Invoking Armageddon to Attack a Nation Is Child’s Play
Only children believe the stories of Armageddon Fiction, but the problem is that children are running the U.S. government
You may have heard about the American military’s insane rants about how Operation Epstein Fury, aka the War on Iran, was “all part of God’s divine plan” of Armageddon.1
When I was a tween in the 1970s, a cool book (I thought at the time), called The Late Great Planet Earth, written by Hal Lindsey and Carole C. Carlson, was published by Zondervan. It described how the Armageddon of its day, this one a brawl for the ages between the Soviet Union and the United States, the true mother of all battles, was preordained by the Bible.
The book sold 30 million copies.
I was an impressionable young lad, and I realized I needed to move on from my copy of the Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey, which my mom must have thrown out because it disappeared one day from my bookshelf along with my copy of The Communist Manifesto. True story. No wonder she made me go to catechism.
I was an inquisitive young fella, and I found LaVey's version of theology fascinating, mostly from the standpoint of, “Holy Shit, someone actually published this thing.” But I was never able to offer that explanation to my impatient mother, who must have thought that all those whacks from the wooden spoon and other parental weapons of war were fruitless expressions of her love and guidance.
It might be worth noting that she didn’t ditch my copy of The Late Great Planet Earth, which occupied my bookshelf during that same time period, along with more benign tomes such as The Best of Mad Magazine and my favorite, The Brothers Karamazov.
Sidebar: I was a weird kid (little has changed on that front).
The Late Great Planet Earth described the inevitability of our doom as Biblical prophecy. It was written when people were concerned about a thermonuclear war with the Soviet Union. Fundamentalist Christians needed an escape hatch, and Hal provided it.
The book was the most commercially successful exploitation of something called premillennial dispensationalism, or, as I call it, Armageddon Fiction.
Premillennial dispensationalism (Armageddon Fiction) has been around for a long time. The actors, in the form of nations and leaders, change to fit the times.
In Lindsey’s reckoning, the prophet Ezekiel predicted a Soviet-led invasion of Israel. This would lead to Armageddon, and we’d all be the worse for it (or better for it, I guess, in their view). The Soviet Union represented the prophesied alliance of Magog, which in Revelation 20:7–9 gathers forces for the final war, after which the messiah would return and do whatever messiahs do when they return after taking a long vacation from us crazy humans.
In Revelation, Magog is led by a charismatic leader named Gog, who would have been Leonid Brezhnev in 1970. Brezhnev was a quiet, surly bureaucrat trying to hold together the world’s largest nation, and was about as charismatic as a chew toy with big bushy eyebrows.
That didn’t stop Hal and his coauthor, Carole C. Carlson, whose name mysteriously disappeared from later editions of the book. They needed a Gog, so Brezhnev would have to do.
Lindsey’s book transformed into the ultimate coda for fundamentalist Christians. Its essence became entrenched in their worldview, and it never died, even after the Soviet Union did.2
When the Soviet Union died, Magog demanded a replacement. These replacements changed to fit the moment.
That Iran is suddenly a part of this is fairly curious, because its historical ancestor, Persia, has a benign relationship with Judaism and Christianity. Persia was once ruled by a fellow named Cyrus, who freed the Jews from Babylonian captivity.
Ezekiel, who is often referenced by fundamentalist crafters of Armageddon Fiction, of which it should be noted, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is one, wrote his prophecies sometime between 593 and 571 BC. During that time, he and other Jews were living in exile in Babylon.
It’s pretty neat that he seemed to have predicted that Persia, which at the time was not a major power, would have a considerable impact on the Jewish diaspora of his day. So I can see why people are eager to quote him.
Ezekiel’s predictions were also the first manifestations of apocalyptic prophecy, including the use of the names Gog and Magog, which have clung stubbornly to fundamentalist dogma through the modern era.
Ezekiel was part of the opening lines of prophetic literature that began describing God judging powerful empires so that Israel could be restored. World empires would fall, and Israel would rise from the rubble of the ruins.
As you can see, the musical chairs of actors playing Magog and Gog go back to ancient history.
A timeline of apocalyptic prophecy
Hal Lindsey was one of our more recent examples of apocalyptic prophecy, but the tradition has a timeline we can follow:
The Babylonian Empire (c. 626–539 BC)
Gog = Nebuchadnezzar II
Magog = The Babylonian Empire
This period was highlighted by the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC and the subsequent deportation of Judeans to Babylon.
Prophets in those days included Ezekiel and Jeremiah.
The Persian Empire (539–330 BC)
Magog = It’s fuzzy… The Babylonian Empire?
King Cyrus was one of the good guys in Jewish lore, so he doesn’t get to play Gog. Darius I, one of his successors, might have qualified, depending on who told the tale. Or, perhaps Xerces gets a vote. I dunno. You tell me.
This period launched a series of prophetic writings that described a sequence of world empires and anticipated future conflicts. Gog experienced so many name changes that he became dizzy and demanded beheadings.
But none of them seemed to be Persian (unless you say otherwise — it’s really your call if you’re playing a video game version of Armageddon Fiction).
However, Persian rulers were a tad unpredictable, so one gets the feeling that it might have been helpful to keep some apocalyptic prophecy involving Persia in the back pocket in case things went astray.
The Greek (Hellenistic) period (330–63 BC)
Gog = Antiochus IV Epiphanes
Magog = the Seleucid Empire (most famously, but there were others)
In 167 BC, Antiochus, the king of the Seleucid Empire, attempted to suppress Jewish religious practices and did nasty things like desecrating the Jerusalem temple. The Seleucid Empire was one of the vestiges of Alexander the Great’s whirlwind tour of parts of Europe and the general environs of the Middle East and Asia Minor.
For those of you losers who haven’t yet read Psalm of Vampires, I can almost guarantee that you aren’t aware that Alexander the Great, in turn, was the great founding vampire from the House of Argeadai, but I digress.
Another popular prophet, Daniel, wrote his prophecies during the Hellenistic period. He, more firmly than any other prophet to that point, introduced the notion of symbolic beasts to represent future empires.
The Roman Empire (63 BC – AD 476)
Gog = OMG, Nero!!!!!!
Magog: You guessed it: Rome
Most serious Biblical scholars, including those who wrote substantial annotations for the Jerusalem Bible, one of Catholicism’s most significant Bible translations, view Nero as Revelation’s version of Gog.
Biblical scholars annotating the English Standard Version (ESV) Bible (and many others) make the same interpretation.
According to sober minds, Revelation, like most prophecies, was written in reaction to the suffering of Jews, and later Christians, at the hands of autocratic weasels.
Many scholars believe the “Beast” and “Babylon” imagery in Revelation symbolically represented the Roman Empire and that “Babylon” was a code name for Rome.
The book of Revelation, like other books of Biblical prophecy, functioned as encouragement to persecuted Christians (instead of Jews). They needed the morale boost. Christians suffered tremendous persecution by Roman rulers in Christianity’s early years, especially by Nero. The hope was that these prophetic writings would assure Christians that Rome’s power would ultimately fall.
You can bet that some mullahs in modern-day Iran are preaching the same kind of apocalyptic hopes for Trump, a modern-day Nero if there ever was one.
Many theological scholars even think that the famous forehead tattoo of Revelation, “666,” was a code for “Nero.”
One weird twist to Armageddon Fiction is that there is a large contingent of American fundamentalists who believe that Trump is the anti-Christ, which is why they’re okay with his sordid relationship with Epstein, and even the growing probability that he raped and clobbered a 13-year old girl after she tried to bite his dick off.
It isn’t that they’re “okay” with the behavior. In their twisted minds, it’s that he’s part of God’s plan, so they must continue to support him, because God wants them to. Destiny must be fulfilled. If it all leads to an apocalypse, then, dammit, be ready, pray to your God, and worship the monsters at the gate when you die (because only a monstrous God would put forward such a plan).
The preceding four major periods of ancient history germinated what followed:
Early Christian versions of Armageddon Fiction
Early Christians were taught by prophetic writings that the Roman Empire was the final enemy before Christ’s return. As you might know, Christ didn’t return after Rome fell, so new versions of Magog were needed to carry on the tradition of Armageddon Fiction.
Medieval interpreters
Some medieval theologians applied Revelation to struggles within the Christian world or conflicts with external enemies.
Protestant Reformation
Some reformers identified the “Beast” of Revelation with institutions they opposed, especially the papacy (or whoever the Pope — “Gog” — was at the time).
Modern prophecy movements
Beginning in the 19th century, systems like dispensational premillennialism began applying modern nations to prophetic texts and replacing Magog and Gog with rulers of the day accordingly.
After World War Two, Middle Eastern geopolitics began dominating the Magogosphere, thus laying the foundation for Hal Lindsey and other writers of Armageddon Fiction.
Some Christian writers suggested that the Holocaust perpetrated by Germany meant that the world was entering the end-times era. The subsequent establishment of the state of Israel was interpreted by some developers of Armageddon Fiction canon as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
But the Magog relationship with the Holocaust never fully developed, even though the Holocaust was a poster child for anyone who believes in a Devil on Earth.
Why? The geography didn’t fit.
Promoters of Armageddon Fiction don’t like it when the world’s storyline of conflict and hate doesn’t fit their parameters.
Pete Hegseth’s Armageddon Fiction
American military officers are said to have told non-commissioned officers during Oorah sessions that the war was fulfilling “end times” prophecy from Revelation and that the conflict could help bring about Armageddon or the second coming of Jesus.
Much of this is attributable to the transformation of the military, a transformation still in process, by Pete Hegseth, the right-wing Christian lunatic that Herr TrumpEpshTeen put in charge of the Defense Department.
In August 2025, a Guardian headline warned us:
How Pete Hegseth’s zeal to bring religiosity to the Pentagon is dividing the military: Former Fox and Friends host’s ultra-conservative Christian nationalism causing ‘frustration’ within ranks, say experts3
But the shock and awe of DOGE and other regime crimes allowed stories like this to slip under the rocks, away from view.
Hegseth began his tenure as Secretary of Defense by replacing normal people in the higher echelons of the military with lunatics who believe in Armageddon Fiction. And thus emerged crazy news stories of commanders thumping the Bible so that young pilots and other armed forces personnel could rain oil on Tehran, as reported by the Associated Press:
You might think, if you’re a gung-ho “Iran Deserved It” type of war monger, that this is all fine.
Reports are coming in of oil shortages in one of the poorest nations on earth, Bangladesh, which depends on Iranian oil. It’s not all fine.
This war of choice has an entanglement of repercussions, too out of scope for this article to go into, which are beginning to reveal themselves a little more each day.
If it leads to Armageddon, it’s not God’s destiny. It’s that Americans were stupid enough to ditch a qualified woman for round two of a man who presided over a million Covid deaths in his first term:
Let’s talk about Revelation
In a comment on another Substack, I got into a little trouble with some Christians when I only half-jokingly said that Revelation was the result of a drug trip, since that seems like one of the few rational explanations for passages like this:
And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within…
— Revelation 4:6-8
Trippy, man.
But more serious scholars than I have better explanations about the various events in Revelation that have nothing to do with Lindsey’s fictions. Or drugs, for that matter.
The word Armageddon occurs one time in the Bible
The only reference to “Armageddon occurs in Revelation 16:12–16:
“And they assembled them at the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.”
Out of that is born a long legacy of weirdness.
Modern prophetic preaching frequently portrays a great final battle in the Middle East where world powers gather before Christ returns. Since the modern prophets of doom have run out of Magog representatives, Iran has taken on the role for our current conflict because it’s sort of a geographic fit.
Some modern promoters of Armageddon Fiction like to say that Russia is still in the middle of it all, which is one reason fundamentalist preachers are convinced missiles will fall, and we can all jump for joy as the apocalypse finishes us off.
The ESV interpretation of Revelation is a bit different.
ESV Annotations generally say:
Armageddon is symbolic, not necessarily a literal battlefield.
From an etymology standpoint, Armageddon most likely refers to “Mount Megiddo” in Israel, which has some historical significance to major battles there.
Armageddon also acts as an undefined symbol that represents the final gathering of evil powers against God before divine judgment.
There are no specific references in Revelation to any empires on earth, either those in the future or those in the past.
Scholarly annotators in the Jerusalem Bible take a somewhat different route than those of the ESV. They consider the imagery of Revelation as symbolism of the struggle between early Christians and the Roman Empire.
“The Beast” of Revelation fame is widely interpreted by scholars who annotated the Jerusalem Bible as representing the Roman imperial system. Some scholars specifically linked Nero or later emperors in their annotations. This imagery, say the scholars, reassured early Christians that Rome’s power would eventually collapse.
In other words, Gog was, and is, whoever Bible thumpers say he is.
John, the apparent author of Revelation, uses Magog and Gog as mythic symbols for worldwide opposition to God, according to most serious scholars. No matter how many times fundamentalist Christians try to replace Magog with their enemy of the day, the only prophetic destiny we can predict is that the doomster’s predictions will fail to come true, and new replacements for Gog and Magog will need to be unearthed.
Nothing in Armageddon Fiction is based on either historical evidence, fact, or even specific prophetic reference.
It’s all about pushing forward an agenda.
This most recent agenda is an especially malignant one.
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Footnotes
Braun, Sara. “US Troops Were Told War on Iran Was ‘All Part of God’s Divine Plan’, Watchdog Alleges.” the Guardian. The Guardian, March 3, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/03/us-israel-iran-war-christian-rhetoric.
National Endowment for the Humanities. “The Late Great Planet Earth Made the Apocalypse a Popular Concern,” 2017. https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2017/winter/feature/the-late-great-planet-earth-made-the-apocalypse-popular-concern.
Makuch, Ben. “How Pete Hegseth’s Zeal to Bring Religiosity to the Pentagon Is Dividing the Military.” the Guardian. The Guardian, August 14, 2025. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/14/pete-hegseth-pentagon-christian-nationalism.
what if you gave an Armageddon and Jesus didn't come? I spent my youth and adulthood thinking it might happen any day (those test sirens at noon, duck and cover, air raid shelters, on and on). Then it seemed to crawl into whatever hole the lunatics took temporary comfort in.
And now its back. Is Gog going to stand the end and say "sorry, suckers?" Seems pretty clear that trumpseth is Gog and the whole regime is Magog. But they're never going to admit they were wrong, even as nothingness replaces any concept of heaven.
An oddly mustachioed German (well, Austrian) gentleman believed he was the catalyst for the same event. Personally, I'm all in on Ragnarök and be damned with John and his mushrooms.