Which Bible Character is Donald J Trump?

Have you ever answered one of the personality quizzes that ask "Which ____ are you?"
The blank can be filled in with almost anything. Which Peanuts character, StarWars hero, Disney princess, Hogwarts student, comic strip villain, Jane Austen protagonist, Shakespearean charlatan, Hunger Games champion... you get the idea. The higher quality quizzes are based on the Myers Briggs Personality Types and attempt to match your answers to a similar literary archetype.

I believe that the biblical archetype for Donald Trump is a person that many do not ordinarily think of as being a Bible character, and yet his name was mentioned directly at least nineteen times in the Old Testament.¹ The scriptures refer to him as the King of Persia. Secular historians call him Cyrus the Great. In my essay below, I explain why I believe that the answer to "Which Bible character is Donald Trump?" is "Cyrus the Great, King of Persia."

Cyrus the Great, Donald J Trump, and the Unfathomable Workings of God 

Donald Trump's campaign slogan is "Make America Great Again." Whether or not you believe, as his opponent claims, that America is already great just the way it is, whether or not you think Trump's slogan is simply bandwagon hype that is calculated to pander to the Obama-haters, and whether or not you believe Mr. Trump can deliver on the promise, none of those are the point. The point is that the announced goal of a Trump presidency is restoration. "Make America Great Again" is a call to bring America back to her Constitutional roots and rebuild from there. When God had a similar goal to accomplish, to release His people from their Babylonian captivity, to rebuild the temple, and to make Jerusalem great again, He choose Cyrus.    

 

 ... My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD.
 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:8, 9


"My ways are not your ways," declares the Lord.
This is probably one of the easiest Bible verses to prove. It may not even need proof; it might be more like a geometry postulate that is accepted as an essential presupposition, a Captain Obvious truth.

God chose Abraham who failed to protect his own wife and lied to a foreign head of state. God chose Moses who had committed murder and had a fear of public speaking. God chose Jacob who was a schemer. God chose Joseph who was a braggart. God chose David who was an adulterer and conspired to assassinate. Practically every Patriarch in Judeo-Christian culture had major flaws and was a person very few voters would support if they'd had to rely on network news for their voting information. If you read only the secular biographies of Cyrus, you probably would not guess that Isaiah prophesied that it was the Lord "who says of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd, and he shall fulfill all my purpose.’" Isaiah 44:28.  And yet, God did choose Cyrus to fulfill all His purpose. Moreover, Isaiah's prophesy of God's choice for who would help restore the Temple was made 140 years before the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed² and even longer before Cyrus was born.  Specifically, God chose Cyrus to be the man that would allow the Jews, after having spent decades in captivity under Babylonian rule, to return to their homeland and rebuild, making Jerusalem great again.

What were Cyrus's religious credentials?
If you believe the archeologists, then based upon the the number of fire altars they have found from that place and time, Cyrus was probably a Zoroastrian. Elements like fire (signifying wisdom) and water (for purity) were used in worship, but were not the objects of worship, (just as music can be used in worship, but the song is not the object of worship; it points to the One who is worshiped). Zoroastrians believe in one God, Ahura Mazda, the creator of the universe. They believe in an adversary, Angra Mainyu, the destructive spirit. So far, that does not seem incompatible with Judeo-Christian beliefs, however, Zoroastrianism also believes that man is basically good and can make choices to return the earth to a place of paradise on his own, no blood atonement needed. This puts the Zoroastrian religion solidly in the pagan column. 

Cyrus Cylinder

The Cyrus Cylinder is an artifact that partially corroborates scripture of the Bible; it is a 22.86 cm long clay cylinder with cuneiform writing that records some of the works of Cyrus. There are similarities to the Bible record, but also a few differences. The cylinder does say that Cyrus helped deported peoples return to their homeland, but never mentions Jerusalem by name. It does say that Cyrus was chosen by "God," but it names the Babylonian god Marduk, not the Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda, and not the Jewish YHWH. 
The semblance between the two accounts has resulted in accusations by evolutionists that the Jews "stole" their "mythology" from the Babylonians and then went back and wrote a prequel to make it appear as if Isaiah had been a great prophet. The 'mankind evolved' timeline cannot accept that all language groups shared a common religion prior to the fall of the Tower of Babel, (which is the Occam's Razor explanation for the similarities when the "Adam was a fully-functioning creation" timeline is used.)

For the purpose of answering the question "Which Bible Character is Donald J Trump?" we do not have to address that centuries-old charge today. Whatever Cyrus's true beliefs were, the Jews would have considered him to be a pagan. For now, we simply need to present enough information on the life of Cyrus, king of Persia, to show that even though he was not a devout Jew, God could still say of Cyrus, "He is My shepherd! And he will perform all My desire." 

Cyrus is the biblical archetype of Donald Trump. As flawed as Cyrus was, God still called him His shepherd.

Several correlations between these two men can be seen in the first six verses of Isaiah, chapter 45, and those will be addressed shortly, but first I would like to insert the commentary for this passage from the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges:

The apostrophe to Cyrus expresses dramatically the purpose of Jehovah in raising up the Persian conqueror. The idea that the true God has made a personal revelation of Himself to the mind of Cyrus is not implied; Cyrus is to learn the religious significance of his mission from its results (Isaiah 45:3), just as mankind at large comes to understand it (Isaiah 45:6). The direct address to Cyrus (Isaiah 45:2 ff.) is prefaced in Isaiah 45:1 by a series of clauses describing his invincible career, which has already attracted the attention of the world. (An apostrophe, as used here, is a direct address of a person or personification who is not physically present.)  Public domain, J. Skinner - 1897 & 1898

Note that Cyrus is a man whose career attracted the attention of the world before God used him to make Jerusalem great again. Donald Trump's career likewise attracted the attention of the world early on. In 1988, several years before Americans heard of Hillary Clinton, Trump was a guest on the nationally syndicated The Oprah Winfrey Show, and he even talked about running for office during that interview, (easily searchable on YouTube).  He became widely known from starring as the boss in the reality show, The Apprentice, where the world was given a glimpse into why he made some of the decisions that he did. God does indeed work in strange ways!

Note also that Isaiah is not predicting that Cyrus would get a full revelation of Jehovah at the beginning of his service. The Lord did not demand that he become a "good Jew" before he was trusted with God's plan.  Rather, Cyrus's purpose and God's provisions are revealed progressively. This is also proving to be the case with Donald Trump. For example:
 On June 21st of this year, one-thousand Christian leaders were invited to attend a meeting at the Marriott Marquis in New York. The meeting, titled "A Conversation with Donald Trump & Ben Carson," was hosted by United in Purpose & My Faith Votes. Since Trump was the presumptive nominee by that time, Ben Carson gave the opening remarks and the Q&A conversation was all Donald. Many who were in attendance posted a summary on their ministry's or their personal website. It is interesting to compare the varied impressions of these leaders, but they did have a consensus that Donald Trump was listening to their concerns and was open to learning about them. [As an aside, for those of you who believe that the lights in the expanse of the heavens were made for signs and feast-seasons, this meeting took place the morning after summer solstice and a full moon. As far as the significance of this goes, I will say only this: There was a change in the way the Holy Spirit directed my prayers at that point. I had the impression that a corner had been turned.]

Here are some of the scriptural parallels between Cyrus and Trump found in Isaiah 45—

v1. Thus says the LORD to Cyrus His anointed, Whom I have taken by the right hand, To subdue nations before him And to loose the loins of kings; To open doors before him so that gates will not be shut:
       The city of Babylon was well fortified. If Donald Trump follows the same pattern, then it can be expected that his detractors and God's enemies will figuratively shut the door in his face in order to make going forward look impossible. If God follows the pattern that He used with Cyrus, then He will open doors and shatter gates in His own time.

     We have many doorkeepers that strangle and manipulate our politics. Some have conspiratorial sounding names: The Council on Foreign Relations, The Bilderbergs, The Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission. But many others also like to play the role of gatekeeper, most notably the press, a variety of well-funded PACs, and lobbyists. Furthermore, Trump's own party has been opposed to him. John Vibes writes,

During a recent interview on Fox News with Bill O’Reilly, former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich suggested Donald Trump was an “outsider” because he doesn’t belong to “the secret society,” and that he has not been “initiated” into the inner circles of the elite.³

It would take nothing short of the Almighty God to open these doors, yet they opened and Trump secured the GOP nomination.   

    We may not see the other "nations subdued" yet, but Trump is campaigning on the promise to renegotiate bad trade deals, so this element is on the radar.
    Chuck Missler says that "loose the loins of kings" can be literal, and that it means to scare them so badly that they crap their pants. (To be balanced, I will add that conventional commentaries interpret the idiom "loose the loins" as "to ungird, to weaken," or in the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown commentary using vocabulary of the 1880s, "to enfeeble.")
The RINOs⁴ were and remain scared of Trump in a way that no other candidate scared them. During the primaries and now in the race for President, Trump's opponents have been weakened, devitalized, and fatigued, just like Cyrus's enemies were.

v2.  "I will go before you and make the rough places smooth; I will shatter the doors of bronze and cut through their iron bars.
    In Cyrus's time, the gates around the city of Babylon were made of bronze and hung on iron frames. The account of Cyrus taking the city in the 6th century BC is thrilling. It was taken without warfare because the troops diverted the flow of the Euphrates River and were able to wade into the city at night through the river gates. It is quite possible that Cyrus had some inside help with this because there were those in the city who had more respect for him than they held for their own leader, Belshazzar. 
    Herodotus, an ancient historian, wrote of how the Persians resented their subjection to the Medes. Ironically, some of the Medes were the first to recognize that God had His hand on Cyrus, a Persian. Herodotus quotes a letter that was written to Cyrus by one of the Median dissenters, "Son of Cambyses, heaven evidently favors you, or you could never have thus risen superior to fortune."  (Cambyses was Cyrus's biological father, although he was raised by a shepherd.)
In a convoluted and twisting history, Darius the Mede was set in charge of the city after Belshazzar had the kingdom taken from him the night that he misused the Temple goblets to toast idol gods. (Daniel 5:31) Darius, was Cyrus’s uncle and later became his father-in-law. He ruled under his nephew, Cyrus.

In drawing a comparison with Donald Trump, the bronze and iron is symbolic, and the breaking down of these doors signifies liberation. We have seen a switching of allegiances during this election cycle. People who have voted the Democrat ticket all their lives are switching to vote for Republican Donald Trump. Many votes for Trump will be cast by Independents, who now consider themselves former Republicans after a Republican House failed to stop Obama's spending and a Republican Senate continued to confirm Obama's appointees. 
 

v3. "I will give you the treasures of darkness And hidden wealth of secret places, So that you may know that it is I, The LORD, the God of Israel, who calls you by your name.
     Treasures of darkness—Have you heard of Guccifer 2.0, the hacker? Can you say Wikileaks? Some of the secret corruption is being exposed. Julian Assange, an Australian whom Forbes magazine describes as the "genius provocateur behind Wikileaks," has promised that more 'treasures of darkness' will be revealed. Those who are discerning will recognize the Lord's hand in this because Satan is unlikely to expose corruption. 

Calls you by your name— I don't think this next "proof" would convince many Western thinkers that Donald Trump is the new Cyrus, but keeping in mind that God enjoys puns and that the Semitic names of the Bible usually identify the character of the person, the significance of these names, if not prophetic, is at least a curiosity.
Cyrus -  From Κυρος (Kyros), the Greek form of the Persian name Kūrush, which may mean "far sighted."
Donald -   From the Gaelic name Domhnall which means "ruler of the world", composed of the old Celtic elements dumno "world" and val "rule". (http://www.behindthename.com/)
Trump (v) - "surpass, beat," 1580s. Related: Trumped; trumping. (n) - "trumpet," c. 1300, from Old French trompe "long, tube-like musical wind instrument."  (http://etymonline.com)
Hover cursor for this link to topical studies - Symbolism of trumpets
Beyond that, most claims that "God has called Trump by name" are too sketchy for me to state with any assurance. A lot of people like to be YouTube stars and play the fortune teller. Christians are supposed to judge these, and oftentimes we just don't have enough information to do that well. It is easy to feel like Mulder of the fictional X-files, skeptical, but with an "I Want To Believe" poster firmly pinned on the wall. One of them, however, did settle comfortably in my spirit. It made the claim that when Donald was still a boy, he called out to God, and that God is honoring the heart-promise made in his youth. And that is exactly what the God I know would do: honor a child's heartfelt promise.


v4. "For the sake of Jacob My servant, And Israel My chosen one, I have also called you by your name; I have given you a title of honor Though you have not known Me."
     For the sake of— this is an Old Testament writing and two "sakes" are given. Jacob and Israel. If you remember the account in Genesis chapter 32 and repeated in Genesis 35:10, "Israel" was the new name given to Jacob. Throughout the rest of the Bible, Jacob is used to emphasize the human nature and Israel is used to denote his spiritual relationship with the Lord.   We are living in a New Testament age when the nation of Israel has largely reverted to her "Jacob" status insofar as she rejected Yeshua, while the Church of believers has a spiritual relationship with Jesus. (This is not the same as replacement theology—the mission of the church has not replaced the mission of Israel.) We could equally say "for the sake of My servants and My choosing." 

God makes His motives clear in verse four that He is doing this for Jacob His servant and for Israel His chosen. God is not restoring Jerusalem for Cyrus, God is going to see His City restored and made great again for Jacob and Israel, basically for His own family.

So for multiple reasons, God gives a title of honor to a Cyrus who hasn't known Him, but who has respect for this God he is learning about. I would posit that both for the sake of the praying church that is asking for their Father's help, and for the sake of God's overarching plan for His kingdom, God has called out a present-day Cyrus. 
  

v5. "I am the LORD, and there is no other; Besides Me there is no God. I will gird you, though you have not known Me;
This is a stumbling block for many. They have a hard time accepting that God would do this! Here it is in the New Living Translation:  "I am the LORD; there is no other God. I have equipped you for battle, though you don't even know me."  How? Why? Would God equip a man for battle who does not even know him? 

Yes, He would; He even repeated His authority to choose for emphasis— I am the LORD, and there is none else— there is no God besides me. God has a Divine right to choose. There are some life-long church people who have a hard time grasping it, but Cyrus got it! The Bible reconfirms itself in Ezra 1:2. 

Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Ezra 1:2

Cyrus understood that he had been charged with an important mission. Just a small amount of research into why Donald Trump said that he felt compelled to run for the Presidency will reveal that he gets it too. Both men had/have a strong sense of being called to a mission of destiny.  [Hold this thought. It will come up again in the Racehorse Theory.]

v6. "That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun That there is no one besides Me. I am the LORD, and there is no other,
     The WHOLE PURPOSE in choosing Cyrus was so that men may know God! 

Actually, this is brilliant. God wants to reveal His Glory. He wants men to know Him from the rising of the sun to its setting. It does make sense that the best leader for these time is an active seeker of God, not someone who has long ago outgrown their childlike awe.

If we judge whom to give our vote to based on the question, "Which candidate will do the better job of creating conditions such that men may know that there is no one besides the Lord," then answers become simplified. Millions of voters have become disillusioned by seeing people in power "get away with" lying and deceptive acts. This does not help men know God; it makes Him seem more remote than ever. The promotion of a death culture by mandating that Americans pay for abortions does not reveal God's glory, nor does the iron fisted push for lifestyles that God has called abominations.     



Other similarities
 
Cyrus was an active seeker of knowledge. He was elated when he read the scroll of Isaiah where these things were recorded about him!⁵ 2 Chronicles 36:22 says that the Lord stirred him up to these things. This is a quality that Donald Trump shares with Cyrus; they both are eager to seek out answers and solutions, and they were/are both open to hearing what God was saying. 
 
God used Cyrus to clean out the abominations of Babylon. Trump has said that he wants to clean out the crookedness in government. 

The Racehorse Theory applies to both men! The racehorse theory of human development was popular in the 1800s; it is not politically popular today. It posits that some horses were simply born to win. It was seen as natural law. Today, we might say that "it's in their DNA." That attitude is offensive to those who ascribe to the "fairness" of a level playing field. You may not like it, but the Bible has precept of "Potter's Choice." The Potter gets to choose. Does not the potter have authority over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel unto honor, but one unto dishonor? Romans 9:21 Both Cyrus and Trump believe(d) that they were called to greatness.


The Books of Jeremiah and Ezra mention Cyrus as well. I have not tapped into these passages yet in this blog post— 
2 Chronicles 36:22–23 records Cyrus's decree to restore Jerusalem. Cyrus returned the temple treasures that had been carried off decades earlier by the Babylonians!  Can you imagine God selecting a person and giving him a title of honor, even though he did not know God at the time, who will restore the stolen treasures of the Church?  Writing about the Restoration of the Stolen Treasures of the Church would require a separate article, but this was addressed in Donald Trumps acceptance speech when he spoke about repeal of the 1954 Johnson amendment, a change to the tax code that choked the free speech of non-profit organizations. 

Conclusion — Sort Of
This is not so much a conclusion as it is a stopping point. 
   So far I have shown 
• Similar callings, Restoration of Jerusalem and Making America Great Again
• Cyrus was not a 'good Jew" and Trump is not a 'devout Christian; but both men were open to hearing what God has to say. 
• Both men had careers that attracted the attention of the world before they achieved greatness. 
• Both received progressive instruction from God. Actually, this is the normal, so it is not unusual, but I include it because progressive revelation causes character to be formed differently than goal-setting and then aligning all things to meet that goal. (In this regard Trump is radically different than Hillary and we see his similarity with Cyrus.)
• Both flummoxed their opposition in such a way that it weakened them. 
• Both were/are successful in attracting their enemies' defectors.
• Both benefited from the exposing of secrets; Daniel interpreted the mystical writing on the wall that judged Belshazzar, and the exposure of secret documents is bringing judgment on Trump's opposition.
• In both cases, the Lord is directing current events for the sake of His own people, not for the sake of Cyrus or Trump. 
• Both men have been motivated by a sense of destiny, viewing themselves as servant-leaders.  
• Cyrus liberated the Jews to be able to worship in the Temple again, and Trump appears to be in the process of liberating religious freedoms for Christians.
• Both expressed an eagerness to know more about God. 
• God has put both men in a position to affect world history.   
 
  



Footnotes
¹ Nineteen direct mentions of "Cyrus" were found in my Studylight.org search of the New American Standard and Cyrus matched 37 verses in the Authorized King James Version, with more mentions of Cyrus in the apocryphal book of 1 Esdras used in many Catholic Bibles. Additionally, there are places where he is alluded to but not by name.
² Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews Book XI, chapter 1 Jeremiah, whose ministry in Judah overlapped the end of Isaiah's, also prophesied about some of Cyrus's acts, (although not by name,) before he was born.  
³  Vibes, J., Former House Speaker Says GOP Hates Trump Because He Doesn’t Belong To “The Secret Society” March 9, 2016
⁴ RINO - Republican In Name Only, said of Representatives and Senators who voted for Obama's policies against the popular will of their constituents, and of those who benefit from the RNC but compromise its platform.  
⁵ There are two main theories about how Cyrus came into possession of the scroll. One is that Daniel, who worked for Cyrus's uncle gave it to him. Daniel would certainly have known about the prophecy and he was in a position to pass it on to Cyrus. The other theory makes for a more adventuresome story. In the 51st chapter of the eponymous book, Jeremiah writes his prophecy of the fall of Babylon on a scroll. In verse 61 he gives it to the quartermaster, who is about to leave the land of Judah for Babylon, with these instructions, "As soon as you come to Babylon, then see that you read all these words aloud."  Verse 63 reads, "And as soon as you finish reading this scroll, you will tie a stone to it and throw it into the middle of the Euphrates." The second theory about how Cyrus got the scroll is that when his troops diverted the river and the water level dropped, his soldiers found it. That sounds far-fetched, but then one day an axe head would float too. Both could be true, that Cyrus found Jeremiah's scroll first and then sought out more information and was stunned to find that Isaiah had written about the capture of Babylon too, and Isaiah mentioned him by name.