Since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, Israel’s war – from Gaza to Lebanon, Syria, and even Iran – has taken on an increasingly apocalyptic tone.
An alliance of Christian Zionists and Israel’s far-right sees the current conflicts as fulfillments of End Times prophecy. Netanyahu’s government has eagerly catered to these beliefs – from facilitating “Third Temple” preparations to invoking biblical conquest – in ways that risk turning prophecy into a self-fulfilling policy.
A Zionist jihad unleashed in Gaza and beyond
In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 2023 rampage – which killed over 1,400 Israelis and saw over 240 taken hostage – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a war that would reshape the region. The Israeli Air Force rained thousands of tons of munitions on the Gaza Strip in retaliation.
In just a few weeks, the bombing killed more than 8,000 Palestinians by late October (according to Gaza health officials), with entire city blocks reduced to moonscapes of rubble. Netanyahu cast this campaign in stark, biblical terms. He told the Israeli public they were fighting “a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness” – language of cosmic good vs. evil that echoed ancient apocalyptic texts.
Fast forward to June 2025 and death toll now stands at nearly 60,000 souls.
On October 28, 2023 Netanyahu even invoked the scriptural command to “remember what Amalek has done to you”, referencing a biblical episode in which Israel is instructed to annihilate the Amalekites – men, women, infants – for attacking the Israelites. In other words, Netanyahu was analogizing Hamas (and by extension, Gaza’s population) to a foe marked for total extermination in the Bible.
Such rhetoric was alarming to many, but it thrilled a particular audience: the vast community of American Evangelical Christians who see Israel’s wars as the unfolding of End Times prophecy. Within hours of the Hamas onslaught, Evangelical leaders rallied in lockstep behind Israel. “To the terrorists who have chosen this fight, hear this: what you do to Israel, God will do to you,” pronounced Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a lobby claiming 10 million members
An Evangelical statement signed by 2,000 pastors and leaders backed Israel’s war as a just fight of good versus evil. In Texas, megachurch pastor John Hagee – a doyen of Christian Zionism – took to his pulpit and urged immediate U.S. intervention against Iran, blaming Tehran for the Hamas attack. “Let me say it to you in plain Texas speech,” Hagee roared to cheers, “America should roll up its sleeves and knock the living daylights out of Tehran for what they have done to Israel. Hit them so hard that our enemies will once again fear us”. As Israeli bombs fell on Gaza and ground forces moved in for what Netanyahu called a fight to “completely defeat the murderous enemy”, influential evangelicals were framing the conflict not as a limited campaign, but as the beginning of a biblically ordained battle – potentially the Battle of Armageddon itself.
Within weeks, the war did spill beyond Gaza. Skirmishes erupted on Israel’s northern border as Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shiite militia in Lebanon, traded fire with Israeli forces. By January 2024, more than 130 Hezbollah fighters had been killed since Oct. 7 2023 in these border clashes, along with several dozen Israeli soldiers, raising fears of a second front. Israeli artillery and airstrikes hit targets in southern Lebanon almost daily; Lebanon’s health ministry reported over 3,700 people killed in Lebanon since the war began – a staggering toll hinting that Israel’s retaliation was not confined to Hamas alone. At the same time, Israel launched wave after wave of airstrikes in Syria, targeting what it said were Iranian arms convoys and proxy militias. It even struck the Damascus and Aleppo international airports, knocking both out of service on October 12 and again on October 22, in an effort to stem the flow of weapons and fighters from Iran’s network.
Each of these theaters – Gaza, Lebanon, Syria – represented an expanding arc of conflict encircling Israel. And hovering behind it all was the shadow of Iran. Israeli officials accused Iran’s Revolutionary Guards of masterminding the Hamas attack and supplying Hezbollah with rockets, starkly warning that “whoever attacks us – blood [will be] on their own hands” with eyes clearly on Tehran. By 2024, Netanyahu’s government was openly preparing for the possibility of direct war with Iran, holding massive air force drills and intelligence operations focused on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Evangelicals, notably, had long anticipated exactly such a showdown: a final war pitting Israel against Persia (Iran) and other hostile powers, as foretold by the prophet Ezekiel’s “Gog and Magog” prophecy. So when Netanyahu’s threats toward Iran sharpened, prophecy-minded pastors grew giddy.
One prominent minister, Greg Laurie, told his California congregation: “The Bible predicted… a large force from the North of Israel will attack her after she was regathered, and one of the allies with modern Russia, or Magog, will be Iran or Persia. If you get up in the morning and read this headline ‘Russia Attacks Israel,’ fasten your seatbelt because you’re seeing Bible prophecy fulfilled in your lifetime.”
Sure enough, events seemed to be racing toward that prophetic scenario. In June 2025, Israel’s conflict with Iran ceased to be shadowy and became overt. In a stunning escalation, the Israeli Air Force launched a surprise blitz on Iran itself, hitting Iranian military and nuclear sites. Netanyahu exulted that the strike “wiped out the top echelon” of Iran’s military command and set back Tehran’s nuclear program by years.
As Iranian media showed images of flames billowing from a stricken gas field and claimed dozens of civilians were killed, Netanyahu remained unapologetic. “We will hit every site and every target of the Ayatollahs’ regime, and what they have felt so far is nothing compared with what they will be handed in the coming days,” he declared in a video message. Iran fired back with volleys of missiles at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, drawing Israeli missile defense and U.S.-supplied batteries into action. For the first time in history, missiles from Iran rained down on Israel and Israeli warplanes bombed the Iranian homeland – a nightmare war that many feared could spiral into a regional inferno.
To Christian Zionist hard-liners, however, this was no nightmare; it was the fulfillment of divine script. In San Antonio, Pastor Hagee and his son Matt had been predicting exactly this convergence. After Hamas’ attack, the Hagees hosted a “Night to Honor Israel” at Cornerstone Church where they preached that “this war is prophetically significant” and part of God’s plan. On stage, Matt Hagee pointed to a map of the Middle East as he preached from Ezekiel: “The Secretary of State is not going to get us out of this one. God has a hook in the jaws of these nations, and He’s drawing them here… God tells Ezekiel exactly how He’s going to defend Israel. He speaks about raining down fire and hail and brimstone. That’s a heavenly air assault.”
In Hagee’s telling, Israel’s enemies – from Hamas to Hezbollah to Iran (and even Russia and China) – were simply actors being dragged onto the stage of an end-times drama scripted by God. As Israeli UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan sat in the pews of that church, he heard American Christians describe his country’s war in overtly apocalyptic terms. Erdan himself stepped up to cite the biblical prophet Isaiah and urge these evangelicals to “be partners with God” in Israel’s figh.
The message was clear: to many on the Christian right, Israel’s multi-front war is not merely geopolitical – it’s eschatological, the long-awaited clash that heralds the Second Coming of Christ. And Netanyahu’s government, by widening its military campaign and adopting explicitly biblical rhetoric, appears to be leaning into that narrative.
Prophecy: Third Temples, Gog and Magog, and the Second Coming
Why are American evangelicals so invested in an Israeli war that could engulf the Middle East in flames? The answer lies in a particular reading of biblical prophecy that has become mainstream in the white Evangelical subculture over the past century. In this theology – often called dispensationalist or Christian Zionist eschatology – the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948 was not a political accident but a divine signal. It fulfilled ancient prophecies of Jews being “regathered” to their homeland, a key milestone that, in the view of many Evangelicals, “starts the clock ticking on a seven-year Armageddon”, after which Jesus Christ will return to establish His kingdom.
According to this interpretation, we are now living in the last days, and Israel is the linchpin of God’s endgame. One 2015 poll found that 73% of US Evangelicals believe that current events in Israel are “part of the prophecies in the Book of Revelation”, literally signs of the approaching apocalypse.
In Evangelical prophecy seminars and best-selling novels like the Left Behind series, a few specific end-times scenarios are emphasized. One is the rise of a Third Temple in Jerusalem. The Bible’s Book of Revelation and the Book of Daniel are interpreted to imply that before Christ’s return, a new Jewish Temple will be built on the Temple Mount (where the first two temples stood in antiquity), and an Antichrist figure will profane it, triggering the final sequence of tribulations.
For many Evangelicals, therefore, anything that advances the prospect of rebuilding the Temple is laden with prophetic significance. This is why seemingly arcane matters – such as the breeding of red heifers – have captured evangelical imaginations. The red heifer, a completely red cow without blemish, is mentioned in the Book of Numbers as a requirement for ritual purification related to the Temple. For two millennia since the Second Temple’s destruction, no such animal was available to perform the purification rites.
But in recent years, Christian Zionist groups have gone to great lengths to breed red heifers and get them to Israel, believing that this will pave the way for temple construction. In September 2022 they succeeded: five pure red heifer calves, bred by a Christian rancher in Texas, were flown to Israel and delivered to the Temple Institute (a religious group preparing for a future temple). “The prophecies came true, and the Jews are back in Israel. Now they need to build a Temple… The red heifer is the key,” explained the Texan rancher, citing his literal reading of Scripture.
These Evangelicals believe that once the Temple is rebuilt – an event they actively encourage – it will set in motion the events of the Book of Revelation, including the appearance of the Antichrist, a great tribulation, and ultimately the Second Coming of Jesus.
Another core prophecy motif is the war of “Gog and Magog.” This comes from Ezekiel 38–39, which describes a future invasion of Israel by a confederation of nations from the far north, led by a figure named Gog. In the evangelical interpretation, “Magog” is often equated with Russia (or the former Soviet states) and its allies, and “Persia” – explicitly named in Ezekiel – is modern-day Iran.
Other enemies in the prophecy have been variously identified as China, Turkey, Libya, and Arab states – essentially, a grand alliance of Israel’s (and America’s) foes. Crucially, Ezekiel foretells that God Himself will intervene in this war, decimating Gog’s armies with fire from heaven, thus magnifying His glory to the world.
To a believer steeped in this narrative, the alignment of current events is striking. An aggressive Russia to Israel’s north? Check. A militant Iran/Persia vowing to wipe out the Jewish state? Check. Islamist armies (Hamas, Hezbollah) menacing Israel’s borders? Check. It is no wonder that “armed conflicts involving Israel are often associated with End Times battles by American evangelicals”, as Religion News Service noted, “since many believe the Jewish state will play a role in fulfilling biblical prophecy.” In this view, each war Israel fights isn’t only for its survival – it’s a step toward God’s final victory over evil. Pastor Greg Laurie’s warning about Russia and Iran attacking Israel was not idle speculation; it was a direct reference to Gog and Magog, essentially telling his flock that World War III in the Middle East would mean the Bible is coming true before their eyes.
Then there is the ultimate battle: Armageddon. The Book of Revelation describes a final gathering of the nations to war at a place called Har Megiddo (Armageddon) in Israel, where Jesus will return in glory to defeat the forces of Satan. Many evangelicals conflate any major Middle East war with Armageddon, or at least see it as a lead-up. When the current Gaza war erupted, some influential Christians immediately framed it in these terms. “For some believers, the news from the Middle East is a prelude to Armageddon and the Rapture,” one observer wrote, noting that evangelicals flooded social media with prophecy memes as soon as fighting began. It’s not that they think the Gaza conflict is Armageddon per se – but they view it as one more link in a chain of events making up the end-times chronology. Each crisis ratchets up their expectation that the big battle is nearing. Indeed, Texas televangelist Hagee has said for years that “the march of time is rapidly aligning with the events foretold in Revelation”, and he greets each Middle East war as further confirmation.
Finally, underpinning all these specific beliefs is a theological conviction about the role of Israel in the Second Coming. Evangelicals of this stripe believe that the Jews are still God’s chosen people and that His promises to Abraham – “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse” (Genesis 12:3) – remain in effect. Supporting Israel, to them, is not just geopolitical; it’s a biblical mandate tied to blessings and curses.
Moreover, their interpretation of Revelation holds that during the apocalyptic drama, 144,000 Jews will recognize Jesus as Messiah and be saved, even as many others perish. In a stark formulation, some preach that ultimately faithful Christians will be raptured to heaven while nonbelievers, including Jews who do not convert, face judgment or death when Christ returns. This uncomfortable detail – that their “beloved” Israel is destined for tribulation – is usually glossed over in public.
What matters politically is that right now, evangelicals see the Jewish State as the stage upon which God’s plan unfolds. A 2018 survey by Lifeway Research found that 80% of US Evangelicals believe the creation of Israel in 1948 was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. They are, in short, primed to view every Middle East crisis as divinely orchestrated. As Lee Fang reported, “These Christian Zionists have preached that bloodshed in Israel is necessary for the second coming of Jesus Christ.” It is a startling belief: that war in the Holy Land is not to be feared or stopped, but actually welcomed as a necessary precondition for ultimate salvation.
This belief system has profound real-world consequences. It means there is a large constituency in America – tens of millions strong – that will support almost any Israeli military action, uncritically, because they see it as part of God’s prophetic timetable. It also means that there are influential voices, with direct access to American politicians, actively encouraging escalation and even cataclysm, in the name of hastening God’s plan.
When Netanyahu describes his war aims in biblical language, these believers hear not the inflammatory words of a nationalist politician, but the thrilling echoes of Scripture coming to life. And Netanyahu knows it.
Netanyahu’s unholy alliance with Christian Zionists
To understand how Israel’s current leadership has leveraged Evangelical beliefs, we must examine the long-running political alliance between the Israeli right and America’s Christian fundamentalists. Benjamin Netanyahu is perhaps the most adept Israeli leader ever in cultivating Evangelical support.
As far back as the 1990s, during his first stint as prime minister, Netanyahu realized that while liberal American Jews might criticize his hardline policies, conservative Evangelicals would cheer them. Over time, he shifted Israel’s diplomatic outreach accordingly. By the 2010s, Netanyahu was openly calling Evangelical Christians “our best friends in the world.” In a 2017 video address to a Washington summit of Christians United for Israel, he greeted the crowd with warm familiarity. “When I say we have no greater friends than Christian supporters of Israel, I know you’ve always stood with us,” Netanyahu proclaimed, to thunderous applause. He praised the shared “Judeo-Christian” values of Israel and America and cast their partnership as a civilizational struggle against radical Islam: “It’s a struggle of free societies against the forces of militant Islam… They want to destroy the State of Israel, and then they want to conquer the world”.
In return for this adulation, Evangelical leaders offered Netanyahu a political army of sorts – millions of American voters who would push the U.S. government to take a pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian line at every turn.
The fruits of this alliance were most evident under U.S. President Donald Trump, who surrounded himself with Evangelical advisors and reciprocated their loyalty by aligning U.S. policy with both Netanyahu’s agenda and prophecy-centric wishes. The move of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018 stands as the emblematic example. Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was something successive presidents had refrained from doing, as it inflamed Palestinians and violated international consensus. But Trump did it – explicitly to please evangelicals. “We moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem. That’s for the Evangelicals,” Trump admitted at a rally.
Indeed, John Hagee and other Christian Zionist luminaries were invited to speak at the embassy’s dedication ceremony in Jerusalem, where they framed the moment in prophetic terms. (Hagee called it a fulfillment of God’s promise and a step towards the Messianic era.) Israeli officials understood the dynamic: that Trump’s Evangelical base was a key driver of his Middle East decisions.
One former Israeli diplomat quipped that Netanyahu’s government had effectively “outsourced” its U.S. outreach to Christian allies, since the Israeli-friendly tilt of the Republican Party was now rooted as much in Bible Belt churches as in New York synagogues.
Netanyahu’s personal courtship of Evangelical influencers has been relentless. He has appeared multiple times at CUFI’s huge “Night to Honor Israel” gatherings, often via satellite feed, to lavish praise on Christian Zionists. In November 2022, on the eve of Israel’s elections, Netanyahu even sat for a cozy interview with Pastor Hagee broadcast to Evangelicals – a clear gesture of solidarity and thanks. (It paid off: Hagee’s organization mobilized its followers to pray for Netanyahu’s victory.)
Beyond rhetoric, Netanyahu’s policies have aligned with Evangelical interests. Under his watch, Israel has given greater leeway to settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank – something pro-Israel Evangelicals enthusiastically support, since many believe Jews must reclaim all of “Biblical Israel” as part of God’s plan. He appointed ambassadors like David Friedman (Trump’s envoy to Israel), who openly funded West Bank settlements and spoke of a divine claim to the land. Netanyahu also backed Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, a move cheered by Evangelicals who see confrontation with Iran as inevitable and necessary. At every turn, the Israeli prime minister has been keenly aware that to keep the unwavering support of America’s Christian right, he must deliver actions that resonate with their end-times worldview.
This alliance, however, comes with deep ironies and risks. Evangelicals support Israel not for Israel’s sake, but for the sake of their own theological narrative, in which Jews are basically props in a Christian drama. Some Israeli officials privately acknowledge this with a shrug. “Sure, I know that some of our [Evangelical] supporters believe that … the Jews do not fare well in [their] scenario,” said an Israeli settler leader bluntly. “But until that time – there’s lots of issues we can work on together, to our mutual benefit.”
In other words, Israeli hardliners are willing to overlook the fact that their evangelical “friends” ultimately expect Jews either to convert to Christianity or be slaughtered at Armageddon. What matters to Netanyahu and his allies is that, here and now, these Christians are useful. They pour millions of dollars into Israeli causes (for instance, John Hagee’s organization alone claims to have donated over $100 million to bringing Soviet and Ethiopian Jews to Israel, fulfilling prophecy of ingathering). They fund social programs and even the Israeli military; during the current Gaza war, Evangelical organizations have sent donations, volunteers, and even bulletproof vests for Israeli soldiers.
Politically, Evangelicals have helped block any U.S. pressure on Israel to compromise with the Palestinians. The Trump administration’s unabashedly pro-Netanyahu stance – greenlighting Jerusalem’s embassy move, cutting aid to Palestinians, endorsing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights – was “generously supported by [Christian Zionists] and translated into some of the Trump administration’s positions,” as one analysis observed.
Even when, former President Biden (a Democrat) urged caution to avoid mass civilian casualties in Gaza, the loudest American voices pushing Israel to hit harder were Evangelical and far-right figures. They view any restraint as thwarting God’s will. The net effect is that Netanyahu’s alliance with U.S. Evangelicals has given him a long political leash – perhaps dangerously long. It has bound Israeli policy to a bloc that will not countenance moderation. For these Christian allies, peace talks, territorial compromise, or de-escalation are almost akin to defying prophecy; hence they encourage Israeli leaders to be maximalist and aggressive.
Netanyahu, for his part, has become adept at speaking to this audience in terms they understand. In speeches in English, he often highlights Israel’s role in protecting Christian holy sites and upholding “Judeo-Christian” civilization against Islamist barbarism. Such phrases aren’t incidental; they’re calculated dog-whistles to Evangelicals that Israel is on the front lines of a holy struggle. In private meetings, he’s even more explicit. During a visit to Brazil in 2018, Netanyahu met with a group of Brazilian Evangelicals and effusively thanked them, saying: “We have no better friends in the world than the Evangelical community, and the Evangelical community has no better friend than Israel.”
It’s a mutual adoration society built on a peculiar convergence of interests: the Israeli right wants unfettered freedom of action, and Evangelicals want the apocalypse. As harsh as that sounds, it is borne out by statements from evangelical leaders themselves. Mike Evans, a member of Trump’s Evangelical advisory board and founder of the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem, bluntly said that his mission was to get Christians to “fulfill biblical injunction… to defend God’s chosen people” and to stand with Netanyahu so that prophecy can unfold.
What happens when this alliance of convenience hits moral or strategic red lines? We are finding out in real time. As civilian deaths in Gaza mounted into the thousands, virtually every traditional U.S. ally (and many American Jews) urged Israel to show restraint or agree to humanitarian pauses. But Netanyahu was buoyed by a different chorus – one shouting “no ceasefire!” from American pulpits and right-wing media. At a “Pray for Israel” event in November, former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence (an Evangelical himself) echoed Netanyahu’s Amalek analogy, essentially giving biblical cover to Israel’s harsh tactics.
The influential Family Research Council, a Christian Right lobby, blasted the very idea of a ceasefire as aiding terrorists. This pressure certainly fortified Netanyahu’s resolve to continue the Gaza offensive despite international outcry. For Netanyahu, having millions of American Christians essentially cheering him on as God’s chosen warrior is a strategic asset – but it also encourages a dangerous sense of infallibility. In the past, Israeli leaders like Yitzhak Rabin and Ariel Sharon, when pursuing controversial moves (peace accords, Gaza withdrawal, etc.), had to contend with U.S. administrations applying brakes or conditions.
Netanyahu, thanks to his Evangelical alliance, has largely been free of such inconveniences, especially during Republican tenures. Even now under Biden, the far-right House Republicans (many of whom are tied to Evangelical constituencies) have warned Biden not to lean on Israel; some have even threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine unless aid to Israel is increased – reflecting a theology-infused foreign policy where Israel stands above all.
In sum, Netanyahu’s partnership with Christian Zionists has supercharged Israel’s most hardline impulses. It provides political insulation and funding for projects long championed by the Israeli far right – and nowhere is that more evident than in the push to fundamentally alter the status quo on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.
Temple Mount: Red heifers and the Third Temple project
While the world’s eyes have been on the bombs and rockets, another drama – quieter but potentially just as explosive – has been unfolding in the hills of Jerusalem. It revolves around a question that sends shivers down the spine of anyone familiar with the Middle East: Will a Third Jewish Temple rise in our time on the Temple Mount, supplanting the Al-Aqsa Mosque?
To be clear, the vast majority of Jews and Israelis do not seek to rebuild the Temple if it means destroying the mosque – such a move would trigger uncontrollable conflict. Mainstream Orthodox Jewish teaching actually holds that the Temple can only be rebuilt in the messianic era, not by human scheming. But a small fringe of Jewish activists, often referred to as the Temple Movement, do want to see the Third Temple constructed as soon as possible, and they have been preparing for it for decades: recreating Temple vessels, training priests, even drafting architectural plans.
What’s new and disturbing is that they now have allies and enablers in high places – not only in Netanyahu’s governing coalition, but among American Evangelical Christians and Republican politicians.
One highly symbolic episode came in September 2022, when the five red heifers arrived in Israel from Texas. These heifers were a gift from Evangelical Christians working with the Temple Institute. They were carefully bred to meet the ancient criteria: solid reddish-brown hair, no blemishes, never yoked to labor. According to Numbers 19, the ashes of such a cow, mixed with water, are needed to purify anyone who would enter a future holy Temple (since everyone today is considered ritually impure from contact with death).
In other words, no red heifer, no rebuilt Temple – an intriguing theological bottleneck. The Temple Institute and its Christian partners had searched for years for a qualifying calf. When five were finally found and donated by a devout rancher, the heifers were flown to Israel as “pets” on El Al Airlines (to bypass strict livestock import regulations). The event could have been dismissed as a PR stunt by eccentric zealots – except the Israeli government chose to lend it a sheen of official legitimacy. Netanel Isaac, director general of the Ministry for Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage (a cabinet-level ministry in Netanyahu’s government), attended the airport ceremony and delivered a speech honoring the red heifers’ arrival.
Even more telling, documents later showed that Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture circumvented protocols to import the heifers – fast-tracking special permits since the United States was not on the list of approved countries for live cattle imports. In other words, state officials quietly bent the rules to enable a biblical sacrifice project championed by Christian Zionists. Ir Amim, an Israeli NGO that monitors Jerusalem extremism, reported in August 2023 that the government’s involvement was increasing: the Heritage Ministry had been funding development on the Mount of Olives to prepare a site for the red heifer ritual, since Orthodox law dictates the cow must be sacrificed on a spot that directly faces the Temple Mount.
These revelations underscore that elements of Netanyahu’s government are not merely tolerating Third Temple enthusiasts – they are actively supporting them with budgets and permits.
By early 2024, Temple-movement activists were still trumpeting that the long-awaited red-heifer sacrifice was “imminent.” In a video on the Boneh Israel site, American preacher Michael Samuel Smith stood beside the five Texas-bred calves in Shiloh and proclaimed they had “come of sacrificial age,” predicting the first successful offering would occur “between Passover and Pentecost 2024.” Yet the ceremony never happened. Israeli authorities quietly withheld the required permits and security clearance, Passover and Pentecost passed without event, and by March 2025 Temple Institute rabbinic inspector Rabbi Azariah Ariel conceded that the heifers had begun to sprout disqualifying white hairs. With no blemish-free animals and no official approval, the project has been shelved indefinitely while activists talk of breeding a new “generation” of candidates.
On the Palestinian side, these developments were seen as an existential threat. The Hamas military wing’s spokesperson, Abu Obeida, gave a speech marking 100 days of the Gaza war (which Hamas tellingly code-named “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”). In it, he referenced the red heifers, calling the anticipated sacrifice a “detestable religious myth designed for aggression against the feelings of an entire nation.” He was articulating what many Palestinians believe: that Israel’s far-right government is ultimately bent on dismantling the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem – Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock – to clear the way for a Jewish Temple.
Indeed, ever since Israel captured East Jerusalem in 1967, Palestinians have feared a plot to take over Al-Aqsa, which is Islam’s third-holiest site. Those fears have grown more acute in recent years as Israeli police repeatedly stormed the mosque compound during times of tension, and as Jewish religious-nationalists, including cabinet ministers, made provocative visits there.
One of those ministers is Itamar Ben-Gvir, the ultranationalist who became Netanyahu’s National Security Minister in late 2022. Ben-Gvir is a former disciple of the banned Kach party (a Kahanist Jewish extremist group) and has long agitated for Jewish prayer rights on the Temple Mount. In January 2023, days after taking office, Ben-Gvir marched onto the Al-Aqsa mosque plaza under heavy guard – the first such visit by an Israeli minister in years. “The Temple Mount is open to all,” he declared pointedly, using the Jewish term (“Temple Mount”) for the site.
That 15-minute visit drew condemnation from across the Arab world and even a rebuke from the U.S., because it violated (or at least tested) the fragile status quo arrangement: since 1967, Israel agreed to leave Al-Aqsa under Islamic Waqf administration, where Muslims pray and non-Muslims may visit but not worship. Ben-Gvir’s message, however, was that the old rules no longer fully apply – that Jews should assert equal claim to Judaism’s holiest spot, even if it means scrapping a decades-old understanding. Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh accused Ben-Gvir of staging the visit as part of a bid to “turn the shrine into a Jewish temple.”
Ben-Gvir denied this, and Netanyahu publicly insisted he is committed to the status quo. But Palestinians were not convinced, and even Jordan – the custodian of Al-Aqsa – warned that Israel was courting disaster. (In the past, clashes at Al-Aqsa have indeed been the spark for wider violence, including the Second Intifada in 2000.)
The fact is, Netanyahu’s governing coalition today contains several figures who have openly talked about rebuilding the Temple. Another is Bezalel Smotrich, the Finance Minister, who once wrote a manifesto calling for a “third Temple as a house of prayer for all nations”. While Smotrich has tempered his words since taking office, his party and others like Avi Maoz’s Noam faction include hardcore theocrats for whom the Temple isn’t a messianic abstraction but an actual construction project to be advanced.
These politicians, in turn, have ties to American Evangelical counterparts. In July 2023, Jewish Currents reported that a group of far-right Israeli activists (including Temple Mount campaigners) was working with U.S. Republicans – some of them influenced by Evangelical theology – to promote the idea of changing the status of the Temple Mount. American visitors, from GOP Congressmen to Christian pastors, have been given VIP tours by Temple Movement guides, who explain their goal of ultimately demolishing the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque and rebuilding the Jewish Temple in their place.
Obviously, these Americans can’t openly endorse destroying a mosque; instead, they come back and talk about “religious freedom” for Jews at the site. Indeed, several Republican lawmakers have introduced or supported resolutions calling on UNESCO to label the Temple Mount solely by its Hebrew name and affirm Jewish rights there – moves that Palestinians interpret as diplomatic steps toward legitimizing a future temple. The Temple Movement’s GOP allies have publicly amplified a sanitized version of its goals, framing them as merely ending discrimination and allowing Jewish prayer at Al-Aqsa.
But behind closed doors, the actual intent – to eventually “destroy Al-Aqsa… and rebuild the Jewish holy temple” – is well understood by those involved. It is a messianic vision that conflates with the Evangelical End Times vision. For Christian Zionists, a Third Temple would mean we are truly in the final countdown to Christ’s return. It’s hard to overstate how electrifying the temple issue is for them.
Some American Evangelicals even talk of the red heifers and new temple in breathless terms on prophecy TV shows, speculating that the Antichrist’s appearance is near.
Netanyahu, notably, has not himself advocated building a Temple – he is a secular nationalist, not a messianic ideologue. However, by empowering the most fanatical elements of Israeli society in his quest to maintain power (his coalition depends on these ultrareligious factions), he has created a permissive environment for Third Temple talk that previous Israeli governments kept on the fringe. The government’s tangibly increased support for Temple Mount radical groups – for example, by funding their projects under the vague guise of “heritage” development – sends a quiet signal that the idea of a Temple is no longer unthinkable in the halls of power.
This has not gone unnoticed by Israel’s security establishment; Shin Bet officials have reportedly warned that any move toward changing the Temple Mount’s status could trigger a regional war. Indeed, one could argue that Hamas’s timing on October 7 (“Al-Aqsa Flood”) was partly driven by the perception that Israeli extremists were closer than ever to realizing their Al-Aqsa takeover plans. In their warped logic, a massive attack on Israel might preempt the imagined Israeli plot against the mosque. If so, it perversely fulfills a cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy on both sides – a holy war mentality feeding off each other.
For American Evangelicals, meanwhile, Netanyahu’s tacit encouragement of Temple activists is seen as further proof that he is God’s man in Israel. They point to the red heifer project and say, look, even the Israeli government is on board; prophecy is moving! Never mind that the chief rabbis of Israel still oppose Jews praying on the Temple Mount (a fact the Evangelicals often ignore); they see only the headline: “Israeli government welcomes red heifers needed for Third Temple.” One widely shared CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network) news segment in 2023 excitedly asked if the “last missing piece for the Third Temple” was falling into place, noting the red cows’ arrival and interviewing a rabbi who gleefully said, “Yes, we are in the time of messiah”.
The sense of imminent prophetic fulfillment is a powerful motivator – it keeps believers emotionally and financially invested. It is, frankly, one reason donations to groups like the Temple Institute and CUFI surged after October 7: Evangelical supporters opened their wallets, convinced they were funding not just humanitarian relief or political lobbying, but God’s unfolding plan. Hagee’s CUFI, for instance, held a fundraising telethon during the Gaza war in which Hagee thundered, “Israel is the apple of God’s eye… I encourage you to bless the house of Israel with your financial giving,” even as images of Israeli airstrikes played on screen.
The money and fervor flowing from the Christian right have emboldened Israeli extremists to attempt what was once unthinkable – like smuggling ritual objects onto the Temple Mount (several have been caught trying to surreptitiously slaughter lambs there at Passover, for instance). Each year that passes without a new status quo crisis is deemed by them a year of progress, because more Jews ascend the Mount and more groundwork (literal and figurative) is laid for the temple.
In short, the push for a Third Temple, once a fringe fantasy, now enjoys political patronage at the highest levels and international coordination with America’s Christian Zionists. It is a fuse awaiting a spark. And Netanyahu – by enabling the zealots and winking at their foreign patrons – has all but struck the match.
Should that fuse ignite, it could make the recent Gaza war look small by comparison. As Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar warned, “Messianic ecstasy can be a weapon of mass destruction.” Netanyahu’s gamble is that he can keep the messianics close, milk them for support, but not let them go too far. History suggests that’s a dangerous game.
The Iran-Israel War: Prophecy and escalation
Those long-simmering tensions between Jerusalem and Tehran exploded into open war in mid-2025. In the pre-dawn hours of Friday, June 13, Israel launched Operation “Rising Lion”, a massive preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear and military apparatus. Over 200 Israeli fighter jets, accompanied by explosive drones and covert Mossad teams, hit dozens of targets across Iran – from the Natanz uranium enrichment site to missile bases and research labs.
The goal, as Israeli officials framed it, was stark: to cripple Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon. Israeli intelligence had learned that in the months after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre, Iran secretly formed a “weapons group” to experimentally assemble a nuclear bomb. This discovery spurred Netanyahu’s hardline government – long fixated on the Iranian threat – to take decisive action.
In the first wave of airstrikes, several key facilities were destroyed and multiple IRGC commanders and nuclear scientists were reportedly killed. The opening blow was devastating. Roughly 15,000 centrifuges at Iran’s largest enrichment center in Natanz were knocked out by a sudden loss of power, with the UN’s nuclear watchdog assessing that “in great probability the centrifuges have been severely damaged if not destroyed altogether”. Israeli leaders exuded grim satisfaction; after years of warning the world about Tehran’s atomic ambitions, they had acted unilaterally and, by their account, set Iran’s nuclear program back “a very, very long time”.
Tehran’s retaliation was swift. Within hours of Israel’s strike, Iran unleashed a barrage of ballistic missiles and armed drones aimed directly at Israeli cities. Air-raid sirens wailed across the nation, from Haifa in the north to the Tel Aviv metro area and Jerusalem, sending civilians racing to bomb shelters. The Israel Defense Forces’ Home Front Command effectively shut down daily life, ordering all schools closed and banning public gatherings as a precaution.
For the first time in decades, Israelis found every region under threat of long-range missile attack. Some warheads evaded the Iron Dome and Arrow defense systems: in the coastal city of Bat Yam, a direct hit on a residential block before dawn on June 15 reduced the building to rubble, killing at least nine people – including three children – and injuring over a hundred. Another salvo struck the port of Haifa, where fires and shrapnel injured some 15 civilians.
By the conflict’s third day, Iran had fired multiple heavy salvos, and Israel’s emergency services tallied 13 killed and over 380 wounded on the Israeli side. Yet Iran, too, was absorbing a punishing response: relentless Israeli air raids were pounding military bases, command centers, and infrastructure in Iran, with the Iranian Health Ministry reporting hundreds dead (at least 224 by June 15) and scores of facilities in flames.
Israeli strikes continued around the clock, aiming to neutralize any Iranian counter-attack capabilities. On June 16, Israeli warplanes even obliterated two Iranian fighter jets on the tarmac of Tehran’s airport – jets that might have challenged Israel’s aerial dominance. The IDF systematically hunted Iran’s missile launchers and drone teams as well. In one raid, pilots tracked an Iranian UAV launch cell, “eliminated” the crew, and destroyed their launchers minutes before they could fire a new volley toward Israel.
Iranian officials responded with fiery rhetoric – vowing to unleash the “largest and most intense” missile barrage in Israel’s history – but their capacity to make good on that threat was steadily eroded. Israel claimed complete air superiority over Iran’s skies, striking even hardened sites in the capital. The campaign expanded to strategic economic targets on June 14, when explosions rocked oil refineries and fuel depots near Tehran and in the Gulf coast province of Bushehr.
This move aimed to squeeze Iran’s economy and perhaps stoke domestic unrest, as fuel shortages and blackouts mounted in Iranian cities. By design or fate, the war’s timing found Iran surprisingly isolated. Despite years of Tehran arming proxies on Israel’s borders, groups like Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad offered little more than token attacks. Even Syria – an arena of past Israel-Iran shadow wars – saw only sporadic spillover. “Now that it’s under attack, Hezbollah and others are either too weak or too cowed to join the battle,” one Israeli analysis noted, underscoring that Iran’s vaunted regional network failed to come to its rescue.
Apart from a stray Iranian drone that crashed in Syria (tragically killing a Syrian civilian and a few rockets from Lebanon, the feared multi-front conflagration did not fully materialize. The broader regional war that observers had long braced for – encompassing Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria – instead coalesced into a singular duel between Israel and Iran, albeit one fraught with regional peril.
Apocalyptic narratives and Christian Zionist responses
Within Evangelical and Christian Zionist circles, the Iran-Israel war was imbued with profound prophetic significance. Pastors and prophecy teachers across the United States immediately pondered whether this conflict fulfilled biblical End Times scenarios. Greg Laurie, a prominent Evangelist, argued that the clash was “not the full fulfillment” of specific end-times prophecies “but it is certainly a foreshadowing.” He pointed out that Scripture foretells Israel’s isolation in the last days and a coming coalition from the north “including Persia (modern-day Iran)” rising against it (Ezekiel 38–39).
What the world witnessed in June 2025, Laurie suggested, looked eerily like a prelude to that prophecy – a dramatic stage-setting if not the final act itself. He and others reminded believers that the Bible depicts Israel’s ultimate regathering (fulfilled in 1948) and warns of wars to come; therefore, they said, Christians should “pay close attention” and be spiritually prepared. Laurie stressed that such events should not incite fear but faith: “When you see these things begin to happen, stand and look up, for your salvation is near” (Luke 21:28). In his view, prophecy isn’t meant to scare but to prepare, galvanizing the church to “walk closely with the Lord” in perilous times.
Other Christian leaders were even more explicit in linking current events to ancient prophecy. Pastor James Kaddis, a well-known Calvary Chapel teacher, declared the Israel-Iran clash “absolutely Ezekiel 38 in the making.” In a prophecy update after Operation Rising Lion, Kaddis excitedly noted the “remarkable alignment of current events with the prophetic timeline”. He explained that while this war was not itself the prophesied Gog-Magog War of Ezekiel, “we are watching things that need to happen before Ezekiel 38 can happen”.
In other words, the geopolitical pieces were sliding into place. The sudden elimination of several top Iranian military figures – Iran’s armed forces chief General Mohammad Bagheri and IRGC commander Hossein Salami were rumored killed in the initial strikes – was unprecedented, Kaddis observed, and it dramatically weakened Iran’s military posture. “Iran’s ability to defend itself … has mostly been shut down,” he said, suggesting that a power vacuum was emerging in the region.
To prophecy watchers, such turmoil hinted that Iran (Persia) could be ripe for the major End Times conflict outlined in Ezekiel, wherein a coalition including Russia (Magog) and Iran comes against Israel only to be divinely defeated. Some also pointed to Revelation 16’s mention of global armies and the “kings of the east,” drawing lines to Iran’s role in a future Armageddon scenario. The bottom line among these faith leaders: events in 2024–2025 were not random but part of a divine script. “These are not just ancient words. They’re warnings and wake-up calls,” one prophecy teacher urged, calling people to seek God earnestly as world events accelerate.
Equally telling was the response of Evangelical Christian Zionists, who doubled down on their support for Israel with fervor. For them, this was more than a geopolitical conflict – it was a validation of biblical promises and a test of faith. Pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, quickly released an “action alert” to his millions of followers after Israel’s strike, framing the war in moral and spiritual terms. “We must stand with Israel today and every day,” Hagee proclaimed, casting Iran as an “evil force” that Israel had boldly confronted on the world’s behalf. He urged believers to thank U.S. leaders for supporting Israel and to pray for the success of what he deemed a just cause. Hagee and others in the Christian Zionist camp emphasized the biblical mandate of blessing Israel: “I will bless those who bless you, and curse him who curses you” (Genesis 12:3).
They warned that pressuring Israel to withdraw or showing ambivalence would bring curse, not blessing. Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, echoed this sentiment. Citing Iran’s oft-stated intent to “wipe Israel off the face of the map,” Graham reminded Christians that Israel’s fight was a fight for freedom against terror – and a fight for values that Christians and Jews sharef. He called on the church to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6) and for a quick resolution, even as he affirmed that “Israel has been forced into defending itself and needs our prayers”.
This language, steeped in Scripture, reinforced the view that standing with Israel is a sacred duty. Evangelical leaders drew a direct line from prophecy to policy: since God gave the land of Israel to the Jews (Genesis 15) and since modern Israel’s rebirth is seen as fulfillment of prophecy, America’s role is to support Israel without reserve.
Isolationist “America First” voices urged Washington to drop Israel rather than fight Iran, but Evangelicals drowned them out. For most Christian Zionists, Tehran’s attack confirmed a biblical struggle in which Israel—God’s champion—must prevail, while Iran was cast as demonic evil. Prophecy teachers cited Israel’s 1948 rebirth and every subsequent war as steps toward the End Times, insisting this latest clash showed the final pieces—Jewish ingathering, global antisemitism, and Iran’s hostility—falling into place.
By early 2025 that narrative dominated U.S. pulpits. The Gaza war had already primed congregations to see every front as part of one apocalyptic drama; Iran’s direct strike sealed the link. Figures like Hagee, Laurie, and Graham framed Netanyahu’s bombing campaign as obedience to God, and Netanyahu echoed the language of light versus darkness. Even Israel’s opposition closed ranks around him, reinforcing Evangelicals’ view that providence had anointed a resolute leader and a supportive White House for the final battle.
When Iran quietly sought a cease-fire, Netanyahu vowed to keep striking until its nuclear and missile programs were smashed—an intransigence cheered in Evangelical circles as proof prophecy was still unfolding. Churches redoubled prayers for total victory, describing the 2025 war as another rung on the ladder from Gaza to Gog-Magog. Each missile volley thus became both geopolitical reality and theological confirmation that, for believers, the End of Days is now unfolding in real time.
Conclusion
Israel’s strategic path is increasingly being steered by a dangerous cocktail of apocalyptic prophecy and ultranationalist zeal, as Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition finds common cause with American Evangelical End-Times believers. This unholy alliance has eroded normal moral and diplomatic restraints, emboldening leaders to pursue extreme, no-compromise measures – from the merciless bombardment of Gaza to whispered ambitions on the Temple Mount – under the guise of fulfilling divine destiny.
Its influence extends across the Atlantic as well: Evangelicals’ outsized sway in Republican politics has helped lock in unconditional U.S. backing for Israel’s most hard-line actions, framing every escalation as part of God’s plan. Whether sincerely embraced or cynically exploited, the invocation of biblical prophecy in political strategy is having very real, destabilizing effects. Each violent provocation is hailed as a sign that prophecy is unfolding, creating a perilous feedback loop in which apocalyptic expectation fuels aggressive policy – and those aggressive policies then reinforce the End-Times fervor. Observers warn that this theology-fueled militarism is hurtling the region toward potential catastrophe: a single incendiary move at Al-Aqsa or a wider regional offensive could ignite a truly cataclysmic conflic.
Such an outcome is not preordained – it is the product of human choices – and it underscores the urgent need to reject this marriage of prophecy and power before it leads to irreparable harm.