Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday said he’s okay if the work he’s doing in President Donald Trump’s administration leads to the end times.

Vance initially responded by laughing.

“I have for my entire life been fascinated by end-times prophecy and theology,” he said, and described reading about it in a Bible when he was 10 or 11 years old. Vance said he wouldn’t be shocked to learn that the Antichrist was “walking among us” right now, nor would he be shocked to learn that we’re living in the end times at this moment.

But Vance said that, as a Catholic, he was “commanded” to try to make the world what God wants it to be.

“What I’m trying to focus on is doing as much of God’s work as possible right now, and if that leads to the end times, okay,” he said. “And if that leads to, you know, us building a better world that thrives and survives for a very long time after I’m gone, that’s great, too.”

“I just think you’ve got to kind of try to have an attitude of the end times may be coming,” Vance added. “In fact, they are coming, it’s just a question of whether they’re coming thousands of years down the road or a few months down the road, and we’ve got a lot of work to do right now.”

Critics on social media didn’t find it very reassuring to hear a world leader say they were okay if their work leads to the end times – and they hit back on X: