The End Times Checklist That's Driving the War on Iran
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When the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran, most people's first reaction was about geopolitics. Ours was about theology. Because when you've spent years watching end-times ideology creep into the halls of American power, you start to recognize the fingerprints.
This week on the podcast, we brought in reinforcements. Reverend Timothy Garvin-Leighton is a pastor, a former Peace Corps volunteer, and someone who has taught classes on eschatology, the study of the end times, across Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. We've known Tim for six or seven years now, and when the Iran strikes happened, he was the first person we wanted to talk to.
Because this isn't just about bombs. It's about the theology underneath them.
"All Part of God's Divine Plan"
Before we even got into the history, we wanted to set the scene. Pete Hegseth stood at a Pentagon briefing and described Iran as a regime "hell bent on prophetic Islamist illusions." That language isn't accidental. That's eschatological framing coming out of the mouth of the Secretary of Defense.
Then came the letter. Published on Jonathan Larsen's Substack and picked up by outlets like The Guardian and NBC News, it was written by a military NCO on behalf of 16 fellow troops. Their commanding officer had opened a combat readiness briefing by telling them not to be afraid, that the Iran strikes were "all part of God's divine plan." He cited the book of Revelation. He referenced Armageddon. He told them that President Trump had been "anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to earth." He had a big grin on his face the whole time.
The NCO who wrote the letter is a Christian. At least ten of the other complainants are also Christians. One is Jewish. One is Muslim. They filed complaints with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation because they knew what they were hearing wasn't a briefing, it was a sermon. And not one any of them signed up for.
As pastor Joe Smith put it in a post that Melissa found: "When you believe war might trigger Jesus' return, war stops being an unspeakable tragedy and starts looking like a catalyst. And once that shift happens, human beings become chess pieces in a cosmic end-times board game. That's not theology. That's called fanaticism."
So Where Does This Come From?
This is where Tim really brought it. Because this end-times obsession didn't fall out of the sky. It has a very specific origin story, and it's younger than most people think.
John Nelson Darby was an Anglican pastor in England in the early-to-mid 1800s. He felt the Anglican church had become too political and had stopped preaching biblical Christianity. So he left and founded the Plymouth Brethren, and he started reading scripture in a strictly literal way. Out of that came dispensationalism, the idea that God has divided human history into seven distinct periods, or dispensations, each with its own rules for how God interacts with humanity.
Tim walked us through all seven: Innocence (Adam and Eve in the Garden), Conscience (the Fall to the Flood), Human Government (Noah to Abraham), Promise (Abraham to Moses), Law (Moses to Jesus' crucifixion), the Church Age or Age of Grace (Pentecost to the Rapture, which is where dispensationalists believe we are now), and the Millennial Kingdom (Christ's thousand-year reign).
If you've ever seen a pastor on TV drawing timelines on a whiteboard, that's Darby's framework. John Hagee does it in nearly every sermon. The Left Behind series was built on it. Moody Bible Institute and Dallas Theological Seminary have been teaching it since the early 1900s. And generations of pastors have come out of those institutions and planted churches that treat these dispensations not as one interpretive lens among many, but as the literal blueprint for how the world ends.
Tim made an important point here: you can be educated and still be dangerous with this material. If you're reading scripture through a literalist, inerrantist lens, the eschaton isn't metaphor, it's a checklist. And that's exactly how a lot of people are treating it.
The Prophecy Checklist
This is where it gets wild. Tim shared a printed-out list of prophecies that dispensationalists track as either fulfilled or unfulfilled.
On the "fulfilled" side: the Jews reoccupying Jerusalem (Zechariah, fulfilled June 7, 1967, they say). Israel being reclaimed from desolation and becoming agriculturally productive again (Ezekiel 36:34-35, ongoing since the 20th century). Jerusalem being recognized as the capital.
On the "unfulfilled" side: Israel dwelling in security and prosperity (Ezekiel 38:11). A Russian-led coalition of mostly Muslim nations invading Israel (Ezekiel 38:1-17). And here's where it gets truly mind-bending, the connection to Russia comes from dispensationalists taking the ancient geographic names in Ezekiel 38, like Magog, and developing a phonetic system that maps them onto modern place names like Moscow and the Russian landmass. Tim described it as people essentially creating a code out of ancient words and building a geopolitical map of the modern world from it.
They also use numerology to calculate timelines. They use geography to construct modern maps from ancient texts. And then they overlay current events onto those maps and declare prophecy fulfilled or in progress.
One of the biggest unfulfilled items on the list is the construction of the Third Temple — Solomon's Temple, rebuilt on the original Temple Mount. The problem, of course, is that one of the most sacred sites in Islam currently sits on that exact spot. The Al-Aqsa Mosque. So for this prophecy to be fulfilled, you'd have to destroy one of the holiest sites in Islam and rebuild a very specific ancient temple in its place. Melissa pointed out that from a non-literalist reading, "temple" in Paul's writings typically refers to the community of believers, not a physical building. But if you're reading literally, it's bricks and mortar, and it has to happen.
It's Not Just Christians
One of the most fascinating parts of the conversation was Tim explaining that this isn't a one-sided eschatological arms race. Iran has its own end-times theology. Islam also believes in Armageddon. The Mahdi, a great leader, is expected to return and lead the armies of Islam in a final conflict. Jesus plays a role in the Islamic version too, fighting the Antichrist alongside the Mahdi.
Tim pointed out that Iran's nuclear program was significantly ramped up under President Ahmadinejad, who came from a prominent Shiite family and was deeply invested in Islamic end-times theology. So what we're watching now is two nations, each influenced by their own version of apocalyptic theology, whose eschatological trajectories have essentially collided.
Judaism has its own apocalyptic vision too. The Jewish Messiah is expected to be an anointed person from the House of David, not necessarily divine, who will restore Israel to its biblical boundaries and bring about an era of peace. This plays directly into the settler movement in the West Bank and the push to restore Israel's geographic identity as described in scripture.
All three Abrahamic traditions arrive at the same conclusion: their version of the Messiah wins, and eventually everyone follows their faith. The dispensationalists support Israel not because they love Judaism, but because restoring Israel is a prerequisite for the Second Coming, after which, in their view, even the Jews will become Christian. Matthew called it what it is: anti-Semitism on one hand, love of Israel on the other, held together by the belief that it all leads to Jesus coming back.
Is Trump the Antichrist?
Melissa asked. Tim said no. Not because Trump isn't problematic, he clearly is, but because he doesn't fit the profile. The Antichrist is supposed to arise from the Middle East, be a broad-spectrum communicator with global appeal, and be deeply ideological. Trump, Tim argued, is none of those things. He's effective in a narrow lane, but he's not ideological, which is actually part of why the Iran strikes don't make sense from his own "America First" worldview. Tim suggested Trump is more of a puppet in this scenario, doing the bidding of neocons and dispensationalists who have been pushing for conflict with Iran since 1979.
Tim noted that if you're looking for someone who fits the Antichrist profile in terms of communication ability, both Reagan and Obama were far more effective broad-spectrum communicators. Which, of course, is exactly what people said about both of them at the time.
The Rapture Isn't Really Biblical
Near the end of the episode, Melissa raised something a lot of people who grew up in evangelical churches can relate to: the fear of being left behind. Coming home as a kid and being terrified that your parents had been raptured without you. The constant anxiety that the end could come at any moment and you might not make the cut.
Tim pointed out that the rapture as most people understand it isn't really a biblical concept at all. It comes from the Latin translation of a single Greek word meaning "caught up." Darby was the one who turned it into the elaborate event that the Left Behind series dramatized. Most biblical scholars and theologians trace the modern concept of the rapture directly back to him.
Blessed Are the Peacemakers
Tim closed by sharing that when he woke up the Saturday morning after the Iran strikes, he scrapped his planned sermon on Nicodemus and rewrote the whole thing. He preached on Matthew 5:9: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God."
He said the mission of the Christian church isn't to love peace or think about peace, it's to actually make peace. And in a moment when end-times theology is being used to justify dropping bombs on another country, that calling has never been more urgent.
If Jesus returns, as pastor Joe Smith put it, he won't need our missiles to clear the way.