Emperor-Elect

Mr Trump, while President-Elect of the United Sates, has not ruled out military action in his much publicised plans to secure Greenland as US territory. He cites reasons of national defence, which is odd seeing as America survived two world wars, a cold war, and a major, meticulously planned, multitargeted terrorist attack, all without ownership of that land mass. He has then suggested, apparently with seriousness, that His Majesty’s Commonwealth realm of Canada becomes the 51st US state. Even in the aftermath of that most sinister of Canadian Prime Ministers, Mr Trudeau, I doubt many Canadians will cheerily surrender their sovereignty to Washington.

Although Donald Trump appeals to American equivalents of people like me (evangelical Christians of socially conservative views), his apparently imperial objectives seem a little bizarre. Even in the late nineteenth century when colonisation was all the rage, America generally contented itself with a handful of small conquests, such as the Philippines in 1898, while regarding with distaste the Old World’s appetite for gobbling up Africa and Asia. Yet in many world rulers, past and present, the old spirit of Nimrod is manifested. That ‘mighty hunter before the Lord’ (whose quarry was men, I fear, rather than rabbits) set his heart on a human empire, in opposition to God’s preference for nation states. Nimrod disappeared from the historic record, but others, such as Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander, Augustus and their modern heirs, all gleefully expanded their native territories, colonising, consuming and sometimes even combusting the lands of others. Mr Trump, it would appear, is now wishing to add his name to this merry band. In a similar vein, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has labelled Armenia ‘a fascist state’, which is invariably a precursor for an offensive engagement or full scale invasion.

There is only One to whom all lands belong, all governments should bow and all sovereignty be yielded. He sits not on Washington’s Capitol, Russia’s Kremlin, London’s Whitehall or New York’s UNO. All nations belong to Him because He made them all, and still gives them air to breathe and food to eat. Christ Jesus is coming as Conquering King and Victorious Potentate, dealing once and for all with the godless states and petty autocrats of human civilization.

So be it, Lord! Thy throne shall never,
like earth’s proud empires, pass away;
Thy kingdom stands and grows forever
until there dawns Thy glorious day.

-John Ellerton, 1870

Image by Pascal from Pixabay