The far-right outlet WorldNetDaily published a column today by author Jerry Kaifetz titled “God has a History of Using Men Like Trump,” in which Kaifetz argues that God may be using Donald Trump to save America from total collapse just as he used King Ahasuerus to stop a plot by Haman to exterminate the Jews.
Kaifetz writes that conservative Christians should act like Esther, who according to biblical accounts married Ahasuerus even though he was not Jewish but whose marriage to the king enabled her to thwart Haman’s plans, and rally behind Trump despite the fact many find him morally repugnant.
“I don’t know how I could more clearly see Donald Trump represented in the person of King Ahasuerus, with Esther, of course, being America’s conservative voters,” Kaifetz says.
“I urge Christians to understand that Donald Trump is a modern-day King Ahasuerus,” he writes. “He is the captain who can keep the USS Titanic off the iceberg. Let’s worry about his Christian pedigree when our ship finds safer waters to ply.”
My mind then goes to the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. It is here that I find a singular character whom God saw fit to ally with His people not because of his understanding of the holy, but because the issue that towered above all others was the national, cultural and physical survival of the nation of Israel. That man was King Ahasuerus from the Book of Esther.
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Now I can just imagine the outrage among some elements of the Jewish world when a Jewish girl is advised to marry a heathen king. “He is not even a Jew!” were shouts that surely echoed throughout the empire. Some of the more practically minded Jews surely responded by saying, “Listen, you schmucks! Nobody is going to be Jewish if Haman has his way and now we have the chance to get some real influence in the palace in Shushan.” Perhaps this pitted the “true Jews” against the “Jinos,” Jews in name only. Perhaps the followers of Mordecai told the Jewish purists that it was time to “Make Judaism great again.”
I don’t know how I could more clearly see Donald Trump represented in the person of King Ahasuerus, with Esther, of course, being America’s conservative voters. Just as back in the Persian Empire, survival was the only issue that counted in forging alliances when the likes of Haman was plotting genocide against the entire Jewish race. Sound familiar? Haman was a descendant of King Agag, a Jew hater in the classic form that seems to periodically emerge in the pages of world history only to be relegated by fate to irrelevancy, defeat and obscurity while the Jews have continued to prosper for 5,000 years.
In the end, the Book of Esther is a look into the practical mind of God, and His spokesman Mordecai. Mordecai understood one thing: The survival of the nation was at stake, and its enemies had made the threat of genocide and were fully capable carrying out that threat. Mordecai knew that avoiding that fate trumped (please pardon the pun) the insistence on prohibiting a Jewish girl from marrying a non-Jew. How much would that matter if Judaism were wiped from the face of the earth?
Today, I urge Christians to understand that Donald Trump is a modern-day King Ahasuerus. He is the captain who can keep the USS Titanic off the iceberg. Let’s worry about his Christian pedigree when our ship finds safer waters to ply. Let’s not strain at gnats and swallow a camel.
