9780807092934
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The World in Flames audiobook

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The World in Flames Audiobook Summary

A lively memoir of growing up with blind African American parents in a segregated cult preaching the imminent end of the world—for fans of James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird.

It’s 1970, and 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.

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About the Author(s) of The World in Flames

Jerald Walker is the author of The World in Flames

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The World in Flames Full Details

Length 5 hours 39 minutes
Author Jerald Walker
Category
Publisher Beacon Press
Release date April 27, 2024
ISBN 9780807092934

Subjects

The publisher of the The World in Flames is Beacon Press. includes the following subjects: blind, family relationships, family life, memoirs and biographies, memoirs, racism, black boys, african american memoirs, books by black authors, religion, african american books, segregation, chicago, black authors, african american authors, white supremacy, childhood trauma, childhood, cults book, cults, growing up, coming of age, doomsday, religious cults, biography, biographies, autobiographies, social justice, activism, biographies of famous people, religious books, autobiography, activist, cult, family, feminism, crime, Biography & Autobiography, Cultural Heritage, Religion, Cults The BISAC Subject Code is Biography & Autobiography, Cultural Heritage

Additional info

The publisher of the The World in Flames is Beacon Press. The imprint is Beacon Press. It is supplied by Beacon Press. The ISBN-13 is 9780807092934.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

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