His Mighty Hand and Outstretched Arm
It's been associated with everyone from the God of Israel to Adolph Hitler. So what is this ancient gesture? Why does it keep reappearing throughout history?
Yet they are Your people, even Your inheritance, whom You have brought out by Your great power and Your outstretched arm.’
Deuteronomy 9:29
You brought Your people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs and wonders, with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and with great terror. Jeremiah 32:20-21
After just a single week into his second term as Commander in Chief, Donald Trump is already signaling a historic era ahead of us.
He’s called it the start of a "new Golden Age.” He says, after an assassin’s bullet whizzed by his right ear last summer, he was “saved by God to make America great again.” Maybe he was. None of us can know for sure.
But if his first days as the 47th president are any indication, he believes every word of it.
In a flurry of executive orders signed with his first hours as POTUS, Trump has
ordered the declassification of files “relating to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and Dr. Reverend Martin Luthern King Jr.”
signed an executive order Tuesday stating that it's policy of the federal government to only recognize "two sexes, male and female”
ended the anti-Christian, anti-White federal initiatives fittingly known as DIE; and
rescinded a Civil Rights-era rule which prohibited federal employees from discriminating on the basis of race, religion and other attributes.
Those last two, as Trump said in his inauguration speech, would go a long way in helping the U.S. “forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based.”
Colorblind. Interesting word.
It’s the same one used by former snake oil salesman Vivek Ramaswamy, who called the hope of a “colorblind meritocracy” a “conservative idea” with roots stretching back to the civli rights era.
And just as America was about to step full stride into this colorblind utopia, Elon Musk, the world’s richest autistic, decided he would, against his better instincts, publicly emote by way of an instantly recognizable, one-armed salutation.
Now, whatever you think about Musk - and there is plenty of reason for pause - there is no denying his unmatched influence as the most visible technocrat of our time.
Certainly, a man of his stature is immune to fits of passion that would make him suddenly, at a moment of such historical import as a presidential inauguration, flail his arm in a manner that might possibly be misinterpreted as something else.
In other words - Musk meant to do that. In fact, he did it twice.
Here’s the other angle.
Now, Musk gets far too much ink to waste time on him in this space. Needless to say, however, the gesture sent shockwaves throughout social media and even spurred a statement from no less than the Anti-Defamation League, which pointed out that it wasn’t a “Nazi salute” but simply an “awkward gesture.”
Quite a statement coming from an organization that bills itself as the world’s antisemitic watchdog, one which states “salutes and hand signs are a common feature of hate groups” and claims numbers - that is, written expressions of numerical values - can qualify as “hate symbols.”1
These days, failing to immediately condemn and cancel what the culture decrees to be worthy of such opens one to allegations of antisemitism - even if you’re one of the most visible Jewish organizations around.
So of course, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) wasted no time in accusing the ADL of, well, defending a "Heil Hitler salute." Welcome to 2025.
Yes, its a whole new level of absurdity when Jewish advocates are accused of turning a blind eye to a salute made infamous by Adolph Hitler. But hey, it’s not like this is new ground for the Democrats. They’ve been calling Trump and his supporters “Nazis” for years now, because apparently, the only historical analogy for a man who doesn’t fit your political ideals is Hitler.
It’s also the logical outcome for a culture steeped in Rachel Maddow, who earlier this year compared a Trump rally in NYC to one held in the same venue by the German American Bund nearly a century ago.
Because remember: nothing says rational discourse like comparing your political opponents to Hitler.
You know, like Joe Biden did.
However uncharacteristically accurate, ADL’s response is correct. The gesture made by Musk wasn’t a “Nazi salute.”
It was a Christian one.
Let me explain.
The Oath of the Horatii (1784), by Jacques-Louis David depicts this gesture known as the Roman or Fascist salute in which the right arm is fully extended, facing forward, with palm down and fingers touching. In some versions, the arm is raised upward at an angle; in others, it is held out parallel to the ground.
Rome is generally considered the first Christian empire in the history of the world. Three centuries after using Christians as kindling and lion lunch, Emperor Constantine decriminalized Christianity with the Edict of Milan in 313 AD. A decade later in 323, Christianity was recognized as the official religion of the emperor and the state.
This is where we get modern-day images such as this.
Interestingly, the Roman Empire later became known as the “Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation” between the years 962-1806. This in itself is a shocking and undeniable link between Rome and modern-day Germany, one which underscores the shared heritage of the Roman salute.
This gesture, which become synonymous with Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich, actually has origins which predate Hitler: Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, who aimed to restore the country to imperial Rome, adopted the gesture in 1925. The following year, Hitler and other leaders of Germany’s National Socialist party adopted the salute, which soon became compulsory among party members.
But decades before the Third Reich, most Americans may not realize the Roman salute was introduced by a Christian minister named Francis Bellamy, who wrote the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance in 1892.
It’s unlikely Bellamy would’ve been comfortable in much of American Evangelicalism, at least prior to the 21st century. Described as a “Christian socialist,” Bellamy’s original version never included the phrase “under God,” which was’t added by Congress until 1954.
Not only was Bellamy “forced from his Boston pulpit for preaching against the evils of capitalism” in 1891, but he stopped attending church completely at one point because “he disliked the racial bigotry” he witnessed.2
Clearly, Francis Bellamy was hardly what one would call a “MAGA extremist” today.
And yet, this man, as the Pledge of Allegiance was adopted by schools across the U.S., introduced the Bellamy salute, which consisted of a straight right arm angled slightly upward and a faced-down palm.
Almost exactly like the Roman salute.
Unsurprisingly, the Bellamy salute fell out of favor as the U.S. entered World War II against Germany and Italy, where a similar salute was commonplace. Eventually, Congress amended the Flag Code in December 1942, changing the salute to placing a right hand over the heart.
What most fail to understand, however, is that, both before and after the Bellamy Salute, this ancient gesture signified an oath - hence the “pledge” in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Prior to World War II, the salute was used in pledges (or oaths) taken by the athletes in the Olympic Games. For reasons not terribly difficult to discern, the salute all but disappeared after 1936.
Now whatever the culture may teach, Scripture clearly teaches raising our right hand toward heaven is a divine gesture signifying an oath before a holy and just God.
According to Strong’s Lexicon:
The imagery of an outstretched arm was often used to depict divine intervention or deliverance. In the Hebrew Bible, God's "arm" is frequently associated with His mighty acts of salvation and judgment. The concept of the arm as a symbol of power is also reflected in various ancient artifacts and inscriptions from surrounding cultures.3
For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever.
And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord Yahweh; In the day when I chose Israel, and lifted up mine hand unto the seed of the house of Jacob, and made myself known unto them in the land of Egypt, when I lifted up mine hand unto them, saying, I am Yahweh your God…
Yahweh has sworn by His right hand and by His mighty arm: “Never again will I give your grain to your enemies for food, nor will foreigners drink the new wine for which you have toiled.
Then the angel I had seen standing on the sea and on the land lifted up his right hand to heaven. And he swore by Him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and everything in it, the earth and everything in it, and the sea and everything in it…
The outstretched arm is an oft-repeated motif throughout Scripture to signify a divine oath and demonstrate the power of Yahweh over Israel and the nations. It is a Biblical gesture that is almost always synonymous with faithfulness, redemption, and God’s sovereignty.
But because Yahweh loved you and kept the oath He swore to your fathers, He brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
As surely as I live, declares the Lord Yahweh , with a strong hand, an outstretched arm, and outpoured wrath I will rule over you.
You brought Your people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs and wonders, with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and with great terror.
This outstretched hand motif continues into the New Testament, where both Jesus and His disciples repeatedly command those who wish to be healed to stretch out their hands - an act which undoubtedly resembled the Roman salute.4
Even nowadays, it’s not uncommon to see Evangelicals stretch out the arm and extend their hand outward to pray for healing or blessing over an individual or collective fellowship - and nobody would ever argue this to be a “Nazi salute.”
Knowing all this, why would we ever allow the world which commits nothing but evil continually instruct us, God’s beloved, about what is evil and what is good?
Why should an unbelieving world or even a regime consigned to history determine what a gesture means if the Bible has already defined it?
What if this ancient gesture is, in fact, emblematic of Western history, one which we have been made - consented, even - to forget?
What if, once again, we are beginning to remember who we really are?
There is a legacy over us, a great cloud of witnesses, as it were, of those brave patriots who stepped out in faith to establish and defend this great nation. Men who put their trust in Yahweh over King George. Men who exalted the Holy Bible over every human institution in order to prosper this great nation.
How can we deny them the honor they so richly deserve by treating our heritage as disposable?
What if Donald Trump is merely the vessel through which our God is bringing these things to remembrance and shaking us from our slumber?
Even a man of the stature of Elon Musk, when he gazes upward, understands his own smallness in the face of the Holy One who rules over the nations.
Do not be deceived: this world and its principalities and powers will go to any lengths to convince even the chosen of God that their symbols and gestures are “evil.”
One day, there will be a leader who will convince the Christ-rejecting world that the cross of Jesus Christ is nothing less than a satanic symbol - and they’ll believe him.5
We cannot afford any longer to allow a decaying culture to define what it means to honor Christ Jesus.
Let Him speak through the Word He spoke long ago.
Other numerals the ADL says are “extremist”: 14, 88, 1488, 8814, 109, 110
https://web.archive.org/web/20121106000037/http://www.oldtimeislands.org/pledge/pledge.htm
Luke 5:13; Matt. 14:31; Mark 1:41