One noncommissioned officer said he was directed to tell his troops that Trump was “anointed by Jesus” and that war with Iran was “all part of God’s divine plan” to bring about Armageddon.

In less than a week, the US and Israel’s war has rendered unfathomable suffering upon the people of Iran. Over 180 schoolgirls and staffers were killed in a massacre this weekend, and several hospitals have reportedly been struck, amid numerous other attacks on civilians.

But some US troops are being told the bloodletting is all a part of God’s plan.

At a briefing on Monday, as President Donald Trump unleashed what has been called a “carpet bombing” of Tehran, a combat-unit commander reportedly told noncommissioned officers (NCOs) that the commander-in-chief was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”

The complaint, sent by one of those noncommissioned officers, was just one of at least 110 similar reports received by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) since Trump first launched strikes on Saturday.

In compliance with the First Amendment, the Department of Defense has long adopted rules against proselytizing within the armed forces. But under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, an evangelical Christian who has said the West must wage a “crusade” against Islam, Christian nationalist invocations in the military have become commonplace.

Mikey Weinstein, the president and founder of MRFF and an Air Force veteran who served in the White House of former President Ronald Reagan, told independent journalist Jonathan Larsen that the group has been “inundated” with complaints from NCOs since Saturday, which all have “one damn thing in freaking common.”

“Our MRFF clients report the unrestricted euphoria of their commanders and command chains as to how this new ‘biblically-sanctioned’ war is clearly the undeniable sign of the expeditious approach of the fundamentalist Christian ‘End Times’ as vividly described in the New Testament Book of Revelation,” Weinstein said.

“Many of their commanders,” he added, “are especially delighted with how graphic this battle will be, zeroing in on how bloody all of this must become in order to fulfill and be in 100% accordance with fundamentalist Christian end-of-the-world eschatology.”

According to Larsen, who first reported on the MRFF’s findings on Monday, the message has been spread far and wide as US troops rained missiles down upon Iran.

Larsen reported that the “complaints came from than 40 different units spread across at least 30 military installations,” and have involved commanders in every branch of the US military.

One noncommissioned officer, who did not identify himself out of fear of retaliation, said his commander “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”

The NCO added that his commander “had a big grin on his face when he said all of this, which made his message seem even crazy.”

“Our commander would probably be described as a ‘Christian First’ supporter,” he said. “He has been this way for a very long time and makes it clear that he desires all of us under him to become just like him as a Christian. But what he did this morning was so toxic and over the line that it shocked many of us in attendance at the ops readiness briefing.”

The NCO identified himself as a Christian, but emailed MRFF on behalf of 15 of his troops, which included at least one Muslim and one Jewish person.

He said that their commanders’ remarks “destroy morale and unit cohesion and are in violation of the oaths we swore to support the Constitution.”