Gospel, reality check, and call to all persecuted individuals and communities in the U.S. — and worldwide

I. The Missional Mandate: God’s Design for All the Ethnē

The missional purpose of God is not an afterthought in redemptive history — it is the spine of it. “In you shall all the ethnē (peoples, ethnicities) be blessed” (Galatians 3:8; cf. Genesis 12:3 LXX). From the Abrahamic covenant to its fulfillment in Christ, the trajectory of Scripture is unmistakably global: God intends blessing for every ethnic people-group on earth. This blessing is not incidental. It is the telos toward which the whole canonical narrative moves.

That blessing is made possible only through the death, resurrection, and reign of Emperor–Healer Jesus Christ — Emperor, because He reigns over all creation, both spiritual and material, visible and invisible; Healer, because His kingdom rescues, liberates, heals, repairs, reconstructs, and brings to fulfillment what sin, death, Satan, demons, and evil human structures have broken.

Christ bore our sins in His body on the tree (1 Peter 2:24). He disarmed the principalities and powers, triumphing over them through the cross (Colossians 2:15). He rose as the firstfruits of the new creation (1 Corinthians 15:20). And having ascended, He was seated at the right hand of the Father, with all authority given to Him in heaven and on earth — far above all rule, authority, power, and dominion (Matthew 28:18; Ephesians 1:20–22). He already reigns. His kingdom has been inaugurated — not yet consummated, but already real, effective, and comprehensive nonetheless.

It is from that throne that He commissions His believers–followers: “Go therefore and disciple all the ethnē” (Matthew 28:19–20). The Great Commission is not a polite suggestion. It is a royal mandate issued by the Commander-in-Chief of the whole cosmos, including the realm of spirit beings.

II. The Commission’s Priority Addressees: The Oppressed and the Crushed

The ethnē to be discipled include — by the logic of Christ’s declared manifesto documented in Luke 4:18–19 — those on the underside of power. The Spirit of the Lord was upon the Son to announce good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed. This is not peripheral to the gospel; it is its announcement.

That means the Great Commission is especially directed toward Foundational Black Americans, Native peoples, Latine communities, immigrants, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and all others who have been and still are being systematically crushed by the structures of racial empire. These are not secondary recipients of the missionary mandate. They are at its center.

III. The Counterfeit Gospel of “White” Colonial Conquest

Against this missional mandate stands a long and blood-soaked counter-narrative. “White” conquistadores–colonizers have never functioned as stewards of the ethnē — they have been their predators. In fact, invoking the parable of the wicked tenants (Matthew 21:33–46) to describe them would be grossly irresponsible and deceitful. The wicked tenants at least began as tenants: they were entrusted with the vineyard before they corrupted that trust into violence, murder, and attempted seizure of the inheritance. “White” conquistadores–colonizers were never tenants. They were invaders, thieves, enslavers, dispossessors, destroyers, and murderers who entered lands and communities not entrusted to them, seized what did not belong to them, massacred peoples made in God’s image, and then blasphemously claimed the authority and blessing of the Owner whose name they profaned.

The murder of the Son in Jesus’ parable remains the climactic disclosure of human rebellion against God. But precisely for that reason, the parable must not be misused to sanitize colonial conquest. “White” conquistadores–colonizers did not merely betray an entrusted stewardship. They fabricated a claim of stewardship after invasion, genocide, dispossession, expropriation, and enslavement. As a human historical structure of violence, massacre, and land-theft against peoples never entrusted to them, their colonial project is infinitely worse than what the category of murdering and land-grabbing tenancy allows.

They are more accurately foreshadowed by the evil four horsemen — conquest, war, famine, and death (Revelation 6); by the beast and the false prophet, who join political atrocities to spiritual legitimation (Revelation 13); and by Babylon the Great, the imperial-commercial order drunk on the blood of the holies and enriched by the commodification of human life (Revelation 18). This is not hyperbole. It is pattern recognition in the grammar of prophetic Scripture.

Foundational Black Americans stand first in the crosshairs of that structure — a fact documented across the history of U.S. racial empire, from chattel slavery and racial atrocities to segregation, political suppression, extraction, and the continuing refusal of repair. Aneta Dybska’s 2024 analysis of the ADOS movement illuminates the contemporary articulation of this lineage-specific injury and the socio-political demand that it not be erased. The logic of racial empire in the U.S. has always organized itself around the annihilation, predation, and suppression of Black life. That logic has not dissolved. Instead, it has been refined and re-weaponized.

IV. The Present Crisis: Trump, MAGA, and the Resurrection of the Confederacy

The present political moment is not an anomaly in U.S. history. It is an intensification of its deepest pathology. Trump, MAGA, and approximately 81% of self-identified Republicans are functioning as a resurrected confederacy — a political coalition organized around the conservation of “White” racial hierarchy, the authoritarian concentration of executive power, and the systematic rollback of protections for those the racists–supremacists are “othering” (PRRI; Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian).

But the crisis is not confined to the Republican Party. Too many white Democrats and white Independents remain functionally “White” in the sense articulated by Dr. Charles W. Mills in The Racial Contract (1997) — committed, either consciously and/or through the sediment of socialization, to the invisible but operative system of racial advantage that organizes U.S. political and social life (PRRI; Pew Research Center). At the hour of the nation’s greatest peril, “White” people — across party lines — have proven beyond unreliable.

The asymmetry must be acknowledged: white Republicans remain far more deeply aligned with structurally racist and authoritarian politics than white Democrats, while white Independents remain substantially more compromised than white Democrats. But comparative distance from MAGA is not repentance. White liberals and progressives remain accountable wherever they preserve domination, refuse repair, silence the oppressed, or protect their own comfort at the expense of targeted communities.

The authoritarian appetite now on full display was visible well before Trump’s first term. In the 2016 PRRI/Brookings Immigration Survey, researchers used a scale adapted from the American National Election Study to measure authoritarian orientation. On that measure, nearly two-thirds of white working-class respondents (64%) and nearly four in ten of white college-educated respondents (39%) registered an authoritarian orientation. In the same study, 60% of white working-class respondents and 32% of their college-educated counterparts agreed that the country needed a leader “willing to break some rules” to set things right. The demand for strongman power was not created by Trump. It was already present within substantial sectors of the white electorate before he first entered the presidency.

Trump himself supplied the most candid confirmation of this intent. Speaking at the Turning Point Action Believers Summit in West Palm Beach, Florida, on July 26, 2024, he told the crowd:

“Christians, get out and vote! Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what? It’ll be fixed. It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore…. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.”

This is not the rhetoric of democratic competition. It is the language of authoritarian consolidation — the promise that once power is secured, the mechanisms of accountability will be rendered unnecessary.

Independent watchdogs have confirmed what such language portends. The V-Dem Institute warns that U.S. democracy is deteriorating at a speed and scale “unprecedented” in modern history, identifying rapid concentration of power in the presidency and severe deterioration in liberal-democratic constraints. Separately, Freedom House documents a significant decline in U.S. political rights and civil liberties, including sustained efforts by the Trump administration to centralize executive control, undermine anticorruption safeguards, and target perceived political opponents.

Simultaneously and persistently, Trump and his administration are inflicting multiple forms of severe, systemic damage to the nation. In light of documented threats from Russia and China, and analyses of the administration’s foreign-policy direction, one may fairly infer that this immense damage creates functional advantages for Moscow and Beijing, whether or not any secret coordination exists (Glem Melo, “Is Trump Putin’s Puppet — or Something Worse”).

The United States is, right now, in unprecedented peril.

And Trump’s political coalition remains formidable: 81% of self-identified Republicans and nearly 70% of white “Evangelicals” continued to view him favorably in PRRI’s February 2026 survey. The implication must be stated plainly: Functionally, 81% of self-identified Republicans and nearly 70% of white “Evangelicals” are supporting democratic backsliding, authoritarian consolidation, and the constantly intensifying oppression of Black, Native, Latine, immigrant, LGBTQIA+, and other targeted communities.

Trump, MAGA, the Republicans who knowingly continue to sustain their destructive public power, and “White” liberals and progressives insofar as they preserve domination, refuse repair, silence the crushed, or protect their own comfort at the expense of targeted communities, are evil and harmful like Pharaoh and the ancient Egyptians (Exodus 1–14). They have chosen the path of hardness. And history — both sacred and secular — is unambiguous about where that path ends.

V. A Gospel-Grounded Political Mandate: Remove Trump and MAGA from Power

The biblical claim that Christ reigns over all creation — both material and spiritual, visible and invisible — is not a claim that can be quarantined solely to the inner life or the Sunday gathering. It is also a socio-political claim. And it carries political implications.

The Lausanne Covenant — the landmark 1974 evangelical consensus document emerging from a global congress of Christian leaders from more than 150 nations, personally signed by thousands of believers, and principally drafted under the leadership of John Stott — affirms that socio-political involvement is not a betrayal of evangelical faithfulness but part of Christian duty. In its section on “Christian Social Responsibility,” the Covenant declares that God is “both the Creator and the Judge of all men,” and therefore that Christians “should share his concern for justice and reconciliation throughout human society and for the liberation of men and women from every kind of oppression.” It further insists that evangelism and socio-political involvement are “both part of our Christian duty,” and that “the message of salvation implies also a message of judgment upon every form of alienation, oppression and discrimination.”

The Covenant is careful to distinguish: reconciliation with other people is not reconciliation with God, social action is not evangelism, and political liberation is not salvation. Removing Trump and MAGA from power is not the gospel. But that very distinction cuts both ways. Because political liberation is not salvation, Christians must never confuse any political cause with the gospel itself. And because socio-political involvement is part of Christian duty, Christians must never use the gospel as a pretext for passivity before injustice. If, as this essay has documented, Trumpism and MAGA politics are organized around racist harm, democratic sabotage, the systematic marginalization of the vulnerable, and the deformation of truth, then resisting Trumpism and lawfully removing Trump and MAGA officeholders from public power — through voting, organizing, legally warranted litigation, public documentation and truth-telling, and coalition-building — is a legitimate and, under these conditions, necessary expression of Christian social responsibility. By the Lausanne Covenant’s own terms, this is not a departure from evangelical faithfulness. It is a concrete expression of it.

To truly free, heal, repair, reconstruct, secure, and bless the U.S., Trump and MAGA must be removed from power. This is not a partisan preference. It is a gospel-fruit commission grounded in the same Scripture that commands the discipling of all the ethnē (Jim Wallis, The False White Gospel; Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority). The political dismantling of a regime organized around racist harm and democratic sabotage is inseparable from faithful Christian witness.

Removing Trump and MAGA from power, and freeing, healing, and reconstructing the U.S. for real — these are acts of tangible witnessing for our Emperor–Healer. They are not distractions from the gospel. They are necessary tangible demonstrations of it.

Moreover, a movement of holistic discipleship, liberation, and reconstruction here in the U.S. could serve as an inspiration and encouragement for Chinese Christians inside and outside China, Russian believers inside and outside Russia, Saudi disciples inside and outside Saudi Arabia, and other suppressed peoples of faith worldwide to fast, pray, drive out demons, advance the proclamation of the gospel in word and in action, demolish evil and oppressive systems, and reconstruct their nations.

In fact, dear Black, Native, Latine, immigrant, LGBTQIA+, and other oppressed Christians in the U.S., our God-given mission is discipling all the ethnē, dismantling horsemen–beast–falsehood–Babylon structures, and the blessing of all ethnicities from the U.S.A. to the ends of the earth.

The same is true of our fellow persecuted siblings in Christ worldwide. Their mission is equally to dismantle horsemen–beast–falsehood–Babylon structures in their own nations, disciple all the ethnē, and advance the irreversible blessing of all humanity that God purposed from eternity to eternity in Christ.

Now, we have to keep in mind that we cannot demolish horsemen–beast–falsehood–Babylon structures by becoming beasts ourselves. We have to follow the crucified and risen Emperor–Healer in His holy way: worship and serve God alone, proclaim the gospel in word and in action, fast and pray, drive out demons, expose lies, refuse compliance and/or complicity with evil, protect the oppressed, resist all injustices through truthful and nonviolent action, and labor for liberation, healing, and reconstruction (2 Corinthians 10:3–5; Ephesians 6:10–18; Acts 5:29; Revelation 12:11; Romans 12:17–21). Christ sends His people as sheep among wolves; therefore, everything that we do for Him and for humanity must be pursued wisely and without needlessly exposing endangered believers and communities to attacks (Matthew 10:16, 23). God willing, a succeeding essay will address these biblical, nonviolent, security-conscious, and context-sensitive means more fully.

VI. Divine Judgment, Divine Choice, and the Open Door

Scripture is candid about what happens when those in power refuse to repent. God hardened Pharaoh so that His power might be displayed in the liberation of the oppressed (Romans 9:17–18). The hardening of “White” political actors — their shamelessly remorseless and unrepentant persistence in the face of overwhelming gospel and prophetic witness — is not merely a sociological phenomenon. It is a theological and moral one.

This does not mean that every white person, or every person presently entangled in “White” domination, has been hardened beyond repentance; the open door of salvation proves otherwise. It means that their persistent refusal of truth and repair manifests the Pharaoh-pattern Scripture teaches believers to recognize and resist.

Therefore, we turn to the biblical truth that God, in His sovereign freedom, has chosen the despised things of this world — the Black, the Native, the Latine, the immigrant, the LGBTQIA+, the crushed — to nullify the things that are (1 Corinthians 1:28–29). Not because they shame the powerful, but because God allows the powerful to shame themselves by their own shameless and remorseless unrepentance. His rescuing of their victims, and His adopting in Christ those among the crushed who come to repentant faith, is His indictment and shaming of those who victimize.

Yet we always keep in mind that the door of repentant faith remains open. God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9; 1 Timothy 2:3–4). The political demand for accountability and the gospel call to conversion are not in contradiction. The former is an application of the latter.

VII. Call to the Oppressed in the U.S. and Worldwide: Be Heirs and Servants of God

Dear Black, Native, Latine, immigrant, LGBTQIA+, Chinese, Russian, Palestinian, Saudi, and other oppressed persons and communities:

God is calling you to Himself — not as afterthoughts, not as projects, but as His heirs and servants. He is calling you to bless and disciple all the ethnē by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit. The same Christ who died to pay for sins, who defeated Satan, who rose from the dead, and who inaugurately reigns over all creation — visible and invisible, material and spiritual — wants to place His name on you. You are not the margin of His mission. He is calling you to be its bearers and frontliners.

Surrender all to Christ. Feed on God’s Word. Be the repentant church. Do life and mission together. Be continually filled with and led by the Holy Spirit. Fast, pray, and cast out demons. Share Jesus. Disciple all the ethnicities. Plant repentant churches. Free, heal, and bless all humanity.

To those in the U.S.: Call Congress. Elect accountability. Impeach and convict Trump. Get America out of peril. Reconstruct the nation for real. And extend the blessing of freedom and new creation to all nations.

To those in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other anti-Christian nations: Persevere in gospel-centered discipleship, prayer, fasting, spiritual warfare, and servanthood. Be filled and led by the Spirit every day. Christ will never abandon or forsake you. Soon, He will crush Satan under your feet (Romans 16:20).

Holy Spirit of Emperor–Healer Jesus Christ, be merciful to us, anoint us, lead us, and help us.

God willing, in a succeeding essay we will study supernatural victories in the Bible.

Glem Melo is an imperfect, repentant evangelical missionary.

With research and composition assistance from multiple AI tools.