Donald Trump as Messiah and King Cyrus

Donald Trump as God's chosen messiah—this is a motif that appeared in 2015 in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election.
Hundreds of texts, speeches, lectures, and sermons given since 2015 by charismatic preachers and representatives of the prosperity gospel from evangelical circles—such as Robert Jeffress, Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jr., Tony Perkins, Bryan Fischer etc.—increasingly show a messianic pattern applied to Donald Trump (cf. Barrett-Fox). The speakers argue that Saul, Solomon, David and other biblical figures who prevailed against the political establishment as political leaders were messianic kings anointed by God, even if their moral behavior sometimes left much to be desired. Early on, this argument was focused on the Persian king Cyrus (559–530 BCE), who is described in Isa 44:24-45:8 as God's anointed and his messiah.
In presenting Trump as such a biblical king and messiah, Cyrus is understood as a ruler who does not share the belief of God but is nonetheless understood as God’s chosen messiah. In this reading, it is crucial that Cyrus as God’s anointed ruler does not know the God of Israel at all and therefore cannot keep to his commandments and follow their ethical and moral standards. This biblically based argumentation of a messianic ruler enables Donald Trump to be integrated precisely into the values and norms of evangelical Christians. In this way, the leading evangelical preachers use the biblical motif of Cyrus as the Messiah chosen by God and functionalize it to promote Donald Trump in the social milieu of evangelical Christians, which is becoming increasingly popular.

In 2018, a film entitled The Trump Prophecy was produced as a collaboration between Reel Works Studio and the evangelical Liberty University’s Cinematic Arts program (cf. Wellenbrink, 225; Gorski, 2020, 175).1 The first part of the film tells the story of fireman Mark Taylor from Orlando, which includes Trump’s stylization as King and Messiah Cyrus, and the second part consists of conversations with well-known interviewees from the evangelical milieu (Link). The film begins with events from 2005: during a mission, firefighter Mark Taylor was unable to save a young boy from a burning house. Since that time, he has been plagued by dreams and anxiety, which his doctor diagnoses as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and for which he prescribes medication which Taylor refuses to take. In the following years, the anxiety attacks get worse and worse: in a nightmare, a fire demon from hell appears to him. His wife Marie Jo prays to God and asks him for help. Her prayers work: in a dream, a “glowing orb” appears, bombarding him with electrical energy. Taylor gets up happily, picks up the Bible and randomly opens Isa 45 and reads Isa 45:1–5. After falling asleep in an armchair, he wakes up listening to Donald Trump on TV. Then, Taylor hears a message from God telling him, “You’re hearing the voice of the president.” This becomes Taylor’s vocation: he then notes in his diary that Trump will be God’s chosen next president and calls it “The Commander-in-Chief Prophecy”: “The spirit of God says: ‘I have chosen this man Donald Trump for such a time as this. Whereas Benjamin Netanjahu is to Israel so shall this man be to the United States of America.’”
Although the 2012 election does not confirm his message of God, Taylor continues to write down the messages of God in his diary. Then, he shows his “The Commander-in-Chief Prophecy” to his physician, Dr. Colbert. The latter’s wife, Mary Colbert, recognizes “that it has that rhythm to it when the holy spirit is bearing witness to the truth” in these words. With the help of her son, she interprets the situation into which the holy spirit had led her by her son pointing her to 2 Chr 7:14: “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” (cf. Willenbrink, 232). Her son instructs her to build “a national prayer chain” of “prayer warriors” so that everyone prays for “leadership and those in authority above us”. This, she says, is the “will of God to be done” for Trump to become president. She also instructs her followers to blow a shofar horn on Election Day to boost Trump’s chances. After the improbable happens and Trump is elected, Taylor's prophecy appears to be true, curing him of PTSD.
The plot of the film is not a fictional story but is based on the “true” story of Orlando firefighter Mark Taylor, who spread his prophecies via YouTube and then published them in his book The Trump Prophecies: The Astonishing True Story of the Man Who Saw Tomorrow...and What He Says Is Coming Next (2017).

¹ Jerry Falwell Jr., one of the most prominent evangelical preachers and Trump supporters, who invited Trump to Liberty University in 2016, was Liberty University’s president. Liberty University is financed primarily by the Green family, a wealthy, evangelical entrepreneurial family.

In the context of the opening of the U.S. embassy on May 14, 2018, on the 70th anniversary of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Netanyahu visited President Trump at the White House on March 5, 2018. This visit came after Trump had announced on December 6, 2017, that he would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Benjamin Netanyahu told the international press the following:I want to tell you that the Jewish people have a long memory, so we remember the proclamation of the great king, ِّCyrus the Great, the Persian king 2,500 years ago. He proclaimed that the Jewish exiles in Babylon could come back and rebuild our Temple in Jerusalem. We remember a hundred years ago, Lord Balfour, who issued the Balfour Proclamation that recognized the rights of the Jewish people in our ancestral homeland. We remember 70 years ago, President Harry S. Truman was the first leader to recognize the Jewish state. And we remember how a few weeks ago, President Donald J. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Mr. President, this will be remembered by our people through the ages.
(Link)In his statement, Benjamin Netanyahu takes up Trump’s stylizations as God’s anointed messiah and chosen ruler Cyrus. Furthermore, Benjamin Netanyahu takes up formulations that Chief Rabbi Isaac Halevi Herzog made to the president and thereby links both events (cf. Trangerud, 17).

On the occasion of the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and the 70th anniversary of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, the Mikdash Educational Center in Jerusalem issued coins in three variants, each working iconographically with the stylization of Cyrus and Trump by showing both superimposed on each other in side portraits (Link).
The first coin shows Cyrus and Trump with the inscription “Cyrus - Balfour - Trump Declaration 1917–2017” and a second parallelizes Netanyahu and Trump with the inscription “War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness” and Cyrus and the Temple on the reverse (2020). A third coin likewise shows the superimposition of Cyrus and Trump combined with the quote from Ezr 1:2–3: “… and he has given me a charge to build him a house in Jerusalem …”. On the reverse of this coin there is also an image of the temple. One of the aims of the Mikdash Educational Center is to rebuild the temple in the near future on the Temple Mount/al-ḥaram aš-šarīf in Jerusalem and therefore connects Donald Trump with Cyrus (cf. Trangerud, 10; the Scripture on Cyrus and his command to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem: Ezr 1:2–4; 6:3–5).