Guatemala’s President Follows Trump in Accepting Award From “End Times” Author

A press release from the Friends of Zion Museum:

Guatemala’s Evangelical President Morales accepted the Friends of Zion Award in the Presidential Palace from Friends of Zion founder Dr. Mike Evans for his historic decision to move the Guatemalan Embassy to Jerusalem.

In December President Donald Trump, received the Friends of Zion Award from Dr. Mike Evans in the oval office at an event attended by Vice President Pence, Senior Advisors Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump and faith leaders representing over 150 million Christians globally.

Evans, as I noted last month, is a high-profile Christian Zionist who has written numerous books linking current global politics to the “End Times”: his many titles include The Final Move Beyond Iraq (blogged here); Showdown with Nuclear Iran: Radical Islam’s Messianic Mission to Destroy Israel and Cripple the United States (written with the assistance of Jerome Corsi, whose birther “investigations” inspired Trump); and The Final Generation: Jesus is Coming Soon (“Bible prophecy after Bible prophecy points to the likelihood that the last generation before Jesus’ return is now on the Earth”).

Over the years, Evans has built relationships with Israel’s political establishment, and Israeli Ambassador Mattanya Cohen was in attendance when Evans presented Morales with the award, which came just days after anti-corruption protestors in Guatemala were violently suppressed by state forces.

In August, Guatemala’s constitutional court blocked Morales’s attempt to expel Ivan Velásquez, the Colombian head of the UN’s International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala. At the time, it was reported that Velásquez enjoyed the support of the US ambassador, Todd D. Robinson; however, Robinson was transferred to Venezuela in December, and in the same month Reuters quoted Michael Shifter of Inter-American Dialogue as saying that Morales’s support for Jerusalem as the capital of Israel “is a pretty low-cost way for Morales to make sure the Trump administration is on his side”.

Given that Evans has recently paid for more than a hundred “God Bless Trump” signs to appear around Jerusalem, it looks like it is also a “low-cost way” for Morales to promote himself as a pious Evangelical who is doing God’s work, rather than as a more controversial figure.