Trump Triumphs!

I’d like to see Trump be the first Pres. to face impeachment procedings on his first day of office.

For what?

[Larry]

I’d like to see Trump be the first Pres. to face impeachment procedings on his first day of office.

For what?

I am guessing that Aaron would say that impeachment should come for the way he ran his campaign and the general reckless way he runs his life. As I noted above, there really isn’t anything, Constitutionally speaking, that would prevent that.

But that said, practically speaking, it would be electoral suicide. Trump won in great part because he persuaded working class whites to vote for him, and then to throw him out without a serious offense while he’s in office would more or less say “let’s give Congress to the Democrats.” I’m no fan of Trump’s antics, but he’s won fair and square (as fair & square as it gets this cycle I guess), and we should at least give him a chance to prove us (especially me) wrong.

Bob Jones, Jr., has been dead for years. Bob Jones III has been retired for years. Bob Jones IV disappeared years ago. Stephen Jones retired a couple of years ago because of poor health. Who are you talking about? You don’t come across as being very knowledgeable about Bob Jones University.

That may be the case. Now I’m the one who is not knowledgeable, because I hadn’t heard of this endorsement, but that certainly doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. However, I’ve never considered Stephen Jones to be particularly political. I’ll have to ask around to see if someone else knows.

A question please.

My concern about Trump is that he has access to the nuclear codes. How much of a real threat is your president-elect in plunging us all into WW3?

In Australia we value our defence alliance with the US:)

I’m stunned that Trump won.

I’m even more stunned that people - Evangelicals AND Fundamentalists - keep portraying Trump as a defender of all things Christian and as God’s tool to ‘save the country’. I’m appalled at how many think that ‘holding their nose’ to nominate and elect a known adulterer/whoremonger who has built his life and empire on greed and covetousness is ‘the right man’ for those who identify with the sinless Son of God.

God’s mission has nothing to do with saving America and everything to do with the gospel. Let’s keep our eye on the real goal here. Even if Trump were able to overturn all the laws regarding abortion, nominate 9 iron-clad conservative SCOTUS justices, enshrine ironclad religious liberty protections in law, enact term limits and a national balanced budget, etc….none of that has anything to do with preaching Christ crucified and glorified, or making disciples. Would those things make it easier? Sure. But all of it could be undone in four years by a Democratic POTUS (if elected in 2020), and it might, actually, make us lazier and more complacent.

I continue to fear that we have sold our mission and calling for a bowl of soup at the earthly powerbroker’s table…and we’re so excited about it. The highlight of a Clinton victory is that the stranglehold that this nation has on its’ evangelical and fundamentalist voters might finally be broken. Instead, it’s much stronger than ever.

His point about not ruling out their use has been standard US policy for years. I don’t know if the problem has been resolved. But the US Navy would not confirm or deny if a particular ship had nuclear weapons on board. New Zealand which wanted to be a nuclear free nation would not allow port visits.

[Jim]

Robert Apps wrote:

A question please.

My concern about Trump is that he has access to the nuclear codes. How much of a real threat is your president-elect in plunging us all into WW3?

In Australia we value our defence alliance with the US:)

What’s he’s said about nukes

My initial comments about impeachment may have been unclear. First, I was not entirely serious. It’s impossible to impeach a Pres. on his first day of office. But I am serious that removing him at the earliest possible opportunity—by a fully legal process—is the best case scenario at this point.

My belief is that the application of Romans 13 continues after the process of selecting a leader just as it did before the selection. That is, leaders must be chosen, put in place, and removed from office in compliance with the laws of the land. We do have a mechanism in place in our highest law of the land, the Constitution, for removing persons unfit for office. I probably won’t put much energy into writing about it now because his unfitness is likely to be quite obvious before he is in office for very long. Then again, it was obvious to quite a few of us long before he was nominated. … time will tell.

It is possible that the layers and layers of ossified bureaucracy that conservatives (and libertarians) have long deplored may be our “salvation” (temporal sense only) in this case. That is, the gears, levers, and dead weights of modern government may be sufficiently resistant to change to bring some stability to the whole situation despite the philosophical and methodological void at the top, where a leader ought to be.

Anyway, I’m not advocating lawlessness; I’m advocating due process.

Aaron,

How can you talk of impeachment before the man takes office? Did you ever publicly call for impeachment of President Obama after his eight year track record? If Hillary was elected would you have called for her impeachment based on her felonious behavior as Secretary of State? Seems a bit premature to say the least. I, like you, would love to have Pence as president. Maybe Trump will choose not to run for a second term and open that door. Right now we should pray for Trump’s conversion or at least a massive dose of common grace, and that he will surround himself with good people in his cabinet.

Since my undergrad degree is political science, all of this fascinates me. I stayed up until 3am watching the results. Fascinating. One of the dangers is that Christians might become complacent in our gospel work/emphasis. I suspect that if Clinton had been elected, many would have prayed more & perhaps taken their Christianity more seriously. The danger now is that Christians will breathe a sigh of relief and go back to their typically American pursuit of whatever it is they pursue. All of this of course fits into overall prophecy somehow. 2 Tm 3:1ff still applies. Elected leaders have a tendency to surprise. For example, many conservatives looked with anticipation toward Nixon’s term of office but were surprised at how much he incorporated more liberal policies such as expanding health care, wage & price controls, openness to China, etc. Politics is a tool to try to solve the problems created by our sin nature. But politics can never solve the fundamental problem - our sin nature. Only the gospel can do that. May we use the coming months for greater gospel emphasis while praying for “rulers and all those in authority” (1 Timothy 2:2).

[Aaron Blumer]

My initial comments about impeachment may have been unclear. First, I was not entirely serious. It’s impossible to impeach a Pres. on his first day of office. But I am serious that removing him at the earliest possible opportunity—by a fully legal process—is the best case scenario at this point.

My belief is that the application of Romans 13 continues after the process of selecting a leader just as it did before the selection. That is, leaders must be chosen, put in place, and removed from office in compliance with the laws of the land. We do have a mechanism in place in our highest law of the land, the Constitution, for removing persons unfit for office. I probably won’t put much energy into writing about it now because his unfitness is likely to be quite obvious before he is in office for very long. Then again, it was obvious to quite a few of us long before he was nominated. … time will tell.

It is possible that the layers and layers of ossified bureaucracy that conservatives (and libertarians) have long deplored may be our “salvation” (temporal sense only) in this case. That is, the gears, levers, and dead weights of modern government may be sufficiently resistant to change to bring some stability to the whole situation despite the philosophical and methodological void at the top, where a leader ought to be.

Anyway, I’m not advocating lawlessness; I’m advocating due process.

What you write about may happen, but I honestly hope it doesn’t. If Trump shows himself so unfit that an impeachment process takes over the day-to-day business of running the country, what will that mean for America? I completely agree with you that Pence would be more ideal as the President based on his character, but he didn’t get the nomination, and he didn’t win the election. In a very real sense to those of us who believe in God, Trump is now where God wanted him to be, and our country is where He wanted it to be.

Our pastor’s message last night was on Psalm 146, specifically, “put not your trust in princes.” I believe that now, I believed it when Clinton, Bush, and Obama were elected, and I would believe it if Pence were now the president (or takes over from Trump for whatever reason). I don’t know any Christian who thinks Trump was or is a great moral example, or an ideal candidate in most other ways. I suspect that those who voted him in were either the “angry voter” the commentators were discussing Tuesday night, or they are those who weighed the policies of the top two competitors, held their noses, and voted in a way they thought was less evil (which, by definition, means more good), knowing that a vote for a third-party candidate, while being a good conscience choice for some, was still realistically a throwaway vote (we can discuss how multi-party would work another time).

I’m praying now that God will have mercy on our country, that we will use whatever “reprieve” from overt persecution that might have come to pass if the opposition were elected to further the Church and our mission here on Earth, that we can live our lives quietly in peace and honesty, and that God would use events in Trump’s life to bring him to Himself. That last, while seemingly far off, is not impossible with God, even if we have to discount all the testimonies from “big” men that Trump is already truly a saved man.

I’m still getting a lot of enjoyment from reading the pontificating of the press right now, but I know we are a divided country, and we now have to figure out a way to walk circumspectly in the world, knowing that half of our country now thinks the apocalypse has come. Obama had one of the best speeches of his time in office yesterday. Whether or not he believes it is one thing, but he is right that we have to now move forward together as Americans, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to see the failure of the new pilot of this plane we call America, because we are all on it, and most of us don’t have parachutes to bail out over Canada, even if we wanted to.

[Mike Harding]

I, like you, would love to have Pence as president.

I was just curious, so from Google:

Pence’s church from the mid-1990’s to 2012: http://www.indygrace.org/

And from 2012 to the present: http://www.yourchurch.com/