A right-wing pastor who serves on Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory board claims God has given the president “full power” to launch an attack on North Korea.
Robert Jeffress, head of the First Baptist Dallas megachurch, told CBN on Tuesday that a biblical passage in Romans allows rulers to use “whatever means necessary ― including war ― to stop evil.”
He said:
“In the case of North Korea, God has given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong Un. I’m heartened to see that our president ― contrary to what we’ve seen with past administrations who have taken, at best, a sheepish stance toward dictators and oppressors ― will not tolerate any threat against the American people.”
Jeffress also said:
His comments came on a day of heated rhetoric. Trump threatened North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” over that nation’s nuclear program, and Pyongyang said it was considering an attack on a US military base in Guam.
While the New Testament is full of pacifist teachings, Jeffress told The Washington Post that those instructions are aimed at Christians. The government, he said, has another set of rules laid out in Romans 13.
That selection warns that governing authorities are “established by God” and are “agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”
Jeffress told the Post “that gives the government the authority to do whatever, whether it’s assassination, capital punishment or evil punishment, to quell the actions of evildoers like Kim Jong Un.”
Romans 13 also says, “Love does no harm to a neighbor.”
Jeffress, who serves on Trump’s evangelical advisory panel and has been a guest in the White House, has a long history of intolerant rants directed against gays, Muslims, Catholics, Mormons and more.
This story originally appeared on HuffPost.