According to a story in Rolling Stone magazine, Donald Trump, for his 2024 presidential campaign, has been floating the idea to some associates of expanding America’s federal death penalty, carrying out group executions, and even televising executions. He is said to also want to bring back death by firing squad or by hanging, and “according to two sources” he is even thinking of the guillotine (ref. 1). The latter, death by guillotine, stands out because it is Bible prophecy that in these last days Mystery Babylon, the nation of the False Prophet, will execute its own citizens by beheading for refusing to take the mark of the beast, and for refusing to worship the beast and his image.
And he had power to… cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads
Revelation 13:15-16
And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
Revelation 20:4
Another thing about all this is that in the movie The Purge: Election Year (2016), which was released October 2016 and which features the tagline “Keep America Great”, no doubt inspired by a time-travelling demon that noticed Trump’s “Make America Great Again” November 2016, there is a scene where some of the victims of the purge are beheaded by guillotine. In 2020, Trump ran for the presidency again, using that exact slogan, “Keep America Great”.
The Purge: Election Year (2016) evokes the False Prophet, the beast “with two horns like a lamb” that speaks “as a dragon”: someone proclaiming to be a Christian but speaks for Satan. The False Prophet is someone the early Christian Barnabas once described as “the black one”.
It is not certain whether Trump will win 2024. My guess is that 2024 will be given to the False Prophet, assuming that it is all to start soon. In effect, the False Prophet would have to be “the king of Babylon”: he would have to be at the top of that nation with real political power, rather than be merely an influential celebrity. I suppose, the “man of sin” and “son of perdition” will pick up on these ideas that Trump has floated, and so in time, the US federal death penalty will involve the guillotine.
One of the reasons why America must find a new way to carry out the death penalty is because since 2005 or thereabouts, Europe has been refusing to supply the drugs that were once used by America to execute a person by lethal injection (ref. 2). The European Union has taken a moral stance against the death penalty.
It is a sign of the times that the guillotine is in the news.
The Islamists of ISIS are known to behead captives with a sword or a knife, while televising it. But Revelation explains that eventually Babylon also, being equally Satanic, will behead some of its citizens.
Did you know that in Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler executed several Christians by guillotine?
Sophie Scholl, of the White Rose movement in Munich, was one example. She was a Lutheran and a student who tried to stir resistance against the Nazis. She organised anti-Nazi leaflets, but was found out. She was tried in a sham court for treason, and then executed by guillotine.
Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian conscript, was another example. He was a Catholic and a conscientious objector. Remarkably, as a would-be soldier, he was not executed by firing squad, as many might have thought. Rather, they beheaded him by guillotine because he declared himself a Christian, and evil spirits were involved.
A movie about the life of Franz Jägerstätter by Terrence Malick came out in 2019. The title “A Hidden Life” quotes a line in George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch: “For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” Eliot, also known as Mary Anne Evans, was an Anglican who had renounced Christianity for the philosophy of humanism: the idea that in the world there could be good without God, and evil without the Devil. Though Malick might have intended to market his film to the humanist and the secular by quoting Eliot, the expression “A Hidden Life” also points to Colossians 3:3 – “For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”
If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.
Colossians 3:1-4
Remarkably, during the tribulation of Franz Jägerstätter, the Nazi prison guards kept saying to him that his martyrdom would be pointless because no one would notice and nothing would change.
Still, Jägerstätter saved his own soul, and set an example for others, especially in these last days.
And I saw the woman [Mystery Babylon] drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus…
Revelation 17:6
For this reason, Jägerstätter’s life was indeed hid with Christ in God.
Interestingly, the Catholic church beatified Franz Jägerstätter in 2007. Notice his name, “Jäger”, which means “hunter” in German. If it turns out Jägerstätter is a saint, no points for guessing whom he will go after when he is born again.
So, the Nazis beheaded, among others, a Lutheran and a Catholic. In these last days also, if you are behind enemy lines, to be saved, you do not have to know the answer to every complex theological question. You only have to be Christian enough to know that Islam is not a newer testament from heaven that abrogates the gospel of Jesus Christ.
What is more, you only have to be Christian enough to tell the difference between good and evil. If you side with the Devil and worship him, or take his mark, even inadvertently, then you will be blotted out of the Lamb’s book of life, which means you will be damned to the lake of fire.
References:
1. Asawin Suebsaeng and Patrick Reis (14 February 2023), “Trump Plans to Bring Back Firing Squads, Group Executions if He Retakes White House”, rollingstone.com
2. CBS (18 February 2014), “Europe’s moral stand has U.S. states running out of execution drugs, complicating capital punishment”, cbsnews.com