U.S. military commanders are telling their troops that the war in Iran is “all part of God’s divine plan” and citing the Book of Revelation to explain why they’re bombing a foreign country, according to over 100 complaints filed with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
The complaints started flooding in Saturday morning, hours after the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran. One non-commissioned officer filed a complaint on behalf of himself and 15 other troops—all of different religious backgrounds—after a commander told them Trump “has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”
The commander “had a big grin on his face when he said all of this which made his message seem even more crazy,” the complaint said.
Mikey Weinstein, founder of MRFF, said some commanders were inviting subordinates to Bible studies at their homes to “discuss how this was all part of the plan and it’s all being lived out in the Book of Revelation and Christian eschatology.” They were “in a hurry” to get everyone on board.
The complaints have come from more than three dozen military units at over 30 different installations.
The stakes here aren’t abstract. Weinstein explained what these commanders actually believe they’re working toward: “They are promised a 200-mile-long river that is four-and-a-half feet deep filled with nothing but the blood that their weaponized version of Jesus will spill at the Battle of Armageddon. That’s a lot of blood.”
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Service members can’t exactly tell their superiors to knock it off. Under the military’s criminal code, insubordination is a felony. Complaining to chaplains isn’t much help either—the majority of military chaplains are Christian, and many are evangelical.
None of this should come as a shock given who’s running the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared at a prayer breakfast last month that the U.S. is a “Christian nation.” There are monthly prayer meetings at the Pentagon.
The non-commissioned officer who filed the complaint wrote that the religious messaging is “destroying morale and unit cohesion” and that commanders are “flagrantly violating their oaths to uphold the Constitution.”
Harrison Mann, a 13-year Army veteran who resigned over U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza, warned about what happens when the public starts seeing the military as an arm of Christian nationalism. “When the public starts to view the military that way too, then you get to a much more dangerous place where they no longer have trust in them.”
Mann said the public can help by supporting service members who speak up and pressuring lawmakers to impeach Hegseth. “It’s very frightening to imagine that you would be on your own if you tried to defy an unlawful order.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.