A disturbing aspect
There was another disturbing aspect of the disagreement. Many of those who did not accept the Eureka exposition appeared to have little first-hand experience of the book itself. References to it often reflected a lack of understanding of what had been written so long ago. One of the dismissive comments made by an English brother, Chris Brown (When These Things Begin to Come to Pass) implies intellectual dishonesty on the part of John Thomas. “I discovered that the information I was reading [on the continuous historical explanation] was largely copied from other sources, mainly Joseph Mede and Edward Elliot (sic).” Bro. Brown did not appear to be aware that there are acknowledgements in the text of Elpis Israel and that the preface to Vol. 3 of Eureka is devoted to a review, largely critical, of the sources its writer had studied. It is also true, however, that in 1924, C.C. Walker, then editor of The Christadelphian, accepted that Thomas did not always admit his indebtedness to other writers1.
What was impossible to deny was that an increasing number of brethren and sisters across the world were finding more answers to their questions about Revelation in a futurist understanding. One of the undoubted reasons for this was the insistence of many adherents of Eureka, in spite of a changing world, on retaining the 19th century model constructed by Bro. Thomas. Yet many of the principles of interpretation presented in that early exposition are undoubtedly capable of useful extrapolation into the present time. The reluctance of many readers to make this mental shift has had the effect of depressing the status of the Revelation, not of elevating it as they would wish.
A root cause of the ongoing disagreement, I sincerely believe, lies in insisting that the book of Revelation should fit into a box of our own construction. We try to force the book to conform to a set of criteria that we ourselves have constructed and then become angered when it clearly does not do this. The God we worship is far above anything we can fully comprehend. His thoughts and His ways are not by any means ours: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa 55:8-9). Does this not suggest that we should recognize that Revelation is far greater and more comprehensive than we can ever imagine? In my experience, this is the first step towards a resolution of an otherwise intractable problem.
Further exploration
One of the undoubted obstacles to seeking an understanding of Revelation is the inflexibility of our own finite minds. It leads us to reject things we cannot immediately comprehend and cling desperately to those we think we know.
A clear illustration of this inability to see the bigger picture is provided in two examples from the continuous historical understanding as frequently taught in our community. The first relates to the decline of the Catholic Church, attributed to the effects of the French Revolution and the career of Napoleon and understood to be the meaning of Revelation 16. That the political and social upheaval in France weakened the power of the Pope goes without question, and so does the way in which these ideas spread through Western Europe under Bonaparte. But this is by no means the full story.
What has generally been left out of our thinking entirely is the other half of the original Catholic Church, known today as the Eastern (or Greek) Orthodox church, which separated from Rome only in 1054, although the quarrel went back to the Council of Constantinople in 869. Eureka correctly notes that, with the fall of Constantinople, the Patriarch fled to Moscow. But an important point appears to have been entirely missed: the power of this Eastern Pope was not at all affected by his translocation to Russia, or by the later French Revolution. His loss of authority came with the Russian Revolution of 1917. The conclusion is plain. A satisfactory understanding of the continuous historical interpretation demands that events of the 20th century be taken into account. Revelation is shown to be bigger than we have in the past allowed.
Great earthquake
The same tendency to limit the reach of the prophecy is seen in another related topic, the spread of popular democracy. Our traditional explanation limits this largely to the French Revolutions, of which there were three between 1789 and 1848. It completely ignores the English (1688) and the American (1775) precursors to the French upheaval, both of which were products of similar thinking and ambitions. And John Thomas could not be expected to foresee events in Russia after 1917, when the power of the Tsar was destroyed, nor the influence of nationalism and liberalism in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa in the 20th century. Rightly understood, I am convinced, the great earthquake of Revelation 11 cannot be limited to events in France over a mere sixty years. The process started in Switzerland and Holland in 1648 and reached the country in which I sojourn, South Africa, only in 1994. And it has not yet arrived for our neighbors in Swaziland, which remains close to an absolute monarchy! There have been 350 years of rumbling, upheaval and aftershocks.
Another related narrowing of the view refers to the three spirits like frogs of Revelation 16. These are often identified with the French revolutionary slogan “Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!”2Although some later writers, like Michael Ashton,3have noted that the only other Bible reference to frogs is in relation to the third Egyptian plague (Exod 8:2) nobody has, to my knowledge, explored the significance of two other Old Testament observations. To understand something of this we must go to the inspired commentary in the Psalms. These make it clear that the frogs (small and defenseless though they undoubtedly were) penetrated the most carefully guarded places in the land: “Their land brought forth frogs in abundance, in the chambers of their kings” (Psa 105:30), and potentially destroyed Egypt’s unquestioned power: “He sent divers sorts of flies among them, which devoured them; and frogs, which destroyed them” (Psa 78:45). The brief description of the event given in Exodus masks a reality we sometimes miss: ordinary life and business in Egypt were completely paralyzed, not by the croaking (on which Scripture is silent but which has needlessly distracted so many of our commentators!) but by the sheer weight of froggy numbers.
What better image could there be than this, of the effects of ‘people power’ on formerly autocratic governments? And Revelation tells us that the role of the three spirits is to bring the kings of the earth to battle on the great day of Almighty God: “For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty” (Rev 16:14). After the recent Arab Spring doesn’t that make good 21st century sense? It is, I hope, becoming clear that the scope and depth of the book of Revelation are significantly beyond our present comprehension. The corollary is that we should pause before we too quickly abandon one way of understanding it in favor of another.
The emergence of different ways of understanding the Apocalypse has created problems for many Christadelphians. It has led to a major cleavage between “conservative” and “progressive” thinkers as well as to an intensified antagonism between them. It may be helpful to try to understand how this came about.
The principal objection of those who favour the traditional view is that there is, among futurists, a lack of clarity about future events. The program presented in Eureka enables individuals, it is claimed, to place themselves accurately in time, to find a precise location in the unfolding drama and to have the security that comes from that precision. Futurist views, of which there are several, do not offer a similar security. They have replaced certitude about future events with bewildering uncertainty.
Those who espouse this opinion do not readily accept the argument that much uncertainty stems from the fact that in the past century and a half the world has changed out of all recognition. They are reluctant to accept that the rise of nationalism which has led to the redrawing of many maps, especially in the Middle East, has also profoundly affected political realities. They find it hard to accept that Western Europe (and Britain in particular) is no longer able to determine the destinies of other peoples as it did in the 19th century. And the rise of Islam, in spite of the global impact of the events of 9/11, is still regarded as essentially irrelevant. What tends to be entirely overlooked also is that uncertainty is an undeniable and unavoidable part of discovery and learning, as is well illustrated by the experiences of Bro. Thomas in his first encounter with Restorationism in the 1830’s and 1840’s. This was, after all the man who wrote:
“Must a man never progress? If he discover an error in his premises, must he forever hold to it for the sake of consistency? May such a calamity never befall me! Rather let me change every day, till I get it right at last.” (From a letter written by John Thomas in 1848.)4
Personal experience is supported by professional studies which show that we learn by discovering little pieces of useful information, which may take a long time to put together in coherent form.
- Some brethren are shocked that we should even mention the Bishop and his book. They need not be. We do it upon the principle of Paul’s quoting “your own poets” (Acts 17:28). Or upon the principle of Dr. Thomas’ fine and generous acknowledgments to Pearson’s successors, Peter Jurieu and Bicheno, see Eureka, vol. 2, pp. 657, 660. “Dr. Thomas was more indebted to bishops than appears on the surface” (The Christadelphian, 1924, p 26).
- The three voices have one origin — the Frog power which completely transforms the influences of the French Revolution — liberty, equality, fraternity — a false promise of peace! (Eureka, vol. 5, pp. 198-213).
- Revelation Study Guide (2007), page 76.
- Herald of the Future Age, Vol. 4, 1848, p. 40.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One