Apocalyptically-minded fundamentalists viewed World War II as the fulfillment of divine prophecy. Two fundamentalist pastors from Texas, John R. Rice and J. Frank Norris, who each edited and wrote for fundamentalist newspapers, The Sword of the Lord and The Fundamentalist, respectively, provide insight into fundamentalists’ interpretations of the war. Norris, the so-called “Fundamentalist No. 1,” led the revolt of fundamentalist delegates from the Southern Baptist Convention in 1939 and threatened to leave the SBC with five thousand churches. Norris had gained some notoriety in 1926, after he shot and killed a wealthy businessman who had threatened to kill him. Rice, Norris’s less controversial protégé, had become a leading figure in fundamentalism by the 1940s through a career as a pastor of a large fundamentalist church in Dallas (the Fundamentalist Baptist Tabernacle), an evangelist, and an author. The Sword of the Lord, which Rice edited, had a circulation between 10,000 and 15,000 by 1942.Rice believed that “surely the end of the age is near at hand,” since “many, many Scriptures are being fulfilled.” Norris asserted that the Bible taught that Europe, Asia, and Africa would be “under the dictatorship of one man,” and that the signing of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact in August 1939 was a sign that this prophecy would soon be fulfilled. Similarly, Rice argued “the dictators of the present time . . . are rapidly clearing the way for the Antichrist.” Fundamentalists joined many Americans in asserting that Hitler or Mussolini was the anti-Christ. During a defense rally held at Druid Hills Baptist Church in Atlanta in February 1943, Brigadier General Eric Fisher Wood described Hitler and Hirohito each as “the Anti-Christ,” and by the end of the war, DeWitt MacKenzie, an Associated Press correspondent, argued that Hitler, as a “throw-back to barbarism” was an “Anti-Christ.” By insisting that Hitler and other Axis leaders were anti-Christs and therefore harbingers of the apocalypse, fundamentalists shaped public opinion on the war and helped to make dispensationalist theology mainstream.
Furthermore, World War II prodded fundamentalists to emphasize their roots in revivalism and provided a reason for Americans to follow the fundamentalist creed, as leaders such as Rice, Norris, and Bob Jones, Sr. (of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina) threatened that global war was only the beginning if Americans failed to repent. Rice warned that “America is due to begin reaping what she has been sowing.” The only remedy, he asserted, would be “a revival of old-fashioned . . . Christianity.” To fundamentalists, the war also served as evidence that “modernists” were indeed the threat that fundamentalists claimed they were. At the Southwest Prophetic Conference in Dallas, Texas at Scofield Memorial Church, Jones blamed “modernist leaders,” who had “turn[ed]the younger generation into . . . pacifists.” Jones urged revival, Christian education, and militarization, declaring that he was “in favor of having the biggest Army and Navy in the world.” For fundamentalists, World War II served as both validation of their worldview and as motivation for further evangelistic efforts.