I was a black child raised in a white supremacist cult. When doomsday didn’t come, I had to learn how to live

Jerald Walker grew up believing the world would end in 1972, when he was eight. But when fire and brimstone failed to rain from the skies, he and his family had to start again

When Jerald Walker was a boy, his school principal called him into his office and asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. “My answer was: ‘A god,’” Walker recalls, laughing. “He thought I was kidding but I was serious. When he asked again I said: ‘Captain Marvel.’ Because I thought about comic book heroes. I couldn’t think ‘doctor’ or ‘writer’ or any of those things. I had never once given any thought to what my adulthood would be.”

Walker wasn’t even sure he’d have an adulthood. He grew up convinced that the world would end in 1972, when he would be eight years old. According to the prophecy, fire and brimstone would rain from the skies, people would be running in the streets in panic, covered in boils, their faces melting. But as members of the Worldwide Church of God (WCG), Walker and his family would be saved – and magically transported to a place of sanctuary, probably Petra, in Jordan. “The bad news was that there wouldn’t be a future, but the good news was: ‘You don’t have to worry about it. Everything is laid out for you.’”

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