For roughly half a century, a certain strain of American evangelical theology has taught millions of believers to read conflicts like Trump’s war with Iran not simply as geopolitics in action but as prophecy unfolding in real time. I was one of them.

That kind of biblical talk waned in the intervening years, but the war with Iran has clearly revived it, even though evangelical influence in the Trump II administration is significantly weaker than in the first. That the MRFF is now reporting complaints from more than forty different American military units across at least thirty installations indicates that this strange marriage of statecraft and scripture has also moved into the Pentagon. Meanwhile, Senator John Cornyn (announced as “one of Israel’s greatest friends”) attended an alarmist sermon by dispensationalist TV preacher John Hagee, and founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), in San Antonio, which was ominously titled: “End of Days: Operation Epic Fury.”

Trump himself, of course, is not exactly a theologian. He has never shown much interest in evangelical doctrine and rarely speaks the language of prophecy that pastors like Hagee or Hitchcock deploy. What he does understand, however, is the political value of religious symbolism. Few presidents have embraced the role of providential figure quite so enthusiastically, from posing with Bibles to suggesting that divine forces intervened to spare his life.