Did God providentially spare former President Donald J. Trump’s life on Saturday, July 13, 2024? The front-runner presidential candidate could easily have been killed in an assassination attempt, had he not turned his head about an inch or so.
As everyone knows, Trump was campaigning in Butler, Pennsylvania, a city north of Pittsburgh at an outdoor rally when he was shot at by a 20-year-old with a rifle on the roof of a nearby building.
On Sunday, Trump gave honor to the Almighty, writing that it was “God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.”
Bill Maher, the irreverent comedian, in effect made the same observation – but not attributing the miraculous outcome to God. Trump was very lucky to be alive after this incident, said Maher in his own profanity-laced way.
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time God’s providence touched America. Indeed, 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 after Richard Butler (1743-1791), who was a Revolutionary War officer. He served at Yorktown, where the war ended when the British General Cornwallis agreed to surrender. Washington gave Butler the honor to receive Cornwallis’ sword. Butler passed that honor to his immediate subordinate, Ebenezer Denny. At a Yorktown victory meal, General Washington made 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 referring to the biblical God’s governance of the world – He provides for us and He answers prayers.
Dr. Peter Lillback, founding president of Providence Forum, and I wrote a book on the faith of our first president, George Washington’s Sacred Fire. Lillback donated Providence Forum to Coral Ridge Ministries, and I am privileged to serve as its executive director.
In our Providence Forum documentary series on the Christian roots of America, we have a whole episode on our first president, demonstrating that Washington was not a Deist, but rather 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 that can be found 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 remarkable. On July 9, 1755, the 23-year-old George Washington could easily have been killed in a battle that became a massacre. It occurred near Fort Duquesne outside of what is today Pittsburgh.
As the British and American troops – led by British General Edward Braddock – were in a forest by the Monongahela River, their path into the forest suddenly came alive with French and Indian troops shooting them.
Eyewitnesses said that they looked at Colonel Washington, expecting him to die at any minute – but he didn’t. One of these witnesses to the Battle of Monongahela said, “I expected every moment to see him fall. Nothing but the superintending care of Providence could have saved him.”
By the end of the massacre, Washington was the only British or American officer unharmed, with 714 Americans and British either killed or wounded. In contrast, the French and Indians lost three officers and 30 men.
Washington wondered how it was that in that battle men all around him were dying, while he was spared. He wrote a letter to his brother, John Augustine Washington:
“I now exist and appear in the land of the living by the miraculous care of Providence, that protected me beyond all human expectation; I had 4 Bullets through my Coat, and two Horses shot under me, and yet escaped unhurt.”
Jump ahead, and we see on multiple occasions during the American War for Independence, that Washington felt that God helped us repeatedly in that conflict.
As our first president, in his first official Proclamation for a Day of Thanksgiving (to God), Washington stated the goal,
“That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks – for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation – for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war.”
Without God’s help, we would not have won this thing, said the father of our country. Thus, said Washington in a proclamation 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 humbly to implore his protection and favor.”
What happened on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania may well have been another example of God in His sovereign care keeping watch over America.
