Over 110 U.S. service members have filed complaints after military commanders across dozens of installations told them the bombing of Iran is part of a biblical plan to trigger Armageddon and the return of Jesus Christ.
It’s a chilling revelation — but it didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s the product of decades of the ideology of Christian Zionism burrowing deep into American politics, and now, into the chain of command itself.
What Happened
Since the U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes against Iran over the weekend — killing Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and hundreds of civilians — the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has been flooded with reports from active-duty troops across every branch of the military.
According to independent journalist Jonathan Larsen, who broke the story, one non-commissioned officer reported that during a Monday combat readiness briefing, their commander told the room that President Trump had been divinely chosen to start this war.
The commander cited the Book of Revelation repeatedly and urged the NCOs to pass the message down to their troops: ‘this was all unfolding according to God’s plan’.
The NCO, who identified as Christian, wrote the complaint on behalf of 15 fellow service members — including 11 Christians, one Muslim, and one Jewish person.
In the complaint, the NCO said the commander’s remarks were damaging morale and cohesion, and represented a clear violation of their constitutional oaths.
That one complaint was far from isolated. The MRFF told Larsen it received over 110 similar reports from more than 40 units across at least 30 military installations.
The updated count from the MRFF itself indicates more than 200 calls from over 50 installations.
MRFF founder Mikey Weinstein, a former Air Force officer and Reagan White House staffer, said the complaints had one thing in common: commanders expressing what he called “unrestricted euphoria” about the war as a sign of the approaching Christian End Times.
Service members also reported being invited to Bible studies at their commanders’ personal homes to discuss how events in Iran were fulfilling the prophecies of the Book of Revelation.
Book of Revelation Explained
Weinstein noted that under military law, subordinates can’t push back against a superior trying to convert them to their religion without risking insubordination charges — a felony under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
The Hegseth connection
None of this is happening in a vacuum. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a self-described Christian nationalist, has spent his tenure systematically embedding evangelical Christianity into the Pentagon’s operations.
Hegseth has hosted monthly prayer services at the Pentagon since May 2025, featuring pastors from his personal faith circle — including Doug Wilson, a far-right theologian from Moscow, Idaho, who advocates Christian theocracy, opposes women’s suffrage, and has described antebellum slavery as a “beneficent institution.”
The Pentagon confirmed last year that Hegseth also attends a weekly White House Bible study led by Ralph Drollinger of Capitol Ministries, a preacher who teaches that God commands America to support Israel and that entitlement programs have no biblical authority.
Drollinger’s Bible study reaches members of the House, Senate, and the Trump Cabinet.
After Israel’s attack on Iran last year during the 12-Day War, Drollinger dedicated two straight weeks of lessons to preaching support for Israel — distributing those lessons to the same officials being briefed on military operations.
At a National Religious Broadcasters event and at the 2026 National Prayer Breakfast, Hegseth has publicly declared America a “Christian nation” and framed the Western military tradition as a continuation of the Crusades. His “Deus Vult” tattoo — Latin for “God wills it,” the battle cry of medieval Crusaders — is not a fashion choice.
It’s a statement of ideology.
So What is Christian Zionism?
To understand how commanders ended up preaching the Book of Revelation during combat briefings, you have to understand Christian Zionism — a theological and political movement that has quietly become one of the most powerful forces in American foreign policy.
Christian Zionism is the belief that the return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
Rooted in a literal reading of biblical prophecy — particularly the books of Genesis, Ezekiel, and Revelation — the movement holds that God promised the land of Israel to the Jewish people, that the modern state of Israel fulfills that promise, and that supporting Israel hastens the apocalyptic events described in scripture.
The theology centers on a concept called premillennial dispensationalism, popularized in the 19th century by British preacher John Nelson Darby.
In this framework, human history is divided into distinct eras — “dispensations” — that culminate in a final period of tribulation, the Battle of Armageddon, and the thousand-year reign of Christ on Earth.
The establishment of Israel in 1948 and its capture of Jerusalem in 1967 were interpreted by millions of evangelical Christians as direct fulfillments of prophecy.
Here’s the part that matters for the Iran war: in Christian Zionist eschatology, a catastrophic military conflict in the Middle East — particularly involving Israel and its regional enemies — isn’t something to be avoided.
It’s something to be welcomed.
The bloodier, the better.
The Book of Revelation describes a final battle at Armageddon followed by the return of Jesus, the rapture of true believers, and eternal damnation for everyone else. For committed Christian Zionists, war with Iran isn’t a geopolitical crisis. It’s a prophetic countdown.
“These commanders are fixated on a vision of a river 200 miles long and four and a half feet deep, filled with nothing but the blood that their version of Jesus will spill at the Battle of Armageddon.”
How Christian Zionism Captured American politics
Christian Zionism as a political movement actually predates Jewish Zionism. Its roots trace back to 17th-century English Puritanism and the theological conviction that Jewish restoration to the Holy Land was a necessary step in God’s plan.
British figures like Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Palmerston, and eventually Lord Balfour — whose 1917 declaration set the stage for modern Israel — were all influenced by these beliefs.
In the United States, the movement gained real political muscle starting in the late 1970s.
Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, founded in 1979, fused evangelical Christian values with Republican electoral politics and fierce support for Israel.
Falwell was honored by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin that same year.
Pat Robertson, Hal Lindsey (whose 1970 book The Late Great Planet Earth sold tens of millions of copies), and later John Hagee built massive media and organizational infrastructures around the idea that supporting Israel was a biblical obligation.
By 2003, the Moral Majority’s successor organizations represented the single largest voting bloc in the Republican Party.
Today, the most powerful Christian Zionist organization is Christians United for Israel (CUFI), founded by Hagee, with over 10 million members — more than the entire adult Jewish population of the United States and far exceeding the membership of AIPAC.
The movement’s political influence has been bipartisan at the margins but overwhelmingly Republican at its core.
Ronald Reagan brought Falwell and Robertson into White House strategy sessions.
George W. Bush cited his Christian faith as a motivator for supporting Israel and infamously described the post-9/11 military campaign as a “crusade.”
During Trump’s first term, Christian Zionists held key positions: Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Ambassador to Israel David Friedman all openly identified with the movement.
Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017 and the Abraham Accords were celebrated by Christian Zionist leaders as prophetic milestones.
Now, in Trump’s second term, the alignment has only deepened. Mike Huckabee — who has publicly stated that Israel has a God-given right to territory far beyond its current borders — serves as Ambassador to Israel.
Hegseth runs the Pentagon like a church. And Drollinger’s Bible studies directly reach the officials making war and peace decisions.
Why This is Dangerous
The danger here isn’t that military commanders are religious.
People of all faiths serve in the armed forces, and religious expression is protected by the First Amendment.
The danger is that the constitutional wall between church and state — which the Department of Defense has historically enforced through strict rules against proselytizing (trying to convert someone to your religion) — is being dismantled from the top down.
When a combat commander tells a room full of soldiers that a sitting president was divinely anointed to start a war, and that the war’s purpose is to bring about the literal end of the world, that’s not religious expression.
That’s theocratic command authority.
It undermines unit cohesion, alienates non-Christian service members, and introduces a dangerous fatalism into military operations.
If the war is God’s will, why plan carefully?
Why minimize casualties?
Why question orders at all?
As one NCO wrote in their complaint: it’s not just about the separation of church and state. It’s that the commander feels fully supported by the entire chain of command to push his Armageddon theology onto everyone beneath him.
Harrison Mann, a 13-year Army veteran now with the advocacy group Win Without War, warned that this kind of rhetoric threatens public trust in the military itself.
When commanders signal that the armed forces are only for Christians, MAGA supporters, and white Americans, the institution loses the credibility it needs to function in a democracy.
The U.S. is now engaged in a military campaign that has killed hundreds of Iranian civilians in just days — including strikes on schools, hospitals, residential buildings, and a sports complex.
The Iranian Red Crescent has reported nearly 800 dead. Six American troops have already been killed, reportedly at an inadequately protected installation in Kuwait that consisted of little more than a trailer surrounded by concrete walls.
And at the highest levels of the military and the White House, the people directing this campaign are surrounded by — and in some cases are themselves — true believers who view this bloodshed not as a failure of diplomacy but as the fulfillment of prophecy.
This is not a fringe movement acting from the outside. This is the operating theology of the people running the war.
