to my autistic brain, especially because fear has been such a part of my life harkening back to seeing A Thief in the Night. But I don’t think that God means that we should never feel fear. We are human, of course, we are going to feel fear. But I think don’t fear means don’t give into fear or to use a modern term: don’t catastrophize.

These are scary times and I do believe we are dealing with an Antichrist who has done terrible things and very well could do things none of us have even thought of yet. That does make one pause; it makes me pause. Like I said earlier, what was just a movie now seems very real.

And yet, God tells us to fear not. I think God tells us this so that we remember that while the Men of Lawlessness might believe they are in charge and can rule by fear and intimidation, they don’t have the final say. We believe in hope. We believe that the rulers of this world, especially the tyrants only last for a time, while God lasts forever. They may rule now, but they won’t forever. They will fall, either by revolution, the law or natural causes. As Christians, we believe Jesus is Lord and that means that Ceasar is not, especially when Ceasar wears a red tie.