This edition is sponsored by Compassion International
Hello, fellow wayfarers … How our views on the end times don’t influence our politics as much as the other way around … What caused a convinced atheist to rethink the question of God … Why I think we should give up “hope” this Easter … Virginia is for readers with today’s Desert Island Bookshelf … This is this week’s Moore to the Point.
Why I Changed My Mind on Bible Prophecy and Politics
Every time there’s a war or rumors of war in the Middle East, Americans start arguing over prophecy charts again. The onset of the Iran war is no exception. People debate about unverified reports—whether US service members are told they are fighting for Armageddon or whether some US or Israeli leaders expect a third temple in Jerusalem to result from this tumult in fulfillment of dispensationalist ideas about prophecy.
Prosperity gospel preacher John Hagee is still here, arguing from his pulpit that the Iran war is the prompt the Bible predicted for the end times, just as he was doing almost a quarter century ago with the Iraq War. There’s a relationship between how we view the end of the world and how we see the political events around us, but I’ve changed my mind on what that relationship is.
My doctoral dissertation was about how viewpoints on last things shaped evangelical Christian attitudes toward social and political engagement. In agreement with theologian Carl F. H. Henry’s important book The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, I argued that overly utopian views of the thrust of history led to social gospel activism and thus usually to disillusionment. And I argued that overly pessimistic views of the kingdom of God—that history spirals downward until the sudden, cataclysmic coming of Christ, as in popular premillennialism—tend to deaden concern for social action that isn’t about winning souls to Christ.
I still agree with all of that. An understanding of the kingdom of God as a wholly present reality that can be brought in by human effort ultimately spawns a religion that is about social restructuring at the expense of personal renewal. And an understanding of the kingdom of God as a wholly future promise sees the world as a doomed project, for which the only remedy is for people to be rescued, soul by soul. Where I’ve changed is that I wonder whether, in 21st-century America at least, it’s not so much that end times theology influences politics as the other way around.
With the “kingdom now” category, we’ve had an entire century to see its trajectory. As Henry suggested in the 1960s, some churchgoers who aren’t sure whether Isaiah or Ephesians are the Word of God or not are fully confident about God’s position on energy policy. But these parts of the church tend not to have prophecy charts—unless it’s what “side of history” one should be on as it progresses.
What about the prophecy charts, though? Is that really the opposite problem—that these Christians are too focused on heaven, and their place in it, to be concerned about the things of earth? At least in some eras, the temptation of American Christianity has often been caricatured as a hyperspiritual otherworldliness. Is this why these Christians tend to think of love of neighbor only in the most individual and personal terms? For some, undoubtedly, that is the case. But for most of us, the fundamental problem is not otherworldliness but carnality. It’s not that we love the present world too little but that we love it too much.
What changed my mind on this is, first, how malleable the prophecy charts actually are. Here, I don’t mean the way certain pronouncements about the imminent end of the world have failed so repeatedly. The 1970s or 1980s, we were told, were the “terminal generation” because of the way Ezekiel clearly prophesied the European common market or the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. Then the 1990s were the obvious end, because Saddam Hussein was allegedly reconstructing the Babylonian Empire.
When these things turn out not to be so clear after all, none of the prophecy teachers ever says, “Well, I was wrong. Let me go back to the Scriptures and see where I failed.” They usually just move to the next confident set of assertions. But the real problem of malleability isn’t so much the kind that takes years to track.
Instead, the problem is that now we can count on hearing certain answers whenever any political issue arises. For those who use Bible prophecy, the answer to “What will lead to the second coming of Christ?” always lines up with whatever their political tribe supports and can change as fast as that changes.
If the Iran war wraps up soon and the Iranian people finally have a free republic instead of a dictatorship, that will be, for some of these people, clearly the result foreseen in the Book of Daniel. If the war drags on for years, people who support the war will say, “Support the president,” and people who oppose the war will say, “This is the disaster the Bible foretold right before the coming of Christ.”
For some of these people, when the tribe was “America first” with no foreign interventions, that was God sparing the country from the “globalist” New World Order, and it was necessary for the second coming of Christ. And for some of these same people, now that President Trump is intervening in Venezuela and Iran, all this is prophesied, the right thing to do, and necessary for the second coming of Christ.
All of that is human. Very human. All too human.
But it’s more than that. It’s also that many people’s understanding of the kingdom of God seems to have different implications depending on the political or social questions at hand. For some on the “kingdom now” side, ushering in the kingdom meant supporting freedom, justice, and self-determination and denouncing authoritarianism and empire—unless the empire in question was the USSR or the authoritarians were Cuban.
And for the “kingdom future” people, there was always what we could call “the weave.” If the question was prohibition of alcohol, then God calls us to social action, to be salt and light in our world. If the question was Jim Crow, police-state segregation, then God forbids us to be distracted from saving souls by bringing politics into the church. And the same dynamic is at work in the same sectors today. Taking on abortion or gambling is Christians standing up for what is right (and I agree on both of those), but other matters the Bible takes up repeatedly—such as the treatment of the poor or partiality toward people on the basis of their race or ethnicity—are “social justice” and a “distraction.”
And so it goes.
Twenty-five years ago, I argued that an “already, not yet” framework of the kingdom is necessary for Christians to stop choosing between grace and justice, between love of God and love of neighbor, between regenerate hearts and thriving communities. I still think that. What I would change is that it’s not so much that we miss the what of the “already, not yet” but the who.
In what might be one of the most important passages in all of Scripture, Jesus said to his disciples, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (Luke 17:20–21, ESV throughout). Jesus himself is the kingdom of God in person. And he tells us not to be shaken by events, not to be conformed to this present age, but to keep looking to him.
Once we get bored by the actual Messiah, we will look for others. Once we lose our awe at the kingdom of God, we will look for other kingdoms. But the Christ of the kingdom frees us—from carnality pretending to be otherworldliness, from fear pretending to be conviction, from Machiavellianism pretending to be worldview, and from tribalism pretending to be community.
The kingdom of God—present already but not yet fulfilled—tells us what to care about (justice, peace, the poor, the vulnerable) while also shielding us from the disillusionment or bloodthirstiness that can come with expecting to have to bring the fullness of that kingdom on our own. As embodied in Jesus, the kingdom concerns us not just with outcomes but with ways and means, even as it prompts humility on how to get to those common goals.
I have no idea what will happen in Iran. I have no idea what will happen in the modern state of Israel. I have no idea whether we have 5 more minutes or 45 million more years before the Apocalypse. Jesus said, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority” (Acts 1:7).
Who needs a prophecy chart when we already have the Way?
An Ex-Atheist on What Changed His Mind
“I once was blind, but now I see” or “I once could see, but now I’m blind” are opposite realities—but not so different in terms of how one tells the story.
For years, I’ve noticed that people who move from Christianity to atheism, like those who move from atheism to Christianity, tend to follow similar patterns of telling their stories, all of them similar to Christian conversion testimonies: Here was my life before. Here was how bad my life was. Here’s how I saw the light. Here’s how my life has been since. It’s much rarer for a person to tell that story, in either direction, with a sense of continuity and even gratitude for every stage of it.
On the podcast this week, I talk to former Harper’s Magazine editor Christopher Beha on his journey from a Christian upbringing to atheism to now what he calls a “skeptical” belief, which he discloses in his new book Why I Am Not an Atheist. And I told him the book was not what I expected.
That’s true, first of all, because it’s not exclusively about answering intellectual doubts about God. Beha describes a mystical experience he had as a boy that he now attributes straightforwardly to an angelic visitation. He discloses how a tragedy in his life, the near death of his twin brother, led him to question the efficacy of prayer and the reasons for suffering to the point that he surrendered his faith to what he saw as reason: He became an atheist.
Much later, he started to see that skepticism itself has limits. And what startled him out of his unbelief was not some apologetic argument but rather experiences in life—such as falling in love and starting a family—that he couldn’t explain with a purely naturalistic framework. He became a Christian.
But in this episode, he talks with me about why he’s grateful for those years as an atheist, arguing that the skeptical phase was necessary for him to receive a faith as his own. His description is somewhat akin to T. S. Eliot’s metaphor of a stage going dark as the scene changes.
Beha tells me what he’s learned about how to believe while still wrestling with doubt, how Christian parents should deal with children who are questioning the faith, and why an atheist who is seeking the truth should just go to church one Sunday. I challenge him on whether he’s embraced the real thing—the kind of Christianity in which Christ was truly raised in space and in time—or become like the atheists who are “cultural Christians” for the perceived benefits to their own health or to that of civilization.
I found the conversation riveting, and I think you will too. You can listen to it here.
Let’s Lose Our Hope This Easter
My column in the March/April issue of Christianity Today is up on the website. I argue that we should lose what we falsely call hope in order to get the real thing. I write,
Once, I had to help someone lose her faith. Kind of.
She was coming out of a prosperity gospel background in which people used the admonition “Have faith” to manipulate her into giving more money to the ministry. It was her lack of faith, they told her, that was to blame for her sickness and poverty. At one point, after listening to this woman lament her lack of faith, I said, “Why don’t we forget faith for a little while and just trust Jesus?”
Trusting Jesus is, of course, what the Bible calls faith. And in the fullness of time, I told her that. But before she could understand the reality by which she could live, she had to let go of the illusion by which she was swindled. As soon as she stopped worrying about how much faith she had and looked to Christ, she was, in fact, exercising faith. Lately I’ve wondered if the same is true for most of us in regard to another good word that has lost its meaning: hope.
My fellow evangelical Christians love the word hope almost as much as a pastor exposed as an adulterer loves the word grace. In almost every setting in which I speak, one of the first questions people ask is “What gives you hope?” or “Where do you see signs of hope?” When pressed to define what they mean, they ultimately describe what they’re seeking as measurable reassurance—the calming word from an authority that everything will turn out okay.
If I were braver, I would simply respond, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah,” (Matt. 12:39, ESV throughout). But I am made of squishier stuff than Jesus, so I usually give some signposts of good things to come. When I do that, though, I am giving them punditry or prediction, not hope.
You can read the whole thing with the gift link here, and you can subscribe to get every issue here.
Paid Content
For many pastors, the challenge isn’t passion for mission — it’s finding a simple and sustainable way to help your congregation live it out. Compassion Sunday gives your church a meaningful way to activate the Great Commission by connecting your congregation to children and families around the world.
With ready-to-use resources and a clear, proven framework, Compassion helps you mobilize your congregation to put their faith into action — extending generosity, discipleship and care “to the ends of the Earth.”
| Advertise with us |
Desert Island Bookshelf
Every other week, I share a list of books that one of you says you’d want to have on hand if you were stranded on a deserted island. This week’s submission comes from reader Woody Fisher in Richmond, Virginia. Here’s his list:
- The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God by Dallas Willard: This book revolutionized my spiritual life. Willard has a profound approach to Scripture, and in this book, he presents a way of interpreting and applying the Word in a way that changed my view of the kingdom of God. He presents the kingdom as the upside-down kingdom, which is actually the right-side up kingdom.
- The Bread of Angels: A Journey to Love and Faith by Stephanie Saldaña: This is a beautiful account of a young journalist who finds her identity in the desert of Syria. As an aspiring student journalist, she spends a year living in Damascus, and as she observes the persevering spirit of those she encounters there, it brings her to the realization of the emptiness of her life. Through an experience in the Mar Musa monastery in the desert, the journey of her life changes course in a dramatic fashion. Her experiences there are profound, and she records them in beautiful language.
- Songbirds by Christy Lefteri: This is a beautifully written novel about a young woman from Sri Lanka who attempts to escape the rigors of poverty in her homeland only to be caught up in the terrors of human trafficking and slave trade on the island of Cyprus. Sadly, it is based on actual conditions today. It is heart-wrenching and challenging.
- Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner: Stegner wrote a very thought-provoking novel about a historian who is bound to a wheelchair and through his bitterness has alienated his children. He decides to explore, from a historian’s point of view, his grandparents who sought their dreams on the frontier. In the process of writing their story, he actually learns his own story. It is the powerful story of a family history spanning four generations.
- Hannah Coulter: A Novel by Wendell Berry: It is difficult to pick out a favorite of the Port William novels, but Hannah Coulter is mine. As Hannah reflects on her life, she shares bits of philosophy along the way that I found arresting. I found that I would read a paragraph or two or three and realize that Berry, in an almost unobservable way, shares some marvelous life lessons. It is a book for enjoyment and reflection that can be life-changing.
- Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting by Michael Perry: In this lively memoir of this experience of returning to his rural home, Perry portrays Midwestern life with humor and insight. He speaks of family values and of the encroachment of consumerized society. It is both memoir and social commentary that is delightful reading.
- The Lincoln Highway: A Novel by Amor Towles: With rich character development and wonderful descriptions, Towles tells the story of Emmett Watson and his compadres as they frolic across America. As they pursue their adventures, they encounter a diverse group of characters. In the process, Emmett learns much about people, life, and himself.
- Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God by J. I. Packer: Packer addresses the difficulty of reconciling the sovereignty of God and human responsibility. He describes this dilemma as an antinomy, which is a statement of two apparently contradictory ideas. The operative word is apparently. Packer goes on to explain that these ideas are not actually contradictory. This is seen clearly in human activity in evangelism in response to the sovereignty of God. The book provides what I think is the clearest and best explanation of these deep issues that one could find.
- The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese: This is one of my all-time favorite novels. It is about a Christian family from the southwest part of India. In the telling of the story of the family, Verghese allows us to see and experience the social and political struggles of that part of the world. Issues of family values, faith, and the meaning of love are presented in a powerful way. Verghese is a great writer.
- A Land Remembered by Patrick D. Smith: Smith tells the story of the MacIveys from the mid 1800s to the mid 1900s in what is called “Cracker” Florida. This historical novel exposes the dangers of materialism and greed through the life of this family. In reading this book, I felt as if I were transported into the primitive life of the early days of Florida, and I learned much of Florida history. Smith has obviously done a great deal of research and seems to be considered the dean of Florida history.
- Grant by Ron Chernow: Ulysses Grant is usually identified as a drunkard who was brutal in war and ineffective as president. Chernow, through meticulous documentation, presents a very different picture of Grant. As a military strategist he was brilliant, and as president he was very effective in bringing about collaboration. Perhaps his most notable achievements came in his handling of the miscarriages of justice in the postwar South. Though he did struggle with drink, his greatest mistakes came in trusting those who were not worthy of his trust. Though lengthy, the book is well worth the read.
Thank you, Woody!
Readers, what do y’all think? If you were stranded on a desert island for the rest of your life and could have only one playlist or one bookshelf with you, what songs or books would you choose?
- For a Desert Island Playlist, send me a list between 5 and 12 songs, excluding hymns and worship songs. (We’ll cover those later.)
- For a Desert Island Bookshelf, send me a list of up to 12 books, along with a photo of all the books together.
Send your list (or both lists) to questions@russellmoore.com, and include as much or as little explanation of your choices as you would like, along with the city and state from which you’re writing.
Quote of the Moment
“Crucified people disappeared. That was the purpose of crucifixion—to annihilate them, to erase them from the human record with the most degrading mode of public ‘disappearing’ someone that has ever been imagined. And I mean that almost as literally as I can. The Cross and Resurrection are one event—you can’t have one without the other. If Jesus had not been raised from the dead, we never would have heard of him. He would have been eliminated by means of crucifixion. Not by being dead, but by being dead in that particular way invented by the Romans to erase a person’s humanity. So we must ask, What does that mean? Why did God choose this?”
—Fleming Rutledge in a Christianity Today interview
Currently Reading (or Re-Reading)
- Malcolm Guite, ill. Stephen Crotts, Galahad and the Grail (Rabbit Room Press)
- Jon Meacham, American Struggle: Democracy, Dissent, and the Pursuit of a More Perfect Union (Random House)
- Elie Wiesel, And the Sea Is Never Full: Memoirs, 1969– (Schocken)
- Frederic Prokosch, Voices (NYRB Classics)
- Stephen R. L. Clark, Plotinus: Myth, Metaphor, and Philosophical Practice (University of Chicago Press)
Join Us at Christianity Today
Founded by Billy Graham, Christianity Today is on a mission to lift up the sages and storytellers of the global church for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Subscribe now to get exclusive print and digital content, along with seasonal devotionals, special issues, and access to the full archives. Plus, you’ll be supporting this weekly conversation we have together. Or, you could give a membership to a friend, a pastor, a church member, someone you mentor, or a curious non-Christian neighbor. You can also make a tax-deductible gift that expands CT’s important voice and influence in the world.
Ask a Question or Say Hello
The Russell Moore Show podcast includes a section where we grapple with the questions you might have about life, the gospel, relationships, work, the church, spirituality, the future, a moral dilemma you’re facing, or whatever. You can send your questions to questions@russellmoore.com. I’ll never use your name—unless you tell me to—and will come up with a groan-inducing pun of a pseudonym for you.
And, of course, I would love to hear from you about anything. Send me an email at questions@russellmoore.com if you have any questions or comments about this newsletter, if there are other things you would like to see discussed here, or if you would just like to say hello.
If you have a friend who might like this, please forward it, and if you’ve gotten this from a friend, please subscribe!
Russell Moore
Editor at Large, Christianity Today
P.S. You can support the continued work of Christianity Today and the Public Theology Project by subscribing to CT magazine.
Moore to the Point
Join Russell Moore in thinking through the important questions of the day, along with book and music recommendations he has found formative.
Delivered free via email to subscribers weekly. Sign up for this newsletter.
You are currently subscribed as no email found. Sign up to more newsletters like this. Manage your email preferences or unsubscribe.
Christianity Today is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
“Christianity Today” and “CT” are the registered trademarks of Christianity Today International.
Copyright ©2025 Christianity Today, PO Box 788, Wheaton, IL 60187-0788
All rights reserved.