Anyone like me who grew up in an "end times" household knows this story by heart: Christians must witness to all the world in order to bring about the Second Coming of Christ.
In
this article from the Los Angeles Times, the attempts of multiple Christian ministries to hasten the end of the world are documented and examined. For many who were not raised in these traditions, their views might seem odd at best, harmlessly eccentric at worst.
However:
According to various polls, an estimated 40% of Americans believe that a sequence of events presaging the end times is already underway. Among the believers are pastors of some of the largest evangelical churches in America, who converged at Faith Central Bible Church in Inglewood in February to finalize plans to start 5 million new churches worldwide in 10 years.
I think we all know how most of that 40% votes. And when your base is convinced that The End must be hastened, it's a fair question to consider how much that view influences the policy of this administration. How many true believers at the upper levels of political and military decision-making want the Middle East to explode in an orgy of pre-Messianic violence?
Perhaps we're asking the wrong questions about our foreign policy in Iraq (and soon, possibly, in Iran). We're looking at things as a secular-minded realist would approach matters, expecting order, stability, and long-lasting peace for the region as goals. But what if you're trying to provoke your God's hand? Wouldn't you, as Dick Cheney maintains, never want to pull out? Wouldn't you want to inflame tensions to the point that the trumpet sounds and the dead are raised to meet Jesus in the air?
Republican foreign policy makes a lot more sense when viewed this way.