There is a version of Christianity that has grasped power in America that should trouble anyone who takes Jesus seriously. It shows up in the rhetoric of people like Pete Hegseth and Mike Huckabee, and it carries real-world consequences, especially given the degree of political power folks like them now have. It is a Christianity that is fixated on the end, obsessed with conflict, and strangely comfortable with imperial violence.
At the center of this framework is an assumption that often goes unexamined: that Jesus will return in a way that looks nothing like the Jesus we meet in the Gospels. This returning Christ is imagined as violent, retributive, and eager to settle accounts. As Mark Driscoll once put it, Jesus comes as a “prize-fighter with a tattoo down his leg, a sword in his hand and the commitment to make someone bleed.” But once that assumption is granted, a deeper problem emerges. If the second coming of Christ contradicts the first, then the first no longer functions as a revelation of God. It becomes, at best, incomplete, and at worst, misleading.
That raises a question that should not be easy to ignore. If Jesus must return to correct or override his earlier mission, what exactly did his life, teaching, and death accomplish?
Jesus and the Character of God
The Gospels do not present Jesus as one voice among many. They present him as the definitive revelation of God’s character. Full stop. When Jesus teaches, he does not speculate about God. He speaks with authority about who God is and how God acts.
This is especially clear in his teachings on violence and enemy love. In Matthew 5, Jesus instructs his followers to love their enemies and to pray for those who persecute them. In Luke 6, he grounds this command in the nature of God, calling his followers to be mimetically merciful as their Father is merciful. These are not abstract ideals. Rather, they are rooted in a long-imagined Jewish claim about God’s own posture toward humanity.
Jesus reinforces this not only in his teaching but in his actions. When he is arrested, he rebukes the use of the sword. When he is executed, he does not call for judgment on his enemies but asks for their forgiveness. The cross is not a moment where Jesus suspends his theology. It is where his theology is most clearly expressed.
In my book Heretic!, I make the case that Jesus consistently reframes Scripture through a nonviolent lens. He does not affirm depictions of divine vengeance as the final word. Instead, he reveals a God who refuses to operate through retribution. This reading is not a selective one. It is rooted in the conviction that Jesus himself is the interpretive key.
If that is true, then any future vision of Christ must be consistent with what has already been revealed. Otherwise, the coherence of the Gospel collapses.
Paul and the Language of Peace
Paul’s theology develops this same vision. His writings are often read through later theological debates, but his core claims are remarkably consistent with the portrait of Jesus found in the Gospels.
In 2 Corinthians 5, for instance, Paul describes God’s work in Christ as reconciliation, explicitly stating that God is not counting people’s sins against them. In Ephesians 2, he refers to Christ as our peace, emphasizing the breaking down of hostility rather than its fulfillment. Even in passages that use the language of struggle or armor, the emphasis subverts expectations and remains on peace, righteousness, and faith rather than violence.
The framework is clear. God’s action in Christ is restorative, not retributive. The goal is reconciliation, not destruction. This makes it difficult to sustain a theology in which the culmination of God’s plan is a violent purge. Such a conclusion would not extend Paul’s thought but contradict it.
Eschatology and the Appeal of Violence
The popularity of end-times speculation in certain Christian circles has created space for a different kind of gospel. In this version, global conflict is not something to lament but something to anticipate. War becomes a sign of progress toward a divinely orchestrated conclusion.
This is where contemporary political rhetoric becomes relevant. When non-religious grifters like Donald Trump speak about potential conflict with Iran in casual or even enthusiastic terms, and when devoutly religious commentators interpret such conflict as prophetically significant, the result is a fusion of theology and militarism that should be deeply concerning. War, in this framework, is no longer a tragic failure of human systems. It becomes a necessary step in the unfolding of God’s plan. That shift has moral consequences by reshaping how suffering is perceived and how violence is justified.
But it also raises a theological problem. If war and retribution are essential to the fulfillment of God’s purposes, then again, the teachings of Jesus about enemy love and nonviolence are sidelined. They may be acknowledged, but they are no longer determinative.
The Problem of a Contradictory Christ
At this point, the issue is not merely interpretive but deeply Christological. The question is about the identity of Christ himself.
The New Testament does leave room for future hope, for the restoration of all things, and for the ultimate defeat of evil, but it does not present Jesus as someone whose character will fundamentally change in the process. The very same Jesus who forgives his enemies is the one in whom, according to Colossians 1, all things are reconciled.
If a future vision of Christ depicts him acting in ways that contradict his earlier teaching and example, then we are faced with a choice. Either the Gospels do not give us a reliable picture of God, or the later depiction is mistaken.
Conclusion
This isn’t a side issue about charts, timelines, or how to read Revelation. It presses on the center of the Christian claim about God.
The life of Jesus gives us a concrete picture to work with. He teaches enemy love and then practices it under immense pressure. He refuses the sword when it could have saved him. He forgives in the middle of state-sponsored violence. If that is what God is like, then any account of the future must move in the same direction. Otherwise, we are not talking about fulfillment but reversal.
The problem with the popular end-times imagination is that it quietly asks us to loosen our grip on Jesus in order to make room for a different kind of victory. A violent resolution begins to feel necessary. War starts to look meaningful, even desirable, especially when it is wrapped in prophetic language. That helps explain why talk of conflict with Iran can sound casual or even energized in some political and religious circles. The tone is revealing. It assumes that violence will get us where God wants history to go.
That assumption runs against the grain of everything Jesus embodied. It also sits uneasily with Paul’s insistence that God’s work in Christ is reconciliation, not score-settling. Once those two witnesses are taken seriously, a retributive ending becomes difficult to square with the story we have been given.
So, the issue comes down to continuity. Does the end of the story look like its center? If the answer is no, then the center no longer holds. If the answer is yes, then the cross remains our guide, even when we think about judgment, justice, and the restoration of all things.
That leaves us with a decision about which vision will shape our imagination. One leans into fear, conflict, and the language of inevitability. The other stays with the crucified Christ and lets that image do the heavy theological lifting. Only one of those options preserves a coherent Gospel, which is something false teachers like Hegseth and Huckabee have no interest in.
If you’re navigating faith after certainty, loving Jesus but not the empire, or trying to hold on to hope in a burning world, you’re not alone. I explore these themes weekly on the Heretic Happy Hour podcast.
You can also explore my books—including Heretic!, The Wisdom of Hobbits, and others—right here: https://quoir.com/authors/matthew-j-distefano/
Thanks for reading. Thanks for thinking. And thanks for refusing to settle for easy answers.
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