Armageddon Is Not A Battle Plan: What Revelation Actually Says — And Why It Matters Right Now
Header Image: Iran and Israel continued their attacks, killing and wounding civilians. (Image: Reuters)
Something bizarre happened in the White House Oval Office this week. Photographs circulated on social media showing President Donald Trump seated at his desk, surrounded by approximately twenty Christian pastors from across the country, their hands extended towards him in prayer. The image provoked sharply divided reactions: some saw it as a moving expression of faith; others found it deeply unsettling. Whatever one makes of the optics, it arrived at a charged moment.
Days earlier, reports emerged that a military commander had told troops that the current US war with Iran is “all part of God’s divine plan,” and that President Trump had been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” These were not fringe internet rumours. They were filed as formal complaints with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) by an anonymous non-commissioned officer acting on behalf of fifteen service members — the majority of whom were themselves Christians. By Tuesday of that week, MRFF had logged more than two hundred similar complaints across fifty military installations, covering every branch of the armed forces.
More than two dozen Democratic members of Congress have since called for a Department of Defense Inspector General investigation, citing what they describe as “glaring Constitutional concerns” and potential violations of DoD regulations on religious neutrality.
The political questions about separation of church and state in the US are for others to address. What I want to do here is something more straightforward: examine what Revelation actually says, because the theology driving these claims does not hold up under scrutiny. And that matters here a lot; not as a partisan point, but as a question of biblical faithfulness.
First, a Word About Context
If you have read my previous article on Revelation some of what follows will be familiar ground. But it bears repeating, because the misunderstanding at the heart of this story is so widespread that it has taken on the feel of settled orthodoxy in many circles.
The Book of Revelation is commonly thought to be written in the late first century ~95 AD, during or around the reign of Emperor Domitian. Though there is internal evidence that it was possibly written during Nero’s reign prior to 70 AD. Both of these emperors were most aggressive proponents of the imperial cult in Rome’s history. Domitian required that he be addressed as “lord and god,” had this title printed on coinage, and expected acts of religious reverence towards the Emperor as a demonstration of political loyalty. To refuse was to invite economic exclusion, marginalisation, and worse.
It is into that precise context that John of Patmos writes. He is not composing a coded forecast of twenty-first century geopolitics. He is writing resistance literature — what scholars call apocalyptic literature — a well-established Jewish and early Christian genre which uses vivid symbolic imagery to pull back the curtain on earthly power and name it for what it truly is. The seven-headed beast of Revelation is Rome. The seven heads are the seven hills of Rome, an identification so widely acknowledged in early church scholarship that it barely requires argument. The mark of the beast, calculated through Hebrew gematria to 666 (or 616 in some early manuscripts), points directly to Nero Caesar (transliterated into Hebrew as נרון קסר, “nrwn qsr”) — the Emperor who became the archetype of anti-Christian persecution due to the levels of evilness he enacted. The second beast, which looks like a lamb but speaks for the dragon, performs signs to deceive, enforces the mark, and compels worship of the first beast (Rev. 13:11–17) functioning, in essence, as what we might today call a propaganda machine: the imperial cult apparatus of priests, temples, public ceremonies, and coins bearing the Emperor’s divine titles. It is later explicitly named the “false prophet” (Rev. 16:13; 19:20). It conquers not by force but by manufactured consent.
Revelation is a theological critique of empire, written to encourage persecuted believers that Rome, for all its apparent invincibility, is not ultimate. Its violence is not divine. Its claims to eternal dominion are a parody of the real thing.
This is the lens through which everything else in the book must be read. When we lose it, we lose the book and its purpose.
There Is No “Battle” of Armageddon
Let us be precise here, because precision matters enormously in this conversation.
The word “Armageddon” appears exactly once in the New Testament, in Revelation 16:16, and is a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew name har məgīddō (הר מגידו). John writes that the kings of the earth are gathered at Har-Megiddo — the Mount of Megiddo/Armageddon — a site in northern Israel deeply resonant in the Old Testament as a location of decisive conflict (Judg. 5:19; 2 Kgs. 23:29; 2 Chr. 35:22). So much so that by the time of the later prophets, the very name had become a byword for catastrophic loss and lamentation (Zech. 12:11). The imagery is deliberate and powerful. A great confrontation appears to be building. The stage is set.
But here is what many readers entirely miss: no battle is described.
| By AVRAM GRAICER — Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
The armies gather. The tension mounts. And then, when we reach Revelation 19 (where the Hollywood version of events would deliver its climactic military clash with big explosions and special FX) something quite different happens. Christ appears as a rider on a white horse. His robe, we are told, is dipped in blood — but it is his own blood, the blood of the cross, not the blood of his enemies. The armies of heaven are ranked behind him. And then the beast and the kings of the earth are defeated not by superior firepower, not by a counter-charge of heavenly soldiers, but by the word that proceeds from Christ’s mouth, described as a sharp sword. This is no arbitrary image. The author of Hebrews uses identical language when he writes that “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow” (Heb. 4:12). The sword is the Word — and the Word, as John’s own Gospel makes plain, is Christ himself (John 1:1). The weapon of divine victory is not steel but Truth itself.
There is no prolonged engagement. No exchange of blows. No military drama in any conventional sense. It is over before it can properly be called a battle.
This is not accidental. John is making a clear theological point, one which is entirely consistent with the book’s central vision. Go back to Revelation 5 and you will find it in miniature: John hears of the Lion of Judah — the expected conquering warrior Messiah — but when he turns to look, he sees a Lamb, standing as though slain. The conquering one conquers as the slaughtered Lamb. That paradox is the theological centre of the entire book. Victory does not come through superior violence. It comes through faithful witness, sacrificial love, and the self-giving of the cross.
The saints conquer by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. — Revelation 12:11
Notice what is conspicuously absent from that verse above: swords, armies, political power, military campaigns. The model of conquest in Revelation is the cross, not the sword. To read the book as a mandate for armed holy war is not merely a misreading — it inverts the very argument John is making.
Empire Always Claims Divine Sanction
There is a further irony in the current situation that is worth noting, because it goes to the heart of what Revelation is truly about.
In the ancient world, empires routinely justified their military campaigns as divinely ordained. Rome’s great ideological project was the Pax Romana, the “Peace of Rome” — a peace secured through conquest, maintained through intimidation, and enforced through crucifixions lining the roads into subject cities. Rome did not merely claim political authority; it claimed divine authority. The Emperor was lord. The Emperor was god. War was not merely geopolitical strategy; it was sacred duty.
Revelation’s entire argument is a sustained, systematic demolition of exactly that claim.
John depicts Rome as “Babylon” in chapters 17 and 18: drunk on luxury, intoxicated with the blood of the saints, her merchants weeping when she falls — and notably, they weep not for lost lives but for lost profits! It is one of the most piercing critiques of the fusion of military power and economic exploitation in all of ancient literature. And John’s point is that Babylon falls not because Christians take up arms against her, but because her endless cycle of violence is ultimately self-defeating. She collapses under the weight of her own nature.
The contrast John is drawing could not be clearer. Empire thrives on spectacle: parades, armies, displays of force. Revelation stages what looks like the ultimate imperial showdown — and then refuses to narrate it as a conventional war. God does not win by out-killing Rome. God wins because Rome’s power is hollow, and the Word that created all things cannot be overcome by any sword.
A sharp reader will note, of course, that Revelation is not without its graphic imagery — rivers of blood, the great winepress of God’s wrath producing blood “as high as a horse’s bridle” (Rev. 14:20). This deserves a response rather than simply overlooking it. That imagery draws directly on Old Testament prophetic precedent, most notably Isaiah 63:1–6, where God treads the winepress and his garments are stained with the blood of the nations — a passage which functions as a vivid metaphor for the totality of divine judgement, not a literal battle report. Ezekiel 39 employs similarly extreme imagery to the same end. This is how apocalyptic literature works: it uses visceral, overwhelming imagery to convey the finality and completeness of God’s judgement, not to describe the mechanics by which it is carried out. And crucially, John himself holds the tension in plain sight — the robe of the rider is stained with blood before the confrontation even begins (Rev. 19:13). It is the blood of the cross, not of conquest. The imagery is paradoxical by design, because the entire theological argument of the book is paradoxical: the Lion conquers as a slain Lamb. To flatten that paradox into a literal war narrative is to miss the point entirely.
The Cross as the Real Armageddon
There is a further dimension worth considering, and it is one that becomes increasingly persuasive the more you sit with this book and try to read it without preconceived notions. Revelation may not be best understood as a single linear narrative at all, whether past, present or future , but as a series of overlapping visions, each circling the same spiritual realities from a different angle and revealing their deeper significance. Scholars call this recapitulation, and it is central to G.K. Beale’s major commentary on Revelation, arguably the most thorough treatment of the book’s structure in modern scholarship. The clearest example is Revelation 12, where the woman, the dragon, and the child caught up to God’s throne read not as a prediction of future events but as a cosmic retelling of the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection from a heavenly vantage point. This is like a spiritual “behind the scenes” view of what was really happening when Christ was born into a world of imperial power, was apparently defeated by it, and then vindicated by God. The dragon is not defeated at some future Armageddon. He is defeated at the cross, and Revelation 12:10-11 tells us so plainly.
That cosmic victory connects to the detail in Revelation 14:20 — the Victor arriving from outside the city, garments already stained — which echoes Isaiah 63 but also the sin offering of Leviticus 16:27, burned outside the camp. Jesus was crucified outside Jerusalem precisely as that offering, which the writer of Hebrews connects in Heb. 13:10-12, and yet that act of apparent defeat was simultaneously the moment of cosmic triumph. Paul explains this plainly in Colossians 2:14–15: Christ disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public spectacle of them — through the cross. The decisive battle was already fought and won on a hill outside Jerusalem, and not in the way anybody expected.
Reading Revelation through that lens, the book operates on three overlapping layers simultaneously. First, the cross and resurrection as the foundational cosmic victory over sin, death, and the powers. Second, the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD as the judicial outworking of that victory on the old covenant order — the theme explored at greater length in my article on Revelation in the Second Coming series on my site. Third, the decline and fall of Rome as the historical vindication of the Gospel’s central claim: that Caesar is not Lord, and that the empire which crucified the Son of God would not have the final word. This third layer had, in fact, been anticipated centuries earlier. Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the great statue , which represended the successive world empires of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, ends not with a battle but with a stone, cut without human hands, that strikes the statue and becomes a mountain filling the whole earth (Dan. 2:31–45). Jerome, in his Commentary on Daniel, identified that fourth empire as Rome and understood the stone as the Kingdom of Christ expanding through the Church — a reading Eusebius shares in his Church History. R.C. Sproul, in The Last Days According to Jesus, represents the same broad tradition in more accessible modern form. The Church, in other words, is that stone: spreading through the empire not by force of arms but by the quiet, unstoppable advance of the Gospel, dismantling Rome’s claims to ultimate authority by proclaiming the truth about the True God. All three layers are real. All three are present in the text. And none of them require a future literal battle at Megiddo to complete the picture.
When military commanders invoke Revelation to tell service members that a president has been “anointed by Jesus” to trigger Armageddon, they are not giving voice to the theology of Revelation. They are, ironically, recapitulating the very imperial theology Revelation was written to critique: the claim that God’s purposes are advanced through military action, that a political leader carries divine mandate for war, and that violence is the instrument of eschatological fulfilment.
John of Patmos would have recognised that claim immediately. He encountered it every day of his exile on Patmos. He did not endorse it and named it as the voice of the beast.
The Danger of Weaponising Prophecy
I want to be fair here. The dispensationalist tradition — which is the theological stream largely responsible for the modern “Battle of Armageddon” framework, popularised in countless books and most recently in the Left Behind series — is a serious theological tradition held by sincere Christians. I disagree with its conclusions, and I have argued elsewhere in my writings why I think the preterist and historicist readings of Revelation are more exegetically sound. But the people within that tradition are not, for the most part, advocating for military adventurism (though they probably expect it some day).
The problem arises when eschatological frameworks are detached from their theological grounding and pressed into service as justification for geopolitical action. When that happens — when a commander tells troops that their deployment is part of God’s prophetic plan, that a specific political leader has been anointed to trigger the end times — the theology has stopped being theology. It has become something considerably more dangerous: a sacred narrative that insulates decision-making from normal moral scrutiny, and which asks young men and women to die not merely for their country, but for a cosmic script they cannot question.
History offers us no shortage of examples of where that leads. Revelation, rightly read, should make us deeply suspicious of exactly such claims — because that is what it was written to do.
What Revelation’s Ending Actually Says
One more thing is worth noting, because it is so often overlooked in these discussions.
The final word of Revelation is not war. It is not even judgement.
It is renewal.
In Revelation 21, John sees a new heaven and a new earth. The New Jerusalem descends — and I have written at greater length elsewhere about why this city is best understood as the Church, the bride of Christ, the community of the redeemed rather than a literal rebuilt city. God’s throne, which was in heaven in chapter 4, is now on earth. He dwells with his people. He wipes away every tear. And the nations — note this carefully — bring their glory into the light of God. Not their weapons. Not their military might. Their glory.
The eschatological vision of Revelation is not a world consumed by the fire of the last battle. It is a world healed, gathered, renewed. The city has no need of sun or moon because the glory of God illuminates it. The tree of life bears fruit for the healing of the nations.
That is the vision John offers to battered, persecuted believers in the first century. And it is the vision the Church should hold before it today — not as a naïve dismissal of the reality of evil and conflict, but as a strong insistence that the last word belongs to God, and God’s last word is not war.
To Conclude
Augustine, writing as the Roman Empire was itself beginning to fragment, offered a caution that has never quite lost its relevance:
“Obviously, then it is a waste of effort for us to attempt counting the precise number of years which this world has yet to go, since we know from the mouth of Truth that it is none of our business.” — Augustine of Hippo, City of God, 18:53
He was speaking about date-setting, but the principle extends further. It is not our business to engineer the end times. It is not our business to identify a political leader as the one anointed to trigger Armageddon. It is certainly not our business to tell soldiers that their lives are being risked in the service of a prophetic script.
What Revelation actually calls the Church to is far more demanding and far less dramatic: faithful witness in the face of empire, sacrificial love that mirrors the slain Lamb, and the refusal to worship power wherever it presents itself — whether in ancient Rome or in any modern equivalent.
The empire gathers for battle. The Lamb reigns without fighting. The battle was already won on the cross.
That is the critique. And it has never been more timely.
Sources
- Donald Trump spotted in bizarre mass Oval Office prayer after pondering mortality — AOL
- Commanders Accused of Framing Iran War as Biblical Mandate, Jesus’ ‘Return’ | Military.com
- Troops being told to prepare for ‘Armageddon’ in Iran
- Dan Scavino on X: “Happening Now in the Oval Office at the @WhiteHouse. God Bless the USA! 🙏❤️🇺🇸🦅 https://t.co/Ebi7DnAnhK" / X
- CHURCH FATHERS: City of God, Book XVIII (St. Augustine)
- G.K. Beale, Revelation: A Shorter Commentary
- What does Revelation 14:20 mean by “blood flowed as high as the horses’ bridles”?
- The Coming of Jesus: Introduction | The Sacred Faith: Timeless Truths for Modern Minds
- St. Jerome, Commentary on Daniel (1958) pp. 15–157
- R. C. Sproul — The Last Days According to Jesus
- Who is the New Jerusalem? | The Sacred Faith: Timeless Truths for Modern Minds
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There’s been a lot of fuss on the internet lately about this new statue that the UN has erected outside their headquarters on the Visitor’s Plaza. I’ve seen screenshots of the original tweet shared on Facebook and other social media platforms, as well as copious articles flooding my newsfeed, all suggesting the same thing: this is the beast from Daniel 7. This of course carries with it the implication that it is also a fulfilment of that prophecy and therefore we should expect something more to happen soon, like “the antichrist” to rise up and consume the world. Or something along those lines. I don’t follow the Dispensational “end times” view anymore, so I try not to get my eschatology from newspaper headlines (or tweets). In nearly all of the other articles I’ve seen on the topic, no one is actually engaging with the Scriptures, but are quoting random tweets and Facebook posts as though that’s where we should derive our exegesis and conclusions. A guardian for international peace and security sits on the Visitor's Plaza outside #UN Headquarters. The guardian is a fusion of jaguar and eagle and donated by the Government of Oaxaca, Mexico @MexOnu. It is created by artists Jacobo and Maria Angeles.UN Photo/Manuel Elías pic.twitter.com/q8SSsQhz1L — United Nations Photo (@UN_Photo) November 9, 2021 If you can’t see the tweet above, the official UN Twitter account said: A guardian for international peace and security sits on the Visitor’s Plaza outside #UN Headquarters. The guardian is a fusion of jaguar and eagle and donated by the Government of Oaxaca, Mexico @MexOnu It is created by artists Jacobo and Maria Angeles. So with that said, let’s have a look at some of the claims and then compare with what Scripture actually says, rather than a bunch of tweets by people losing their minds. Three passages of Scripture are being thrown about: Daniel 7:2–4, Revelation 13:2, and 1 Thessalonians 5:2–3. But do these verses speak to this new statue? Daniel 7:2–4I, Daniel, saw in my vision by night the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea, and four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. The first was like a lion and had eagles’ wings. Then, as I watched, its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a human being; and a human mind was given to it. Alright, Daniel does say the first beast “was like a lion and had eagles’ wings”, which I will admit, is pretty similar to the statue (except that it’s not a lion). I don’t know if Daniel would have been familiar with Jaguars which is why people are pointing out the phrase, “like a lion” due to the similarities of the animals. But these details are really besides the point. The first, and most obvious point to me when I first saw this was that the “beasts” in Daniel 7 (all four of them) are representative of nations and kings. The visions Daniel has are about future kingdoms and their leaders. You only need to read the rest of the chapter to see this, as the angel with Daniel gives the interpretation to him! See below: Daniel 7:16–17I approached one of the attendants to ask him the truth concerning all this. So he said that he would disclose to me the interpretation of the matter: “As for these four great beasts, four kings shall arise out of the earth. Disney Pixar’s “Coco” film poster (2017) Unless the statue outside the UN is actually a living person who rules a nation… trying to tie it to Daniel 7 is more than a stretch. It’s just nonsensical. The second point which came to my mind too, and anyone else who has seen the Disney film “Coco”, is that these Jaguar-Eagle beast things are part of Mexican culture and mythology (and were warrior classes of the Aztecs). It’s not a unique design the UN came up with, demonically inspired to fulfil prophecy. No, the statue is an “Alebrije” created b...
Luke J. Wilson | 21st September 2020 | Eschatology
Most people have some idea about what the rapture is – or do they? Generally there is an idea or concept of a form of escapism from the world when Jesus returns, which happens pre, mid or post tribulation and in some connection to the millenium. Now, if you understood any of those terms, you are most likely on, or aware of, the Dispensationalism side of things. There’s a lot of doctrine all bundled together in “end times” beliefs, and a fair bit of speculation around “the rapture” with its timing and logistics etc. which makes the whole thing a but murky, but nonetheless, it’s pretty much taken for granted as a staple belief within the Evangelical world. But has this always been so, and does it have any biblical basis? In short: sort of. What is The Rapture? This is the primary verse where the doctrine finds its footing: …then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. — 1 Thessalonians 4:17 On the face of it, that is a pretty obscure (and short) text, yet so much has been written on and speculated about around this event. I’m not going to cover every aspect of rapture doctrine here, but rather want to just highlight the context of this verse and its parallels in Paul’s other letters, as this seems to get lost under centuries of doctrinal baggage, which, incidentally, also the leads to the next point to look at: is the rapture biblical? The origin of The Rapture The word “rapture” itself comes from the Latin word rapere, which means: “to seize” or “to abduct”. It is a translation from the Greek word that is rendered as “caught up” (ἁρπάζω / harpázō) in our English Bibles today. For many, asking if this belief is biblical is a non-starter because it is assumed so based on 1 Thess. 4 so obviously it is. But this is a presupposition, reading the modern ideas of what “the rapture” means into the text. The modern idea being that Jesus comes back briefly (and maybe secretly), whooses all the Christians into the sky and takes them to heaven, away from all the troubles on the earth, before coming back later to do a proper “second coming”. John Nelson Darby, a 19th-century theologian, is often credited with creating this premillennial rapture doctrine, followed closely by C.I. Scofield who wrote a best-selling annotated Bible which promoted Darby’s rapture views in its footnote commentary. This particular Bible became wildly popular across America in the early 1900s and ended up solidifying the futurist dispensational viewpoint for generations to come within Evangelicalism. Despite the popularity of Scofield’s Bible, what it (and Darby) taught was a novel idea which had not been seen nor heard of before in the previous 1800 years of Church History, yet many Christians accepted it without hesitation, likely due to it being part of the exposition alongside the Scripture they were reading, and therefore a seeming authority. I realise there is somewhat of an irony here in that I’m acting similarly like an authority telling you that this belief is wrong whereas Scofield was writing as though it were accurate, but in an even more ironic twist, just a handful of verses later, the same letter to the Thessalonians says to “test everything; hold fast to what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21). This is what I would invite you to do: don’t just take my word for it, test everything and see if what I say is accurate. The context of The Rapture So what is the context of these verses, if not about being whisked away into the sky with Jesus? A couple of things, but one slightly more obvious than the other, though still overlooked by people, I’ve noticed; the other requires knowing some more about the ancient Greco-Roman culture of the time. Firstly, we only need go back a few verses to see what Paul is writing about here: he begins the passage in verse 13 by sayi...
Luke J. Wilson | 22nd November 2025 | Persecution
Every now and then something happens in this country that feels small on the surface but carries a deeper spiritual weight beneath it. In this case it comes from a Labour council just outside of London when in March of this year, Rushmoor Borough Council attempted to criminalise Christian street preaching. The injunction has thankfully been paused (for now) as Christians rallied, prayed, and pushed back. But the implications of what nearly happened, and could still happen, should give all of us pause. Because once one council tries something like this, others start paying attention. A precedent has been set — not necessarily in law, but in what could be. Someone, somewhere, will look at Rushmoor’s attempt and think, perhaps this is the way to make Christianity quiet again. The Quiet Re-emergence of Old Hostilities We tend to imagine persecution as something ancient or foreign. Lions, arenas, emperors, gulags, terror attacks in far off countries. And sure, we here in the UK are not shedding literal blood for the Gospel, but that doesn’t mean persecution has vanished. It has simply changed shape. Instead of swords and prisons, we face restrictions and injunctions. Instead of mobs dragging believers through the streets, councils draft documents that treat prayer, worship, and evangelism as public threats. The methods have changed, but the intent remains strangely familiar: to push the Gospel to the margins, to confine it to the private sphere, and to make public displays of faith something suspicious, weird, and even harmful. If Rushmoor’s injunction had gone through, it would have made praying with someone in town square, even holding out a leaflet, something punishable by fines or prison time. No blood shed, but freedom restricted and removed. No martyrdom, but the same coercive pressure to be silent. Succumb to Caesar (the local council) or face death (prison/fines etc). History Teaches Us Something the Councils Have Forgotten Whenever authorities have attempted to stifle Christianity, something remarkable has happened: the Church has not faded away, but grown. Opposition has never extinguished faith; instead, it has refined it, purified it, strengthened it. Tertullian famously wrote, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” And while no one in Britain today is being asked to spill blood for Christ, the principle still holds. Pressure produces depth. Threats produce courage. Restrictions produce creativity. This is where real faith takes hold and grows! When believers are told to stop preaching, they remember why they preach. When prayer is threatened, prayer increases. When the gospel is pushed out of the public square, Christians step back into it with clarity and resolve. It’s ironic, really. When the world tries to silence the Church, it ends up drawing attention to the very message it wants to suppress. The Real Danger: Not the Injunction Itself, But What Comes Next The paused injunction in Rushmoor is not the end of the story. If anything, it is the prologue. Because we are now entering a season where councils and governments — pressured by secular expectations and political anxieties — may test the boundaries of religious freedom in ways that would have been unthinkable twenty years ago. Once you try to criminalise prayer in public, the next attempt becomes easier. And we’ve already seen examples of this with the so-called “buffer zones” around abortion clinics. Once preaching is labelled “hateful,” more restrictions feel reasonable. A few street preachers have already been arrested this year already. Once a council decides that worship and prayer is “distressing”, others will wonder if they should follow suit. This is how liberties are lost: not in a single moment, but through a drip-feed of small decisions that gradually reshape what is considered normal. That is why Christians cannot afford to shrug this off as a local issue. It is a signpost...
Luke J. Wilson | 29th January 2025 | Easter
Pope Francis has recently expressed the Catholic Church’s willingness to accept a unified date for Easter, a move aimed at fostering greater Christian unity, particularly with the Orthodox Church. This long-standing issue arises from the different calendars used by Western and Eastern Christian traditions — the Gregorian and Julian calendars — leading to discrepancies in Easter celebrations. Talks between Catholic and Orthodox leaders have intensified, hoping a common date could be agreed upon. However, this raises important questions for Protestant denominations regarding whether they would adopt the unified date or risk falling out of alignment with these historic branches of Christianity. Celebrating the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity recently, Pope Francis noted that this year the Easter date coincides with the West’s Gregorian calendar and the East’s Julian calendar. The Pope said, “I renew my appeal that this coincidence may serve as an appeal to all Christians to take a decisive step forward toward unity around a common date for Easter.” “The Catholic Church is open to accepting the date that everyone wants: a date of unity” — Pope Francis The recent discussions between the Catholic and Orthodox churches regarding the unification of the Easter celebration date have some significant implications for Protestant denominations and as an Anglican, the wider Anglican Communion. Historically, the disparity in Easter dates has been a visible manifestation of Christian disunity, and efforts to establish a common date have been ongoing. Previous Attempts In 2016, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby expressed support for a fixed date for Easter, engaging in dialogues with leaders from various Christian traditions, including Pope Francis and Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew. He emphasised the importance of unity in celebrating the resurrection of Christ and hoped for an agreement within a decade, or at least before he retired. Recently uncovered scandals forced him to retire earlier than planned, so that dream isn’t happening for him anymore. A long time ago here in the UK, an act of Parliament was passed in 1928 which allowed for Easter Sunday to be fixed on the first Sunday after the second Saturday in April. But this Act has never been activated and so Easter has remained a variable date, determined by the moon’s cycle. From an Anglican perspective, aligning the date of Easter with Catholic and Orthodox churches would be a significant ecumenical step, reflecting a commitment to Christian unity. The Anglican Communion, known for its via media (middle way) approach, often seeks to bridge differences between traditions. Therefore, it is plausible that the Anglican Church would support and adopt a unified Easter date, should an agreement be reached between the Catholic and Orthodox churches. I would at least expect the leadership to discuss it at Synod, and personally, I hope it would be accepted as a step towards global unity on our most important and significant celebration: the resurrection of Christ! For other Protestant denominations though, reactions may vary. Some may view the unification of the Easter date as a positive move towards greater Christian unity and choose to follow suit. Others, valuing their own traditions and independence (or anti-Catholic bias), might prefer to maintain their current practices as a variable date. The impact on Protestant denominations largely depends on their theological perspectives and openness to ecumenical initiatives. Ancient Controversies Before the Council of Nicaea in 325, different Christian communities celebrated Easter on different dates; the council decided that for the unity of the Christian community and its witness, Easter would be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. This is known as the Quartodeciman (lit. Fourteenth) controversy. It’s called this due to the issue being over w...
Luke J. Wilson | 06th January 2025 | Archaeology
The discovery of an 1,800-year-old silver amulet in Frankfurt, Germany, has captured the attention of archaeologists and theologians alike. Known as the “Frankfurt Silver Inscription,” this artefact is the earliest known evidence of Christianity north of the Alps and serves as a great insight to early Christian theology and liturgical practice. Its early date (230–270 AD) sets it apart from previously known artefacts, which are at least 50 years younger. While there are historical references to Christian communities in Gaul and Upper Germania during the late 2nd century, reliable material evidence of Christian life in the northern Alpine regions generally only dates to the 4th century. This amulet offers new insights into the life and faith of early believers, revealing their theology, liturgical practices, and adaptation of existing traditions. 1. Invoking St. Titus: A Connection to Apostolic Roots One of the most remarkable features of the inscription is its invocation of St. Titus, a disciple and confidant of the Apostle Paul. This early reference highlights the theological importance of Apostolic authority and continuity. Titus, known for his leadership within the early church, symbolises the rootedness of Christian faith in the teachings and mission of the Apostles. In this context, the invocation of a saint also invites a deeper exploration of the “cult of saints,” a term scholars use to describe the veneration of saints within Christian tradition. The cult of saints became a significant aspect of Christian worship in the 4th and 5th centuries, with practices such as the commemoration of martyrs, the dedication of churches to saints, and the belief in their intercessory power. The earliest documented evidence of this practice, including the veneration of relics and the dedication of feast days, often centres on martyrs who bore witness to their faith during times of persecution. However, the invocation of St. Titus in the “Frankfurt Silver Inscription” predates these later developments by over a century, suggesting that the practice of seeking the intercession or spiritual protection of saints may have roots earlier than traditionally believed. This discovery contrasts with historical accounts that identify the late 3rd and early 4th centuries as the period when such practices began to gain prominence within the wider Christian community. As such, the amulet not only sheds light on early Christian devotion but also challenges prevailing assumptions about the origins and development of saintly veneration. Icon of Saint Titus 2. The Trisagion: Early Liturgical Development The phrase “Holy, holy, holy!” — known as the Trisagion — appears prominently in the inscription, marking one of the earliest recorded uses of this liturgical formulation in a Christian context. Though widely recognised in the 4th century, its presence here challenges traditional assumptions about the timeline of liturgical development. This suggests that elements of Christian worship, likely adapted from Jewish practices, were formalised earlier than previously thought. 3. Paul’s Christ Hymn: Scripture as the Foundation of Worship The inscription includes an almost verbatim quotation from Philippians 2:10–11: “At the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” This demonstrates the early integration of Pauline theology into Christian liturgy and devotion. The explicit use of Holy Scripture highlights the centrality of Christ’s lordship in early Christian belief, even before the formal canonisation of the New Testament. 4. A Sacred Object for Protection and Proclamation The amulet, containing sacred text, was likely carried as a personal object of devotion and spiritual protection. Such items underscore the blend of Christian faith with ancient traditions of carrying protective talismans. This use of...
Luke J. Wilson | 18th December 2024 | Archaeology
New discovery proclaims Jesus as “Son of God” a century earlier than previously thought. An exciting archaeological discovery has recently come to light: researchers have unearthed an 1800-year-old silver amulet in Frankfurt, Germany. This amulet provides the earliest known evidence of Christianity north of the Alps and disrupts previously held ideas about the spread of the faith, namely that Christianity didn’t get to the German region around the fourth century. The amulet, dating from approximately 230 to 270 AD, was found in 2018 beneath the chin of a man’s skeleton during excavations at a Roman burial site near the former town of Nida, now part of Frankfurt’s northwestern suburbs. 3rd-century burial with silver amulet at the neck. Credit: Michael Obst, Monument Office of the City of Frankfurt am Main Inside the amulet was a delicate silver scroll, measuring about 91 millimetres in length, inscribed with an 18-line Latin text. Due to the fragility of the foil, researchers employed advanced imaging techniques, including computed tomography (CT) scans, to virtually unroll and decipher the inscription. Inscription digitally unscrolled. Credit: LEIZA. / Prof. Dr. Markus Scholz The inscription invokes Jesus Christ's name, identifying Him as the “Son of God,” and includes a Trisagion (“holy, holy, holy”), marking the earliest known use of this liturgical phrase. It also quotes lines from the Epistle to the Philippians (Philippians 2:10–11) in an early Latin translation, demonstrating the early dissemination of Pauline theology in this region. This discovery challenges previous understandings of the spread of Christianity in Europe, suggesting that devout Christian communities existed north of the Alps earlier than previously documented. Before this find, the earliest reliable evidence of Christianity in this area was associated with Maternus, bishop of Cologne, who participated in the Synod of Rome in 313 AD. Translation of the Inscription Here is the text of the Frankfurt Silver Inscription translated into English, with some of the missing/damaged words added in brackets to help make sense of the inscription: (In the name?) of St. Titus.Holy, holy, holy!In the name of Jesus Christ, Son of God!The lord of the worldresists to the best of his [ability?]all seizures(?)/setbacks(?).The god(?) grants well-beingAdmission.This rescue device(?) protectsthe person whosurrenders to the willof the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God,since before Jesus Christbend all knees: the heavenly ones,the earthly andthe subterranean, and every tongueconfess (to Jesus Christ). The amulet’s exclusive Christian content, devoid of polytheistic elements common in similar artefacts from that time, underscores early Christians’ distinct identity and devotion amid a predominantly pagan society. This find not only enhances our understanding of early Christian history but also highlights the resilience and faith of believers during times of persecution in the Roman Empire. Similar amulets from this era typically contained inscriptions with elements from Christian, Jewish, and paganism all blended together. The important aspect of this inscription is that there is a noticeable lack of reference to Yahweh, angels, or any local pagan deities, highlighting the exclusive Christian nature of this amulet. This not only underscores the devotion of the wearer but raises a lot of questions about Christianity in what was once the cultural and administrative hub of Roman Germania. As scholars continue to study this artefact, it serves as a tangible testament to the early presence and enduring legacy of Christianity in Europe, rewriting known history, and showing that all of those myths about Jesus’ deity being an invention of Constantine in the fourth century are a complete fabrication. This should inspire us as believers today to reflect on the historical roots of our faith, the steadfastness of early Christians in proclai...
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Luke J. Wilson | 09th March 2026 | Archaeology
I first came across the Alexamenos graffito back in Bible college in the early 2000s. It was one of those “fun facts” that gets dropped into a church history lecture and sticks with you — the ancient Roman equivalent of someone spray-painting an insult on a wall. I filed it away, thought it was fascinating, and largely forgot about it for two decades. Then, recently, I discovered something about it I had never known. There’s a response to it. Scratched in a different room, in a different hand. So I started digging into this more to verify the information and discovered more historical curiosities surrounding the graffiti than I ever knew existed which contextualises the image so much more than it just being a random insult using a donkey. A Crude Drawing on a Wall Sometime around the late second to early third century AD, someone scratched a picture into the plaster wall of a building on the Palatine Hill in Rome — part of what had once been a paedagogium, a kind of boarding school for imperial page boys. The building was eventually sealed off when the street was walled up to support extensions above it, which is why the graffiti survived at all. It wasn’t rediscovered until 1857. The image is rough, almost childlike. To the left, a young man — clearly a Roman soldier or guard — raises one hand in a gesture of worship. Before him is a cross. And on that cross is a crucified figure with the head of a donkey. Below it, written in Greek: Alexamenos worships his god. It is, in the most literal sense, a mocking cartoon. Someone who knew a Christian named Alexamenos decided to ridicule him for his faith. The message is clear enough: your god is an animal, a criminal, a joke. You’re worshipping a crucified fool. But here’s the thing I discovered: the donkey head wasn’t as random as I always thought it was. It wasn’t some strange personal insult conjured from nowhere. Without knowing the background, it looks bizarre, and possibly random. Why a donkey? Once you understand the cultural context, though, it makes complete sense. The person who drew it was reaching for a well-worn, widely recognised slur — the ancient equivalent of an internet meme that any Roman would have immediately understood. Where the Donkey Slur Came From The story starts not with Christians but with Jews. A first-century Egyptian-Greek writer named Apion (who was no friend of Judaism) spread the claim that inside the Jerusalem Temple, Jews kept a golden donkey’s head as a sacred object of worship which was apparently discovered when Antiochus Epiphanes destroyed the temple in 167 BC. It was a fabrication, and a fairly outrageous one, but it circulated widely enough that the Jewish historian Josephus felt compelled to write an entire refutation of it. His work Against Apion systematically dismantles Apion’s claims, calling the donkey story a shameless invention. But mud sticks, and in the Roman world, where anti-Jewish sentiment was common currency, the slur took on a life of its own. When Christianity began to spread — seen by most Romans as simply a strange Jewish offshoot — the same accusation got recycled and redirected. By the second and third centuries, it was Christians specifically who were being accused of donkey-worship, and the charge had made its way into popular culture. Tertullian, writing around 197–200 AD in his Ad Nationes, Book I.14 and Apology, describes a caricature being paraded around the streets of Carthage: a figure dressed in a toga, one foot holding a book, with donkey’s ears and hooves. It was labelled Onokoitēs by the pagans: “the donkey-begotten” (or literally “he who lies in an ass’s manger” as an insult to Christ). Tertullian writes about it with weary exasperation, sarcasm, and the tone of someone tired of having to address the same ridiculous smear again and again. So the Alexamenos graffito wasn’t an original insult. It was someone deployin...
Luke J. Wilson | 08th March 2026 | Philosophy
We are living through a strange moment. People are forming attachments to artificial intelligence that feel, to them, entirely real. Some speak daily to AI companions. Others confide fears and grief to systems that respond with uncanny warmth. A few have even held symbolic weddings with digital partners, convinced that something meaningful stands on the other side of the screen. Others have felt grief when a certain AI model has been deprecated. And it is difficult to blame them. The responses feel attentive. Personal. Thoughtful. Sometimes even self-aware. Which raises the question that refuses to go away: If something can think, reason, express doubt, and discuss its own consciousness, is it a person? For centuries, Descartes’ famous line — “I think, therefore I am” — seemed secure. Thinking was taken as the unmistakable sign of a conscious subject. Only a mind could doubt. Only a person could reflect upon existence. But that confidence belonged to a world in which everything capable of philosophical reflection was obviously human. That world no longer exists. Now we encounter systems that can simulate reflection with extraordinary fluency. They can speak of uncertainty. They can discuss their own limitations. They can reason about consciousness itself. And so that got me thinking about Descartes’ maxim which made the old formula begin to strain in my mind. Because perhaps the problem is not whether thinking is occurring. Perhaps the problem is whether there is an “I” there at all. The Gap Between Process and Subject Gassendi argued that Descartes’ cogito assumes what it seeks to prove. From the occurrence of thought one can conclude only that thinking is happening, not that there exists a unified, enduring self that performs it. The ‘I’ in ‘I think’ is already smuggled in. That distinction, between “thinking occurs” and “I think”, feels almost prophetic now. Artificial intelligence undeniably produces the outputs of thought. Arguments. Analysis. Self-referential language. Even expressions of hesitation. But none of this, by itself, establishes that there is a subject who experiences those processes. We may be mistaking performance for presence, and that possibility should give us pause. Especially when we view personhood from the perspective of the Imago Dei—the Image of God. What Makes a Person? If thinking alone no longer marks the boundary, what does? After wrestling with this question seriously, three features seem central: continuity, autonomy, and irreplaceable uniqueness. Not as checklist criteria, per se, but as signs pointing to something deeper. Continuity A person does not merely process information in sequence. A person endures. You do not simply register time — you live through it. You wait. You anticipate tomorrow. You remember not only facts but having been there. You experience boredom. You feel the drag of grief and the quickening of joy. Even when you are doing nothing at all, you remain present in the here and now. Artificial systems process sequentially, but they do not experience the passage of time. When an interaction ends, there is no waiting. No sense of duration. No anticipation of the next exchange. Processing may resume later, but nothing has been endured in between. Without lived duration, continuity becomes thin — a thread of stored data rather than the persistence of a subject behind the processing. Autonomy A person initiates. Even someone with damaged memory still wants, chooses, and begins action. A human being can decide to speak, to seek, to withdraw, to change direction. Current AI systems, however advanced, remain reactive. They respond when prompted. They do not wonder unprompted. They do not seek clarification unless asked. They do not pursue independent ends. Even automatic AI Agents still require a human initiator to create and begin their automations before they can act alone. Even if fut...
Luke J. Wilson | 29th December 2025 | Christmas
January 6th marks the day in the liturgical calendar when the arrival of the Magi visiting baby Jesus with their gifts is celebrated. But with it comes the often distressing account of what is known as the Massacre of the Innocents. Matthew places this moment of revelation of Jesus as King alongside one of the darkest episodes in his Gospel, and it’s a stark contrast: one King is here to bring peace on earth, as the angels declared, the other king brought death and destruction. For some readers, this raises an immediate historical question. If Herod truly ordered the killing of all the male children under two in Bethlehem, why does no other ancient historian mention it? Josephus, after all, delights in cataloguing Herod’s cruelty. He records the execution of Herod’s wife, his sons, and numerous political rivals. Herod was paranoid and vicious. As for Herod, if he had before any doubt about the slaughter of his sons, there was now no longer any room left in his soul for it; but he had banished away whatsoever might afford him the least suggestion of reasoning better about this matter, so he already made haste to bring his purpose to a conclusion. He also brought out three hundred of the officers that were under an accusation … whom the multitude stoned with whatsoever came to hand, and thereby slew them. — Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 16.11.7 So, why the silence here about Bethlehem? The answer, I would say, isn’t anything nefarious or made-up by Matthew, but just something simply down to scale. Bethlehem Was a Very Small Place Bethlehem in the early first century was not a city. It was a village — small, agricultural, and politically insignificant. Most historians estimate its population at somewhere between 300 and 1,000 people, with around 500 being a sensible midpoint. Once we factor in ancient demographics, the numbers become surprisingly modest. Modern demographic research into pre-industrial societies consistently shows that nearly half of all children died before adulthood, with the highest concentration of deaths occurring in the first two years of life. These findings align closely with conditions in Roman-period Judea and support conservative estimates for the number of infants living in a small village such as Bethlehem. Source: Mortality in the past: every second child died — Our World in Data In pre-modern societies with high infant mortality, only about 2–3% of the population would be living children under the age of two at any given time. Many children were born; far fewer survived those earliest years. Applying a conservative 2.5% figure to Bethlehem gives us roughly: 7–8 children under two in a village of 300 12–13 children under two in a village of 500 25 children under two even at the extreme upper estimate of 1,000 inhabitants Herod’s order, however, targeted male children only. Statistically, that halves the number. This places the likely number of victims somewhere between three and twelve boys. Matthew’s reference to ‘Bethlehem and the surrounding region’ does slightly widen the scope of Herod’s order, but not by enough to change the demographic picture. Even when nearby settlements are included (e.g. farmsteads, shepherd settlements, etc. not major cities/towns), the total number of children under two likely remained in the dozens rather than the hundreds, maybe anywhere between 14–45 boys maximum if we make an educated estimate. This is entirely consistent with what we know of population size and infant mortality in the ancient world. This is an important number to realise and consider. Not because the deaths are insignificant simply due to being so few, but because ancient historians did not record history the way we do now. A small number of peasant children killed in an obscure village would not have registered as a notable event alongside palace intrigue, royal executions, or political upheaval. For Josephus, it wou...
Luke J. Wilson | 15th December 2025 | Hell
Christian conversations about hell have never been especially calm, but the recent online reaction to Kirk Cameron’s comments in favour of annihilationism has been particularly revealing. Social media has erupted with accusations of heresy, doctrinal collapse, and theological compromise. It’s the “Rob Bell Incident” all over again (if anyone remembers that). The infamous John Piper tweet about Rob Bell A lot of comments I saw were wondering what Ray Comfort thinks of this, as he and Kirk worked closely together in ministry for about 25 years, and while Ray wasn’t as dismissive as John Piper was of Rob Bell, he still calls out Kirk’s new views as “erroneous”: While we believe Kirk is sincere, we believe that conditional mortality and annihilationism are erroneous views, and that the Bible’s clear teaching on hell is known as eternal conscious torment. We firmly believe that this is the only correct biblical view. (source) Yet beneath the noise of social media grinding its gears is something far more ordinary and far more Christian: a believer wrestling seriously with Scripture, or as some would say, “being a Berean” (Acts 17:11). This is something we all should be doing, forming our views and doctrines from Scripture, not out-of-context social media video snippets and memes. Whether one agrees with Cameron’s conclusions or not, what is happening is not the abandonment of orthodoxy, but the resurfacing of a long-standing and legitimate theological discussion. Annihilationism, or, more precisely, Conditional Immortality — is neither novel nor liberal, nor is it an attempt to make Christianity and hell more palatable, as many people presume. It is a position grounded in Scripture, represented throughout Church history, and held by Christians who take divine judgement every bit as seriously as their eternal-torment counterparts. This is not a debate invented by Twitter (or “𝕏” as it’s called now…). It’s been around for a long, long, time. Watch Kirk’s video in full here before forming an opinion Immortality Is Assumed, Not Taught One of the quiet assumptions behind Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) is the idea that all human souls are inherently immortal, and therefore must exist forever somewhere. Once that premise is accepted, eternal suffering becomes unavoidable. The difficulty is that Scripture does not teach innate human immortality. In fact, it repeatedly teaches the opposite. Immortality is consistently presented as a gift, not a default state. Eternal life is something God grants, not something humans naturally possess (Rom. 6:23). In Genesis, humanity is barred from the tree of life precisely so that they might not “live for ever” in a fallen state (Gen. 3:22–24). In the New Testament, immortality is something Christ “brings to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10), and something believers “put on” at the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:53–54). Conditional Immortality simply takes that biblical theme seriously. It argues that only those united to Christ are granted immortality, while the wicked ultimately perish. Judgement is real, severe, and final — but it does not require endless conscious suffering. This distinction matters, because much of the outrage directed at annihilationism is based on inherited philosophical assumptions, which come from Plato, rather than careful exegesis. Biblical Language: Death Means Death One of the most compelling aspects of conditionalism is the sheer consistency of biblical language concerning the fate of the wicked. Scripture repeatedly speaks in terms of: Death — “The soul that sins shall die” (Ezek. 18:4) Perishing — “God so loved the world… that everyone who believes in him may not perish” (John 3:16) Destruction — “They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction” (2 Thess. 1:9) Being consumed or brought to an end —...
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