I suspect it was probably my idea originally. I was in eighth grade and didn’t know better. Regardless, it had happened: one of the members of the youth group (perhaps me?) suggested we study the book of Revelation. Our teacher was an enthusiastic fan of Revelation prophecies and an avid reader of the Left Behind series, and that description alone probably makes it clear we were in for a journey. Every session boiled down to some of the same talking points:

“The beast from the sea is described as having the body of a horse, the tail of a scorpion, and breathing fire. Doesn’t that sound like how an ancient writer would describe an Apache helicopter?!”

“The Antichrist is a charismatic leader with a mortal wound who rises to power with plans to unite the world. Doesn’t that sound like the European Union?!”

“A time when Israel fights a battle on many fronts, but the world turns its back. Doesn’t that sound like the Middle East today?!”

The answer to all these questions was a resounding “Nope.” Please note, this class took place more than 20 years ago, and none of our teacher’s prophecies ever came to pass, yet so many people today use this same approach to the book of Revelation. As conflict rages in Israel, many Evangelical “prophets” are talking about how this war mirrors the story of Revelation— how attacks on Israel foretell the return of Christ and the destruction of the world as we know it. But here’s the thing:

It’s incredibly easy to make this shit up.

Because so few modern readers really know how to read Revelation, all you need is a little awareness of the book’s imagery, maybe a smattering of bullshit numerology, and an audience anxious enough to listen. In fact, to demonstrate how easy this is to do, let’s come up with something silly and see if we can defend it with “prophecy” from Revelation…

An abrupt breakup between pop superstar Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce will usher in the apocalypse before the end of 2023.

Okay, we’ve got our totally made-up prediction. Let’s talk about how to make it seem valid based on “biblical teaching.”

1. Use some bullshit numerology to set the stage.
   Taylor Swift was born on December 13th, 1989, or 12/13. Twelve is a sacred number, but notice how positioning it alongside 13 presents a possible corrupting factor. And don’t even get me started on how, if you add the 1 to the 8 and then turn the whole thing upside-down, 1989 becomes 666. On to the Travis Kelce side of the equation, he is 34 years old, which is one more than the sacred number “33”; ergo, Travis must somehow be a parody of the sacred. Taylor is currently 33 but will turn 34 as well in just a matter of weeks, so the prophecy must be fulfilled before that date! Also, one of Taylor’s songs is called “22”; note how the presence of two twos implies duplicity! Furthermore, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce each have 11 letters in their names, which again adds up to —you guessed it— 22! (Okay, that’s enough to work with. We’re off to a good start.)
2. Pull a random description from Revelation and make it apply to your prediction.
   So, after googling “women in the book of Revelation”, there’s this figure in Revelation 12: “A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.” Taylor is famously blonde (i.e. clothed with the sun), and the moon under her feet represents the Spotify logo. Taylor of course has ten studio albums, so we should anticipate two more surprise releases in the next few weeks to complete the “12 stars” (maybe a few more of those “Taylor’s Version” re-releases?). Now, the pregnancy thing is weird, but I think it’s a metaphor for how we “birth” creative works; Taylor must be getting ready to come out with those new albums! Also, subsequent verses in Revelation 12 talk about a red dragon (which obviously refers to the red of the Kansas City uniforms) with ten horns (referring to the ten additional offensive players on the field alongside the tight end). And what is Travis Kelce’s number? 87, which ends in 7, which is how many horns the dragon has! It all fits!
3. Insist that the prophecy you’ve made up will align with future events loosely depicted in Revelation.
   So, okay, now that we’ve twisted some descriptions around, we need to make Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s relationship foretell the end of the world. In Revelation 12, we see a war break out between the dragon (which we’ve established as Travis Kelce) and the angels led by Michael. Now, at first, I thought the “Michael” here might be Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Vrabel, but I’ve come up with a more likely scenario than the Titans having any effect on the end of the world. Big Machine Records (the company Taylor has had a very public falling out with) was founded by Scott Borchettta, whose father’s name was —wait for it— Michael! See, the pieces are all coming together. We’ll get a fight between the Kansas City Chiefs and Big Machine Records as Taylor is “birthing” a new musical project. Here’s the deal though: Revelation states the dragon will try to devour the baby, so could Travis become jealous of the megastardom to which this new project will certainly launch Taylor? Will they split up over it, and will that breakup lead to a second American Civil War (because of course America has to be at the center of this)?! Well, I can’t imagine it playing out any other way, can you? I mean, come on, it’s right there in the Bible.
4. Disregard the context of the original Revelation passage, and assume it’s talking about our current time period instead.
   Revelation is an ancient apocalyptic work, and that’s a genre we’ve sort of lost the ability to read over the centuries. Time works differently in apocalyptic literature: events from the past, present, and future are all being referenced simultaneously alongside coded religious and political images which would have made sense to readers back then but which mystify us today. As such, your best bet when making an End Times prophecy is to remove passages in Revelation from their original contexts as much as possible. Are the woman and the dragon stand-ins for the Church and the Roman Empire or Satan? Possibly, but all that context is just going to confuse the people hearing our prophecy; best to just breeze over it and imagine these words only refer to our own time period (which is the most important one to God anyway).
5. Tap into preexisting biases to really sell it.
   Sexism seems like a pretty safe bet here. If there’s one thing American Evangelicals hate, it’s famous talented independent women, so let’s lean into it to raise suspicion of Taylor as a potential bringer of the apocalypse. Also, the Chiefs’ name is a reference to Native Americans, a culture which white Christians attempted to wipe out, so perhaps we can play on that guilt and insecurity to mobilize Evangelicals against Travis Kelce.
6. Give an arbitrary date, but insist it’s “based on a biblical timeline”.
   Again, we know that Taylor Swift will turn the blasphemous age of 34 next month, and because there are years missing from the Gregorian calendar, this aligns with the coming of a new millennium! The end is nigh!
7. Extra credit if your “prophecy” is a huge bummer and rips on something people love.
   In years past, New Year’s Eve has been a prime candidate for this, but for our bogus prophecy, we’re using the fun and wholesome relationship between Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Social media seems to love this couple, so it’s perfect for us to exploi— I mean, prophesy about.
8. When the prophecy inevitably doesn’t work out, never admit defeat. Double down.
   Oh, Taylor and Travis are still together? Those two surprise albums didn’t come out? There isn’t a second American Civil War? It’s not that I’m wrong; I must have just miscalculated the date. Maybe the world will end on Taylor’s 35th birthday, not 34th. After all, 3 and 4 make 7, which is a holy number, so all this will need to happen while Taylor is 34, not 33. Enjoy the next year, heathens. The End is nigh.
9. Get a gullible Evangelical radio channel to give you air time.
   If this doesn’t work, you can also try just buying a billboard and luring people to a super sketchy website. Make sure to put some waving American flag gifs on there.

And that’s how you bullshit an End Times prophecy.

Now, we’ve had a little fun with this, and the scenario is obviously laughable, but various Christian groups have been pulling these kinds of shenanigans for centuries, often with disastrous financial and mental health consequences to their members. My favorite historical example may be the Millerites, but we’ve lived through several more recent End Times scams. I remember the Evangelical panic around Y2K and Left Behind. I remember when churches started to get really tense around 2012. And yes, with this most recent conflict in Israel, I’ve got a lot of Evangelical friends who are a little extra jittery (or excited) about the impending end of the world. This kind of anxiety is a way to get butts into pews and keep them there, but that’s not the ethic that Jesus preached. Jesus didn’t just want to scare people into a paranoid faith; he sought to help people live lives of love and charity— values which constant End Times anxiety undermines by boiling Christianity down to a single toxic “Are you saved?” litmus test. And with the current conflict in Israel, you better believe our most exploitative clergy are ramping up the anxiety.

Now, while we’re on the subject of Israel, this seems like a good time to take a quick detour to acknowledge a pretty big serious political elephant in the room: prophecy involving Israel’s politics is especially tricky and dangerous. Please bear with me. This is going to require a whole lot of nuance.

I’m not convinced that the modern nationstate of Israel is an appropriate stand-in for the biblical Israel. The Jewish people have been scattered in diaspora for centuries, and the cultures which have evolved from this scattered people are diverse and beautiful. To say that the roughly 7 million Jews who’ve come to call Israel home over the last 75 years constitute an accurate analog for the whole of the Jewish people seems like a stretch. We should also remember that Israel itself is not monolithic; Netanyahu is one of the most unpopular prime ministers in the country’s history, and plenty of Israeli activists want to see the country move in a different direction. On the flip-side, we’d also be foolish to disregard the antisemitism undergirding many of the critiques of Israel, and we should regard cautiously any responses to the past month and a half which call out Judaism as a whole rather than the Netanyahu administration specifically. And finally, back on the Christian prophetic side of things, given Jesus’s proclivity for disregarding the rules and boundaries of various nations during his lifetime, working through a defined modern nationstate —be it America, Israel, the British Empire, or whoever— just doesn’t feel like his M.O. To put it bluntly, the more ministers focus on preserving borders and waging wars, the less we sound like Jesus.

So yeah, is Israel a legitimate country and US ally which has suffered painful conflict throughout its existence (including the trauma of a devastating terrorist attack a month and a half ago)? Yes, I think that’s all pretty clear. Is the controversial location of Israel an incredibly thorny issue which must be addressed with far more care and delicacy than the average fire-and-brimstone sermon? Holy crap, yes. And, perhaps most important to our discussion here today, is a modern 75-year-old country (regardless of its religious identity) an appropriate stand-in for the whole Jewish people in a centuries-old apocalyptic text? That seems less likely. But the fact that we even have to ask all this about Israel reveals an unfortunate trope of biblical prophecy: it’s all too easy to read it anachronistically and glom all kinds of bizarre stuff onto these texts. (After all, we just managed to do that with Taylor Swift.)

So whether you’re talking about Israel’s politics or the relationship between a pop megastar and a football player, biblical prophecy (especially End Times prophecy) should be regarded with care and skepticism. The book of Revelation is a literary treasure, and its message is ultimately one of hope— a new creation free of pain and sorrow, a kingdom where we will dwell with God in a new and joyous way, a time when corrupt earthly powers are put back in their proper place under God’s authority. When we fixate on making the events around us fit some sort of doomsday prophecy, we sell Revelation short, and we introduce a whole bunch of anxiety into the world that we just don’t need.

So read Revelation with an open mind.
Use careful discernment when talking about Israel.
And let Taylor and Travis have their fun.
Amen.