Five days ago, Donald Trump held a media event during which a tight circle of Christian Zionist pastors laid hands on him and prayed for victory in the war against Iran.
We’re so used to seeing public displays of Christianity from American politicians that it doesn’t really register. Most journalists probably thought it was a publicity stunt to shore up the evangelical base.
But there’s a more profound and disturbing element to this. We cannot know what Trump does or doesn’t believe, but the millions of Americans he’s doing this in front of do not see it as just political theatre.
Millions of Americans actually believe this stuff. You might not. I don’t. But that doesn’t matter.
The Zionist base that Trump relies on does, and that makes the strategic calculation of what’s happening in the Middle East very different.
Rational actors try to avoid catastrophe. Apocalyptic actors try to make it happen.
Modern geopolitical analysis has a blind spot the size of heaven.
Religion is treated as background noise. Identity politics. Cultural decoration. Something leaders say to voters and quietly ignore when the serious decisions begin.
It’s always been this way. Elite Roman senators wrote letters to each other about how the gods were a silly idea but religion was useful to rule the dumb plebs.
But elite cynicism is not what drives history. Mass belief is.
The Crusades were not symbolic.
The Taiping Rebellion killed tens of millions.
The Mahdist wars in Sudan were not a metaphor.
When people believe God is about to intervene in history, their tolerance for chaos changes.
The university big-brains who run societies think every other decision-maker in the world is also following national self-interest. The people making decisions about the Middle East right now, however, are not following rational self-interest.
They’re following the Book of Revelation or Ezekiel 28:2-3 or Surah Al-Kahf 18:94. It’s not an opportunistic photo shoot for them. For them, it’s real.
Shia Islam: the Mahdi
In Shia Islam, the end of history arrives with the return of the Hidden Imam, also known as the Mahdi.
If you’re not familiar with it, read the Quran. Or save yourself and read Dune instead.
According to Twelver Shia belief, the twelfth Imam did not die. He disappeared. He remains alive in occultation and will re-emerge at the end of time to destroy injustice and establish divine rule.
Kinda like Elvis but more cataclysmic.
Before the return of the Mahdi, however, the world descends into chaos. War spreads. Tyranny rises. Order collapses. Then the Mahdi appears.
Does it seem to you like Iran is doing everything it can to blow the world system up?
That’s because this belief sits at the theological centre of Iranian Shia Islam and has shaped the ideological vocabulary of the Islamic Republic since the revolution.
Just like a prepper will carry on with things while stacking Mylar bags of rice and heirloom seeds in the evening, the Iranian government has been stacking drones and missiles. Because it was not a question of if, but when.
Jewish Zionism: the War of Gog and Magog
Jewish tradition contains its own final war. The rabbis call it the battle of Gog and Magog.
In the prophetic interpretations of the rabbis, the nations gather against Israel in a vast final assault at the end of the current age. A coalition surrounds Jerusalem. The Jewish people stand on the edge of destruction.
Then God intervenes. Or ‘G-d’. The invaders collapse. The enemies of Israel are destroyed. The messianic age begins.
Secular Israelis in the hipster suburbs of Tel Aviv think this is silly. The more numerous conservative religious Israelis believe that this war is now at hand.
The rising antipathy toward Israel and thereby Jews around the world is evidence for them that this date with destiny is at hand.
This war is not a strategic sign. It is a metaphysical sign. The Olam HaBa when the world ruled will be ruled from Jerusalem is nigh.
Christian Zionism: the world vs Israel
Then there is Washington.
American evangelical Protestantism contains one of the most politically powerful apocalyptic traditions in the modern world.
For millions of believers, the modern state of Israel is not merely a geopolitical ally. It is a prophetic event.
The Christian Zionist and Jewish Zionist eschatological beliefs are mirror images up to the question of the messiah. For Christian Zionists, it’s the rapture and the return of Jesus. For Jewish Zionists, two messianic figures emerge to bring about the redemption of the Jews.
Dispensational theology is the name given to the scriptural interpretation that underpins Christian Zionism. It’s a famously complex topic and is enormously influential in evangelical churches.
For Christian Zionists, the Middle East is not just another region. It is the setting for the end of this world and the birth of the new.
Therefore, for millions of American evangelicals, Israel is not merely an ally.
It is a prophetic trigger.
That belief sits behind American political language about Israel. If you don’t know the backstory, the way American Christians relate to Israel seems bizarre and puzzling.
If you’re Australia, it can feel a bit like being the chaperone on a date.
It’s not puzzling if you’re a Dispensationalist.
The war to end the world
The overlap between all these eschatological visions is the destruction of the world order via a cataclysmic war.
How a war could devastate the entire world was probably quite puzzling until the twentieth century. Now we know. Nukes are seen as eschatological tools by the diehard religionists pushing us to Armageddon.
The Book of Revelation did not include missile silos. Although these prophecies are ancient, the weapons this war will necessitate are modern.
While not every participant in this götterdämmerung of the eschatologies actively wants nuclear war, they all share the belief that it is inevitable, necessary, and redemptive.
Decision-makers in America, Israel, and Iran all believe the final war is coming. Not all of them, but at this moment in our political history, it’s the ones who can push the red buttons.
Human beings have believed the end of the world was near for thousands of years. For most of that time, we lacked the means to make it happen.
That technical problem was solved in 1945. Since then, it hasn’t been a matter of if, really.
Just when.
You can find Dr. David Hilton at Substack.
