When Peace in the Middle East Was a Sign of the End Times
How modern prophecy flipped the script on who the Antichrist is supposed to be.
In popular American evangelical teaching, a key “sign” of the Antichrist is a leader who seems to deliver peace in the Middle East — often framed as a covenant with Israel drawn from Daniel 9:27 and repeated in prophecy media and novels.
That idea was systematized in modern dispensational theology and then popularized by Hal Lindsey and the Left Behind franchise, where the Antichrist brokers a seven-year deal with Israel. Yet when President Trump brokered a huge ceasefire deal in Gaza, seeing the release of hostages, most white evangelicals didn’t apply their own Antichrist rubric to him at all. They wanted him to get the Nobel Peace Prize and were outraged he didn’t.
President Jimmy Carter, by contrast, was sometimes cast by the Christian right as “kind of the antichrist” after the Camp David peace breakthrough. The inconsistency speaks for itself.
I grew up in a conservative religious household. I believed in the rapture. The tribulation. The Antichrist. All of it. Then I grew up some more and discovered my religious beliefs didn’t hold up to scrutiny.
In the churches I knew, there was a recurring point: beware the leader who “brings peace” to the Middle East. We were told the Antichrist would “confirm a covenant” with Israel. Daniel 9:27 was quoted so often I can still hear the cadence. In that reading, peace is the setup. The mask. The fake calm before the hammer falls.
That framework isn’t ancient Christianity. It’s modern — nineteenth-century modern. John Nelson Darby built the system. The Scofield Reference Bible spread it across America. That’s how rapture-tribulation charting took over Sunday school, radio preachers, and pulpits.
From there it jumped into pop culture. Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth turned end-times into mass-market reading. Then Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins wrapped it in airport-novel pacing with Left Behind. Their Antichrist, Nicolae Carpathia, literally signs a peace deal with Israel and green-lights a rebuilt Temple. Millions read it. Many taught it. Peace treaty equals Antichrist. That was the meme.
Now the real world. Trump’s team brokered the Abraham Accords in 2020, normalizing ties between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain, with later signers following. He also moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, a long-promised step many evangelicals wanted. He brokered a historic deal in Gaza.
If your yardstick is “leader who brings peace breakthroughs in the region,” you’d think someone might raise an eyebrow. Instead, white evangelicals overwhelmingly approved of Trump’s presidency and cheered these moves. The “peace deal = Antichrist” flag never went up.
When I posted about this on social media, I riled up some true Trump believers. They insisted Trump couldn’t be the Antichrist because he wasn’t born in the Middle East. But of course, you won’t find that in the Bible — the Antichrist prophecies don’t say where he’ll be born.
And evangelicals didn’t mention birthplace when another president brokered a Middle East peace deal.
When Jimmy Carter helped land the Camp David Accords, parts of the Christian right painted Reagan as virtue and Carter as, quote, “kind of the antichrist.” A peacemaker got the Antichrist whisper campaign. A dealmaker they liked did not. Theology flexed to fit the team jersey.
I was taught that to see any peace in the Middle East was to see a sign of the End Times — that millions of Christians were about to be raptured up into the air and vanish from the earth.
I’m not arguing prophecy. Personally, I think it’s all hoo-haw. I’m noting the double standard. If your doctrine says the Antichrist arrives with Middle East peace in hand, you either apply it consistently or admit it was always a political cudgel.
Let’s also be honest about the source code. Rapture charts and the “peace-covenant Antichrist” package are late inventions. Darby in the 1830s. Scofield notes in 1909 and 1917. Then Lindsey in 1970. LaHaye in the 1990s. Earlier generations of Christianity didn’t preach a pre-trib rapture and a seven-year peace-treaty timeline the way today’s American prophecy culture does.
So here’s my bottom line. As a kid, I swallowed the rapture-tribulation narrative whole. As an adult, I’ve watched the same circles toss their own rules when the politics change. That tells me the rules — or the faith — were never the point.