I am not religious. I have never mistaken a casserole for communion or believed that a televangelist’s sweaty forehead could save me. But if you flip through the Book of Revelation—an acid-trip fever dream of beasts, trumpets, and plagues—it feels like a spoiler alert for American cable news.
Specifically, it reads like a casting call for Donald J. Trump.
Yes, I know: calling Trump the Antichrist is an old joke. But have you noticed how eerily he checks off the boxes of prophecy? It’s uncanny. The man’s résumé could double as a Revelation study guide. And the strangest twist of all? The very people who should be sprinting for the holy water—white evangelical Christians—are the ones building him golden calves and MAGA altars.
So let’s take a little tour, shall we? A guided satire through the end-times prophecies and the very orange man who seems born to fulfill them.
The Antichrist Rises to Power Amid Chaos
Revelation and related prophecies insist the Antichrist will emerge during global upheaval, promising order while sowing discord. Enter Trump, who rose not in times of calm but amid chaos: broken institutions, political rot, reality television, and a social media ecosystem designed to reward grievance.
The Antichrist is supposed to thrive in confusion. Trump is confusion incarnate. Half the time he doesn’t finish his sentences. The other half he invents words like “bigly” and “covfefe.” Yet somehow, people nodded as though these were divine utterances.
The Antichrist Will Perform “Signs and Wonders”
Now, I’ve never seen Trump turn water into wine. But I have seen him turn lawsuits into campaign donations, criminal indictments into polling bumps, and failed casinos into tax write-offs. If that isn’t a miracle, I don’t know what is.
The Antichrist, we’re told, dazzles the world with lying wonders. Trump dazzled evangelicals with “record attendance” at rallies that often ended up with photos of empty bleachers. He dazzled believers with the stock market’s highs, even as regular people checked their bank apps and saw tumbleweeds. He performed wonders, all right—wonders of branding, spin, and deflection.
The Antichrist Will Demand Worship
Evangelicals claim to worship Jesus, but check their living rooms and you’ll find Trump prayer candles, Trump bobbleheads, Trump Bibles (sold for $59.99, leatherette cover extra). The Antichrist is supposed to exalt himself above all gods. Trump literally declared, “I alone can fix it.” He demanded loyalty oaths from his aides. He pouted when the Boy Scouts didn’t clap enough.
The man even rebranded Easter as “a beautiful time for reopening the economy.” If that isn’t the Messiah complex on steroids, what is?
The Antichrist Will Be a Deceiver
Scripture says the Antichrist will deceive many. Trump has told more lies than Revelation has locusts. According to fact-checkers, he averaged over twenty lies a day in office, a Guinness-worthy deception streak. He insisted hurricanes would hit Alabama when they wouldn’t, that COVID would “just disappear,” that Mexico would pay for the wall. And his followers? They ate it up like communion wafers.
Never has deception been so blatant, so provable, and so lovingly embraced.
The Antichrist Will Align With Kings and Merchants
Revelation makes a big deal about the Antichrist cozying up to worldly rulers and profiteers. Trump’s entire presidency was a Mar-a-Lago networking event. Dictators were his pen pals. CEOs were his golf buddies. Foreign governments funneled money into his hotels like tribute to a medieval lord.
The Bible warns of Babylon the Great, merchants growing rich off corruption. Trump built an empire where the Secret Service had to rent rooms at inflated prices just to guard him. Forget Babylon—the man created a pay-to-play Airbnb apocalypse.
The Antichrist Will Blaspheme
Blasphemy is supposed to be the Antichrist’s trademark. Trump has called the Constitution “bad for us.” He once mispronounced “Second Corinthians” as “Two Corinthians” while giving a speech at Liberty University. He referred to Communion as “the little cracker and the little wine.”
He is a blasphemy machine. Yet the pews roared with approval. Christians, who once panicked if a Starbucks cup didn’t say “Merry Christmas,” suddenly shrugged at a man who couldn’t quote a single verse without footnotes.
The Antichrist Will Persecute the Faithful
This is the part where it gets sticky. Evangelicals argue Trump defends their faith. But scratch the surface and you see the truth: he persecutes everyone, equally. His enemies list includes the Pope, nuns who objected to family separations, pastors who dared mention racial justice. He even cleared peaceful churchgoers from Lafayette Square with tear gas, just so he could pose awkwardly with a Bible he clearly hadn’t read.
If persecution is a prerequisite, check the box.
The Antichrist Will Mark His Followers
Revelation speaks of the “mark of the beast,” without which no one can buy or sell. Trump’s mark isn’t 666. It’s MAGA merch. Red hats, gold sneakers, NFTs of him as a superhero—without them, you can’t enter the congregation. The marketplace of MAGA is both literal and symbolic. To belong, you must buy. To dissent, you must be cast out.
It’s not a mark on the hand or forehead. It’s a mark on your Visa bill.
The Antichrist Will Survive Wounds
Prophecy says the beast will suffer a mortal wound and yet live, inspiring awe. Trump has survived bankruptcies, impeachments, indictments, and even bleach-injection press conferences. Any one of these would’ve ended another politician’s career. He thrives. He grows stronger. He turns wounds into branding.
The miracle isn’t that he survives. The miracle is that his followers mistake survival for sanctity.
The Antichrist Will Bring War and Division
The Antichrist is supposed to divide nations, stirring wars and rumors of wars. Trump divided families at Thanksgiving. He divided churches, neighborhoods, entire states. He made mask-wearing a battlefield, turned vaccines into ideological landmines, and practically restarted the Civil War on Twitter.
Division wasn’t the byproduct. Division was the product.
The Antichrist Will Promise Peace, Then Deliver Chaos
Remember “peace through strength”? Remember the promises to end endless wars, bring troops home, and restore order? What we got instead were assassinations, escalations, and photo ops with dictators who played him like a fiddle.
The Antichrist is supposed to promise peace while laying the groundwork for calamity. Trump promised “the best peace” and delivered four years of nonstop turbulence. If that’s not prophecy, it’s plagiarism.
The Rapture Riddle
Here’s the fun part: many Christians believe the Antichrist must come before the Rapture. If so, Trump’s presidency should’ve triggered the great evacuation. But the only people raptured were his cabinet secretaries fleeing indictments.
Meanwhile, evangelicals continue to wait for Trump to usher in the Kingdom, blind to the fact that he’s already ushered in a carnival—complete with overpriced hot dogs and a Ferris wheel that doesn’t stop.
The Comedy of Contradiction
Here lies the absurdity: the same people who once obsessed over Obama being a secret Muslim, who parsed barcodes on Monster Energy drinks for signs of 666, now rally behind a man who embodies every Antichrist trope in their holy book.
They feared the Beast would rise from the sea. Instead, he rose from reality television. They feared deception would come from subtlety. Instead, it came from a man screaming into microphones about crowd sizes. They feared persecution. Instead, they cheer while he tweets “ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.”
It’s not that they don’t see it. It’s that they’ve chosen not to.
I don’t believe in the Antichrist. I don’t believe in the Rapture. I don’t believe Revelation is anything more than a first-century acid trip scrawled on parchment. But I do believe in irony.
And the irony is this: the figure evangelicals most fear, the one their prophecy charts warned about, the one whose traits they hunted in presidents and popes and supermarket barcodes, was standing right in front of them the whole time. They not only embraced him. They voted for him. Twice.
The haunting truth is not that Trump is the Antichrist. It’s that Christians proved they never cared who the Antichrist was in the first place, as long as he hated the right people and promised them power. They turned their prophecy into parody. They turned their faith into fandom.
And if Revelation ever does come true, it won’t be because the Antichrist rose. It’ll be because the faithful applauded him into being.