Social media has been abuzz with calls to assassinate president-elect Donald Trump. At least two persons have also given warnings of a Trump assassination. How should Christians respond to these things?
Within days of Donald Trump winning the presidency, Twitter has seen a spike on calls for Trump's assassination even as protests blazed in different cities in the U.S.
"They need to assassinate Donald Trump asap," one Twitter user said, according to the Daily Mail.
"So who's going to assassinate Trump at his inauguration?" another one asked.
A journalist for The Guardian found herself in hot water after her Tweet calling for Trump's assassination sparked fury.
"It's about time for a presidential assassination," Monisha Rajesh tweeted, according to The Sun. Rajesh has shut down her account and The Guardian safely distanced itself from her after people stormed Twitter asking for her arrest and urging the public to boycott The Guardian.
Other threats called for the assassination of Mike Pence. According to the Daily Mail, the Secret Service is taking these threats seriously by monitoring the social media accounts of the persons releasing them to check if the posts are just one time or if the person has a history of such behavior.
Aside from threats on social media, at least two persons have said God warned them about plans to assassinate Trump. Prophetic minister Lana Vawser announced on Thursday that she saw a "vision" that God gave her to incite the people to pray.
In that vision, Vawser saw "hordes of demons" setting up strategies to defeat the president-elect. They unrolled different scrolls, and in one of them, Vawser saw the words "assassination attempts."
"I knew instantly that these were plans to attempt to assassinate Donald Trump," she wrote on her website.
Prophetic speaker and business consultant Dr. Lance Wallnau on Saturday shared on his Facebook page, 7m Underground, about a similar warning forwarded to him by a friend from Asia. The warning came from a dream in which Trump was shot while he was visiting Pres. Barack Obama in the Oval Office.
How should Christians take such threats and what should they do?
Vawser encouraged God's people to pray for increased protection for Trump. She said that in the vision, as people prayed, she saw the words "assassination attempts" written over by the word "ascent" in red.
"I then felt the Lord speak again 'As My people pray and pray for Donald Trump's protection, as they call on the angels of ASCENT, Donald Trump will be lifted high above these assassination attempts and NOT be touched or harmed. He will be lifted up by My Spirit to a place where he will SOAR above the enemy's attempts and roar,'" Vawser wrote.
Evangelist Franklin Graham said believers need to pray for Trump and Pence whether they voted them or not.
"One thing is for sure, we need to pray for our new president, vice president, and our other leaders every day - whether we agree with them or not," he said on Facebook. "They need God's help and direction. It is my prayer that we will truly be 'one nation under God.'"
Author and minister Jennifer LeClaire also urged Christians to pray in obedience to the Bible.
"Whether we voted for Trump or not, the Bible commands us to pray for those in authority (1 Tim. 2:2). The Bible says that 'there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God' (Rom. 13:1)," she wrote in an article. "Whether we like Trump or not, God is still sovereign. God still has a plan. God is still all-powerful."
