Millions of Christians believe that God has predestined war, curses, famine, ignorance, chaos, and global destruction in the months ahead. It's been prophesied, and nothing can stop it. The creation of the nation of Israel in 1948 is part of this sequence of prophesied events, and the U.S. federal government must be on Israel's side, even if Israel wants to go to war with her neighbors, and even
if it leads to World War III.
This is what's called a "self-fulfilling prophecy." It's a prescription for pessimism.
I repeat: millions of Americans believe this.
None of America's Founding Fathers believed any of this. They believed America was a "City upon a Hill" that would send the Gospel around the world and Christianize the planet. They believed there were centuries of future time ahead of us and the "Novus
Ordo Seclorum" -- the New Order for the Ages -- that they were creating.
Ideas Have Consequences
Most Americans today are not creating anything that will last for ages. They don't believe we have ages. Everything we create is going to be destroyed at Armageddon. This belief is an open invitation for Hitler or Hu Jintao (?) to invade.
Resources on Eschatology
"Optimillennialism" (as we define it) is a fully preterist "post-millennialism." Preterists do not technically believe in a future millennium, and most post-millennialists do not believe in a literal 1000-year "millennium." Some post-millennialists (below) are terrorized by preterism and reject it with great emotion.
"Pre-millennialists" believe that Christ comes before the millennium, to inaugurate the millennium and to rule over it from Jerusalem. "Post-millennialism" is the view that Christ's Second Coming occurs after (post) the "millennium," or period of maximum Christianization.