SCOTT MOREFIELD: Iranians Aren’t the Only Ones With Crazy Apocalyptic Religious Beliefs
One of the first and most often repeated justifications for the war against Iran lies in the contention that the country’s civilian and military leaders are insane, radical Muslims who are not motivated by normal human instincts like the desire for survival. Thus, the cornerstone of nuclear foreign affairs, mutually assured destruction — the principle that has thus far kept the world from nuclear holocaust despite the fact that countries like the United States, Pakistan, Russia, France, Israel, and even North Korea have nukes — should not apply to them.
Often cited is the Shia belief in the 12th Imam, the Mahdi, who, according to Shia Muslims, has been hiding for more than a thousand years and will purportedly reappear amid global chaos and bloodshed to crush the infidels (that’s us!) and establish Islamic justice. To them, apparently, the death and destruction they cause is merely preparing the ground for Mahdi’s arrival and hastening the inevitable apocalypse. Die as a martyr in this war, and untold pleasures in paradise await.
I won’t lie, it sounds pretty wild to me. But to be fair, I grew up in a fundamental, independent Baptist church that consistently put a steady emphasis on its own version of end-times prophecy that might sound, well, a little bit wild to outsiders.
You’ve probably heard some version of it: Christians are ‘raptured,’ or spirited away from the earth, at which point all hell breaks loose. Pilotless planes crash into the ground, driverless cars crash into buildings and each other, and that’s just the start of the 7-year tribulation, during which a multitude of horrors await all those poor souls who are, you know, ‘Left Behind.’
Israel again enters God’s main stage after being supplanted by the Church for two thousand years. Jews who have been returning to the Holy Land for decades make a deal with the Antichrist, rebuild the Third Temple, and start sacrificing red heifers and stuff. Many Jews perish during the tribulation, but many also turn to Christ, who returns at the end on a white horse along with Christians to win the war for Israel at the final Battle of Armageddon. All Israelis, or what’s left of them, are then ‘saved,’ win all their land back, and get to rule the planet for a thousand years before the final judgment of mankind and the everlasting heavenly kingdom.
It’s a convoluted story, to be sure, drawn from what non-adherents like me believe are many misinterpretations of various passages of Scripture and rooted in the wild imaginings of John Nelson Darby in the 1830s. (Little did I know then that such a huge part of the ‘Old Time Religion’ being propagated at my childhood church wasn’t really all that old, but that’s another column!) There are variations, but by and large, premillennial dispensationalism is currently the core eschatological belief of millions of evangelical Christians in the United States and around the world.
Ah, you say, but unlike Iran’s ruling Muslims, America’s Christian leaders would never allow their own apocalyptic beliefs to override reason or self-preservation. To which I would respond, “Au contraire, mon frère.” U.S. service members are alleging that some senior officers have framed the war with Iran as a divinely ordained conflict meant to usher in the “Rapture” and “Armageddon,” according to recent reporting.
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Are the complaints true, or are they just sour grapes from woke soldiers who miss the free tranny surgeries of the Biden era? From my experience growing up and even now talking to friends and family who hold to Christian Zionism and dispensationalism, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched. While I’m quite happy that the military has ditched woke, I would argue that replacing it with warmongering and a side of Biblical prophecy isn’t the best tradeoff.
Combine all that with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s comparison of Iranians to “Amalekites,” a race the God of the Old Testament ordered exterminated, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee’s contention that it would be “fine” if Israel conquered basically the entire Middle East, and the segment of religious Jews who believe their return to Israel will help herald in a Messianic age where they will rule the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, and you have a recipe for perpetual conflict with the potential to start another world war.
All religious beliefs can sound strange to outsiders, especially when they concern prophecy and the end of the world. That does not make their adherents bad people, nor does it mean they will act irrationally in positions of power. The same standard should apply to Muslims as readily as it does to Christians and Jews.
And the question, ultimately, is a game of finger-pointing on whose theology sounds strangest. It is whether leaders are allowing theology to override prudence, deterrence and the basic human instinct for survival. Everybody wants to go to heaven, as the saying goes — just not today.
That is why we should be skeptical when people with apocalyptic beliefs of their own invoke someone else’s as a pretext for war.
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