Israel’s current far-right government under Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu has struck a dangerous bargain with America’s Evangelical Christian Zionists. This unlikely alliance – between ultra-nationalist Jewish leaders and apocalyptic-minded Christian conservatives – is framing today’s Middle East conflicts in biblical terms.
Both sides invoke End Times prophecy to cast wars in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and looming against Iran as holy battles preordained by Scripture. The result is a fusion of theology and policy that critics say fuels militarism and undermines any pursuit of peace.
Netanyahu’s coalition, which includes messianic hardliners, has eagerly welcomed support from Evangelical luminaries like Texas pastor John Hagee. Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), leads the largest pro-Israel lobby in the US and unabashedly embraces an end-of-days worldview. After Hamas’s brutal October 7 attack on Israel, Hagee declared that “prophetically, we are on the verge of the Gog-Magog war that Ezekiel described” – a Biblical apocalypse – and urged Israel “we don’t need to de-escalate”.
Instead, CUFI flew activists to Washington to demand an iron-fist response. This is no fringe voice. With over 8 million members, CUFI wields enormous influence – Speaker of the House Mike Johnson even addressed Hagee’s emergency summit. Their agenda has little to do with Israel’s long-term wellbeing and everything to do with fulfilling prophecy: ingathering Jews to Israel, building a Third Temple in Jerusalem, and sparking a final war to hasten Jesus’s return. As Hagee wrote in his bestselling book Jerusalem Countdown, the ultimate goal is to trigger the Second Coming – a scenario in which Jews either convert or perish.
Netanyahu, for his part, has been happy to play along. “When I say we have no greater friends than Christian supporters of Israel, I know you’ve always stood with us,” he told Hagee’s followers at a CUFI conference. Indeed, Christian Zionists have poured tens of millions of dollars into Israeli settlements and far-right causes. They fiercely opposed the Oslo peace process and helped sabotage it by bankrolling the Israeli right. They lobbied against the 2015 Iran nuclear deal – whose collapse has only emboldened Tehran – and championed President Donald Trump’s hard-line pro-Israel moves like relocating the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
In short, this alliance has worked to foreclose compromise at every turn, keeping tensions high. As Rabbi Jay Michaelson observes, Christian Zionists want Israel caught in an apocalyptic war – not living in peace. And Netanyahu’s government, dependent on ultra-religious and ultranationalist factions, has reciprocated by giving Christian Zionists political access and symbolic victories.
Apocalypse Now
What makes this convergence especially perilous is the shared belief that today’s conflicts are fulfillment of End Times prophecy. Influential voices in Netanyahu’s camp and their Evangelical allies are openly framing wars as holy wars. Key figures invoke ancient scripture about Israel’s final battles to justify real-world military aggression.
In recent speeches to rally his base, Netanyahu himself has resorted to biblical rhetoric dripping with apocalyptic undertones. “Remember what Amalek did to you,” he urged Israeli troops, likening Hamas to the biblical Amalekites – enemies God commanded Israel to wipe out. He described the fight as “a war between the children of light and the children of darkness”, vowing that “the light will overcome the darkness”. In the Torah, the Amalek story is one of total annihilation: **the command was to “completely destroy all of Amalek… killing each and every one of them – including babies”. By invoking this, Netanyahu signaled a war of extermination against Hamas (and, implicitly, Gaza’s population sheltering under Hamas’s rule).
Similarly, top officials like Defense Minister Yoav Gallant echo that “this is a war between light and darkness”. Such language mirrors the Evangelical apocalyptic narrative of a divine showdown. Pastor Hagee and his peers teach that a massive war centered on Israel – the biblical “War of Gog and Magog” – is inevitable.
Many believe this final conflict will involve an alliance of Israel’s enemies (often they point to Iran, Syria, and Russia) attacking the Jewish state, only to be destroyed by God’s hand. Hagee asserted that the Israel-Hamas war was exactly this prophesied confrontation. Every rocket fired by an Iran-backed militia, every skirmish on the Lebanese border, is, in their eyes, another portent of looming Armageddon.
This mindset has tangible influence on policy. Because Christian Zionists view war in the Middle East as God’s will, peace efforts become obstacles to prophecy. As noted, they opposed the very frameworks – Oslo, the Iran deal – that aimed to reduce conflict. They applauded when Trump tore up diplomatic norms, seeing it as clearing the way for destiny. Within Israel, Netanyahu’s far-right partners also harbor messianic aims.
Members of his coalition have agitated to expand Jewish control over Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, even at risk of igniting religious strife. Notably, Israeli “Temple movement” activists, with quiet encouragement from government figures, have been preparing for a Third Temple. In a stark example, the Temple Institute recently imported five red heifer calves from Texas – animals essential for ritual purification – and convened a conference in a West Bank settlement to plan the sacrificial rites.
The group openly stated that performing the red heifer ritual would enable thousands of religious Jews to ascend the Temple Mount (currently restricted by rabbinical law) and ultimately pave the way for rebuilding the Temple. Such moves thrill Evangelical prophecy-watchers, who believe a Third Temple must rise before Jesus’s return. But to Muslims, these are dangerous provocations at Islam’s third-holiest site (Al-Aqsa Mosque). By injecting prophecy into policy, leaders are stoking a powder keg in Jerusalem that could explode into broader conflict.
Holy War Rhetoric = Real-World Carnage
As theological fervor replaces pragmatic strategy, the toll on human life has been devastating. Casting adversaries as biblical evils has morally emboldened an all-out military approach. Since October, Netanyahu’s “time for war” posture has translated into unrestrained force in Gaza. Israeli bombardment and invasion, justified in biblical terms, have killed over 9,000 Palestinians in Gaza (the vast majority civilians) in just a few months.
That onslaught came after Hamas’s own horrific massacre of some 1,400 Israelis on October 7 – carnage that itself fed the doomsday narratives. Each side now invokes God and destiny to justify a fight to the finish. Netanyahu’s explicit references to scripture serve to frame the war as one of righteousness, with no mercy for the “Amalek” enemy. Human rights observers warn that this veers into genocidal rhetoric. As Professor Motti Inbari explains, “when you are talking in the language of holy wars, there can be no resolution that includes a compromise… it’s a total and complete war”.
Indeed, if one believes God ordains wiping out “children of darkness,” calls for ceasefire or negotiation become heresy. This absolutist mindset has been on vivid display. Netanyahu rebuffed international pleas for even brief humanitarian pauses, equating a ceasefire with surrender to evil. His government’s populist rallying cry – fight until “total victory” – reflects a belief that they are agents of a divine plan, not bound by normal political constraints.
American Evangelical hardliners cheer these developments. To them, images of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza or skirmishes with Hezbollah in Lebanon are not tragedies but signs of prophecy unfolding. Hagee and others have explicitly said war in the Holy Land should be celebrated as it heralds Jesus’s return.
This chilling enthusiasm for violence is couched in the language of “light vs. darkness” – the same terms now heard from Jerusalem. By validating each other’s apocalyptic narratives, the Netanyahu coalition and its Christian Zionist allies create a feedback loop that normalizes endless war. Civilian suffering on both sides is rationalized as the price of “biblical destiny.” Death tolls mount, while voices for peace are marginalized or silenced as faithless.
Prophecy Over Peace
Israel’s latest strikes on Iran – including blasts in eastern Tehran and precision attacks on nuclear facilities like Fordow and Natanz – mark a prophecy-fueled escalation. Israeli officials claim to have severely set back Iran’s nuclear program (destroying thousands of centrifuges at Natanz) and eliminated several of Tehran’s top military commanders in the process.
Netanyahu’s far-right government frames the onslaught as a preemptive, even divinely ordained, defense against an “existential” Iranian threat – pointedly code-naming the campaign “Rising Lion,” after a biblical verse likening Israel to a lion that will not rest until it devours its prey. In the U.S., Evangelical Christian Zionists have lauded the operation as “prophetically significant,” casting it as a step toward fulfilling apocalyptic scripture. This theological-political fusion leaves little room for diplomacy: hardliners on both sides now spurn negotiations in favor of a holy-war logic, treating the conflict as destiny rather than a dispute to be resolved.
The convergence of Netanyahu’s ultranationalist politics with Evangelical end-times prophecy has created a combustible moment. It enables leaders to cloak militarism in moral absolutes, dismissing diplomacy as weakness or even defiance of God. Each side in this alliance believes it is on a historic mission: the Christian Zionists to accelerate the Second Coming, and the Israeli hard right to achieve a “Biblical” victory over its enemies.
The immediate consequence has been the escalation of wars on multiple fronts, all portrayed as righteous and necessary. The long-term consequence could be even more dire – a self-fulfilling prophecy of unending conflict.
This critical examination reveals a sobering truth: when officials start seeing tank battles and airstrikes as fulfillment of Scripture, no earthly peace plan stands a chance. By elevating prophecy over policy, Netanyahu and his Evangelical allies are gambling with countless lives and regional stability. Already, thousands lie dead in Gaza, Israeli communities reel from massacre, and a wider conflagration with Iran is now a reality.
Yet the drumbeat of destiny continues. “Christian Zionists want Israel to be caught in an apocalyptic war to end all wars. Do you?” one commentator starkly asked. It is a warning worth heeding. As enticing as a narrative of “children of light” vanquishing “children of darkness” may be to true believers, the reality is flesh-and-blood people are paying the price for these prophetic scripts.
In the end, the fusion of theology and statecraft on display risks turning the Holy Land into a battlefield without end. Policy dictated by prophecy is a recipe for perpetual war, not a just resolution. If leaders continue to prioritize ancient visions of Armageddon over modern diplomacy, the world may indeed witness a self-made “End Times” – one driven not by divine mandate, but by a reckless human choice to make prophecy come true.
The far-right government in Jerusalem and its rapturous supporters in American megachurches would do well to remember that when you set out to ignite an apocalypse, you may very well get one – with catastrophic consequences that no scripture can reverse.
