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Dear James,

Do you ever feel like you know how you’re going to die? I’m 38 years old, have no health conditions, take no medication, and work a low-risk job with manageable stress. The way I see it, I’m Teflon, except for two Achilles’ heels (both heels!):

1. My driving
2. My diet

I’m not an insane driver. It’s not as if I weave between six lanes of traffic to gain one car length. But I do love to drive fast, and I also hate to waste time. It’s a potent combination. I’ve had enough close calls that I can’t deny the significantly nonzero chance that one day all the high-speed, moving variables align to end me.

If the car doesn’t get me, it’ll be my high-fat, high-calorie diet. Despite my life of fast-food abundance, I am not obese, because I am extremely tall and get regular exercise. My large frame hides a lot of excesses. Though external warning signs are absent, everything I know about nutrition makes me feel like I’m headed for a stealth cardiac event or terrible, late-detected cancer.

Don’t get me wrong: I love living! But I think that’s why I find myself handicapping the cause of my own death. Is this normal, or at least not unprecedented?

Dear Reader,

First: Slow down, dude. I’m not being metaphorical. Go slower in your car! In my mind, I see you zooming around out there, folded over the wheel in your tallness, blazing with your fast-food calories, calculating your odds, making a bit of a menace of yourself. I like being speedy too, but think about who else is on the road with you: the panicking, the wild with anger, the hesitant, the half-asleep, the ones who need their eyes tested. Also: the nice people just driving along on their way to Chuck E. Cheese. Do not conscript them into your game of high-speed moving variables.

Now to your question: Is it normal to envision or predict the cause of one’s own death? I think it most certainly is. The other night I attended a performance by the Irish comedian Tommy Tiernan, a very Beckettian figure in his baggy black suit and tipped-back hat, speaking lyrically about madness and death, twitching around in the spotlight. Tiernan told us that he was all for the death penalty, because it gives the condemned man a how and a when and a why: You’re going to die at 3 p.m. on Thursday, by such-and-such a method, because you killed someone with an ax. (Rather than conking out randomly in a room at the DoubleTree, was his point.) Me, I imagine rather fondly that I’ll get hit by a bus: I picture myself looping through the air post-impact, in slow motion, full of regrets and reconsiderations, perhaps even having a last-minute breakthrough. But the Lord comes like a thief in the night, doesn’t he? So I’m pretty sure that, when the ultimate moment arrives, that’s not how it’ll be. You, too, might get a surprise. In the meantime: I’m glad you love living. Eat fewer McNuggets, and take your foot off the gas.

Droning with mortality,
James

Dear James,

Because I’m an old geezer (I’ll be 80 next June), I often reflect on the wreckage I may have left behind in my long life. In the past couple of years, someone I hurt emotionally has stopped talking to me entirely, and he’s made it clear that I shouldn’t try to get in touch with him, either.

Over the course of about 30 years, I have sincerely apologized to him a couple of times for the damage I did. But now, in my old age, it occurs to me that an apology—no matter how sincere—does not have the emotional and moral weight that asking for forgiveness does. It’s not really getting to the bottom of what happened between us. What do you think?

Dear Reader,

I don’t know how anybody expects to get to the end of their life, especially a long life, without a look over their shoulder at the mile-wide seam of smoldering, Mad Max ruination they’ve left behind them: craters, twisted frames, flattened people. Equally, I’m sure your eight decades have been strewn with uncounted good deeds and good vibes. Why not reckon them up?

I once got dumped by a friend—extremely painful!—and I sought advice from someone with more experience than me. “Ah,” he said, “when it’s over, it’s so over.” And so it has proved. Sounds to me like your friend can’t, won’t, or is disinclined to forgive you. So forgive yourself. Let yourself off the hook. Leave him to his life, and get back to living yours. And when the ruminations arise, those creeping wreckage-thoughts, simply give them a nod and then turn your mind elsewhere. Make yourself a nice cup of coffee and sit and watch the weeds grow.

In rustic peace,
James

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This article was originally published by Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Donald Trump’s fans and critics alike have compared him to some of history’s most famous rulers: Cyrus the Great, Adolf Hitler, King David, and more.

But on the eve of the election, a celebrity pastor named Jonathan Cahn wants his evangelical followers to think of the Republican candidate as a present-day manifestation of a far more obscure leader: the biblical king Jehu, who vanquished the morally corrupt house of Ahab to become the tenth ruler of the Kingdom of Israel.

“President Trump, you were born into the world to be a trumpet of God, a vessel of the Lord in the hands of God. God called you to walk according to the template; he called you according to the template of Jehu, the warrior king,” Cahn told the hundreds of Christian leaders who gathered last week for the National Faith Summit outside Atlanta. He also shared a clip of his prophecy about Trump on his YouTube channel, which has more than a million followers.

What Cahn means—and why at least one scholar of the Christian right says he is worried—requires some background. Cahn, 65, is the son of a Holocaust refugee and grew up in a Jewish household in New Jersey. When he was 20, he says he had a personal revelation that led him to Jesus, and he eventually became the head of a Messianic congregation, blending Jewish rituals with Christian worship and a focus on doomsday prophecies.

Cahn helped popularize the interpretation of 9/11 as an apocalyptic biblical allegory. In his telling, the terrorist attacks were akin to God’s rebuke of the biblical nation of Israel, and they happened because God wanted the United States to revert to a time before legalized abortion and gay rights when religion held a more central place in society—or else. His book on the topic, The Harbinger, came out in 2011 and spent months on the New York Times best-seller list.

Cahn continued to release commercially successful books, and combined with his social-media activity, he established a growing and enthusiastic audience for his prophetic warnings.

Then Trump came along. During Trump’s first term, many evangelical-Christian supporters explained his lack of religiosity by comparing him to Cyrus, the pagan ruler of ancient Persia, who served as God’s agent by, according to the Bible, helping the Israelites return home from exile. In 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, amid an effort to build stronger ties with the evangelical movement, praised Trump as a modern-day Cyrus.

But Cahn had spun a different prophetic narrative about the new American president. He released a book called The Paradigm the year after the 2016 election, which cast Trump as Jehu, the biblical king who took control of and restored the Kingdom of Israel, whose territory largely overlapped with parts of present-day Israel and Lebanon. Just as Jehu killed the idol-worshippers who had taken over the kingdom, Trump would “drain the swamp” of Washington and “make America great again.” In this contemporary rendition, Hillary and Bill Clinton play the role of Ahab and Jezebel, the evil rulers who had led the kingdom astray. Jezebel is also seen as wicked in the Jewish tradition, but she is far more prominent as a symbol in evangelical discourse today, representing feminism, sexual promiscuity, and moral decay.

In the 2024 election, Joe Biden’s replacement with Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate challenging Trump allowed the template of Jehu versus Jezebel to get updated and become salient again.

Two weeks before Cahn spoke at the National Faith Summit, an ally of his named Ché Ahn evoked the comparison at another mass religious event. Ahn heads Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena, California, as well as a network of thousands of ministries all over the world. He is a leader of a spiritual movement known as New Apostolic Reformation, which aims for Christians to dominate society and government. Major Republican figures such as Mike Pompeo, Sarah Palin, and Josh Hawley have visited Ahn’s church, reflecting the growing influence of Christian nationalism on the Republican Party.

On October 12, Yom Kippur, Ahn appeared at the “Million Women March” event on the National Mall, speaking before a crowd of tens of thousands, with many wearing prayer shawls or blowing shofars—traditionally Jewish symbols highlighting the movement’s overlap with Messianic Judaism.

“Jehu will cast down Jezebel,” Ahn said, and prophesized a victory by Trump over Harris.

The social-media user who brought the recent Jehu comparisons to wider notice through posts on X is Matthew Taylor, a scholar of the Christian right at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies, a Baltimore-based interfaith research and advocacy group, dedicated to “[dismantling] religious bias and bigotry.”

“Since Harris became the candidate this summer, we’ve seen the Jehu image really rise to the surface much more,” Taylor said in an interview. “This is the story [Cahn and Ahn] want running through their followers’ heads, their lens for interpreting the election and its aftermath.”

In the grim biblical story, recounted in the book of 2 Kings, as Jehu ascends the throne, he kills Jezebel by ordering her thrown out of a palace window, after which he stomps on her body, which is then eaten by dogs. The new warrior king then goes on a killing spree, slaying the families of Ahab and Jezebel and other Baal-worshipping pagans who had despoiled the kingdom.

“Jehu came to the capital city with an agenda to drain the swamp,” Cahn said in his speech, addressing Trump, who also spoke at the National Faith Summit. “Jehu formed an alliance with the religious conservatives of the land. So, it was your destiny to do the same. Jehu overturned the cult of Baal by which children were sacrificed. So, God chose you to overturn America’s cult of Baal, Roe v. Wade.”

Cahn and Ahn did not respond to my request to their ministries to discuss the theology of their recent statements.

Neither pastor elaborated on the analogy they were drawing, and neither made an explicit call for violence. But Trump has generated widespread concern by speaking of retribution, calling his political opponents “the enemy from within,” and talking about using the military against political enemies if he wins.

Given the riot that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, after Trump challenged the election results, and his ongoing promotion of election-fraud narratives, independent experts and government agencies are warning of increased political violence. Many Jewish leaders are particularly concerned because Trump recently blamed Jews for his potential defeat.

Taylor says the pastors’ followers would be familiar with the biblical story of Jehu, and he believes that they are priming their audience to accept violence during the election or afterward.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, that surfaced the Jehu prophecies, Taylor voiced his alarm.

“If Trump wins in this election, the Jehu ‘template’ tells Trump’s Christian supporters: some real-world violence may be needed to purge America of her demons,” Taylor wrote. “If Trump loses this election, particularly to Kamala Harris their ‘Jezebel,’ the Jehu template prescribes vengeance.”