Ellen White urged us to not commit to any political party, but rather to vote for people who are the best on moral issues. Most of us do not need a primer on which side in this election is better on moral issues, but Adventists seem to struggle with what might be called the theology of voting: why should the Christian vote, and what parameters should guide our voting?
Render unto Caesar
“Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?” “Caesar’s,” they replied. Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed.” Mat. 22:19-22
Christians have certain duties as citizens living in organized polities, things that pertain to “Caesar,” by which Christ meant the government or the sovereign. Usually, the minimum duties are to pay taxes and obey the law (Rom. 13:1-7).
In America, we have additional duties, including serving on juries and voting. As Christians, we should take these duties very seriously. In First Corinthians, Paul implies that Christians are, or at least should be, better equipped to discharge these duties than non-Christians:
“Or do you not know that the Lord’s people will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life!” 1 Cor. 6:2-3
According to Paul, Christians ought to be better jurors, and better and more informed voters, than the typical non-Christian person. It is true that, in America unlike some Western countries such as Australia, you are not required to vote. But I would argue that if you fail to inform yourself on the issues and take the time to vote, you do a disservice to your country comparable to failing to pay your taxes, or intentionally avoiding jury duty. In a republic, the citizen is sovereign, and if you do not vote, you give away your sovereignty. More to our point, if Christians do not vote, they will be governed by non-Christians, and non-Christian values will become law and policy.
Clearly, Christians should “render unto Caesar” full participation in citizenship, and that means voting. We are immensely privileged in Western democratic republics or constitutional monarchies—all of which are more or less founded upon Protestant Christian principles—to have a say in who administers the government on our behalf.
Trump’s Not Gonna Save Us
Whenever this topic comes up, invariably someone chirps up and says something to the effect of, “You poor deluded people, Trump is not going to save you!” the implication being that because Trump is not going to save us, therefore we should not vote for him.
And Trump is not, of course, going to “save us.” That is not his job. We have a Savior, His name is Jesus Christ. It is Jesus who saves us, not any elected official. Religion and government are both important, but they are different things. The job of pastors and evangelists is to preach the gospel. The job of our elected officials is to administer the government; in monarchies they do so on behalf of the king or queen, in republics, they do so on behalf of the citizens.
But let us grant that the objector (F.D. Nichol terminology) does not really mean that Trump is not going to save us eternally, but that Trump isn’t going to make everything nearly perfect. Again, so what? No government can make everything perfect. The Christian who understands the biblical worldview knows that mankind is fallen and sinful, and therefore human societies are not perfect and . . . and this is extremely important . . . human societies are not perfectible.
The fact that the world is fallen and sinful, and therefore human government can never be a means of perfecting human society does not mean we should not vote. Taking a shower daily does not guarantee salvation, so should we not shower? Eating does not guarantee a happy marriage, so should we not eat? No, we shower because we need to stay clean; we eat because we need energy to stay alive. Those things don’t do everything, but they do what they are designed to do. Likewise, voting cannot do everything, but it can do the modest thing it is designed to do: allow the citizens to have a voice in the direction of their government.
Ironically, the objector who says “Trump’s not going to save you” is more likely to believe that some other politician—not Trump, but maybe Kamala Harris—can “save” us or make everything perfect or nearly perfect. In other words, the objector is likely to have accepted the lie that human society can be perfected by governmental compulsion; he is likely to be a Leftist utopian.
Trump is Not Fit to be Pope or General Conference President
Many Christians, including some Seventh-day Adventists, persist in believing that their vote should go to the candidate who exhibits the most advanced sanctification. For those people, the fact that Trump lived most of his adult life as a billionaire playboy, and was divorced twice and has children by three wives, is considered disqualifying.
Should it be? President Trump is not running for pope or for president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, nor even for pastor of your local church. What are much more important than his personal peccadillos are his policies, and his policies were friendly towards Christians and promoted freedom of religion and much other good.
It is true that sexual sins can be indicative of lack of character or integrity, but that is manifestly not the case with President Trump. No president in my lifetime was more careful to keep his campaign promises than President Trump. One noteworthy example is that when he was running for president in 2016, he promised to appoint conservative supreme court justices from a list of 11 (later expanded to 21) that was approved by conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation. Trump kept his promise, and the three conservative justices he appointed (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett) joined two older conservative justices (Thomas and Alito) to finally overturn Roe v. Wade, ending the mandatory open season on the unborn.
There are many other examples of Trump’s integrity—doing while president what he promised to do on the campaign trail. To advance some of those priorities, like enforcing the border, Trump had to be very creative, because he was opposed by his own party in congress which would not appropriate funds for a border wall.
But I am realistic enough to admit that, no matter what I say, many Seventh-day Adventists will still very firmly insist that their vote should be based upon the personal holiness and piety of the candidate, not upon any issue or policy, or even the character trait of integrity. For those people, and not out of any desire to publish salacious material, here is the other side of the story.
Kamala Harris got her start in politics because she had a sexual affair with a married man, a very powerful Democrat politician named Willie Brown. Willie Brown was Speaker of the California state assembly from 1980 to 1995, and mayor of San Francisco from 1996 to 2004. Because she was sleeping with him, the 60-year-old Brown appointed the 29-year-old Harris to the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, an area she had no particular expertise in. The position paid $97,000 a year (about $205,000 in today’s dollars), and met twice a month. Brown later appointed Harris to the California Medical Assistance Board, a position that paid $72,000 per year and met only once a month. (She still managed to miss about 20% of the meetings.)
Willie Brown also used his influence on Harris’ behalf in her 2002 campaign for San Francisco District Attorney (her campaign was based almost entirely on the fact that she was not a white male, and white males had held the office since 1910). Brown also helped Harris with her 2010 run for California Attorney General, calling on her likely opponent, Antonio Villaraigosa, to stay out of the race. By then, California was very firmly a one-party state, valuing “diversity” above all else; hence, the mediocre Harris was wafted along from one position to the next—U.S. Senator, Vice President—based solely on being a “woman of color.”
Christian and Seventh-day Adventist voters must choose between two people, Trump and Harris, who both have sexual misconduct in their past lives. But Trump’s was not in any way connected to his decision to seek the presidency, whereas Harris’ sexual misconduct is the foundation of her career. Harris would never have had a political career but for being the mistress of Willie Brown, and the quid pro quos flowing from that. What lessons do you think she learned?
Trump’s Gonna Bring in the Sunday Law
Ironically, given that many Adventists seem to think that a president of the United States must be a near-perfect Christian, if a presidential candidate shows any sympathy whatsoever to organized Christianity, we seem to believe that it is because he is intent on passing a Sunday law and executing all believing Seventh-day Adventists. If Trump meets with Christians on the campaign trail or in the White House it is bloody red murder aimed directly at YOU, Adventist.
I’ll mention a few of the reasons why this is nonsense, but reasons, and reason itself, have nothing to do with this belief. It is based upon sub-rational impulses coming from the Adventist reptilian brain.
Trump has very little interest in what has come to be known as the “culture wars”; his main interest is bringing back manufacturing from China and closing the border so that workers’ wages can rise
Trump has been very friendly toward homosexuals; he will do nothing to threaten same-sex “marriage.” He is not conservative enough on social issues to suit me, much less to be interested in something as arcane as a Sunday law.
Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, is married to a Jew, Jared Kushner; they and their children are Sabbath-keepers, and Trump remains close to them. Trump is also close to another Sabbath-keeper, Dr. Ben Carson.
Trump vehemently distanced himself from “Project 2025,” which, in a 900-page policy wish list, had one entry regarding encouraging Sabbath-keeping (including Sundown Friday to Sundown Saturday Sabbath-keeping) by requiring workers to be paid time and a half for working on their Sabbath.
Trump is obviously not a candidate to enact and enforce a Sunday law.
Beyond that, Ellen White is very clear that the Sabbath-Sunday controversy will be agitated throughout Christendom; it will become a question of intense interest throughout the Christian world. The clergy of apostate Protestantism will argue that cataclysms and disasters of an obviously unnatural character are God’s judgment on us for profaning Sunday; their arguments will persuade their people, who will then turn to their elected representatives and demand Sunday legislation. In other words, the call for a Sunday law will be a “bottom-up” phenomenon, not a “top-down” phenomenon, so it will not matter who is president when these final events occur.
But, again, this deranged obsession that, “Trump’s gonna bring in a Sunday law” is beyond the reach of rational argument. You cannot reason someone out of a position they were not reasoned into, so there is no point in wasting more words on it.
Conclusion
With the bramble of misconceptions cleared away, the issues become clear. I will mention just a few of them although, again, I don’t think most Adventists are confused about which candidate better represents the biblical worldview as well as basic Christianity.
What I would highlight is that Trump has emerged as the godly candidate in his rejection of forever wars that have no national security purpose; these pointless wars feed the military industrial complex, which in turn puts millions of dollars into Washington DC pockets, including the pockets of elected representatives. I’ve explored this in depth here and here, but it remains striking to me that Trump, who attended the New York Military Academy and admired military men, staffing his administration with several retired general officers, has emerged as the candidate of peace.
This rejection of war-for-profit is uniquely Donald Trump. Sadly, most elected Republicans are just as addicted to the military industrial complex gravy train as the Democrats; for political reasons, they are happy it is Ukrainian and Russian boys who are dying in the meat-grinder, but that is just as immoral and sleazy as sending Americans to die in order to make politicians rich.
The good news is that Trump is slowly turning the Republican Party into the party of peace; its most prominent warmongers of just a few years ago, Dick and Liz Cheney, have joined the Harris campaign. Others who are getting rich serving on defense contractor boards, e.g., John Kelly, are vigorously attacking Trump, essentially because he would not submit to the war-for-profit mob.
But the main reason to vote for Trump is that Harris represents a system and an ideology that comes down from the French Revolution, the “beast from the abyss” (Rev. 11:7) which, according to Ellen White and Adventist prophetic understanding, is directly satanic. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, “Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions.”
The Marxist politburo that ruled behind the demented husk of Joe Biden will continue to rule behind this mediocre cipher of a woman who fornicated her way into a lucrative political career. What is their top priority? The sexual mutilation of minor children; cutting the breasts off of healthy 13-year-old girls is their creed and their pride. This is blatantly demonic, and they value it precisely because it is open rebellion against God and the created sexual order.
Under Harris, the heavy-handed government censorship of social media will continue and worsen; the two-tiered justice system weaponized against conservatives, Christians, and other enemies of the revolution will continue and worsen; the invasion through the southern border will continue and worsen until the Anglo-Saxon/Celtic Protestant population that founded America is an asterisk; the war on efficient, inexpensive energy will continue until it is impossibly expensive to heat and cool your home, and there will be no electricity to re-charge you electric vehicle (gasoline-powered vehicles having been outlawed); there will be more attempts at mandatory vaccination, the imposition of vaccine passports, and the imposition of a Central Bank Digital Currency, which will eliminate financial privacy and facilitate Revelation 13:16-17.
America under the Marxist politburo is hurtling toward the Gulag. Can any Seventh-day Adventist actually vote for this demonic darkness?
“Now when they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them. Their bodies will lie in the public square of the great city—which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt—where also their Lord was crucified.” Rev. 11:7-8