Pharaoh’s Dream and My Prophecy About American Christianity Seven Years From Now

I don’t throw the word “prophecy” around lightly. I’ve never considered myself a prophet nor do I consider myself one now. But I see something coming, and I want to put it down on digital paper now, years before it happens. In Genesis 41 Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dream of seven fat cows and seven sleek cows representing seven years of abundance followed by seven years of famine. I’m predicting that a version of the same thing is currently in progress concerning American Christianity.

I haven’t had a dream about cows and I’m not predicting a second term for Trump, but sometime within the next decade, American Christianity will be under more persecution than it has perhaps ever been. Right now we (as the American church) are in our years of abundance. We helped elect a President who is issuing orders and initiating changes friendly to Christianity. At the same time Evangelicals and Christians in general in America have become more closely identified with this president than perhaps any other, because we were the ones that put him in office. Like him or not, he’s our president.

So what’s the problem? Nothing now, because things are good. He’s still in office. But he won’t be forever. In either three years or seven, he’ll be out. Trump has been more divisive as an elected official than perhaps any other in a generation. The opposition doesn’t just dislike Trump, they loathe him. There is a visceral hatred by the opposition building against him and everything he stands for. And what he stands for is Christianity, because for better or for worse, Christians are more identified with Trump than any other group in America. And, as politics goes, the pendulum always swings from extreme to the other. Sooner or later, those opposed to Trump’s personality and politics will come into office, and when they go, they’ll come gunning for everything he represented, including the church.

I don’t know when it will be, but when the pendulum swings (and it will) and we have a president that leans liberal and/or anti-church, American Christianity will face more persecution than perhaps we ever have. While that may not be a bad thing (persecution has a way of purifying and ultimately fueling the church), we shouldn’t be caught unaware. So all that to say: enjoy the fat years of American Christianity, because the lean years are coming.