Foreign Policy published an article that suggested that Martin Luther was the Donald Trump of the 16th century. They imagined a booking error that brought Barack Obama to Luther’s 1517 Germany.
“He’d see a conventionally quarrelsome political scene disrupted by the emergence of an improbable figure who, at first, no one took very seriously. He’d watch as existing players tried to work out how they could best make use of this man before he inevitably flamed out. Obama would even bear witness to this Renaissance-era disruptor discovering how to use new media in a way that no one had ever done before: using new technology, the printing press, to reach a mass audience, not so much challenging the establishment as bypassing it entirely. This man wouldn’t use the language the establishment expected or observe the etiquette they demanded. In fact, he’d be vulgar, foul-mouthed, vindictive, and cantankerous, with a very tasteless sense of humor. But he’d communicate with a vivid directness whose power couldn’t be denied, leaving half of Germany horrified, half of it delighted, and all of it paying attention.”
While some of this caricature may be true, Martin Luther’s cause was far, far higher and more important. Donald Trump may have apocalyptic impact, but we are living in the end times, and as U.S. President, Mr. Trump will certainly have unavoidable end-time prophetic significance. Luther had a high level of moral conviction that Mr. Trump does not share. For instance he saw the pope as Anti-Christ, whereas Mr. Trump supports the ecumenical movement and fraternizes with the bishops.
FP did, however, write, “the monk who came from nowhere to break the power of the Catholic Church, is not quite the same as Donald Trump, the TV personality who came from nowhere to break the norms of American politics. For all his cheerful boorishness, Luther was also given to agonies of conscience, extended bouts of self-doubt and despair. He was genuinely, almost pathologically, convinced of his own utter sinfulness and worthlessness. And he was a man driven by certain core convictions that never wavered over his adult life, a set of ideas that became the foundation of a whole system of thought and for which he was plainly ready to lay down his life. These things do not appear to be true of President Trump.”
One similarity is that both disrupted the long-standing political establishment of their times. Luther attacked a Catholic church fundraising technique known as the selling of indulgences and thereby threatening the church with the loss of political power, while Mr. Trump has confronted the predominant political establishment directly.
“Horrified churchmen said that ‘every day it rains Luther books’ while books denouncing him ‘cannot even be given away.’ Rather than engaging with Luther’s ideas, they simply labeled him a heretic, ordering him to shut up or face the legal consequences.” But the more the churchmen accused Luther, “the more his growing legions of supporters seemed to glory in them.”
“Not many people have what it takes to set themselves against a ruling class this way. If Luther’s sense of inner conviction sets him apart from Trump, their personalities were similar in other ways. Luther, like Trump, had an earthy sense of humor, famously oversized appetite, and a legendary grouchiness toward anyone who crossed him, whom he was always ready to label “fanatics.” Where others pricked the church with needles, he said, he himself used a boar-hunting pike. He nursed a sometimes crude German nationalism and played it up in others. And his early openness to Judaism reversed itself once he realized that few Jews wanted to convert to his doctrines, and he concluded bitterly that “a Jewish heart is as hard as a stick, a stone, as iron, as a devil.”
FP wrongly asserts that both men, were better at disrupting old establishments, not building new ones. Luther, in fact, did build a new establishment, the Protestant church, which today in America, is the predominant religious establishment. Trump, for his part is dangerously trying to give those very Protestants, who are now seriously compromised by the ecumenical movement, more political power.
Luther had no real interest in “tearing up the basic rules of society,” though that’s what happened ultimately. He could not contain the hunger for change that he had let loose, which eventually led to the separation of church and state, liberty and freedom of conscience, and an America that would foster individualism and an end-time religious movement that would give rise to the full, complete and systematic understanding of doctrine the Seventh-day Adventists are privileged to understand.
FP went on to suggest that Luther was nearly as vulgar as Trump, and both men would like those who cut through convention to get things done. But Luther was a man of conscience. Yet his blind spots seemed to have a purpose (it was too soon for Sabbatarianism for instance). Mr. Trump on the other hand is a politician, which by definition has little to do with conviction.
Henry VIII, the English king was cold then warm toward Protestants, and Lutherans in particular, depending on his political interests. Consequently, like Donald Trump, his Protestant allies never quite trusted him, but they couldn’t resist the opportunities he offered them.
Luther’s coherent ideas led the world out of darkness into the light of the Bible and they still stir the soul 500 years later. Donald Trump appears to have difficulty with coherence on the surface, at least, but underneath he is carrying out his campaign promises to the best of his ability and against incredible odds, something that is rather rare in the age of political correctness.
Like Luther, Mr. Trump is unwittingly setting the stage for larger prophetic developments to take place. On one hand the Reformation led the Germans out of darkness into freedom and liberty eventually. On the other, the efforts of Mr. Trump to reunite church and state in America by giving the clergy, including the Catholic clergy more power, is opening the door for the churches to control the state, something that is eminently prophetic. And that is taking us back to medieval principles once again.
“When the early church became corrupted by departing from the simplicity of the gospel and accepting heathen rites and customs, she lost the Spirit and power of God; and in order to control the consciences of the people, she sought the support of the secular power. The result was the papacy, a church that controlled the power of the state and employed it to further her own ends, especially for the punishment of “heresy.” In order for the United States to form an image of the beast, the religious power must so control the civil government that the authority of the state will also be employed by the church to accomplish her own ends.” The Great Controversy, page 443