Robert Jeffress not only supports President Donald Trump’s bombing of Iran, but his publicist sent out a news release to make sure everyone understands he does.
In last Sunday morning’s sermon — delivered hours after Trump ordered massive bombs dropped on four Iranian nuclear sites — the pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas told congregants he supports Trump and Israel.
According to the news release, “the congregation interrupted … several times with rousing applause and responded with a standing ovation, expressing solidarity with their pastor’s remarks and agreement with President Trump’s actions, before kneeling for prayer for the president, the American military, the people and leadership of Israel and the American people.”
He linked support for Trump’s action to support for Israel at all costs.
“To support Israel first of all means to support Israel’s right to exist,” he said. “The nation of Iran doesn’t believe Israel has the right to exist. Iran has as its stated objective to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, and there are other countries who believe that as well. But in doing so, they are going against God himself.
“Unlike any other nation in the world, God created the nation of Israel.”
“Unlike any other nation in the world, God created the nation of Israel,” Jeffress declared. “Israel was his idea, and he said Israel will endure forever. No other nation, including the United States, has that promise, but Israel has that promise.”
As he has done in countless other sermons and books and interviews, Jeffress disputed any Palestinian claim to land in the Holy Lands.
“You listen to the Left, to what’s been taught on college campuses, they would have you believe that this land belongs to the Palestinians, (saying), ‘It’s been theirs and just in the last 50 years Isarel tried to come and steal the land that belonged to the poor Palestinians.’ Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Instead, he insisted, a study of the Bible, secular history and archaeology shows “beyond a shadow of a doubt that Israel occupied that land at least 3,000 years ago. It was theirs because God gave it to them, and he said, ‘This land will be yours forever.’”
And anyone who opposes Israel will always be on “the wrong side of history” and “the wrong side of God,” Jeffress said. “I thank God we finally have a president who understands that truth in Donald Trump.”
Jeffress was not alone in providing evangelical theological cover for one of the most controversial decisions made by an already controversial president.
US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee is presented with a gift as he visits the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews are allowed to pray, while accompanied by Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch. (Photo by GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AFP via Getty Images)
A few days before the attack, Southern Baptist pastor Mike Huckabee, now ambassador to Israel, texted a message to Trump:
God spared you in Butler, PA to be the most consequential president in a century — maybe ever. The decisions on your shoulders I would not want to be made by anyone else.
You have many voices speaking to you sir, but there is only ONE voice that matters. HIS voice.
I am your appointed servant in this land and am available for you but I do not try to get in your presence often because I trust your instincts.
No president in my lifetime has been in a position like yours. Not since Truman in 1945. I don’t reach out to persuade you. Only to encourage you.
I believe you will hear from heaven and that voice is far more important than mine or ANYONE else’s.
You sent me to Israel to be your eyes, ears and voice and to make sure our flag flies above our embassy. My job is to be the last one to leave.
I will not abandon this post. Our flag will NOT come down! You did not seek this moment. This moment sought YOU!
It is my honor to serve you!
As BNG and other outlets have reported, there was a sharp divide among Trump’s supporters over what to do in Iran. The more secular isolationists wanted him to stay away from all foreign conflict, while the evangelicals wanted him to intervene to protect Israel.
“To his evangelical base, Trump is fulfilling end times prophecies before their eyes,” according to author and commentator Diana Butler Bass. “Moving the embassy was but the first step in reorienting U.S. policy toward prophecy. What is happening right now — with the U.S. joining with Israel in this bombing — is nothing less than God’s work, and they believe that they are the recipients of the long-awaited promise of Jesus’ return.”
Diana Butler Bass
Bass notes this particular theology — known as premillennial dispensationalism — dates only to the mid-1800s. “It was a completely invented theology about 200 years ago,” she said. “Yet that theological innovation has been one of the most wildly successful heresies in the history of Christianity in terms of spread and influence — mostly via Pentecostalism, the largest and most sustained global religious movement of the last century.”
Huckabee is one of the “chief proponents” of that errant theology, she said.
For those who want to understand what’s going on, understand this, she said: “Bombing Iran secures Trump’s status as God’s man, the one sent to fulfill the prophetic promises that lead to the return of Jesus. While the rest of us are trying to discern signs of fascism, many Americans are discerning the ‘signs of the times.’
“We think Hitler. They think Jesus. We think of the innocent suffering. They think of the final judgment. We pray for peace. They believe that the Prince of Peace is returning with a sword.”
And now, with the bombs having dropped, the MAGA base appears to be coalescing around evangelical support for Trump’s position, new polling shows.
A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday found 81% of Republican voters back the U.S. joining Israel in striking Iran’s nuclear sites. However, 75% of Democrats and 60% of independents oppose the strikes.
There is “no ambivalence from Republicans on the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites. By a large margin, GOP voters give full-throated support to the mission,” said Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy. “American voters, most of whom are not supportive of the country joining in the Israel-Iran conflict, are extremely troubled by the possibility that involvement could metastasize and draw the U.S. into a direct war with Iran.”
Evangelical leader Franklin Graham indirectly praised Trump’s decision on Iran, writing on X: “I thank God for President @realDonaldTrump’s leadership of our nation. I believe the world is at a much safer place this week than we were last week. Join me in praying that God would guide and direct his every step as he faces these incredibly tough decisions.”
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