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Trump’s ‘Praise… Allah’ Jab at Iranian Regime Draws Parallels to Elijah in 1 Kings

So, a quick recap for those of you who spent Easter weekend away from social media: President Donald Trump had quite the viral holiday.

First, on Saturday, there were totally unconfirmed rumors that Trump was ill or dying in Walter Reed Medical Center despite no actual evidence of this. Left-bubble social media was in a fury: We need proof that the president is active and vigorous!

Then on Sunday, the president threatened Iran with an “f-bomb” post on Truth Social, by saying that if the Straits of Hormuz weren’t open by Tuesday, it was open season on power plants and other infrastructure, including a mocking “Praise be to Allah” in the message.

Left-bubble social media was in a fury, again: The president was active and vigorous, too much so, and is clearly crazy. It’s time for the 25th Amendment!

Apparently, on a holiday celebrating the resurrection of central figure of the Bible, leftists were admitting they’ve never read anything more in the Good Book than “judge not.” But we’ll get to that in a second.

Here’s the post and the concomitant freakout from the left:

WARNING: The following posts contain vulgar language that some readers will find offensive.

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I’ll be the first to admit that “Open the F***in’ Strait, you crazy b******s, or you’ll be living in Hell” is, y’know … unorthodox.

It’s also pretty darn direct, which is what you need to be when you’re dealing with a country launching random attacks to keep the Middle East and the world hostage so that it can continue to develop both nuclear and conventional weapons that would allow it to keep the Middle East and the world hostage to an even greater extent.

However, that part seemed to get less attention than the words “Praise be to Allah” — especially on Easter Sunday. This struck some as irreligious, or even as unironic praise of Allah, which is proof that they’ve never actually opened a Bible and spent any serious time with it.

One Old Testament incident in particular stands out. As one social media user put it: “And when President Trump says ‘Praise be to Allah,’ he’s doing something very similar to what the prophet Elijah did on Mount Carmel with the prophets of Baal.”

So for those of you Christians not familiar with 1 Kings, specifically 1 Kings 18, here’s a TL;DR version:

During a famine caused by a drought, God tells the prophet Elijah to appear before Ahab, then the king of Israel, who had been hunting him. When they meet, Ahab calls Elijah “you troubler of Israel,” which is quite the accusation to answer for. Elijah, untroubled, tells Ahab that he’s actually the problem, because he’s turned toward worship of other gods — specifically of Baal, a common form of idolatry in the time when 1 Kings was written.

Elijah has a challenge for the priests of Baal: Put your god to the test, and then we’ll put our God to the test. From 1 Kings 18:22-29, with verse 27 in particular bolded:

Then Elijah said to the people, “I, even I only, am left a prophet of the Lord, but Baal’s prophets are 450 men. Let two bulls be given to us, and let them choose one bull for themselves and cut it in pieces and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it. And I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood and put no fire to it. And you call upon the name of your god, and I will call upon the name of the Lord, and the God who answers by fire, he is God.” And all the people answered, “It is well spoken.” Then Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, “Choose for yourselves one bull and prepare it first, for you are many, and call upon the name of your god, but put no fire to it.” And they took the bull that was given them, and they prepared it and called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no voice, and no one answered. And they limped around the altar that they had made. And at noon Elijah mocked them, saying, “Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.” And they cried aloud and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them. And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice. No one answered; no one paid attention.

To return to summation form: Elijah then builds an altar of his own, prepares his bull for sacrifice, and puts wood on the altar. Then he makes the challenge even greater by having water poured all over the bull, the wood and even filling a trench around the altar.

Then he calls upon God to do what the priests of Baal couldn’t — and the results don’t take long:

“Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.”

Elijah then orders the prophets of Baal seized and slaughtered, at which time it begins to rain and the famine ends.

Unorthodox? Yes! Effective? Yes! And much more explicitly sanguinary, by the way, than what Trump is threatening here. (But not as bloody as what the Iranians are doing to their own people by the tens of thousands, it’s worth noting, for daring to protest the regime.)

In other words: Allah ain’t gonna save you, no matter how hard the theocratic despotism theocratically despotizes its people and the people of the world.

Others noted that those having a cow over this needed to read their Bible (and/or the president’s official Easter statement):

What’s impressive, though, is the left’s social media pivot on Easter weekend.

Saturday: “I’m going to post that the president is sick and dying, even though I don’t know anything about his condition.” Sunday: “I’m going to post that the president is alive but a heretic, even though I don’t know anything about the Bible.”

That’s at least a kind of consistency, I suppose. A consistency of being wrong.

C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.

C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).

Birthplace

Morristown, New Jersey

Education

Catholic University of America

Languages Spoken

English, Spanish

Topics of Expertise

American Politics, World Politics, Culture

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