Gareth O'Callaghan: JD Vance doesn't mind if the end times come — which god is he working for?

Talk of the apocalypse is everywhere we look these days, but it's not the inevitability some want us to believe 

JD Vance said publicly last week that he ‘is doing as much of God’s work as possible’ and he is OK ‘if that leads to the end of times’, which he says ‘are coming’. Picture: AP

Can you remember where you were or what you were doing on May 21, 2011? Does the date mean anything? 

Most likely not, unless it’s a birthday, or some other significant anniversary.

The reason it became memorable was because a famous American Christian radio broadcaster convinced tens of thousands of his listeners that the world would end on that day. 

As he prophesied, the date would coincide with the second coming of Christ.

Based on detailed analysis of the Bible, evangelist Harold Camping genuinely believed the ultimate conflict between good and evil was destined to take place that Saturday, which would then result in the final judgement. 

His organisation, Family Radio, based in Franklin Tennessee, spent millions in advertising to get the message out to its listeners. 

Many of them clung to his every word. To those who took the teachings of the Good Book literally, this was not a rehearsal.

In hindsight, his prediction turned out to be a non-starter, so he revised the date to October 21 later that same year. He had originally predicted the end of time would occur on September 6, 1994. 

He blamed a mathematical error. God loves a trier, as they say. Clearly Jesus was not a blond-haired blue-eyed Republican, much as many of America’s Christian nationalists want to believe he was.

And now, according to a recent Bloomberg article, people are betting on Christ’s return in 2026 (which doesn’t leave a lot of time if it’s true). 

Gladly most of the bets are gambling against the final curtain this year; but it still shows just how curious we are as a society with the end times — scriptures aside. It will happen, so best not make light of it.

Considering that history could now have its own textbook of failed predictions of the Second Coming — or a similar process known to some as the Rapture — and also for those non-believers who quietly fret about wars, and climate change and plague and how it might all end, we are still here, intact; or just about. 

But for how long more? If the road to perdition were a kitchen recipe, then it feels as though we’re almost cooked.

If the Jesus we were all taught to believe in as children is watching what’s going on right now, I would imagine he’s as nervous and uncertain as the rest of us as to what the future holds, and how much longer humanity can hold out.

That might sound simplistic. It’s not meant to be, because it’s precisely how many people feel. 

For most Christian believers, human history is not just a series of random meaningless events, it’s a journey that follows an ancient story. 

For others who don’t believe, it’s more likely that life appears to be nothing more than random and mostly beyond their control.

Survival of the luckiest

Luck plays a huge role in survival. When you strip back all the teachings, and any affluence and status that mark out our individual lives and validate them, what you are left with is a balancing act that places survival as its priority. Covid proved that.

We believe during the good times we are in control, but that’s simply a coping mechanism. 

You only have to look around to see it’s a myth, which is precisely why the idea of the end times feels so unfathomable.

End times are becoming more of a certainty as each year passes; the notion is no longer implausible — we have long passed that by. 

Right now, it seems as though it would be easier to destroy humanity than to heal it, and that process is progressing exponentially.

Almost one in three Americans, according to a study by psychologist Matthew Billet, now believe the world will end in their lifetime, and that’s not a fringe position held by a handful of doomsday cults. 

Whether you’re watching glaciers disappear or worrying about the dangers of AI, this common belief of the end times cuts across all dimensions of society — not just evangelists.

Perhaps for the first time, people are asking out loud whether it will be humans or God who will bring about end times. 

My gut instinct tells me that a bunch of my own species are already well invested in the task, and they don’t care.

Bigger challenges to come

Sure, there’s lots of pessimism and fatalism swirling about right now, but that doesn’t help to solve what otherwise will be an inevitability. 

We feel unable to protect ourselves against an unknown enemy. Once again, covid proved that. But there are bigger challenges to come and we owe it to ourselves to be ready.

For over 75 years, the Doomsday Clock has served as humanity’s determinant, or warning system, for existential threats. 

As this symbolic clock edges closer to midnight — end times — interesting patterns of mortality edge upwards, including suicide and Alzheimer’s deaths.

As published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in January 2024 the clock remained at 90 seconds to midnight — the closest it has ever come in its history to the end times, reflecting the threats of nuclear war, the climate crisis, and rising AI risks.

It’s not difficult to surmise that existential dread is the one reality we are all now doomed to face, if we allow it, while that also asks questions about our collective diminishing health in the shadow of global threats.

What’s even more interesting in this study is the reaction of those who believed that God or supernatural forces controlled the end times. 

They were significantly less likely to support extreme action to address those same threats — as though God will have the final say while protecting them.

JD Vance ‘doing as much of God’s work as possible’

One such believer appears to be JD Vance, who said publicly last week that he “is doing as much of God’s work as possible” and that he is OK “if that leads to the end of times”, which he says “are coming”. Which ‘god’ does he work for?

His boss’s depiction of himself as Jesus earlier this year on social media still leaves me lost for words.

What’s equally worrying now when it comes to tracking end-times eschatology is the rising ideology of the far right. 

Supremacist survivalism, as writer Naomi Klein described it in The Guardian last year, might have been a shapeshifter for many years, but now it has become a real-life monster — on a par with anything we associate with a biblical apocalypse.

Modern-day Armageddon has already started with what has become known as the “exit”, where the world’s hyper-wealthy politicians and tech-supremos plan to set up their own fiefdoms — or “freedom cities” as Trump called them in 2023 — under the sole control of their own exclusive membership, free of democracy and law, policed by private mercenaries, run by AI-like humanoids and financed by cryptocurrencies. 

So much for Trump’s “America first” call to unite

Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, called these Trumpian billionaire-type sycophants “technofeudalists” who “don’t give a flying fuck about the human being”.

Welcome to the accelerating race to end times where the ultra-elite are already preparing for global annihilation — an event they will be ultimately responsible for causing because human ‘optimisation’ is what they do. 

People are rungs on their ladder to the fiefdom. They’re constructing their very own Tower of Babel. 

They don’t care about the rest of us or our world; they don’t have to. They could save it but they’re not interested.

How those who strive to make the world unliveable while also planning how to survive the fallout is at the heart of Naomi Klein’s new book End Times Fascism — written with Astra Taylor.

If we don’t start to fight back against this man-made armageddon complex as it accelerates right before our eyes, then we allow the Doomsday Clock to start ticking again.

It’s time we stop imagining life on Mars and devote more time and energy to the only planet most of us will ever get to live on. End times will come eventually.

I’d just prefer not to be here when they do.