“I think it means bringing the end of the world closer, sort of.” (Illuminatus! - Vol 1 - Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson)

According to a report in ‘The Guardian’, US military commanders have been invoking extremist Christian rhetoric about biblical “end times” to justify involvement in the Iran war to troops, according to complaints made to a watchdog group.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/03/us-israel-iran-war-christian-rhetoric

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has received more than 200 complaints from personnel across the US armed forces including members of the  Marines, Air Force and Space Force.

According to one complaint from an NCO in a unit on standby to be deployed “at any moment to join “operations against Iran, their unit commander had “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”

“He said that ‘President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth’”, the NCO added.

According to Mikey Weinstein (MRFF’s president) “These reports indicate an increase in Christian extremism in the military”, noting that the complainants “report the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders” who perceive a “‘biblically-sanctioned’ war that is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian ‘End Times’.”

Shia Islam, in its Twelver version, demands (as is made explicit in the Constitution of Iran itself, article 5 --> ref. to art. 107 calling for the upcoming of the Mahdi) the coming of the End of Times (as implied by the reappearance of the Madhi), and clearly commends it as a desirable state of affairs. This is un undeniable principle of the Iranian Constitution. The ayatollahs and their acolytes long for the coming of the end of the world, as Christopher Hitchens so eloquently reminded everyone who would read/listen on several occasions.

The fact that you are denouncing here to me sounds as the shadow of a shadow of a similar intent from members of the US military, although from a Christian viewpoint, and it strikes me as profoundly unbalanced in its scope, never mind some groups or subgroups of such institution being in synch with such delusional thoughts. "According to a report" and according to complaints made to "a watchdog group", and all of this reflected by "a certain paper", to me, is not enough.

IMHO, the situation is bad enough as it is, without anybody trying to make it look like what's going on is another crusade from the Christians against the Muslims. Something it is not.

This is playing with fire ideologically.

It will take me one week at least to get up to speed with any answers on this thread, so please bear with me. I don't generally participate in these topics, but in this case accuracy is of paramount importance.

2 hours ago, joigus said:

Shia Islam, in its Twelver version, demands (as is made explicit in the Constitution of Iran itself, article 5 --> ref. to art. 107 calling for the upcoming of the Mahdi) the coming of the End of Times (as implied by the reappearance of the Madhi), and clearly commends it as a desirable state of affairs. This is un undeniable principle of the Iranian Constitution. The ayatollahs and their acolytes long for the coming of the end of the world, as Christopher Hitchens so eloquently reminded everyone who would read/listen on several occasions.

The fact that you are denouncing here to me sounds as the shadow of a shadow of a similar intent from members of the US military, although from a Christian viewpoint, and it strikes me as profoundly unbalanced in its scope, never mind some groups or subgroups of such institution being in synch with such delusional thoughts. "According to a report" and according to complaints made to "a watchdog group", and all of this reflected by "a certain paper", to me, is not enough.

IMHO, the situation is bad enough as it is, without anybody trying to make it look like what's going on is another crusade from the Christians against the Muslims. Something it is not.

This is playing with fire ideologically.

It will take me one week at least to get up to speed with any answers on this thread, so please bear with me. I don't generally participate in these topics, but in this case accuracy is of paramount importance.

I’m not entirely sure what you are criticising or taking exception to here. The pernicious effect of what is commonly known as ‘Christian Zionism’ in neo-con political circles concerned with US foreign policy has been widely documented for quite a number of years.

To avoid any misunderstanding, what is being  referred to here are white evangelical fundamentalist  christians who believe that they are living in elder times in which the apocalyptic events described in the Book of Revelation are being re-enacted.

They fervently believe that the locale and the geo-political objectives they are pursuing will coincide with the arrival of the Antichrist and his defeat in the final battle of Armageddon on the plains of Megiddo and the valley of Jehoshaphat, followed by the second coming of the messiah, and a ‘rapture’ of the faithful up into heaven by the Lord.

President George W. Bush was susceptible to this form of bible-thumping, and it was one of the factors that helped direct his administration’s disastrous march into the second Persian Gulf war from 2001 onwards.

Mike Pompeo  a former director of the CIA who became the Secretary of State in the first Trump administration was yet another believer. A New York Times article from  30 March 2019 spelled out quite clearly what that belief system involved:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/us/politics/pompeo-christian-policy.html

An evangelical Christian, Mr. Pompeo had just returned from tours of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built on the ground where Jesus is said to have been crucified and buried, and of tunnels beneath the Western Wall, by the holiest site in Judaism. The interviewer posed a question around a biblical tale about a queen who saved Jews from slaughter by a Persian official: Did Mr. Pompeo think President Trump had been “raised for such a time as this, just like Queen Esther, to help save the Jewish people from the Iranian menace?”

“As a Christian, I certainly believe that’s possible,” Mr. Pompeo said. “It was remarkable — so we were down in the tunnels where we could see 3,000 years ago, and 2,000 years ago, if I have the history just right — to see the remarkable history of the faith in this place, and the work that our administration’s done, to make sure that this democracy in the Middle East, that this Jewish state, remains. I am confident that the Lord is at work here.”

Mike Huckabee the current US Ambassador to Israel is another senior political figure who has expressed views similar to those of Christian Zionism in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson

https://forward.com/news/807715/mike-huckabee-christian-zionism-tucker-carlson/

President Trump still routinely holds ‘prayer meetings’ in the Oval Office with fundamentalist christians, and there have been troubling reports that key foreign policy decisions are sometimes being influenced by what used to be known as Stichomancy (from the the Greek root στιχος - “row, line, verse”) aka Bibliomancy,  a form of divination in which the bible is opened to a random page and a finger placed on a verse with your eyes closed. The same was said to have happened during the G.W Bush administrations as well.

2 hours ago, joigus said:

IMHO, the situation is bad enough as it is, without anybody trying to make it look like what's going on is another crusade from the Christians against the Muslims. Something it is not.

Whether it is or not, there are more than a few prominent Americans who don't mind portraying it exactly as a crusade, Pete Hegseth among them

Edited 8 hours ago8 hr by npts2020
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