I dunno man, every generation feels like "these are the hardest times ever" about something. Christ's earliest followers were in Jerusalem, which was pretty much destroyed utterly by the Romans 30 years after his death, then in pagan Rome, where they were fed to lions and where brothels and licentiousness were pretty much common. Then you can go through the various Islamic conquests and Ottoman empire, the plague of 1347 which many thought was an eschatological event, the French revolution, Spanish civil war, Soviet Union, etc. Apologies if I missed any big ones.
Anyway, it's hard for me to look at now and think we have it uniquely bad.