While at a ministry fundraiser with his wife, history professor Erik Benson was surprised to hear a person talk about the events in Iran in relation to the end times. As he walked out of the event, he began thinking what he heard and discussed it with his wife.

“I hadn’t heard someone talk about this in a long time,” Benson said.

He said that it was like having a flash back to the eighties when he was growing up during the Cold War. At that time, many Americans thought that the end times were upon them. They believed the Soviets were the evil ones and Gorbachev was the Anti-Christ.

Benson started digging into the history behind this. Part of his interest came from his background in foreign relations, and part of his interest came from being a Christian. He was curious about what Christians thought about the Cold War and how it relates to the end times. More and more research turned into a paper.

He then presented the paper, “The Last Days: Conservative Christian End Times Prophecy and US Cold War Policy,” was recently presented at a conference for the Society for the History of American Foreign Relations.

Benson said professors are scholars who keep on learning and studying. For history professors, the venues where they present themselves and their work  are the conferences.

With this paper, there was a lot of interest in all of the different elements that Benson presented. The end times worldview shaped a lot of people’s thinking during the Cold War, and it made them a solidified unit with a lot of political influence.

“It was interesting to look at this. These guys really did something. They had an effect,” Benson said. “On the other hand, wow, that idea didn’t really pan out.”

The history conference where Benson presented his paper was comprised of people mostly interested in foreign relations. These people were not necessarily conservative, and the majority of them not Christians.

As a Christian, Benson had this opportunity to present his paper, but didn’t use the paper as a platform for Christianity.

“The job of history is to put the story out there and tell it in a way that people can see the point we’re trying to make,” he said. “As a professional historian, I’m telling a story that’s not been told; an important story. Evangelicals have played a big part in our foreign policy.”

Along with telling this story, Benson hoped that non evangelicals would hear and eliminate some stereotypes. He hoped evangelicals could look at it, too, and see that they need to be more careful about the claims they make.

Benson wasn’t expecting a big turnout of people when he presented his paper. His time slot was the last slot on Saturday night, and the prime spots are on Friday. Surprisingly, he had the biggest turnout of people for that time slot. There turned out to be a large amount of interest on the topic.

He presented with two other people. One was from another Christian college and the other was from Ohio State. When the floor opened up for questions, the majority commented positively on Benson and the other Christian college presenter, and mostly negative on the Ohio State presenter.

Benson was excited that there were people out there who would give his paper a fair hearing. From here, he plans to extend his research on the subject and presenting an additional paper in a few years.