A Prophetic Script.

World War I also served to galvanize the premillennial wing of conservative Protestantism. A growing movement since the late nineteenth century, premillennialism focused on the second coming of Jesus to initiate the millennium, the thousand- year reign of peace predicted in the biblical book of Revelation. Most premillennialists expected these events, which would mark the end of human history, to occur imminently. They read the Bible carefully, especially prophetic books such as Daniel and Revelation, and interpreted it literally, looking for clues that would help them recognize the onset of this cataclysmic time. The events of the European war corresponded strikingly -well to a set of these prophetic "signs of the times" that premillennialists had agreed upon and had been anticipating for years prior to 1914. Foremost among the premillennialists' prophecies was the expectation that ten European...