On Iran, Christianity, And Biblical Prophecy

In a previous article I attempted to, in gentle, diplomatic terms, articulate that this attack on Iran was at best short sighted. The reasons why one might support it from a Western centrist perspective are obvious. It’s a brutal Islamic theocracy supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine. If these, among other sensible geostrategic reasons, were the motivation behind initiating conflict with Iran, and there were a post conflict framework for governance in place ensuring regional stability, then at least one could follow the logic. However, as the days go by it looks more and more like a return to Bush-era foreign policy. Unfortunately religious ideology which ultimately leads the United States astray from its European partners seems to be the driving force here.

This month the Military Religious Freedom Foundation received over 200 complaints from U.S. service members across 30+ military installations. Commanders were explicitly framing Iran strikes as fulfillment of biblical end-times prophecy. One non-commissioned officer reported his commander after he had stated “President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” The commander cited the Book of Revelation extensively and urged troops to view the war as “all part of God’s divine plan.” (Source: https://jonathanlarsen.substack.com/p/us-troops-were-told-iran-war-is-for)

This isn’t anomalous extremism, it represents the logical extension of apocalyptic theology that is fundamentally incompatible with democratic governance.

Many Christian Nationalists will question the Christian view of Israel and Zionism, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the deeper problem: You cannot maintain Christianity’s metaphysical claims while rejecting its apocalyptic trajectory. Either the Bible is divinely inspired or it’s not. If it is, then the Christian must believe in the prophecy and that the Jewish people must return to the holy land. If it’s not, then Christian ethics have no binding authority.

Christian Nationalists engaged in theological cherry-picking have many feckless and middling platitudes and rebuttals, the most common of which are surely:

“The modern secular state has nothing to do with biblical promises”

However Ezekiel 36:24-28 describes a two-stage process: First physical return to land (verse 24), then spiritual renewal (verses 25-28)

Prophecy explicitly says they’ll return first while still unbelieving, then convert later and modern secular Israel fits this pattern perfectly.

Another being: “Return to the land” means spiritual restoration, not literal geography.”

Why interpret *some* prophecies literally (Jesus’s birth, death, resurrection) but others metaphorically? If resurrection is literal but land promises are metaphorical, what’s the principle for distinguishing? This obviously opens door to treating resurrection as metaphor too.

Another: “The Church has replaced Israel. All promises to Israel now apply to Christians (the “New Israel”).

Romans 11:1 - “Did God reject his people? By no means!” Romans 11:29 - “God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable” If God’s promises to Israel are revoked, how do you know His promises to Christians aren’t also revocable?

All this to say, the pretext for Zionism and end-times prophecy exists in the mythology itself. Refusal to acknowledge this reveals logical inconsistency presented as moderation.

The Performative Nature of Prophecy

Humans themselves drive prophecy. It doesn’t predict the future; it generates it. Religious movements succeed when leaders instill in their followers the belief that their actions fulfill cosmic destiny rather than mere political strategy. This is prophecy’s performative function: the belief creates the conditions for its own manifestation. A thought experiment clarifies this: imagine all believers simply waiting for prophecy to unfold without human action. We know intuitively that nothing would happen. Prophecy requires enactment to maintain its religion’s vitality; it is myth moving through the future, and humans must breathe life into it through action.

This reveals why neither “moderate” Christianity nor “Christian Nationalism” can provide an alternative to dispensationalist apocalypticism. Alternative theories do not steer the ship. Any Christianity that maintains biblical authority must grapple with these prophecies. Dismissing them as metaphor while maintaining ethical teachings as literal requires arbitrary interpretive principles that undermine the entire religion.

Structural Incompatibility

Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), share eschatological frameworks fundamentally at odds with Western governance. These traditions envision linear time moving toward a climactic endpoint: cosmic battle between good and evil, divine judgment requiring mass death, and a new perfect world requiring annihilation of the current imperfect one.

Liberal democracy requires endless negotiation and compromise, incremental reform rather than revolutionary rupture, a future that is open-ended and contingent on human choices, and strategic rationality based on cost-benefit analysis. Apocalyptic theology demands non-negotiable imperatives determined by divine will, catastrophic transformation from this world to the next, a predetermined future that humans must enact, and theological necessity that supersedes rational calculation.

These frameworks cannot coexist. When military commanders frame Iran strikes as prophecy fulfillment, they remove warfare from strategic assessment. Casualties become acceptable (martyrdom brings salvation), diplomacy becomes betrayal (delays Jesus’s return), and allies’ concerns become irrelevant (cosmic stakes supersede political considerations).

The Transatlantic Divide

European responses to the Iran strikes illuminate this incompatibility. France, Germany, and Britain issued a joint statement explicitly noting “we did not participate” in U.S.-Israel attacks. While condemning subsequent Iranian retaliation “in the strongest terms,” the three leaders notably avoided commenting on the legality or legitimacy of the initial strikes. Germany received notice only Saturday morning, and Macron warned separately that “the escalation underway is dangerous for everyone.”

This distancing reflects Europe’s post-Westphalian settlement: after the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) killed eight million through religious conflict, European states recognized that theological disputes are non-negotiable and that peace requires removing theology from statecraft. While Europe didn’t abandon Christianity, it saw the importance of neutering its political implications.

American Christianity never underwent this process. The United States maintained religious vitality in public life without European-style anticlericalism. The result: European democracies cannot coordinate with partners whose military commanders pursue eschatological rather than strategic objectives. You cannot maintain relations with allies who believe Europe will become the Antichrist’s capital and that billions must die to trigger Jesus’s return. This is effectively policy in the US vis-à-vis the institutionalization of what is ultimately *actual* Christian Nationalism, and it is quite possibly the biggest threat to our Atlantic relationship.

The Paradox of Tolerance

Karl Popper argued that unlimited tolerance must lead to tolerance’s destruction: if we extend unlimited tolerance even to the intolerant, the tolerant will be destroyed. Applied to theology, western democracies that protect apocalyptic religious frameworks in positions of military power enable movements actively seeking civilization’s destruction—not as tragedy but as theological achievement.

Current boundaries have already failed. The 200+ MRFF complaints prove that the constitutional prohibition on religious proselytizing in military settings is being systematically violated. Strategic intolerance becomes necessary: protecting private apocalyptic belief while prohibiting eschatological framing in public office, and barring apocalyptic literalists from national security positions where they can enact the prophecies they claim merely to predict.

The Existential Stakes

If prophecy requires human enactment to keep religion vital, and Abrahamic prophecy is apocalyptic, then the mythology itself, not merely extremist interpretation, contains structural imperatives toward civilizational destruction. Western democracies face an uncomfortable choice in the short term: develop robust secular meaning-making systems that can compete with religion’s emotional power, or accept periodic crises when sincere believers gain sufficient power to pursue eschatological goals.

This is the question Western states have failed to answer: what do you do when sincere religious belief becomes incompatible with governance? Europe chose secularization. America is discovering it never answered the question at all. The West must decouple from Abrahamism and perhaps the long-term solution is something entirely new.