Made in 1974, There's a New World Coming was a one issue comic based on the book of the same name by Christian evangelist Hal Lindsey. Through his books, Lindsey helped popularize a school of thought known as premillenial dispensationalism, one of the more hotly contested ideas among Christians. It's a school of thought mainly dedicated to making declarations about the end times and how obvious it is that Jesus is coming Real Soon Now, an idea exemplified by books like Lindsey's The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon, a book which you may be surprised to know has been out of print for about 15 years.

Sorting out all the details would take a few million pages of explanation, as there are numerous splinter beliefs within dispensationalism which is in itself a splinter from more traditional Christian teaching. But for our purposes there are two basic camps. At the end of the world there will be a seven year period called the tribulation. Allow me to illustrate.

It starts like this:

But then:

3 and a half years later:

Which leads to:

After the other 3 and a half years, finally:

Then Jesus throws all the bad people in the fire.

This is the traditional Christian belief. Dispensationalists believe this too, with one key difference. Rewind back to the beginning, right before the tribulation starts...

Then, without warning:

All Christians are magically sucked away and can enjoy the coming seven year torment of the faithless from their box seats in Heaven instead of having to endure it with everyone else on earth. Also Jesus is balding or something, what the hell.

This, despite involving Jesus coming and doing so after the first time He did it, is not the Second Coming. It's a secret coming. If at any time Jesus or any of his IM forces are captured, God will disavow any knowledge of His actions. This 1.5 Coming allows all the Christians of the world to rest easy knowing they won't have to actually go through any hard times for their faith, and also allows them to revel in the fact that all those non-Christian jerks will be getting what's coming to them.

This becomes a driving idea in dispensationalist teaching, as we will see. Threatening people with eternity in hell wasn't bringing in the converts, but surely telling them that prior to that they'll have boils for three and a half years will close the deal.