Phillips' Armageddon thesis

One of the main arguments of the book American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips goes something like this:

Much of the support for Bush’s war in Iraq comes from Armageddon prophecies. Iraq is depicted as a resurgence of the biblical Babylon and Saddam Hussein the anti-christ. President Bush may or may not believe this himself, but he is deliberately manipulating this segment of the electorate to garner support for his militaristic ambitions.

Phillips gets his understanding of apocalypse from reading Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind series, and he takes it for granted that each of this series’ 60 million readers takes all of it utterly seriously. (That’s about a fifth of the voting population!) I don’t doubt that there are plenty of folks out there reading the newspaper with a Revelations lens and coming up with all sorts of theories about what it all means. However, I do have a problem seeing the logic between accepting this view of Iraq and wanting America to invade. If Saddam is really the anti-christ, why not just let him carry out his diabolical assault on Israel so we can move this thing along and pave the way for Christ’s return? Why should the United States meddle in the divine plan?

Unfortunately, Phillips leaves the task of actually documenting the nexus between end-times hysteria and U.S. foreign policy up to the reader’s imagination. So … I thought I would do a little web research of my own to see if I could find any Christians, or politicians courting Christians, who are using this apocalyptic justification for the current war in Iraq.

Here are the results from my brief foray into the eclectic online world of Bible prophecy:

I surveyed a few of the most popular prophecy sites; http://www.tribulation.com/, http://www.raptureready.com/, http://www.abbaswatchman.com/, http://www.timmchyde.com/, http://www.rapturenews.com/, Rapture Watch Forum - looking for support for Phillips' thesis that the ideas espoused here somehow form Bush's base of support for the war on Iraq. I was not prepared for how wild of a ride this exploration would be.

In reality, the view that the nation of Iraq under Saddam was a fulfillment of the rise of Babylon is very much a minority opinion. Bible prophecy enthusiasts are actually split between believing that Babylon will be built in Iraq sometime in the future (with the help of the United Nations), or more commonly that it consists in the current global capitalistic system – essentially that United States is the new Babylon, the agent of evil in the tribulation.

Tim McHyde sees a prophetic announcement for Christians to abandon the corrupt American empire:

"Yes, America is worse than the rest of the world by how God judges, and must be judged before all other nations whose time comes later at the end of the Great Tribulation."

Abbas Watchman asserts about President Bush,

"The Bush family worships devils.Yes I don't like him. He is destroying the image of Christianity and therefore an enemy of God."

The various members of Rapture Watch Forum are more subdued in their anti-Bush rhetoric, but they clearly also see America as the evil Babylon – and Bush as its tyrannical leader. Read through the search results for G.W. Bush.

Wow … and these are the most popular end-times sites, according to Christian Top 1000. It looks like the President's got some work to do in revving up the support of his base.