	Login Cart Advanced Search
Our List Bestsellers Current Bestsellers All-Time Bestsellers Activism General Economic Justice Environmental Justice Education Reform Racial Justice Community Action Immigration Reform American Society General Anthropology Cultural Studies General Latin American Native American Myths Made In America Economics Law and Society Philosophy Sociology Sports and Society Child and Family Issues Adoption General Media and Technology Beacon Classics Biography and Memoir Autobiography and Memoir Biography Disability Disability Environment and Conservation Energy and Climate Conservation Food and Agriculture Wildlife Nature and Environment Concord Library Series Gardening General Biography and Memoir Feminism and Gender Feminism Gender Women's History Women's Literature Black Women Writers Bluestreak Series General Women's Lives Sexuality Biography and Memoir History American History General Early American History 19th Century American History 20th Century American History 21st Century American History African American History General The King Legacy ReVisioning History Adult Editions Young Readers Editions World History Africa Asia Central and South America Europe Middle East Literature and the Arts Fiction Poetry Nonfiction General Essays Food and Society Letters Memoirs Queer Perspectives Multicultural Interest African American Asian American Caribbean Latin American Middle Eastern Native American South Asian By Series Black Women Writers Bluestreak Concord Writers Young Adult Music The Arts National Poetry Series Raised Voices Poetry Series Politics and Current Events Politics and Current Events Progressive Education LGBT Issues Books for K-12 Classroom Use Teaching and the Classroom Higher Education History of Education Race and Education School Reform and Policy Race Education Democracy Series Queer Perspectives Education and Youth Fiction General Memoir Religion and Sexuality Queer Ideas Queer Action Transgender Perspectives Transgender Voices Also of Interest Race and Ethnicity in America General African American History African American Literature Fiction and Poetry Nonfiction Black Women Writers Celebrating Black Women Writers King Legacy Series Race Education Democracy Series Religion How We Live Our Beliefs Pluralism Buddhism Christianity African American Theology Catholicism Early Christianity General Protestant Islam Judaism Unitarian Universalism World Religions Gender and Sexuality Inspiration Science and Medicine Public Health Medicine Science Psychology Women's Health YA and Children's Audiobooks Books by Mary Oliver Poetry and Prose Audiobooks Spring 2025 Summer 2025 Fall 2025 Blog About About Beacon Address and Directions Awards Booksellers and Librarians Catalogs Staff Distribution Sales and Ordering Submission Guidelines Contact Customer Service Author Appearances Jobs and Internships Media Requests Rights and Permissions Resources Book Banning Resources Desk and Exam Copy Information Reading Guides Teacher Guides Guides for UUs and Book Groups Social Impact

The World in Flames

A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult

Author: Jerald Walker Narrated by: C. S. Treadway

Download: Amazon | iTunes | Audible | Audiobooks | Nook

Buy the CD

A memoir of growing up with blind, African-American parents in a segregated cult preaching the imminent end of the world

When The World in Flames begins, in 1970, Jerry Walker is six years old. His consciousness revolves around being a member of a church whose beliefs he finds not only confusing but terrifying. Composed of a hodgepodge of requirements and restrictions (including a prohibition against doctors and hospitals), the underpinning tenet of Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God was that its members were divinely chosen and all others would soon perish in rivers of flames.

The substantial membership was ruled by fear, intimidation, and threats. Anyone who dared leave the church would endure hardship for the remainder of this life and eternal suffering in the next. The next life, according to Armstrong, would arrive in 1975, three years after the start of the Great Tribulation. Jerry would be eleven years old.

Jerry’s parents were particularly vulnerable to the promise of relief from the world’s hardships. When they joined the church, in 1960, they were living in a two-room apartment in a dangerous Chicago housing project with the first four of their seven children, and, most significantly, they both were blind, having lost their sight to childhood accidents. They took comfort in the belief that they had been chosen for a special afterlife, even if it meant following a religion with a white supremacist ideology and dutifully sending tithes to Armstrong, whose church boasted more than 100,000 members and more than $80 million in annual revenues at its height.

When the prophecy of the 1972 Great Tribulation does not materialize, Jerry is considerably less disappointed than relieved. When the 1975 end-time prophecy also fails, he finally begins to question his faith and imagine the possibility of choosing a destiny of his own.