\u201cBrothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.\u201d<\/small><\/p>\n
– Pope Leo XIV<\/p>\n
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation reports receiving hundreds of complaints from U.S. service members alleging commanders have framed current military operations in Iran in terms of Christian end-times prophecy, namely God\u2019s plan for Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus. At a recent Pentagon service, the Secretary of The United States is not the first to embrace apocalyptic theatre as a major driver of foreign policy, and as a former evangelical familiar with this worldview, it is deeply concerning. There’s a stark parallel to history we must take seriously.<\/p>\n For the first several hundred years, Christianity largely took a posture of mercy and martyrdom. The concept of a violent and militant Jesus probably had its origins in the medieval period. The idea was first formally codified at the Council of Nablus in 1120, where Canon 20 permitted a clergyman to take up arms in self-defense without bearing any guilt; this was during turbulent times when Christian pilgrims were often massacred by the hundreds along their journey, leaving their rotting corpses along the road from Jaffa into the Holy Land. This one concession, intended to be a temporary measure, seeded militant movements in Christianity starting with the Papal legitimization of the Templars movement (\u201cGod\u2019s Holy Knights\u201d) and their involvement in the Crusades, extremist groups such as Alfonso I\u2019s Brotherhood of Belchite, the Pastoureaux, and eventually reached into modern day militant Christian ideals.<\/p>\n Modern evangelical end-times beliefs are just shy of 200 years old, and stand largely upon a populist theology called dispensational hermeneutics<\/em>, which I’ve written about at length<\/a>. This once fringe approach to Christian theology grew out of a small movement of aristocratic separatists in Ireland in the 1820s named the Plymouth Brethren, of which a lawyer named John Darby was a leader. Darby had a disdain for formalism and rejected all prior scholarship, including the work of the reformation, which he believed was markedly deficient. As an anti-cleric, his flavor of nuda scriptura<\/em> Christianity called for strictly literal interpretation of all scripture, and in isolation from patristic authors (church fathers), historical writers, or other sources outside of the New Testament. Rejecting church doctrine established for more than a thousand years, Darby built his own theological belief system referred to today as dispensationalism<\/em>, which fundamentally altered how the Bible was interpreted. This interpretive framework forces a very specific worldview that restructures much of the New Testament around a militant and advancing <\/em>Christianity. Prior to Darby, the book of Revelation had been largely considered a book of hope relevant to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD (the antichrist<\/em> referring to Nero Caesar). Darby’s new theology forced Revelation to be interpreted as both literal<\/em> and future<\/em> prophecy. He also believed in a form of Christian exclusivity, considering his followers to be “pure” in an evil world, and the only true believers among an otherwise “ruined” church.<\/p>\n Darby’s fundamentalist theology gave birth to many of the concepts adopted in evangelical low churches today such as a secret rapture, a terrifying tribulation, and a third temple in Israel. These ideas were first preached in the United States in 1870, and fell upon the ears of Dwight Moody, who embraced it. With Moody and the help of his longtime friend Cyrus Scofield (notably also a lawyer), this tiny separatist group ultimately influenced Christianity in the Americas and helped create what most associate today with the Evangelical Church; the arm of the Christian church in America today largely claiming Christian nationalism. While strong modern evidence suggests Scofield fabricated a fake Doctor of Divinity <\/em>degree, dispensationalism heightened in popularity around 1910-1915, with the publication of his Scofield Reference Bible <\/em>which attempted to authoritatively indoctrinate Christianity with a dispensational interpretation. This following was positioned to gain appeal from events across the next several decades. As Kim Riddlebarger writes in A Case for Amillennialism<\/em>, \u201cSeveral important social and cultural factors made dispensationalism popular among American evangelicals, who had been overwhelmingly postmillennial just a generation earlier. The horrors of World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and the tense Middle East situation can all be explained by the dispensational system. When people are uncertain about the future and afraid of what might come to pass, dispensationalists assure them that when things go from bad to worse, the church will be raptured from the earth and Christians will not be around to experience the great tribulation or the wrath of the Antichrist. In this way, dispensationalists offer comforting answers to painful questions.\u201d<\/p>\n The 1918 Influenza breakout had killed millions and birthed a spiritual madness for seances and the occult. The more pessimistic society got, the more it was open to accepting a fiery, terrifying end of world theology. Common recurring themes in the world such as inflation, war, disease and genocide are seen by dispensational Christians as a concise sign of the end of the world, even though these concepts play out over and over again throughout history. Reinterpreting an end times to now be set in the modern day had obvious appeal. No one could blame society for being tempted to parallel the Antichrist to Hitler, or the sufferings of the Great Tribulation to the horrible sufferings of the Holocaust, especially with a relatively new form of theology circulating that fit with current events.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As historian David Redles points out in Hitler’s Millennial Reich: Apocalyptic Belief and the Search for Salvation<\/em>, many apocalyptic movements begin with a chaotic destabilization of society, \u201cthe multiplicity of causality, the convergence of cataclysmic events, creates rapid, sudden, and irrevocable change in society and change within the psyches of those who experience it.\u201d Between the 1920s to 1940s, many dispensationalist Christians in the west were speculating that Hitler was the Antichrist, but those within his ranks believed he was the messiah returned. Dietrich Eckart, a mentor to Hitler to whom he later dedicated Mein Kampf, painted the Jewish race as the Antichrist, reinterpreting the Old Testament and writing an antisemitic exegesis on the book of Revelation. Using a forged and now-debunked document named the Protocols of the Elders of Zion<\/em> to paint a false conspiracy by the Jews for world domination. This was ultimately used by Hitler to justify the Holocaust. Hitler\u2019s speeches, fully embracing Eckart’s fiction, attempted to convince the Germans that the Jewish intended to use the hyperinflation of that period to enslave them through famine, \u201cfor the second revolution under the Star of David\u201d.<\/p>\n Eckart probably obtained his millenarian point of view independently of Darby, though dispensationalist ideals had already permeated through Germany by this time through Darby’s preaching. Martin Luther was largely considered an Amillennial or Historicist; he did not believe in a thousand-year reign. Eckart, however shared Darby’s approach to literal interpretation – when it suited him – and used Luther’s German translation of Revelation 20 to derive his notion of an apocalyptic millennial reich. Nazism\u2019s rise was ultimately fueled by its apocalyptic components of this reign, which in many ways parallel core concepts in premillennial dispensationalism building within the ranks of the evangelical church. Redles points out, \u201cthe Nazi conception of the tausendj\u00e4hrige Reich, literally millennial kingdom, was taken to be a perfect world…\u201d He goes on, describing the appeal as, \u201cthe message of that piercing voice was one of impending apocalypse, with salvation possible only through Nazism. Nazi rhetoric struck a chord with the millenarian longings of many hopeless and frustrated Germans.\u201d While the Nazi apocalyptic diverged far from a Christian interpretation in many regards, \u201cNazi messianism and apocalypticism were central to the Nazi construction of reality\u201d. For many nazis, believing in their leader as their savior was essential to their faith. Hitler grasped onto the idea of himself as the messiah so strongly, that even Eckart – who had previously introduced Hitler as “Germany’s young Messiah”, began worrying about Hitler’s “messiah complex”.<\/p>\n The similarities were recognizable enough to the Catholic Church, and when the Third Reich failed to establish a thousand-year reign on the Earth, the Vatican in 1944 issued a statement that millennialism cannot be safely taught. It cannot be understated how central Nazi apocalyptic eschatology was to the racist motivations of the regime. Historian Mary Fulbrook wrote of Nazism and Christianity, \u201cit seems that, for many Germans, adherence to the Christian faith proved compatible with at least passive acquiescence in, if not active support for, the Nazi dictatorship.\u201d Most high churches today (Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and so on) largely reject dispensational premillennialism; with that, concepts of a secret rapture, hell-on-Earth tribulation, and other such extreme ideas evaporate.<\/p>\n So here we have two different nations adopting similar theology as a means of hope in troubling times. Through the manipulation of a deranged leader bent toward world domination, one of those nations collectively committed mass atrocities against humanity; end-times apocalypticism as a catalyst. When mixed with racism and prejudice, and the sense of an “other” to fear, the worldview built around the dispensational belief system can create monsters. One must be very cautious with the authority one gives to those who would claim to be able to interpret ancient scripture. More than simply some innocent set of opinions about the future, many of the more extreme evangelical churches continue to advance the idea that we are at the precipice of some form of apocalypse, and seek to bring about the eschaton by fulfilling such prophecy, <\/em>encouraging active participation to bring about their version of a rapture. In its most played out scenario, this would imply defeating Israel’s enemies, including Palestine, to make it possible to rebuild the temple.<\/p>\n As I said at the onset, the fact that this US military – run by an administration largely put into power by the evangelical church – would use an evangelical brand of apocalypticism as a rationale for war is not surprising. It is, however, a sobering reality that should give us pause to seriously consider the eerily similar zealotry behind the atrocities in the Nazi regime, and whether our own country’s trajectory is nearing the same dark abyss.<\/p>\n I am deeply saddened by my fellow Christians who have fallen into the pit of Christian nationalism, and are left with nothing but a vain set of prejudices they call Jesus. To these, their faith has adopted a Christianized form of Jihad. This country is playing with fire, and while many can only abstractly comprehend the bombs falling in the Middle East, many in our military seem to have sounded the alarm that we are killing human beings under a scarily familiar guise of eradicating “the other” in what is perceived as an end-times scenario.<\/p>\n In spite of the Holy War that US military leaders are attempting to conduct in Iran, their leader has simpler priorities. If we really want the US to pull out of Iran early, we need only rename the waterway to the Strait of Epstein. The amount of faith Christian nationalists put in one man to deliver them “God’s Country” is of messianic proportions, yet he is far from a Messiah. Should they get their World War III, it will be the result not of prophecy, but of one man’s fragile ego – or perhaps such a gullible man can be so easily swayed to believe they really are the Messiah. Let’s hope not.<\/p>\n Further reading:<\/p>\n Christianity’s End-Times Conspiracy Theories<\/a>\u00a0(zdziarski.com)<\/p>\n Plymouth Brethren<\/a> (wikipedia.org)<\/p>\n Hitler’s Millennial Reich: Apocalyptic Belief and the Search for Salvation<\/a>\u00a0(amazon.com)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cBrothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.\u201d<\/small><\/p>\n – Pope Leo XIV<\/p>\n The Military Religious Freedom Foundation reports receiving hundreds of complaints from U.S. service members alleging commanders have framed current military operations in Iran in terms of Christian end-times prophecy, namely God\u2019s plan for Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus. At a recent Pentagon service, the Secretary of The United States is not the first to embrace apocalyptic theatre as a major driver of foreign policy, and as a former evangelical familiar with this worldview, it is deeply concerning. There’s a stark parallel to history we must take seriously.<\/p>\n For the first several hundred years, Christianity largely took a posture of mercy and martyrdom. The concept of a violent and militant Jesus probably had its origins in the medieval period. The idea was first formally codified at the Council of Nablus in 1120, where Canon 20 permitted a clergyman to take up arms in self-defense without bearing any guilt; this was during turbulent times when Christian pilgrims were often massacred by the hundreds along their journey, leaving their rotting corpses along the road from Jaffa into the Holy Land. This one concession, intended to be a temporary measure, seeded militant movements in Christianity starting with the Papal legitimization of the Templars movement (\u201cGod\u2019s Holy Knights\u201d) and their involvement in the Crusades, extremist groups such as Alfonso I\u2019s Brotherhood of Belchite, the Pastoureaux, and eventually reached into modern day militant Christian ideals.<\/p>\nDefense<\/del> War prayed for overwhelming violence<\/em> against those who deserve no mercy<\/em>.<\/p>\nDefense<\/del> War prayed for overwhelming violence<\/em> against those who deserve no mercy<\/em>.<\/p>\n