Yup. If you want to command mobs of people, you need an idea to unite and motivate them. Land and guns aren't much if you can't control people's moral self-worth on a mass scale. Race, nation, class are all excellent, but nothing is as ambitious or effective as religion. It can be interpreted as many ways as there are individuals to apply it to their personal situation. It can't be refuted on its own terms; all you have to do is believe and obey, and you're in. The only problem after that is competition, and because validation is not based on reason, the only way to resolve conflicting claims of dominion is force. And the evidence is nearly limitless, from the Old Testament straight through the next two volumes. It has yet end.
End times are the ends of advanced civilized cultures. The end of Rome wasn't the end of the world, just the end of a world worth living in. What ended the Classical world will be the same thing that ends us, and I can think of no better indicator of what causes end times than what comes to dominate after the fall.
So yeah, people do the things they do because of the ideas they believe. Ideas cause history. Religion has been the dominant idea through the worst eras of history. It's basic math.
