Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has now survived two official assassination attempts. However, according to the former president, the threats are only getting more severe.

On Tuesday, Trump was informed of “real and specific threats” coming from Iran to end his life. He wrote in a post, “Big threats on my life by Iran. The entire U.S. Military is watching and waiting. Moves were already made by Iran that didn’t work out, but they will try again. Not a good situation for anyone. I am surrounded by more men, guns, and weapons than I have ever seen before.” This was also publicly addressed by Trump Campaign Communications Director Steven Cheung, who said, “Intelligence officials have identified that these continued and coordinated attacks have heightened in the past few months.”

Considering this, Cheung emphasized that “law enforcement officials across all agencies are working to ensure President Trump is protected, and the election is free from interference.” In addition to the threats coming from Iran, the two assassination attempts, both stemming from American citizens, have seemed to spark a trend of even more vitriol directed at the former president.

Only a matter of weeks after the first assassination attempt by Thomas Matthew Crooks in Butler, Pa., a man from Idaho by the name Warren Jones Crazybull made nine phone calls to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach, Fla. According to a criminal complaint assessed by Forbes, Crazybull stated, “I am coming down to Bedminster tomorrow. I am going to down [Trump] personally and kill him.” This same man shared further threats on his social media platforms, The Post Millennial highlighted.

Just this week, Trump was “forced to cancel” a rally in Wisconsin due to insufficient resources to ensure proper security. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) announced on X that a whistleblower informed him “the Secret Service DENIED the Trump campaign the resources [and] manpower for a rally in Wisconsin,” even though Vice President Kamala Harris was able to hold a rally in the same state the week prior.

As a final example of these widespread threats against Trump, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recently published “the first page of a handwritten letter allegedly penned by Ryan Routh, who has been arrested in connection with the September 15 assassination attempt against Trump … in Florida,” The Washington Stand reported. In the letter addressed to “the World,” the writer encouraged readers to “finish the job” of assassinating Trump, offering a $150,000 bounty to whoever would do so.

Amid these growing threats, a recent poll from Quinnipiac University found “roughly three-quarters (73 percent) of likely voters say they are either very concerned (39 percent) or somewhat concerned (34 percent) that there will be politically motivated violence following the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.”

According to the survey, which took place between September 19 and 22 polling 1,728 people, Democrats are the most concerned about “the pot of political discourse boiling over into politically motivated violence,” with 90% of the Democrat respondents stating they’re either “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned.” Another 59% of the Republicans surveyed felt the same.

All of these circumstances point to an increasingly violent and anxious political climate, Family Research Council’s biblical worldview experts, David Closson and Joseph Backholm, explained to The Washington Stand.

“Most of us believe there is a right to self-defense,” Backholm said. “[S]o, in some sense, we all believe there are circumstances in which it’s permissible to use force against someone who is an immediate threat to someone’s life or well-being.” However, we can see how “the problem is that our political rhetoric has been so hyperbolic that it has convinced a small percentage but significant number of the public that Trump is actually Hitler.” With this mindset of believing “a genocidal dictator is about to take power,” Backholm noted, “you can understand why someone would consider the use of force to prevent it.”

Backholm went on to address how there’s a certain worldview run amok that believes “it’s less helpful in a political sense to say, ‘I disagree,’ than it is to say, ‘My opponent will destroy the world,’” thus convincing “people we’re perpetually on the verge of holocaust and societal collapse.” This likely explains why “we’re seeing assassination attempts,” as it is a direct result of this “sense of desperation” that something must be done to eliminate the perceived threat.

Not only do “desperate people do desperate things,” as Backholm put it, but Closson chimed in that everyone has to reckon with Scripture’s “metanarrative of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.” A biblical worldview provides an understanding to life’s biggest questions, but “if you are operating from a non-biblical worldview, you are then going to answer some of life’s most fundamental questions very differently.”

According to Closson, humans are faced with these questions: “What’s gone wrong with the world? And is there any hope?” In response, unbelievers often believe “politics offers the hope that we can make the world right again,” while still lacking a response for exactly what went wrong in the first place. Ultimately, “That existential hope that you put in the political process at the end of the day is a misplaced hope,” and it will often lead to poor behavior when circumstances seem dire.

On the other hand, Backholm and Closson pointed out that fear is one of the most common responses to chaos, especially for those who choose not to be violent themselves. “Heated, hyperbolic political rhetoric is nothing new to American campaigns and elections,” Closson explained. “However, it does seem that in the last few election cycles some of the rhetoric has escalated.” And “the effect of this escalating rhetoric is that many people are nervous and unnerved by what happens in the political process.”

But Backholm offered, “The fact that most people fear political violence after the election is evidence that there are people on the Right and Left who have placed far too much hope in politics and will see losing an election as something to despair over.” And this, he added, is where Christians are called to respond differently to what’s happening around us. “The Christian worldview compels us to pray and work for righteousness to prevail,” he said, “but it also allows us to understand the limits of our control.”

Christians are called to “be good stewards of what God has given us authority over, but we must also let God control the things we don’t control.” Backholm contended, “This framework allows us to avoid despair even when we see clear evidence of sin and evil at work in the world,” which Closson described as a “Genesis 3 world ravaged by the effects of sin.” Without a biblical perspective, Backholm observed, the “only solution to the problems in the world is political. And if that doesn’t work out,” then there’s “nowhere else to turn.”

All this is a reminder that “hopelessness leads people to do desperate things like be violent if an election doesn’t go the way they prefer,” Backholm noted. But as both Closson and Backholm addressed, “[T]he gospel is the antidote to hopelessness.”

“Whenever we see violence or sin, it’s not only a reminder of how we are in rebellion against our Creator, but it’s also a reminder of our need for redemption,” Closson concluded. “For Christians, we know the gospel offers the only hope that sinful people can be reconciled to a holy God through faith and repentance of sin. Christians should look at the world and not be surprised, but interpret it through the lens of creation, fall, redemption, consummation, and be the people that can offer a hopeful word to a chaotic and scared world.”