Far-Right Religious Leaders Advising Trump See Iran as an End Times Holy War

Head of the White House Faith Office Paula White-Cain sings as she stands next to Donald Trump and other religious leaders during a National Day of Prayer event in the White House Rose Garden on May 1, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Since the Trump regime launched its war on Iran, his administration has gotten a lot more biblical.

In the last few weeks, Trump and his circle have delivered a chorus of mandates — many sounding as if sent from the Almighty himself — from encouraging lawmakers to support legislation “for Jesus” to billing America’s 250th anniversary as a moment to rededicate the nation under a single, unified God.

Trump has surrounded himself with a constellation of evangelical advisers who not only support his policies but also frame them as divinely sanctioned. Their specific strand of evangelical theology interprets global conflict, especially in the Middle East, as a precursor to the end times. For Trump, this alignment may well be transactional, another way to energize and consolidate a critical voting bloc. But for many of the religious figures now orbiting him, the stakes are far more cosmic: The war is not simply geopolitical; it is eschatological.

And it’s already bleeding influence into America’s war machine. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has overseen a steady infusion of Christian symbolism and practice into military life — hosting prayer gatherings, elevating hard-line evangelical figures, and pushing a more overtly religious tone across the force.

Reporting shows his tenure has included efforts to reshape the chaplain corps and integrate his Christian worldview more directly into military culture. The aesthetic is not subtle: Hegseth has embraced Crusader iconography — he has tattoos of the Jerusalem cross and the phrase “Deus vult,” which means “God wills it” — while framing America’s conflicts in civilizational and religious terms. In a prayer given last week at the Pentagon, Hegseth asked God to aid in pouring down “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

Even some on the right have begun to voice their unease. One conservative commentator, reacting to the growing influence, bluntly described Trump’s leading faith adviser Paula White-Cain as a “psychopathic doomsday cultist,” warning about the theological currents shaping the administration. 

As someone well-versed in Christianese — I was raised deep in the evangelical Bible Belt of Texas, and even met a young Paula White growing up — this dialect signals a real shift.

Suffering, in this worldview, is not merely tragic; it is necessary to actuate the return of Christ.

In evangelical media ecosystems, Iran is not just a strategic adversary but part of a prophetic story — one tied to interpretations of the Book of Revelation and the battle of Armageddon. Suffering, in this worldview, is not merely tragic; it is necessary to actuate the return of Christ.

And as White-Cain, now the head of the White House Faith Office, put it: “To say no to President Trump would be to say no to God.”

This tension — between political expediency and apocalyptic belief — is no longer theoretical. It is being operationalized.

Prophetic Gospels

Days after launching unilateral strikes on Iran, Trump convened nearly two dozen evangelical leaders for private counsel. The pastors stood around him, laying hands to pray for strength and protection for his latest military campaign. At the center of that circle is White-Cain, a longtime Trump ally who has served as his “spiritual adviser” since his first presidential run.

White-Cain’s rise is emblematic of the fusion now underway. Once a televangelist with deep ties to charismatic Christianity, she built a following through prosperity gospel preaching — a theology that links faith with material success — before being elevated as a key Trump confidant.

Early on, she rose to prominence through her connections to figures like Bishop T.D. Jakes and appearances on networks like BET, positioning her within both Black churches (which is where I met her) and evangelical media spaces alike. During his first term, Trump established the White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative and appointed White to lead the newly minted office.

Donald Trump bows his head in prayer during a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 26, 2025 with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and House and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner. Photo: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

But White-Cain is not just a political ally. She is part of a broader network of evangelical leaders who have long framed global conflict in explicitly prophetic terms. Figures in this sphere have publicly described Middle East wars as signs of the “last days,” argued that geopolitical upheaval fulfills biblical prophecy, and emphasized that spiritual warfare is inseparable from physical conflict.

White-Cain’s own writings and appearances wrap modern politics in stark, spiritually dispensationalist end-times framing. Dispensationalism, for the uninitiated, is a strain of evangelical Protestant theology that reads the Bible literally, divides history into distinct eras of God’s plan, separates Israel from the Church, and anticipates a coming rapture and a thousand-year kingdom on Earth.

In an April 2025 interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, White-Cain opened by asking whether the world was ready to kick off Armageddon itself.

“The Christian vision of the End of Days foretells of some profound transformation and redemption,” she said in the interview, as reported by the Times of Israel. “Based on the events that are unfolding today, do you feel that we are seeing these signs of that vision come to fruition?”

The stakes, by her telling, are nothing less than annihilation. This matters when those voices are whispering prayers into the decisions of a president directing military force.

She’s not alone. She’s brought others into Trump’s religious power network — including Alabama pastor Travis Johnson, who has been spotted around Trump’s religious events and moving in the same circles. 

He presents himself as a global traveler spreading Christian “love” and “peace.” On X, he also told his followers, “Islam is not just a religion, but a system of military conquest” — casting American Christianity as a necessary bulwark against it.

After Israeli missile strikes — which coincided with the start of Ramadan — decimated Iranian leadership, Johnson posted with a glib jab: “Bye, Felicia. Khamenei has left the building.”

Robert Jeffress, pastor of megachurch First Baptist Dallas and one of Trump’s most visible religious defenders, is also among those lending supernatural support to the president. Jeffress has spent years advancing a worldview that injects Christian nationalism with cultural and religious exclusion. He has described Islam as “a false religion” that is “inspired by Satan,” and once declared, “America’s collapse is inevitable and there is nothing we can do to stop it.”

Others in Trump’s spiritual cadre push similar lines with parallel prophetic and apocalyptic bluster. California pastor Greg Laurie, another regular in Trump’s prayer closet, linked the assassination of Iran’s ayatollah to end times gospel in a video he posted on X.

“As far as I can see the next event on the prophetic calendar would be the rapture,” he told his audience. “Then of course the great tribulation period … culminating in the Battle of Armageddon.” 

Laurie, like many evangelicals, reads Iran as biblical Persia, which is named in the book of Ezekiel as an ally of Magog, a prophesied war machine that will one day converge on Israel in the final chapter of human history.

There are those in Trump’s religious sphere who haven’t given up hope — but only because they see themselves as locked in a holy war for the soul of a nation. Josh McPherson, a rising voice in Christian nationalist circles, has been blunt in his preaching for a theocratic military force, often teaching in camouflage and combat boots. He has advocated that “godly righteous men and women submitted to the Heavenly Father” should be running the most powerful military in the world.

In a recent podcast interview, McPherson frames American Christians as a critical line of defense against the spread of Islam, which he describes as “demonic” and a “scourge” while advocating for mass deportations. If action isn’t taken now, he predicts the apocalyptic vision where future generations of Christians will have to respond to an “Islamic Jihadist invasion, where the only way to push back is with bullets and guns.” 

Taken together, this is not a random assortment of fringe pastors. It is a coherent theological ecosystem, one that frames war as prophecy, opponents as demonic, and global collapse as necessary to bring about the return of Christ.

That convergence — of theology, rhetoric, and military power — is now drawing scrutiny on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have formally called for an investigation into Hegseth and the Defense Department, warning that “extreme religious rhetoric” may be seeping into the chain of command and shaping how the war on Iran is being prosecuted.

Attendees pray as unseen Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner prays for unseen Donald Trump during a reception with Republican members of Congress at the White House in Washington, D.C., on July 22, 2025. Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

The danger is not just metaphysical. There is a long body of research showing that when political power fuses with religious certainty, war intensifies. Religious framing makes wars far more difficult to end, not easier. Conflicts become existential, not negotiable. Identity replaces strategy. Destiny replaces diplomacy. 

And for volunteer troops fighting in a pluralistic democracy, intention matters.

A soldier should not be asked to die for a religion he does not serve.

For a soldier, sailor, or Marine who pulls the trigger or launches the missile, it muddies the distinction between national defense and participation in what could amount to religious ethnic cleansing.

Where strategic decisions are guided not by how to end wars, but how to beget new prophetic ones.

Where the end result could mean dying not in service of your country, but instead as a preordained martyr. 

A soldier should not be asked to die for a religion he does not serve, to usher in an ending he does not want, or to fight for a vision of the world rooted in prophecy rather than policy. That is not national defense; that is ideological conscription. And when a state begins to wage war on those terms, it is no longer defending itself — it is surrendering its power to something far more dangerous than any enemy abroad.

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