Hi,
Before we get into Hayden Donnell’s new column about how yes, Donald Trump is definitely the Antichrist, I wanted to touch on something feral that happened in New Zealand last week.
Members of Destiny Church pushed and punched their way into an Auckland library, apparently angry it was part of Pride Week. About 50 church members dressed in black barged into the library, leaving a 16-year-old girl concussed.
Destiny Church runs on hatred — and are largely encouraged to do so, given tax-free status by the government due to their religious status.
Destiny’s leader Brian Tamaki says he gave the order: “I want you to storm the library they’re in and shut it down.”
Back in 2018 — David Seymour (leader of ACT, who are currently part of a coalition of parties who lead New Zealand) publicly said Brian Tamaki was, “a good man who makes a lot of difference.”
And despite the New Zealand government banning gang patches, Destiny Church is very much allowed to wear theirs.
Petitions like this one to remove the cult’s tax-free status are encouraging, with 76,042 signatures and counting. There is also this parliamentary petition, less viral with 8,598. While this is all encouraging, this feral church has been reported on for years (here I am rambling on about it back in 2020) with very little change.
Fighting with librarians sounds like a fucking joke, which is exactly what Destiny is. Unfortunately, they are much more than that: They’re a hate group. And they’re not subtle about it.
Of course Brian Tamaki looks up to another “Christian” leader that loves encouraging their followers to mindlessly and violently storm buildings — which brings us to Hayden’s compelling argument about Trump’s true nature.
In case your eyes are tired, I recorded this story as a short podcast so you can listen as well.
See you in the comments,
David.
I’ve Seen Enough: Donald Trump is the Antichrist
It’s time to admit the Christians were right all along. The prophecies are coming to pass.
by Hayden Donnell
I spent most of my early 20s whining about how God doesn’t exist. The faith I’d held was crumbling, and being replaced in my mind by a huge deposit of angst. I made whole albums bemoaning the newly empty sky; the sudden void where heaven, hope, and meaning used to be. “Wah wah wah,” I moaned. “You only get one call but there’s no telephone.”
It’s been 15 years since then, and I’m pleased to admit in light of recent events, I may have overreacted. The Bible I once nitpicked over its stances on shellfish and whether it’s okay to have kids eaten by bears if they hassle you for being bald is making a huge comeback. It may not be perfect on the issue of killing every firstborn son in Egypt but it’s hard to get mad when its ancient texts are laying out our current situation with an accuracy so eerie it would make Nostradamus shart in jealousy. I’m talking, of course, about how Donald Trump is clearly, irrefutably the Antichrist as described in the prophetic Biblical books of Daniel and Revelation.
The Antichrist, for those not familiar, is the person who, according to Biblical prophecy, will set themselves up as a false messiah ahead of the second coming of Jesus. Christians have been anticipating the guy for decades. Whole industries have sprung up around scaring people into prepping for his arrival. Timothy LaHaye’s fictional Left Behind series was distributed to every Evangelical home in the ‘00s as an instruction manual on what to expect in the next two to five business days. Right now we’re massacring Palestinian children in part because Evangelicals believe war in Israel is part of the full End Times extravaganza laid out in Revelation. They’ve even dissected Biblical texts into equidistant letters in an effort to find more Antichrist factoids.
Despite that, Christians have somehow missed their big bad actually arriving on a golden chariot of fulfilled prophecy. Start with the most famous: Revelation 13:16-17 describes people having to take the mark of the beast upon their forehead to display allegiance to the Antichrist.
The verse goes on to say people won’t be able to buy or sell goods if they’re not emblazoned with the mark of the beast. Coincidentally, Elon Musk owns an app he hopes will supplant the banking system and is currently taking control of the federal government’s payment systems.
That’s not even the only fulfilled prophecy from this chapter of the Bible. Revelation 13:3 says the beast will be wounded in one of its heads, as if to death, and be healed. Many Christians have interpreted that as meaning the modern day Antichrist will be shot in the head and recover.
Revelation 13:4 prophecies that after the shooting, the beast’s followers will ask “who is like unto the beast?”. They will worship his power, saying no-one will be able to make war with him.
The evidence is overwhelming. Daniel 11:36-39 paints a vivid portrait of the Antichrist, saying he will be a man with a big mouth who exalts himself above all others. This leader will serve no gods beyond his own ego. He’ll promote only his admirers, dividing the kingdom between them.
In other news, Donald Trump, a self-promoting billionaire who shows no sign of having a spiritual practice, has granted Elon Musk a compelling package of 100% power and 0% accountability and recently put a Fox News host in charge of the world’s most powerful military.
2 Thessalonians: 2 is also widely interpreted as being about the Antichrist. It focuses on what Christians have called the “man of lawlessness” who will subvert the church into his own cult.
Another common title for the man of lawlessness is the “man of insurrection”.
Yea my brethren, take heed. The signs are all here. I’m not the only one to see them. In an earlier Webworm column, Josh Drummond joined some of these same dots. The prominent publication Baptist News has put pieces of the puzzle together. A recent correspondent to The Spinoff’s advice column ‘Help Me Hera’ worries Musk is the Antichrist, and the rapture is nigh.
Most of these people keep their theories at an arm’s length. Drummond says he’s “having fun”. Baptist News columnist David Bumgardner says he’s “not a dispensationalist” and doesn’t subscribe to LaHaye’s End Times theology. Lindsay Bird urges her correspondent not to worry because Musk and Trump are too pathetic and dweebish to occupy the same leagues as Satan.
Had The Spinoff’s correspondent written to ‘Help Me Hayden’, I would have told them to keep worrying and engage in some heavy duty Hail Marys because they’re absolutely correct. If recent events have taught us anything, it’s that being an irredeemable moron with a repellant personality and the countenance of a salamander wearing human skin is, if anything, an asset when it comes to inflicting misery on a global scale. To the theologians I’d ask what makes more sense: that the weird monks and locust-munching prophets who wrote the Bible coincidentally predicted the Trump presidency or that God wrote it like the pottery ghost in the movie Ghost?
It’s obviously the latter, and we all owe the evangelicals an apology. The agnostics like me were wrong. The atheists, as they always suspected, were complete idiots. The Antichrist is here, and he’s wearing fake tan. Isn’t that good news? Revelation 14 describes what will happen next. Jesus will return to usher in the new kingdom. The beast will be thrown into the lake of fire. Meanwhile, those who wore his mark upon their forehead will “drink the wine of the Lord’s fury”.
“They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. The smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever. There will be no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image, or for anyone who receives the mark of its name,” says The Holy Bible. Not ideal, but fair’s fair. Maybe hide your MAGA hat if you see the skies parting.
-Hayden Donnell
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