War With Iran? A Blood Moon on Purim? For Some Christian Influencers, That Can Mean Only One Thing: The End Times
On Sunday, two days after President Donald Trump ordered the launch of “Operation Epic Fury” against Iran, John Hagee, an 85-year-old televangelist and founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), delivered a sermon at his Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. Standing in front of a banner reading “God is Coming…Operation Epic Fury,” Hagee thanked Trump, “whose wisdom and courage have crushed the enemies of Zion.” He then quickly pivoted to a refrain familiar to anyone who – like me – has followed Hagee’s career since he founded CUFI in 2006: that the US and Israeli attack on Iran would trigger a series of events prophesied in the Bible, including the invasion of Israel by a Russian-led army, and Jesus’ eventual defeat of the Antichrist at the Battle of Armageddon.
For decades, Hagee has said he loves and supports the Jewish people and the State of Israel; that it is a biblical imperative that America support Israel, including waging war in its name; and that Israel will be the site of the ultimate clash between good and evil, in which the Jews will burn or convert, and after which Jesus will rule the world for a thousand years from his throne on the Temple Mount.
Hagee has also spent decades arguing that Iran was at the heart of this sequence of events, relying heavily on the history of the Jewish holiday of Purim, celebrated this week. The holiday commemorates the biblical story of the heroism of Queen Esther, the secretly Jewish wife of the King of Persia, who saves the Jews from an extermination plot led by the evil court official Haman. For Hagee, the story of Purim is not a lesson in the evils of religious hatred and genocidal ambitions; it is a biblical guide to attacking today’s Iran (Persia) in order to save Israel from the evil designs of its leaders. For Hagee, who has long been close to Republican officials and lawmakers, real-life events are primarily relevant as precursors to prophesied events in the Bible or signs from God regarding his divine intentions.
President Barack Obama’s negotiations of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Iran nuclear deal, prompted Hagee, a leading opponent of the deal, to add new twists to his prophetic claims. In 2014, Hagee published a book, accompanied by a documentary, about the “four blood moons,” or a tetrad of full-moon lunar eclipses that occurred on Passover and Sukkot in 2014 and 2015. The coincidence of a full moon on Jewish holidays is common, since the Jewish calendar is lunar. But for Hagee, “God uses the sun, moon and stars to send signals to humanity,” and the blood moon is a sign from God that something important is going to happen regarding Israel. Although blood moons, or lunar eclipses, are fairly regular, such a tetrad on Jewish holidays had previously only occurred around the Spanish Inquisition, the founding of the modern state of Israel, and the Six-Day War of 1967, events that Hagee naturally saw as prophetically significant – for Jews and for Israel.
Muslims, on the other hand, are at worst an existential enemy and at best collateral damage. Reviewing the documentary Four Blood Moons, religion writer Michael Shulson observed: “Throughout the film, it is the Muslims – swarthy, disorganized, kaffiyeh-clad troops – who antagonize the Jews in the most dramatic reenactments. And it is the Muslims – ISIS, and particularly Iran – who film experts believe will be the villainous players in this upcoming blood moon drama. A brief, fully quoting section the common Abrahamic heritage of Jews and Christians omits Islam, the third Abrahamic faith.
Hagee’s blood moon prophecies have become extremely popular in evangelical circles. The Christian Broadcasting Network cited them this week in its coverage of the war. An “analysis” posted by the network on its website acknowledges that the blood moons could be a coincidence, but that also “does not mean that there was not a predetermined intentional message from the moment God set the sun, moon, and planets in motion in Genesis 1.” Blood moons, along with war, could be a sign of the end times.
Hagee may be the godfather of Iran-related prophecies, but prophets who echo them have become commonplace. Charisma magazine, a leading source for charismatic and Pentecostal Christians whose editor has written several hagiographical books on Trump, this week featured “the prophetic voice of Joseph Z.,” who released “a powerful new livestream” on the convergence of Operation Epic Fury, Purim and the lunar eclipse. Joseph Z. asserted “it is likely that we are going to see a revival in Iran” – that is, a Christian revival – and “if you do not understand that we are currently living in a Bible prophecy, you really need to start opening your Bible. » Another prophet, Amanda Grace, was also featured on the magazine’s website for a broadcast in which she claimed that the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as those of other Iranian government officials, mirrored the death of Haman in the Book of Esther. “Haman is hidden within Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,” she added as supposedly powerful evidence of the biblical significance of these events.
Christian Zionists frequently cite Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, as well as the relocation of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the assassination of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani, as major achievements of his first term. Now they have the war they have long advocated for, the war they have long claimed will trigger the end times and the return of Jesus. If it doesn’t, and all that remains is senseless death, destruction, and bloodshed, there will likely be a new prophecy that will keep the prophetic industry going and sanctify Trump of responsibility for it all.
