What happens when the world you thought you understood suddenly stops making sense?
Between 1914 and 1920, Americans watched an extraordinary series of events unfold with almost unimaginable speed. World War I transformed Europe into an industrial killing field. Ancient empires collapsed. Revolution swept through Russia. Jerusalem changed hands. A devastating influenza pandemic circled the globe. And as the fighting ended, Woodrow Wilson proposed a new international order designed to prevent humanity from ever experiencing such a catastrophe again.
For millions of American Christians, these events represented more than war, revolution, disease, and political upheaval. They seemed to carry biblical significance.
In The End of the World As They Knew It, we explore a fascinating and often overlooked dimension of America’s experience during World War I: the widespread belief among many Christians that they might actually be witnessing the events described in biblical prophecy.
This episode enters their world and attempts to see history through their eyes. We trace the rise of prophecy teaching and premillennialism, the growing influence of figures such as C. I. Scofield, Billy Sunday, and other prominent Christian voices, and the surprising ways that theology, patriotism, nationalism, and international politics became intertwined during the crisis.
But this story reaches far beyond World War I.
The ideas forged during these extraordinary years helped reshape American evangelical Christianity and influenced how generations of believers interpreted everything from communism and Israel to global government and international conflict.
To understand why these ideas became so powerful—and why they remain influential today—we have to return to a generation that opened its Bible, looked at the headlines, and wondered whether it was witnessing the end of the world as they knew it.
