UNHOLY WAR: Military Leaders on Both Sides of the US-Israel-Iran War Preach Armageddon & the Antichrist
The hoofbeats of the Apocalypse are now thundering through the halls of American mosques and US government.
Yesterday, The Daily Doom carried a story in its headlines about Muslim clerics inside the United States pushing a war doctrine that claims the Iran war is the ultimate end-times battle that will bring the Mahdi to earth—the Muslim counterpart to the return of Christ. I am rerunning the story—which describes imams in the US also preaching that Trump is the Muslim equivalent of the antiChrist—in order to compare it to another story today about Christian military leaders in the US doing the same thing, but from the reverse perspective.
Chasing after apocalypse
In and article titled “Chasing the Apocalypse,” Shiite ideologues at mosques inside the US are framing the conflict between the US, Israel, and Iran as fulfilling Muslim prophecies for the arrival of the Mahdi, or the Muslim “Messiah”:
For certain hardline Shiite ideologues, including in the U.S., this [war] is not an ending but a prophetic showdown that will usher in the arrival of the “Mahdi,” a messiah, according to Islamic eschatology, or the theology of end times.
In this prophecy, Mahdi will emerge to battle Dajjal, the Islamic equivalent of the Antichrist, in a final battle of Armageddon. For many of these ideologues, President Donald Trump is Dajjal.
At a recent Friday sermon at a local Shiite mosque in northern Virginia, an imam closed prayer with an earnest plea, before war broke out in Iran: “May Allah destroy all the nonbelievers – or kafiroon or munafiqoon,” he said, using Arabic words that refer to “nonbelievers” and “hypocrites.”
He asked for this victory “before the arrival of Imam Mahdi.”
The Friday service at the Manassas Mosque reveals a theological dynamic that Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned about in early February, noting that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s leaders are guided not merely by geopolitics and national security considerations, but by “pure theology.”
Fox News Digital … found clerics, community leaders and media platforms in the U.S. framing tensions with Iran in explicitly apocalyptic terms rooted in eschatology, or Islamist end-times theology.
However, the same can be said of the United States’ military leaders. Another article in today’s headlines reports that US commanders are telling US troops that President Trump was “anointed by Jesus” to start the war with Iran in order to bring on the end times and the return of Christ:
A nonprofit U.S. military watchdog said it has received hundreds of complaints about commanders providing religious reasons for starting the Iran war.
U.S. commanders told troops Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon.”
A damning new report found that evangelical Christian fundamentalism is underpinning U.S. military action in Iran….
Only days ago we heard Ambassador Mike Huckabee making an argument about that to Tuckered Carlson, regarding the right of Israel to spread its boundaries across the Middle East. Now we hear that a number of US commanders are speaking in similar ways and with considerable fervor:
Hundreds of U.S. troops across dozens of units and installations have submitted complaints to the non-profit watchdog, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), since the attack about combat unit commanders providing Christian reasoning for the war….
Non-commissioned officers (NCO) who attended a briefing Monday told the MRFF that a combat-unit commander “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.”
The commander also argued that Trump “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth” and that the Iran war is part of God’s plan, the NCO claimed.
The remarks were submitted in more than 110 complaints about commanders across all military branches, including more than 40 units across 30 military installations, the MFRR told Larsen….
MRFF President Mikey Weinstein, an Air Force veteran, told Larsen that his office has been “inundated” with such complaints, explaining, “These calls have one damn thing in freaking common; our MRFF clients [service members who seek MRFF aid] report the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders and command chains as to how this new ‘biblically-sanctioned’ war is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian ‘End Times’ as vividly described in the New Testament Book of Revelation.”
He added, “Many of their commanders are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100% accordance with fundamentalist Christian end of the world eschatology.”
The Bible speaks woe to those who rush to bring on the end
If this report is true and not some made-up AI garbage, those US commanders who are so delighted about the possibility of Trump being anointed to bring on the end times and the return of Jesus by setting up the great Battle of Armageddon, should perhaps consider this scriptural warning:
18 Woe to you who long
for the day of the Lord!
Why do you long for the day of the Lord?
That day will be darkness, not light.
19 It will be as though a man fled from a lion
only to meet a bear,
as though he entered his house
and rested his hand on the wall
only to have a snake bite him.
20 Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light—
pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?
The Antichrist as described in the Bible, not in Islam
They might also consider another biblical warning. Those who believe Trump is God’s anointed leader of the US get their theology from the biblical prophet Daniel, who wrote …
He [God] changes times and seasons; he deposes kings and raises up others….
The Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone he wishes.” ( Daniel 2:21 and Daniel 4:32)
However, that same prophet also wrote the following warning about the Antichrist:
He will speak against the Most High and oppress his holy people and try to change the set times and the laws. The holy people will be delivered into his hands for a time, times and half a time. (Daniel 7:25)
In other words, It is up to God to set the times and seasons for the big events of human history, and it is the Antichrist who tries to reset those times to his advanced schedule. Those who lust for the end because of the greatness they believe will follow should beware of taking the set times for the end of human history into their own hands. Rushing the end times just because they want to see the end come quickly because of what they believe lies on the other side for them winds up making them the ones who spread great evil over the world in order to force the hand of their Messiah to fit their schedule. (As of this week, we have stories about zealots on both sides of the present battle doing that.)
It may well be that religious zealots will bring on evil in order to rush the end times so that they might see the end come in their time. It may, in fact, come in their time because of them; but I don’t see anything saying they will be praised for it!
Nothing I can think of in biblical prophecy describes a heroic leader who brings on the battle of Armageddon in order to ready the world for Jesus’ return. In fact, the one who brings on that battle is described as being the opposite of Christ. Here is the prophecy about Armageddon:
14 They are demonic spirits that perform signs, and they go out to the kings of the whole world, to gather them for the battle on the great day of God Almighty.
15 “Look, I come like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake and remains clothed, so as not to go naked and be shamefully exposed.”
16 Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon. (Revelation 16:14-16)
The middle verse seems to be almost an interruption that brings a needed reminder that Jesus told his followers he will return “like a thief I the night,” not like an emperor riding into war. Those who gather the nations together for the Battle of Armageddon are not exactly described there in glowing terms.
On the other hand, the Antichrist, is variously described in the Bible as a man of great success who is extremely boastful • who serves no god higher than himself • who is obsessed with global power, placing himself over other national rulers whom he gathers around himself in a body of ten national leaders with himself as the supreme • who becomes hated by those other rulers • who demands total allegiance and takes retribution on anyone who doesn’t give that allegiance • who honors those people who honor him • who establishes global monetary control around his own cashless currency • who seeks gold and silver • who falsely claims he is bringing “peace, peace” to the world • yet who attacks mighty fortresses • and who ultimately brings on a great world war that leads to his own end and the end of the nations that blindly follow him in the rush to that war.
The nations that seek to gather together in the Valley of Armageddon in Israel do not fare well. Their evil dies in a great conflagration as even the skies seem to rain down upon them in epic fury.
I’m not saying this war is that war, but championing any war out of hope that it brings the return of the messiah more quickly is not a camp I would want to be in. Those who rush to expedite the end times, as they understand those times, are not spoken well of in the very prophecies that cause them to delight over the idea that they are bringing the end on more quickly. Somehow they don’t see that part.
Prophets of the last Trump
About this time last year, I wrote an exposé about Trump’s prophets—the charismatic preachers on the Christian Right who lift Trump up as God’s anointed to make America great again. It might be good to read about those empire-builders again to familiarize yourself with them in these present times: “AMERICAN EMPIRE (Part Two): Holy War.” Another perhaps interesting story on this theme was “Peter Thiel, the Antichrist, and the Peace President.”
The hoofbeats of the Apocalypse are thundering throughout the halls of US government right now, including particularly the Pentagon. They are thundering through the mosques of America, too. Both sides of this war are rising with apocalyptic fervor behind them. Remember the Supreme Leader of Iran—whoever takes the role now—is first and foremost a religious cleric. Until that role is filled …
Prophets of the Dajjal
Shiite cleric Ayatollah Kamal al-Haidari on Tuesday called for “jihad” against the United States and Israel, according to a statement issued by his office….
The authority to issue such binding religious rulings traditionally rests with a Marja’ al-Taqlid —a supreme religious authority recognized by followers as a source of emulation in matters of faith and law.
All Muslims everywhere are supposed to answer the call to jihad if it comes from the right authority. For jihad to be legitimate, it must be defensive. The other side must attack first, and it must strike against Islam or its religious leaders. Fortunately, cooler heads around the world have prevailed in the past, but will they now, and what will the new authority try to demand? Will Muslims in American mosques listen?
Pro-regime mosques, K-12 schools and local community organizations in the U.S. are “producing messaging that mirrors Tehran’s talking points almost word for word,” warned Andrew Ghalili, policy director at the National Union for Democracy in Iran, an advocacy group led by Iranian Americans who oppose the theocratic regime running Iran.
In an upcoming report, “The Ayatollahs’ Influence Network in the United States,” reviewed by Fox News Digital, the group’s researchers conclude the Islamic Republic of Iran spreads “Tehran’s messaging” in a network of institutions it supports in the U.S., for example, pitting Trump as the Dajjal fighting defenders of the Mahdi, like Khamenei and now his successors….
Days ago, Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency repeated the end-times narrative, quoting Hezbollah Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem, claiming the regime is the “government of Imam Mahdi” and its anti-U.S. “resistance is the path to hastening his reappearance.”
For women’s rights activist Sara Ghorbani, a writer who fled Iran’s rigid theocratic rule in 2010, the regime’s death grip on power is disturbing. “We’re fighting an evil that the world doesn’t truly comprehend in its belief that it has a divine mandate to usher in a day of apocalypse,” Ghorbani told Fox News Digital.
“Our brave people in Iran are fighting a tyranny that believes it is God’s salvation for this earth when, in fact, it is a cruel and ungodly regime that is actually their own prophecy of Dajjal,” added Ghorbani.
True for cult zealots on both sides, I think.
