Hillary Clinton’s election loss compared to the death and resurrection of Jesus by her own pastor
Hillary Clinton’s pastor, United Methodist City Society Executive Director Rev. Bill Shillady, recently revealed to CNN the email that he sent Clinton the day after she lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump.
Seeming to compare Clinton’s campaign and loss to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Shillady, throughout his message, claimed “Sunday is coming.”
Read the letter, obtained by CNN, below.
“Sunday is Coming”November 9, 2016It is Friday, but Sunday is coming. This is not the devotional I had hoped to write. This is not the devotional you wish to receive this day. While Good Friday may be the starkest representation of a Friday that we have, life is filled with a lot of Fridays.For the disciples and Christ’s followers in the first century, Good Friday represented the day that everything fell apart. All was lost. The momentum and hope of a man claiming to be the Son of God, the Messiah who was supposed to change everything, had been executed.Even though Jesus told his followers three days later the temple would be restored, they had no idea of what that Sunday would be. They betrayed, denied, mourned, fled and hid. They did just about everything BUT feel good about Friday and their circumstances.For us, Friday is the phone call from the doctor that the cancer is back. It’s the news that you have lost your job. It’s the betrayal of a friend, the loss of someone dear. Friday is the day that it all falls apart and all hope is lost. We all have Fridays. But, as the saying goes, “Sunday’s coming!”Today, you are experiencing a Friday. Your Friday is what happened in the last few weeks and last night in the tragic loss. But Sunday is coming!Jesus completed the excruciating task of giving up his life as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. It was his faith and belief in his heavenly Father, that gave him the grace and peace to submit to Friday. While death had seemingly won, Jesus knew better. When he said, “It is finished,” it wasn’t meant to be a statement of concession. It was a declaration that a new day was on the way.Friday is finished. Sunday is coming. Death will be shattered. Hope will be restored. But first, we must live through the darkness and seeming hopelessness of Friday.You know one of my favorite sayings is “God doesn’t close one door without opening another, but it can be hell in the hallway.” My sister Hillary. You, our nation, our world is experiencing a black Friday. Our hope is that Sunday is coming. But it might well be hell for a while.
Shillady’s latest publishing endeavor — a book of devotionals he sent to Clinton throughout the 2016 campaign — is up for sale and Shillady has embarked on a press tour as a result.
Speaking to The Atlantic last week, Shillady noted that one of Clinton’s aspirations for as long as he’s known her was to become a lay leader — or informal pastor — within the Methodist church.
About the book, Shillady said, “It’s an inspirational book. I do not believe that she encouraged me to write this book in any way to change the image of her. She really found [the devotionals] so helpful to her in the midst of the contentious campaign that she felt that people would find some hope … from it.”
“Given her depth of knowledge of the Bible and her experience of caring for people and loving people, she’d make a great pastor,” Shillady told The Atlantic. “No, she probably won’t go to seminary … no, she probably won’t pursue an official lay position in the Methodist church, like deaconess.”
He added, “I think it would be more of … her guest preaching at some point. We have a long history of lay preachers in the United Methodist Church.”
Shillady claimed that since the election, he believes Clinton’s “faith is stronger.”
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