Reading Comprehension (RC) | Premillennialism - a type of eschatology

Premillennialism - a type of eschatology (the study of the last things) based on a literal and rigid interpretation of the Bible - and the corresponding global events were the major reasons of the rise of American fundamentalism in the early 1900s. It also played an important part in the fall of Hitler and in the rise of America as a superpower. Premillennialists, most of them fundamentalists, then generally believed that the teachings of the Bible, especially when overlaid with some of Jesus’ and Paul’s New Testament statements, reveal a hidden “plan of the ages” according to which the current age will climax with the restoration of the land of birth of Jesus, the emergence of powerful empires in Rome, Russia, and the Far East, and then war. The plan further stated that out of this chaos, a new leader will appear, promising peace and security, and most political and religious leaders, unwilling or unable to recognize that this leader is actually the prophesied antichrist, will cede their sovereignty and independence to him. But just before this tyrant is revealed for the threat that he is, all true Christians will join the resurrected Jesus, battle the forces of evil at Armageddon, and establish a millennial kingdom of peace and prosperity on earth.

This belief, malleable enough to fit the many crises and changing geopolitical contexts of the twentieth century, especially World War II, proved stable enough to provide fundamentalists with a secure sense of their place in this world. Along with the rebirth of the Roman Empire, the rise of Hitler and the corresponding growth of anti-Semitism around the globe emerged as signs seized by fundamentalists as evidence of the looming rupture and the “plan of ages” coming true. After completing a 1933 tour of Germany, the Boston minister Harold Ockenga, a fundamentalist, called Hitler, the Nazi leader, “an instrument in the hand of God for the restoring the birth place of Jesus.” Many fundamentalists and other conservatives, already predisposed to see evidence of impending doom and extremely motivated to end Hitler’s reign, were convinced by F.D. Roosevelt’s utopian promises that he might be laying the foundations for a revolution against Hitler. They supported him even though they had initially greeted Roosevelt’s campaign for president with skepticism. As a result, upon being elected as president, Roosevelt appointed several fundamentalists on the cabinet. This reciprocal action led to help spread the fundamentalist movement to new geographies almost spanning the entire country.