An American pastor who leads a church fixated on doomsday has claimed that US President Donald Trumps rise to power was foretold in the Bible.
Jonathan Cahn is the pastor at the Beth Israel Worship Centre in Wayne, New Jersey, where every weekend some 1,000 congregants gather for his idiosyncratic teachings, The New York Times reported on Monday.
He has dedicated an entire book to the claim, an insight he said he received from God.
In "The Paradigm: The Ancient Blueprint That Holds the Mystery of Our Times", Cahn likens Trump to the biblical king Jehu, who led the ancient nation of Israel away from idolatry.
The book, published months after Trump's win in November 2016, argues all sorts of figures in contemporary politics have biblical counterparts. Bill and Hillary Clinton, for example, were the modern-day analogues to wicked Ahab and Jezebel.
Trump, "like his ancient predecessor", Cahn writes in his book, was a "flawed vessel" being used by God. "The unlikely and controversial warrior was destined to become the new ruler of the land. The template would ordain that Donald Trump would become the next president," he said.
Cahn casts Trump as a heroic figure. "Trump is offering us a window for revival, a window to return to God. What happened in the election was not about Trump but about something much higher, the purposes of God."
This week Cahn will make his first trip to the President's vacation retreat Mar-a-Lago in Florida. He is set to address a small gathering of activists and advisers.
Cahn's rise as a doomsday pastor began early as he devoured the writings of Nostradamus, the Virginia psychic Edgar Cayce and far-out conspiracy theories about ancient astronauts. He also read "The Late Great Planet Earth", the 1970s best-seller, that argued doomsday prophecies of the Bible were playing out with events like the Cold War and Israel's Six-Day War.
Cahn said abortion, gay rights and the perceived retreat of religion in the public square were all troubling signs that America, like ancient Israel, had lost its way.