A Christadelphian crisis
We concluded the previous article (The Tidings, July 2016) with the following paragraph:
For almost the next hundred years, Eureka became in Christadelphian circles the standard exposition of Revelation. During that time, almost all the books published on the subject by Christadelphians were attempts to simplify Eureka and to make its ideas more accessible to ordinary brothers and sisters. The time came, however, when thinking readers were compelled to acknowledge that Eureka no longer offered answers to questions raised by the events of the 20th century.
This realization would precipitate a Christadelphian crisis.
Impelled as he was by his fervent wish to see Christ’s kingdom established and the folly and wickedness of man dethroned, Bro. John Thomas came to believe from his study of Bible prophecy that the Second Coming might occur in 18681. He had no way of telling or even imagining the world changes that still had to occur. Three years later he was laid to rest in a New York cemetery. But the community he had helped to found held firmly to the picture he had painted, with the guidance of the prophetic books of the Bible, of the things that lay ahead.
However, before the 20th century had completed its second decade, the old world had gone forever, without John Thomas’s wish being fulfilled. The Great War, which many Christadelphians thought at first might be Armageddon, destroyed an estimated 10 million lives, overturned no fewer than four world powers, and seriously weakening those empires that had survived. Age-old class barriers were swept aside and the voice of the common man came to be more clearly to be heard, along with the unfamiliar accents of two powers from outside Europe, in the USA and the USSR. The increasing use of the internal combustion engine with its voracious appetite for petroleum catapulted on to the world stage remote countries whose hidden oil reserves were suddenly in huge demand.
The pace of change was further accelerated by the Great Depression and the Second World War, followed by the Cold War and the miraculous emergence of an independent Israel. Other new nations appeared all over Asia and Africa. Then came the dramatic destruction of the Berlin Wall and the sudden collapse of the USSR. But this new world was rapidly polluting its environment and using up valuable resources in the pursuit of wealth. The old political divisions were replaced by the even older but neglected economic barriers that separated haves from have-nots, the developed nations from those developing, the rich North from the poor South.
One of the results of these massive changes was the appearance in the brotherhood of suggestions that, in the light of 20th century developments, our understanding of the pattern of future events needed modification. A factor in this change that cannot be overlooked is that, in the century since the publication of Eureka, the general level of formal education in the brotherhood had risen considerably. The result was that there were a greater number of brothers and sisters who were accustomed to forming their own opinions on complex issues and, in consequence, less ready to accept pre-packaged solutions.
The discussion starts
A change in attitude was clearly discernible by the 1950’s in Britain. One writer who played a role in this cautious revisionism was a brother from the north of England called Fred Bilton. In An Exposition of the Apocalypse and The Apocalypse and the Gospels (1955), Bilton argued that no exposition of future events could reasonably exclude Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, the state of Israel and the importance of Middle Eastern oil. Bilton was not the only one to suggest such tweaking of the Eureka thesis. It was not difficult to amend references to the Tsar of Russia, as the latter-day Gog, to mean his egalitarian counterpart in the Kremlin. Nor was it hard to accept that the three spirits like frogs, traditionally associated with the French Revolution, might also describe the activity of those labelled ‘communist agitators’. These modifications appeared in Australian Bro. H.P. Mansfield’s The Apocalypse Epitomised (no date, c. 1965) although the book was in essence yet a further attempt to simplify Eureka. Another revisionist book appeared in 1972, John Doble’s The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory. In retrospect, it is possible to see all this as evidence of a significant shift of opinion in parts of the brotherhood, as the last quarter of the century would more fully reveal. But it was also recognition of the way the world had changed in a hundred years, forcing a process of re-thinking. One result was a revival of interest in the book of Revelation. Another was increased stress on the fault lines that were beginning to appear in the community.
By the second half of the 20th century there was clear acknowledgement of a developing problem in the brotherhood over how the book of Revelation was to be understood. Predictably, there were two very different reactions to the situation.
Writing in a commemorative issue of The Christadelphian, produced in 1964 to mark a century of the use of that name in the community, editor Louis Sargent commented on the key issue: “It must be admitted that much has worked out very differently from expectations that we held and much that was written needs revision in the light of history.” It revealed recognition that divergent thinking on the subject of Revelation was becoming more widespread and, further, acknowledged its necessity.
It was another decade, however, before there was a major parting of the ways. In 1976 Bro Harry Whittaker, living up to his reputation as a maverick Bible student and an unconventional thinker on matters scriptural, published Revelation: a Biblical Approach. This volume earned Whittaker howls of execration and paeans of praise in perhaps roughly equal proportions. These demonstrations, however, left the majority in the middle ground bewildered. Whittaker had proposed an understanding of Revelation which radically departed from that in Eureka. Whittaker argued that the first part of the prophecy applied to events in Palestine around A.D. 70. Subsequent sections applied to the intervening history as well as to the last days. It was, in other words, a blend of preterist, historical and futurist interpretation.
By the 1980s other differing voices had come to be heard. Just before his death, Bro. Peter Watkins, having long resisted persuasion from friends to go into print, finally prepared a manuscript which was posthumously published by his family. It was the product of more than one generation of family study and discussion. Exploring the Apocalypse and the Future saw the fulfilment of Revelation as future but also proposed that the book was largely concerned with events affecting the modern state of Israel.
Vigorously attacked
Two years later, Bro Alfred Norris produced Apocalypse for Every man. This explanation proposed that while the first chapters of the prophecy referred to historical events, the bulk of it was devoted to the last days. It too was vigorously attacked by traditionalists. The main argument against it, as with all futurist interpretations, was that it implied a prophetic silence of eighteen centuries during which believers had no word to encourage them. Norris subsequently produced some answers to his critics which contributed little to resolving differences.
Quite plainly, no clear picture of an alternative understanding of Revelation had emerged and this was abundant evidence to conservatives of the wrong headedness of attempting to provide one. These defenders of the traditional explanation appeared to pay little attention to the editorial observation of Alfred Nicholls in November 1981: “It is sometimes said that we are not so clear and firm in our expectations, not so ready to pronounce on world events as our forebears, the pioneers of a century ago. The reason is not far to seek: we have often raised hope prematurely; we have been too dogmatic and created disillusionment.” Nicholls followed this with a series of articles which later appeared in book form; Interpreting Revelation (1988). He did not enter the lists in favour of one side or the other but sought to set out the basic principles that should be applied in any attempt to explain the prophecy.
Two other titles which appeared at a similar time showed that, in the view of some, the problem could be resolved by a simple choice. Bro. Paul Billington wrote: Revelation: an Appeal for Correct Understanding (no date) and Bro Graham Pearce published Revelation — Which Interpretation? (1991).What the dust of controversy effectively concealed, however, was that there was a significant number of brethren and sisters, neither malcontents nor rebels, for whom the picture presented in Eureka was no longer adequate. In such a charged atmosphere it was not likely that anyone would notice that there was another option that would modify the need for choice.
With the dawn of the 21st century, it was clear that on the subject of understanding the book of Revelation, there were two clearly defined camps in the Christadelphian world: those who continued to trust Eureka and those who were no longer willing to do so.
There was little if any evidence that those of either camp had considered the merits of their opponents’ case or cases. Those who engaged in the debate on the relevant merits of the differing views all seemed to belong to the Aunt Sally school of argument, which considers a rival’s claims only to expose its perceived flaws and never to acknowledge any positive features. This inescapable characteristic of internal strife is one of its most distressing features. As so often has been remarked, the first casualty in any conflict is inevitably truth, even among those whose ostensible aim is the pursuit of that often elusive commodity.
By 2009 several other brethren had published material arguing for a futurist understanding of Revelation. One of them, Bro Ian Hyndman of Australia, made a significant comment in his introduction. Having come to the tentative conclusion that the book’s message refers to an Arab invasion of Israel at the time of the end, he feared that those who had rejected this notion would find their theory of fulfilled prophecy failing and with that their faith. In the preface to Revelation — A Message from Jesus About the Last Days (2000) he wrote: “This is not the accepted view of some Bible students, and for some, the unexpected prospect of Israel suffering defeat and exile could have the effect of shaking their faith when these events occur”.
[To be continued, God Willing, in the October issue.]
- “My conviction is that the judgment upon Babylon will be announced as about to sit; and that the Ancient of Days and the saints will meet ‘in the air’ and among the clouds, in the common A. D. 1866, or 1260 years from A. D. 606.” (Anatolia, 1854, p. 92) The “Exposition of Daniel” has 1868, but this book was first produced in that same year.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One