Another Trump Revolution in November? Then What?
Oct 18, 2024 by David Fowler
On December 8, 2016, I published a commentary entitled, “Will the Trump Revolution Bring Real Change?” My answer was, “No” unless one thing began to happen. It didn’t, and we got President Biden. If we get “round two” of Trump, will that bring about change? Moreover, what must change to end the cycle between “progressive” and “conservative” leaders? My answer is the same as it was then, and that means a change for me.
My 2016 commentary can be found at this link, and I would encourage you to read it, but what follows will give you the gist of it, and it will be sufficient to explain the change in direction I will soon be taking, and my next prediction.
Back then, after noting that the populist turn to Trump in America was also taking place in Italy, I wrote:
It happened. The U.S. Senate changed to Democratic control, the Republican majority in the U.S. House dwindled to the point of immateriality, and we got Biden.
Now we may swing back to Trump and Republicans might take back the Senate.
But this was my fundamental question at the time and it still is: “Why have none of the political changes in the more conservative direction (as of 2016) brought about any real change?”
Will the Trump Revolution Bring Real Change?
To answer that question, I referenced Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer’s work, Christian Political Action in an Age of Revolution.
Van Prinsterer’s conclusion was that the world, beginning with the French Revolution in 1789, had broken from the preceding 700 plus years of Christian historical development to enter what he called a “revolutionary condition” that could only produce “perpetual revolution.”
This is what I wrote about that point:
This, too, is the prevailing principle in America. And until that principle changes, perhaps we should not expect any real change in America or in Europe. Partisan powers that at root embrace the same principle cannot really arrest the direction in which we’re headed; our momentum cannot therefore be forward, but only back and forth. As van Prinsterer said, “the only antidote for systematic unbelief is faith,” faith in the “God of nature, history, and the Gospel.” (emphasis supplied)
Given that, here is the real question I said at that time needed to be answered if there was to be an end to this revolutionary cycle, which rests on the same revolutionary principle of godlessness espoused by Democrats and now the Republican Party’s new Platform:
Where Did I Look for an Answer to My Question?
For the last eight years, I looked for a responsive answer to my question in the context of the one fundamental human relation over which God has demonstrated perhaps his greatest measure of sovereign authority: marriage and procreation. Why look here for my answer?
First, marriage and procreation are unique in all creation because it was by ensuring the continuation of that relationship that a “seed of a woman” would come to crush the head of the one who had tempted Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:15). That “seed” would also rescue future Adams and future Eves from the relational rivalry that set in when their first ancestors turned away from God.
Second, and preceding the importance of even procreation, there is Adam and Eve as husband and wife. That relationship pictures the whole of human history—the “last Adam,” Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:47), receiving His Eve, the Church, the “Bride of Christ,” but in this marriage not even sin and death can part them (Romans 8:35-39)!
The man-woman marital relationship and its replication through procreation and child-rearing is the bedrock of human history, and, in the Fifth Commandment and its new covenant extension, [1] we learn that it is also the key to cultural stability and sustained prosperity.
What Was My Experience and the Answer I Found?
For the last seven plus years I “preached” the value of that relationship to Christian leaders—pastors, denominational leaders, and heads of Christian legal and policy organizations—and offered a constitutionally viable means by which that relationship could be brought to the foreground of public discussion, a means by which these leaders could “speak the Truth” about this vital relationship to a watching world. It was in the form of the Marital Contract Recording Act and the campaign called God-Given Marriage.
So far, I have found no takers among the Christian leaders in this state or elsewhere. Maybe the needed leadership will need to come from the bottom up, which seems to be God’s pattern, and I was looking for leadership in the wrong places.
My Personal Change in Direction
I pray that leadership comes, but to work toward that end, I’ll be turning over my current post to a successor at the end of the year in the hope that God might thereafter use me to develop that leadership wherever those persons might be and whatever their current station in life.
I look forward with great anticipation to see what God might do among His people over the next four years to that end. The leadership that is needed may be a long time coming, but I know Christ will never abandon His Bride even though her on-going purification in preparation for the marriage feast often results from persecution.
But whenever God raises up those leaders and they lead in a significant way, I suspect the populist “revolutions” or swings between Trump type leaders, on the one hand, and Biden/Harris type leaders on the other, will become less revolutionary; revival and reformation will have begun.
If you think God would have you be one of those leaders, and you’re serious, please email me. Let this new work begin!
My 2016 commentary can be found at this link, and I would encourage you to read it, but what follows will give you the gist of it, and it will be sufficient to explain the change in direction I will soon be taking, and my next prediction.
Back then, after noting that the populist turn to Trump in America was also taking place in Italy, I wrote:
Last week I noted the swings between Democrat and Republican control of Congress and between liberal and moderate Presidents (Clinton to Bush to Obama) and further noted that the swings away from more liberal control had not arrested the downward trajectory in our social mores and fiscal irresponsibility:
If we don’t figure out why this phenomenon exists, then I predict that in another four to six years we will see another swing with Congress changing hands and another Obama-Clinton type, or perhaps worse, a Bernie Sanders, going into the Oval Office when we find ourselves disillusioned with Mr. Trump and the change we were looking for from him didn’t come.
It happened. The U.S. Senate changed to Democratic control, the Republican majority in the U.S. House dwindled to the point of immateriality, and we got Biden.
Now we may swing back to Trump and Republicans might take back the Senate.
But this was my fundamental question at the time and it still is: “Why have none of the political changes in the more conservative direction (as of 2016) brought about any real change?”
Will the Trump Revolution Bring Real Change?
To answer that question, I referenced Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer’s work, Christian Political Action in an Age of Revolution.
Van Prinsterer’s conclusion was that the world, beginning with the French Revolution in 1789, had broken from the preceding 700 plus years of Christian historical development to enter what he called a “revolutionary condition” that could only produce “perpetual revolution.”
This is what I wrote about that point:
Van Prinsterer described the revolutionary condition that could only produce perpetual revolution as follows:
The Revolution’s principle is the idolatrous worship of humanity; man recognizes no one but himself as sovereign, nothing but his reason as light, nothing but his will as the rule; he worships man and dethrones God.
This, too, is the prevailing principle in America. And until that principle changes, perhaps we should not expect any real change in America or in Europe. Partisan powers that at root embrace the same principle cannot really arrest the direction in which we’re headed; our momentum cannot therefore be forward, but only back and forth. As van Prinsterer said, “the only antidote for systematic unbelief is faith,” faith in the “God of nature, history, and the Gospel.” (emphasis supplied)
Given that, here is the real question I said at that time needed to be answered if there was to be an end to this revolutionary cycle, which rests on the same revolutionary principle of godlessness espoused by Democrats and now the Republican Party’s new Platform:
The question is . . . whether the Church will be ready to speak the Truth that both the individual and the majority, the ruler and the ruled, the employer and the employee are under the sovereign authority of the Triune God.
Where Did I Look for an Answer to My Question?
For the last eight years, I looked for a responsive answer to my question in the context of the one fundamental human relation over which God has demonstrated perhaps his greatest measure of sovereign authority: marriage and procreation. Why look here for my answer?
First, marriage and procreation are unique in all creation because it was by ensuring the continuation of that relationship that a “seed of a woman” would come to crush the head of the one who had tempted Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:15). That “seed” would also rescue future Adams and future Eves from the relational rivalry that set in when their first ancestors turned away from God.
Second, and preceding the importance of even procreation, there is Adam and Eve as husband and wife. That relationship pictures the whole of human history—the “last Adam,” Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:47), receiving His Eve, the Church, the “Bride of Christ,” but in this marriage not even sin and death can part them (Romans 8:35-39)!
The man-woman marital relationship and its replication through procreation and child-rearing is the bedrock of human history, and, in the Fifth Commandment and its new covenant extension, [1] we learn that it is also the key to cultural stability and sustained prosperity.
What Was My Experience and the Answer I Found?
For the last seven plus years I “preached” the value of that relationship to Christian leaders—pastors, denominational leaders, and heads of Christian legal and policy organizations—and offered a constitutionally viable means by which that relationship could be brought to the foreground of public discussion, a means by which these leaders could “speak the Truth” about this vital relationship to a watching world. It was in the form of the Marital Contract Recording Act and the campaign called God-Given Marriage.
So far, I have found no takers among the Christian leaders in this state or elsewhere. Maybe the needed leadership will need to come from the bottom up, which seems to be God’s pattern, and I was looking for leadership in the wrong places.
My Personal Change in Direction
I pray that leadership comes, but to work toward that end, I’ll be turning over my current post to a successor at the end of the year in the hope that God might thereafter use me to develop that leadership wherever those persons might be and whatever their current station in life.
I look forward with great anticipation to see what God might do among His people over the next four years to that end. The leadership that is needed may be a long time coming, but I know Christ will never abandon His Bride even though her on-going purification in preparation for the marriage feast often results from persecution.
But whenever God raises up those leaders and they lead in a significant way, I suspect the populist “revolutions” or swings between Trump type leaders, on the one hand, and Biden/Harris type leaders on the other, will become less revolutionary; revival and reformation will have begun.
If you think God would have you be one of those leaders, and you’re serious, please email me. Let this new work begin!
[1] Expressed under the Mosaic Polity by the Fifth Commandment, “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12, NKJV). Under the new transnational polity established by Christ, the extent of promise of the commandment is modified accordingly while maintaining the principle, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother,’ which is the first commandment with promise: ‘that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth’”(Ephesians 6:1-3 NKJV, emphasis supplied). The change from “land” to the “earth” is not an error but reflective of the “better hope” (Hebrews 7:19) ushered in by the final revelation of God in Christ. See Hebrews 1:1-3.
