An obscure verse in 2 Thessalonians may conceivably lead to World War III.  OK, it sounds sensational and implausible, but hear me out.

The following is taken from my book Armageddon (Simon & Schuster, 2023), edited for this occasion.

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Evangelical Christians historically have believed that the Bible predicts the future, that many prophecies are being fulfilled in our day, and that they will continue to be fulfilled until the end comes when Jesus returns from heaven in judgment on the living and the dead.

One thing that needs to happen is that the Temple in Jerusalem needs to be rebuilt.  The end cannot come before then.  And so they can appeal to the prophecy of Ezekiel:

They shall live in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, in which your ancestors lived; they and their children and their children’s children shall live there forever; and my servant David shall be their prince forever.  I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them and I will bless them and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary among them forevermore.  (Ezek 37:25-26)

The patriarch “Jacob” (also known as “Israel”) was the grandson of Abraham; he had twelve sons from whom sprang the “twelve tribes of Israel.”  These tribes conquered the Promised Land centuries later, but they were driven from that land as punishment for their sins. Ezekiel insisted God would restore them.  And importantly, he would “set my sanctuary among them forevermore.”

Ezekiel is referring to things that would transpire in his own day, soon after the Babylonians conquered Judah, destroyed the temple, and sent many Jews into exile (586 BCE).   Ezekiel predicts this exile would end and that the sanctuary (that is, the Jerusalem temple) would be rebuilt.  As it was.

But evangelical readers can point out that Ezekiel indicates the sanctuary will stand “forevermore.”  The second temple built after Jews returned from exile in Babylon was destroyed 500 years later by the Romans.  And so, in the evangelical reading, the prophecy has not been fulfilled.  That must mean that it will be fulfilled in our own future.

And more details are provided in 2 Thessalonians, which can be read to show that before the end comes, Israel has to have full control of Jerusalem and, in particular, the Temple Mount.  The problem, of course, is that that the Temple Mount is a sacred site for Islam as well, home to the Dome of the Rock for the past thirteen centuries.  The Dome is located over the site of the original Jerusalem Temple.  For the prediction of 2 Thessalonians to be fulfilled, the Temple needs to be rebuilt there, which means the Dome has to go.

As we have seen, the book tries to explain to readers that the end of the age will not come right away, nor will it happen without warning (contrary to what Paul himself says in First Thessalonians, 4:13-5:11).  A foreordained sequence of events must happen first.  The events involve a mysterious figure, “the lawless one,” who will rise to a position of power. This figure is often identified by readers as the “Antichrist” and the “beast” of Revelation (666), even though he is not called either in the passage:

Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day [the “coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”] will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction.  He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God.  (2 Thess. 2:3-4)

The author then indicates that this figure cannot appear yet because a restraining force is keeping him at bay (2 Thess 2:6).   When that is removed, “the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will destroy with the breath of his mouth, annihilating him by the manifestation of his coming” (2 Thess 2:8).  That sounds very much like the Final Battle between Christ and the Beast as described in Revelation 19:17-20.

What matters most, though, is that before this destruction takes place, the Antichrist figure will take “his seat in the temple of God,” declaring himself to be God.  That obviously cannot happen until the temple is rebuilt.  Jesus therefore cannot return until Israel assume full control of the Temple Mount.  There can be no question, then, about whether or not to support Israel to expand its reach into the Palestinian territories; that was what was promised Abraham “in the beginning.” And there can be no question about whether or not to support Israel in the heart of Jerusalem itself. It must destroy the Dome of the Rock and rebuild the temple for the foreordained “the end” to come.

Since American Christians who support Israeli control of Jerusalem far outnumber American Jews, it is no wonder that Israeli politicians have long pushed for evangelical support, starting in the 70’s at just the time the evangelical prophecy movement reached a fevered pitch – when Hal Lindsey, Jack van Impe, and Timothy LaHaye were all preaching that the end was almost here.  For these modern-day prophets, one piece left in the puzzle remains: the temple has to be rebuilt and Israel cannot face the opposition alone.

This is not a marginal religious belief held by a tiny slice of American Christendom.  It is held by millions, all of them able and encouraged to vote.

You don’t need to be a prophet yourself to figure out what will happen in the Middle East if Israel decides to take over the Temple Mount, destroy the Muslim holy sites there (Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock), and rebuild the Jewish temple.  Many Americans would rejoice.  But it would send the Middle East into chaos and uproar and the literal big guns would almost certainly get involved.

2 Thessalonians could well be prophetic, even if not in the way its author had in mind….