Is Trump’s near-death similar to that of George Washington?

Did God provide for the life of former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday, July 13, 2024? The most promising presidential candidate could easily have been killed in an assassination attempt had he not turned his head an inch.

As everyone knows, Trump was holding an outdoor campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a city north of Pittsburgh, when a 20-year-old man on the roof of a nearby building shot him with a rifle.

On Sunday, Trump honored the Almighty, writing that it was “God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.”

Get our latest news for FREE

Subscribe to receive The Christian Post’s top stories (plus special offers!) delivered daily/weekly to your email address. Be the first to know.

Bill Maher, the irreverent comedian, made essentially the same observation – but did not attribute the miraculous outcome to God. Trump was very lucky to be alive during this incident, Maher said in his own profanity-laced manner.

It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that God’s providence has touched America. In fact, I believe that He helped create America itself, which, despite all its flaws, has become the freest and most prosperous nation.

Butler, Pennsylvania was named for Richard Butler (1743-1791), an officer in the Revolutionary War. He served at Yorktown, where the war ended when British General Cornwallis agreed to surrender. Washington gave Butler the honor of receiving Cornwallis’ sword. Butler passed the honor on to his immediate subordinate, Ebenezer Denny. At a victory dinner at Yorktown, General Washington proposed a toast to “the Butlers and their five sons!”

George Washington was a man who believed in providence. Providence is simply an old-fashioned term that refers to the biblical God’s rule over the world – He provides for us and answers prayers.

Dr. Peter Lillback, founding president of the Providence Forum, and I wrote a book about the faith of our first president, George Washington’s holy fire. Lillback donated the Providence Forum to Coral Ridge Ministries and I have the honor of serving as its Executive Director.

In our Providence Forum documentary series on America’s Christian roots, we have an entire episode on our first president that shows that Washington was not a deist, but an orthodox 18th-century Anglican. In that film, Lillback told our viewers, “(Washington) believed in prayer, which deists did not believe. There are over a hundred written prayers in his writings. He loved the doctrine of providence; he uses it over 270 times.”

One incident in the life of the future first president was notable. On July 9, 1755, the then 23-year-old George Washington could easily have been killed in a battle that turned into a massacre. It took place near Fort Duquesne outside of present-day Pittsburgh.

When the British and American troops – led by British General Edward Braddock – were in a forest along the Monongahela River, their path into the forest was suddenly enlivened by French and Indian troops who shot at them.

Eyewitnesses said they looked at Colonel Washington and expected him to die at any moment, but he did not. One of these witnesses to the Battle of the Monongahela said, “I expected to see him fall at any moment. Only Providence could have saved him.”

At the end of the massacre, Washington was the only British or American officer uninjured. 714 Americans and British had been either killed or wounded. The French and Indians, on the other hand, lost three officers and 30 men.

Washington wondered how it was possible that in this battle people were dying all around him, but he himself was spared. He wrote a letter to his brother, John Augustine Washington: “I now exist and am in the land of the living, thanks to the wonderful care of Providence, which has protected me beyond all human expectations. My coat was pierced by four bullets, and two horses were shot under me, and yet I am unhurt.”

Going a step further, we see on several occasions during the American Revolutionary War that Washington felt that God had repeatedly helped him in this conflict.

As our first President, Washington set out the purpose of his first official proclamation for a day of thanksgiving (to God): “That we may then all unite to express to Him our sincere and humble thanks, for His kind care and protection of the people of this country before they became one nation, for the special and varied grace and favorable interposition of His providence, experienced by us in the course and at the close of the late war.”

Without God’s help we could not have won this, said the father of our country. And so Washington said in a statement for the ages: “It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and to humbly implore his protection and favor.”

What happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday may well have been another example of God watching over America in his sovereign care.