Armageddon
War, and the Anglican Refusal of Eschatological Control
Let’s talk about the end: Armageddon and the return of Jesus. People have tried to manipulate the second coming of Jesus for centuries, and people have predicted the second coming of Jesus for centuries, too. Armageddon has been attempted, prompted, foretold, and so far has not come to fruition, despite the certainty of machinations and prophecies.
In early March 2026, a cluster of reporting and public statements described allegations that some U.S. commanders have framed military action against Iran in explicitly apocalyptic terms—invoking “Armageddon,” the Book of Revelation, and the “imminent return of Jesus Christ.”¹ At minimum, what is publicly documentable is that (a) these claims have been circulated through a named advocacy group (the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, MRFF), (b) an example complaint/email has been published, and (c) major outlets have reported MRFF’s account as allegations rather than settled fact.² ³ The details remain difficult for outside observers to verify independently, because the complainants are anonymous and the underlying briefings are not publicly documented.
That uncertainty matters: Christian (Anglican/Episcopal) moral reasoning should never be built on rumor, and Christian witness is compromised when we speak beyond what we can responsibly know.
And yet even as we bracket what cannot yet be proved, the scenario itself names a real temptation that Anglican theology and liturgy help us diagnose with clarity: the temptation to treat the Second Coming as something we can trigger; to treat a nation-state as an instrument for forcing God’s hand; and to treat other human beings as expendable “means” in an end-times story of Jesus. Whether it appears in a briefing room, a political rally, or a church livestream, the moral and spiritual danger remains the same. Anglican apologetics is not merely argumentation; it is the public reasoning of a people formed by baptismal vows, daily prayer, and Eucharistic fellowship. It is a reasoning meant to protect the neighbor, tell the truth, and keep hope from curdling into cruelty.
The Second Coming is confessed, not controlled
Anglicans confess, with the whole catholic (aka: universal) Church, that Jesus Christ “will come again to judge the living and the dead.”⁶ This is not a lever to be pulled by any nation, movement, or religious faction. It is an article of hope, not a strategy of control and certainty.
Scripture is unambiguous about this. Jesus names the timing as hidden: “no one knows the day or the hour” (Matt. 24:36). Acts is even more direct: “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority” (Acts 1:7). The posture commended is vigilance, repentance, and faithfulness. Faithfulness is not engineering catastrophe to “make prophecy happen.”
Anglican theology strengthens that biblical posture by reminding us how Christians are trained to interpret Scripture in the first place: we “understand the meaning of the Bible by the help of the Holy Spirit, who guides the Church in the true interpretation of the Scriptures.”⁷ That sentence is a quiet rebuke to eschatological swagger. It warns us against interpretive overconfidence, especially the kind that turns a disputed reading of Revelation into a mandate for coercion or war.
Baptism teaches us to renounce “holy” violence—especially when it borrows God’s name
Anglican apologetics begins with baptism, because baptism names who we are before it names what we argue. In the Baptismal liturgy, we are asked whether we “renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.”⁵ That renunciation is not abstract. It is a refusal of any spirituality that sanctifies domination, scapegoating, or bloodshed as “the will of God.”
Immediately after the creed, the Baptismal Covenant turns that renunciation outward as a public ethic: we promise to “strive for justice and peace among all people” and to “respect the dignity of every human being.”⁶ This vow doesn’t depend on whether our opponents are “good” or “evil,” whether they share our faith, are of the same nationality as we are, or whether our preferred reading of Revelation casts them as villains. The neighbor’s dignity is not suspended because someone claims the hour is apocalyptic.
So when a commander, a politician, or a preacher suggests that war is “part of God’s divine plan” to bring about Armageddon, the Anglican response is not first a clever counterargument. It is the simpler, harder refusal that baptism trains into our bones: you do not get to conscript God to consecrate what destroys the creature. This is our Anglican and Episcopal refusal to sanctify war.
Confusing the Kingdom of God with the power of the state is a theological category mistake
This is where the danger accelerates. A nation-state has borders, coercive power, prisons, budgets, armies, propaganda, and incentives for self-preservation. It may do great goods; it may also do grave evils. But it is not the Kingdom of God, and it must not be dressed up as such.
Anglican moral reasoning recognizes that Christians have civic duties and that political authority has real responsibilities. But it also insists, especially through liturgy, that the Church’s mission does not belong to the state. The Catechism summarizes the Church’s mission not as conquering territory or fulfilling a prophetic timetable, but as “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”⁸
That mission can include public action, justice, and even costly service in complex civic contexts. But it cannot be transmuted into an end-times nationalism where the state becomes the redemptive agent and war becomes the sacrament that “ushers in” Jesus. The moment a government imagines itself as the mechanism of the Parousia, dissent becomes heresy, diplomacy becomes betrayal, and atrocities become “necessary.”
Here, Anglican/Episcopal teaching is especially pointed. The Buffalo Statement insists that “each human person is of absolute worth,” and that Christ’s lordship is “a critique of the many lordships which lay claim to our absolute obedience,” precisely because it refuses “political, economic, cultural or religious structures which demean human dignity.”⁹ That is an Anglican way of saying: no nation, no leader, no ideology, no military objective gets to demand ultimate allegiance—least of all by borrowing the name of Jesus.
Apocalyptic certainty creates moral permission for cruelty
When the “end” becomes the end of history, ordinary moral restraints are easily burned away:
Civilian suffering becomes “birth pangs.” Diplomacy becomes “faithlessness.” Restraint becomes “cowardice.” The enemy becomes “an agent of Antichrist” rather than a person made for communion with God. That logic does not merely justify violence; it spiritualizes violence. It teaches people to desire catastrophe as proof that they were right.
Anglican liturgy confronts that temptation by making the Church pray against it—week after week, often with words older and wiser than our ideological scripts. In the Great Litany, we plead, “From violence, battle, and murder, Good Lord, deliver us.”¹¹ If we can pray that sentence honestly, we cannot simultaneously hunger for a war because it might “bring Jesus back.”
Likewise, the Prayer Book’s intercessions teach the Church to pray for peace and for enemies—not as a sentimental flourish, but as a discipline that keeps the heart from becoming a weapon. We ask God to “guide the nations of the world into the way of justice and truth,” and to “teach us to love our enemies as ourselves.”¹² The point is not political naïveté; the point is spiritual realism. Human beings are easily intoxicated by righteous violence. The liturgy sobers us.
A specifically Anglican check on “Revelation as foreign policy”: humility, plurality, and the Spirit-led Church
Revelation has been read in multiple faithful ways across the centuries. Anglicanism has generally been wary of turning apocalyptic imagery into a predictive timetable for statecraft, partly because Anglicans live by a Scripture-shaped tradition rather than by Scripture in isolation from the Church. The Church reads Revelation in the context of the whole canon, under the Spirit’s guidance, with attention to history, and with pastoral caution.
That’s why the Catechism’s line about interpretation matters so much here: the Spirit guides the Church in true interpretation.⁷ It implies that the “private certainty” required to weaponize Revelation, my timeline is correct, my nation is the agent, my war is holy, my opponents are demonic, is not Christian maturity. It is spiritual presumption.
In public life, that presumption becomes combustible. Even when leaders mean it rhetorically, apocalyptic framing in a chain-of-command context risks coercion (especially of religious minorities), undermines unit cohesion, and tempts the state into a kind of national messianism. These concerns have been part of the recent reporting as well, including attention to denominationally specific prayer services at the Pentagon and debates about church–state boundaries in the military.⁴
The Five Marks of Mission: a better Anglican posture toward history
If Anglican apologetics is the defense of Christian hope as a way of life, then we should be able to name, concretely, what faithful hope looks like when the world is anxious and violent.
The Anglican Communion’s Five Marks of Mission provide a compact and realistic alternative to apocalyptic manipulation. They include, explicitly, the call “to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation.”¹⁰ This is not quietism. It is a vocation. It tells the Church what to do while history remains unfinished: proclaim good news, form disciples, serve those in need, resist injustice, challenge violence, pursue peace, and safeguard creation.
That posture keeps eschatology from becoming an excuse for bloodshed. Christians may pray “thy kingdom come,” but the Prayer Book trains us to recognize that God’s kingdom comes with justice, truth, mercy, repentance, and reconciliation—not with a state’s attempt to sacrifice other people on the altar of our preferred timeline.
Conclusion: faithfulness, not “signal fires”
Anglican Christianity does not deny the Second Coming. It proclaims it. But it refuses to turn that proclamation into a project of control. The Church is not called to “light the signal fire” of Armageddon. It is called to be a baptized people who renounce corrupting powers, respect the dignity of every human being, and pursue justice and peace even when fear and rage are easier.⁵ ⁶
That is Anglican/Episcopal apologetics in a sacramental key: not simply winning an argument about prophecy, but embodying a hope so disciplined, so truthful, and so neighbor-protecting that it cannot be recruited to sanctify cruelty and war.
Footnotes
Jonathan Larsen, “U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for ‘Armageddon,’ Return of Jesus,” Jonathan Larsen’s Substack, March 3, 2026.
Sara Braun, “US troops were told war on Iran was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’, watchdog alleges,” The Guardian, March 3, 2026.
Military Religious Freedom Foundation, “MRFF Inundated with Complaints of Gleeful Commanders Telling Troops Iran War is ‘Part of God’s Divine Plan’ to Usher in the Return of Jesus Christ,” March 3, 2026.
Kaanita Iyer and Haley Britzky, “Hegseth invited pastor who calls for Christian theocracy to lead Pentagon prayer service,” CNN (syndicated via KTVZ), February 19, 2026.
The Book of Common Prayer (New York: Church Publishing, 2006/1979), 301. 【1:1†Book-of-common-prayer-2006 (2).pdf†L4102-L4120】
The Book of Common Prayer, 303–305. 【1:0†Book-of-common-prayer-2006 (2).pdf†L4177-L4194】
The Book of Common Prayer, 853. 【1:3†Book-of-common-prayer-2006 (2).pdf†L12893-L12898】
The Book of Common Prayer, 854–855. 【1:2†Book-of-common-prayer-2006 (2).pdf†L12951-L12962】
“In the Image and Likeness of God: A Hope-Filled Anthropology (The Buffalo Statement)” (Anglican Communion, 2015), 25–26. 【1:4†in-the-image-and-likeness-of-god-a-hope-filled-anthr” The Five Marks of Mission (Anglican Comm1-L19】
The Book of Common Prayer1255】
The Book of Common Prayer, 816【0:2†Book-of-common-prayer-2006 (2).pdf†L9098-L9105】
Bibliography
Braun, Sara. “US troops were told war on Iran was ‘a
The Book of Common Prayer. New York: Church Publishing, 2006/1979. 【1:0†B177-L4194】
“In the Image and Likeness ofent).” Anglican Communion, 2015. 【1:4†in-ritzky. “Hegseth invited pastor who calls for Christian theocracy to lead Pentagon prayer service.” CNN (syndicated via KTVZ). February 19, 2026.
Larsen, Jonathan. “U.S. Troops Were Told Iran War Is for ‘Armageddon,’ Return of Jesus.” Jonathan Larsen’s Substack. March 3, 2026.
“Marks of Missn resource). n.p. 【140:0†Marks of Mission.docx†L1-L19】
Military Religious Freedom Foundation. “MRFF Inundated with an’ to Usher in the Return of Jesus Christ.” March 3, 2026.
The Holy Bible (NRSV or other standard translation).