The Plymouth Brethren and dispensationalism

Affiliation

Minister of the Church of Scotland (deposed 1833); minister of the National Scotch Church, Regent Square, London; "angel" of the Newman Street congregation of the Catholic Apostolic Church

Appears in

Edward Irving and the Catholic Apostolic Church, The Plymouth Brethren and dispensationalism

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Life

Annan and Edinburgh

Edward Irving was born on 4 August 1792 at Annan in Dumfriesshire, in the south of Scotland, the son of a tanner. A brilliant student, he entered the University of Edinburgh at thirteen and graduated MA in 1809. He became a schoolmaster at Haddington and then Kirkcaldy, where he befriended a younger teacher, Thomas Carlyle; the friendship lasted all his life. He was licensed to preach by the Church of Scotland in 1815 but could find no parish, and for several years his ornate, Miltonic style failed to win a congregation.

Glasgow and London

In 1819 Thomas Chalmers, the great evangelical preacher, took him as his assistant at St John's, Glasgow, one of the poorest parishes in the city. In 1822 he was called to the small Caledonian Chapel in Hatton Garden, London, a congregation of Scottish exiles. Within months he was the most fashionable preacher in London. Statesmen such as George Canning, writers such as Coleridge and Hazlitt, and crowds of society figures came to hear him; tickets were needed. In 1823 he married Isabella Martin of Kirkcaldy. A grand new church was built for him in Regent Square and opened in 1827.

Prophecy and Albury

Irving became absorbed in the study of prophecy. He translated the Chilean Jesuit Manuel Lacunza's The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty (1827) and took part in the conferences on prophecy held by the banker Henry Drummond at Albury Park in Surrey from 1826 to 1830. These gatherings concluded that the present dispensation was ending in judgement, that the Jews would be restored, and that Christ would return before the millennium. Irving preached and wrote on these themes and on the decline of the Church.

The gifts

In 1830 reports reached London of tongues, prophecy and healing in the west of Scotland, among the Campbell and Macdonald families at Fernicarry and Port Glasgow. Irving, who already held that the gifts of the Spirit had ceased only through unbelief, sent observers and welcomed the reports. Prayer meetings for the gifts began in his church. On 30 April 1831 Emily Cardale, wife of a member, spoke in tongues at a private meeting in London^†, and from October 1831 tongues and prophecies were heard during public worship at Regent Square, sometimes interrupting the service.

Trials and deposition

The trustees of Regent Square brought charges before the London Presbytery, which in May 1832 removed him for allowing people who were neither ordained nor licensed - including women - to speak in public worship. About 800 members followed him, and they met first in a hall and then in Benjamin West's former picture gallery in Newman Street.

Meanwhile his teaching that Christ took human nature in its fallen condition had been attacked since 1827. In March 1833 the Presbytery of Annan, which had ordained him, deposed him from the ministry of the Church of Scotland for heresy on this point.

Under the apostles

In the Newman Street congregation the prophetic utterances began to designate "apostles". John Bate Cardale was called as the first apostle in 1832, and Henry Drummond and others followed. Irving, who had been deposed, was not one of them. On the word of the prophets, he was re-ordained by Cardale in April 1833 as "angel" (bishop) of his own congregation, and found himself subordinate to the men his preaching had brought together. He accepted it humbly.

Key dates

• 1792 - Born at Annan, 4 August
• 1815 - Licensed by the Church of Scotland
• 1819 - Assistant to Thomas Chalmers in Glasgow
• 1822 - Called to the Caledonian Chapel, London
• 1826-30 - Albury conferences on prophecy
• 1827 - Translates Lacunza; Regent Square church opens
• 1830 - Tongues and healings reported in the west of Scotland
• October 1831 - Tongues and prophecy in public worship at Regent Square
• May 1832 - Removed from Regent Square by the London Presbytery
• March 1833 - Deposed by the Presbytery of Annan
• April 1833 - Ordained "angel" of the Newman Street church by Cardale
• 7 December 1834 - Dies in Glasgow

Teachings and claims

The humanity of Christ

Irving's best-known doctrine was that the Son of God took human nature "in its fallen state" - flesh subject to the same tendencies as ours - and was kept from sin throughout His life by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that He sanctified our nature from within. "The Son of God took our fallen nature... and wrought in it a perfect holiness." He insisted that Christ never sinned, but believed that unless Christ took fallen flesh, He could not redeem it.

Restoration of the gifts

He taught that the gifts of the Spirit - tongues, prophecy, healing - belonged to the whole age of the Church and had disappeared only through unbelief. He called tongues the "standing sign" of the baptism of the Holy Ghost, an idea later Pentecostals developed independently.

Imminent return

He believed that the Church was in apostasy, that judgement was near, and that the restoration of the gifts and of apostles was God's preparation for Christ's return.

Documented controversies

• Disorder in worship. The London Presbytery's case rested on the Westminster Directory: utterances by unordained men and women during worship were contrary to the order of the Church of Scotland.
• His Christology. Critics, including Marcus Dods (the elder) and Henry Cole, charged him with making Christ a sinner. The Church of Scotland deposed him for it.
• Robert Baxter's renunciation. Robert Baxter, a lawyer and one of the most prominent prophets, uttered predictions - including that the Lord would come within 1,260 days - and later concluded that his utterances had come from a deceiving spirit. His Narrative of Facts (1833) is the most important contemporary account by an insider.
• Failed prophecies. Several utterances in Irving's circle about events and timing did not come to pass.

Death

Exhausted and consumptive, Irving obeyed a prophetic direction to go to Scotland in the autumn of 1834, riding through Wales and travelling by sea. He reached Glasgow, grew worse, and died there on 7 December 1834, aged forty-two. His last words were reported as "If I die, I die unto the Lord. Amen." He was buried in the crypt of Glasgow Cathedral. He and Isabella had lost several of their children in infancy.

Legacy

The Catholic Apostolic Church, which the apostles formed after his death, developed an elaborate liturgy drawn from Eastern and Western rites. It declined when its last apostle died in 1901; a German offshoot, the New Apostolic Church, has some millions of members today.

Irving is remembered as a forerunner of Pentecostalism and of modern prophetic and apostolic movements, and his circle helped shape the prophetic expectation from which dispensationalism grew. As a theologian, his view of Christ's humanity was later defended by Karl Barth and T.F. Torrance. Carlyle wrote of him: "the freest, brotherliest, bravest human soul mine ever came in contact with."

Measured against the creeds

Irving was orthodox on the Trinity and the deity of Christ, and he sincerely sought holiness and the renewal of a cold Church. But three of his positions are open to serious question. First, on Christ's humanity: the Church has confessed, with the Council of Chalcedon, that Christ is "like us in all things except sin" (Hebrews 4:15). The Fathers taught that He took our nature with its weakness and mortality, but whether He took "fallen" nature in Irving's sense is contested; the Church of Scotland judged that his language compromised Christ's sinlessness. Second, by treating spontaneous utterances in worship as the voice of the Spirit and allowing them to direct the Church - even to appoint apostles - he placed prophecy above the Church's order and the apostolic ministry. Third, the restoration of "apostles" after eighteen centuries implies that the Church had lost its apostolic foundation, which the creeds deny.

Major writings

• For the Oracles of God, Four Orations (1823)
• Babylon and Infidelity Foredoomed of God (1826)
• Translation of Lacunza, The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty (1827)
• Sermons, Lectures and Occasional Discourses (1828)
• The Orthodox and Catholic Doctrine of Our Lord's Human Nature (1830)
• Articles in The Morning Watch (1829-33)

Affiliation

Dentist of Exeter; early member of the Dublin Brethren; self-supporting missionary to Baghdad (1829-33) and India (1833-52)

Appears in

The Plymouth Brethren and dispensationalism, The modern movements in India

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Life

Dentist of Exeter

Anthony Norris Groves was born on 1 February 1795 at Newton Valence in Hampshire, the son of a businessman. He trained in chemistry and dentistry in London, set up practice in Plymouth and then in Exeter, where he became prosperous. In 1816 he married his cousin, Mary Bethia Thompson. He was converted in his teens and longed to be a missionary, but his wife at first opposed it.

Christian Devotedness

In 1825 he published a short book, Christian Devotedness, arguing from the Sermon on the Mount that Christians should not lay up treasure on earth, but give away all beyond their daily needs and trust God for the future. He and his wife did so, and their example made a deep impression on several young men, among them George Müller, later Groves's brother-in-law, and Henry Craik.

Dublin

Intending to be ordained in the Church of England and sent out by the Church Missionary Society, he studied at Trinity College Dublin from 1826. In Dublin he met a circle of earnest evangelicals, including John Gifford Bellett and Edward Cronin, and in 1827 he suggested to them that believers, as disciples of Christ, were free to break bread together each Lord's Day without waiting for an ordained minister, since Scripture did not require one. This conversation is often regarded as one of the beginnings of the Brethren movement. He came to the conclusion that ordination was unnecessary for preaching or for the Supper, and gave up his plan to be ordained.

Baghdad

In June 1829, with his wife, two sons and a small party including the deaf scholar John Kitto, he set out for Baghdad without the support of any mission society, travelling by way of St Petersburg and the Caucasus. In Baghdad he opened a school and studied Arabic. In 1831 the city was struck by plague, flood and siege; his wife died in May and his infant daughter soon after. A small party of Brethren, including Francis Newman (brother of John Henry Newman), arrived to join him. The mission produced few converts.

India

In 1833 he went to India. He travelled widely, encouraging Indian evangelists and urging missionaries of every society to cooperate. On a visit to England in 1834-35 he married Harriet Baynes and recruited William Bowden and George Beer, who founded the Godavari Delta mission in Andhra in 1836. To make the mission self-supporting, he tried a series of business ventures in the Chittoor district, including sugar production; they mostly failed and left him in debt. Among the Indians he trained was John Christian Aroolappen of Tirunelveli, who later led an indigenous revival.

The letter to Darby

On 10 March 1836 he wrote to J.N. Darby warning that the Brethren were becoming defined by what they rejected, and that Darby was building a system as exclusive as those he had left: "you will find the position you are now taking... will make you more known by what you witness against than what you witness for." When the movement divided in 1848 he remained with the Open Brethren of Bethesda, Bristol.

Key dates

• 1 February 1795 - Born at Newton Valence, Hampshire
• 1816 - Marries Mary Bethia Thompson
• 1825 - Christian Devotedness
• 1826-27 - Studies at Trinity College Dublin
• 1827 - Proposes the breaking of bread without ordained ministers
• June 1829 - Leaves for Baghdad
• May 1831 - His wife dies of plague in Baghdad
• 1833 - Arrives in India
• 1835 - Marries Harriet Baynes
• 10 March 1836 - Letter to J.N. Darby
• 1836 - Godavari Delta mission begun by his recruits
• 1852 - Returns to England, ill
• 20 May 1853 - Dies in Bristol

Teachings and claims

Living by faith

Groves taught that Christians, and missionaries above all, should not accumulate wealth or depend on guaranteed salaries, but trust God to supply their daily needs, giving away everything beyond that.

Free ministry

He held that the New Testament requires no ordination for preaching or for the breaking of bread, and that every believer may serve as gifted by the Spirit.

Catholicity of spirit

Unlike many of the Brethren, he held that the bond of fellowship is life in Christ, not agreement on church order, and that believers should be received whatever their denomination. He continued to share in worship with Anglicans and others.

Indigenous mission

He insisted that Indian Christians should lead their own churches, that Indian evangelists should not be dependent on foreign salaries, and that missionaries should adopt a simple way of life.

Documented controversies

Baghdad

His decision to take his family to Baghdad without support, and the deaths that followed, were criticised by contemporaries as imprudent. Groves saw them as a trial of faith.

Missions in India

His insistence on self-support and his criticism of salaried missionaries brought him into conflict with established missions, and his business ventures failed.

Brethren divisions

His appeal to Darby went unheeded, and he lived to see the division of 1848, which he had foreseen.

Death

He returned to England in poor health in 1852 and died on 20 May 1853 at Bristol, in the home of George Müller, aged 58. He is buried at Arnos Vale cemetery in Bristol.

Legacy

Groves has been called the "father of faith missions". His example and writings inspired George Müller, Hudson Taylor and the many missions that followed the faith principle. His emphasis on indigenous leadership anticipated principles that later became standard in mission theory. In India, the Brethren churches of the Godavari delta and the indigenous movements of Tirunelveli connected with Aroolappen trace their beginnings to him. Within the Brethren, he is remembered as the voice of an open, catholic spirit against Darby's exclusivism.

Measured against the creeds

Groves confessed the creeds' doctrine of God and Christ, and his self-denial, his willingness to suffer, and his charity towards Christians of other churches were admirable. His warning to Darby is one of the wisest documents of the Brethren movement.

His teaching on ministry, however, departs from the historic order. The four traditions hold that Christ instituted the ministry of word and sacrament, and that the apostles appointed elders and gave instructions for their ordination (Acts 14:23; 1 Timothy 4:14; Titus 1:5). The Augsburg Confession (Article 14) teaches that no one should publicly preach or administer the sacraments unless rightly called. To make the Lord's Supper possible without an ordained ministry was the first step in a movement that, as Groves himself feared, came to have no means of settling its disputes except by division.

Major writings

• Christian Devotedness (1825)
• Journal of Mr. Anthony N. Groves, Missionary, during a Journey from London to Bagdad (1831)
• On the Liberty of Ministry in the Church of Christ (1835)
• Memoir of the Late Anthony Norris Groves, compiled by his widow (1856)

Affiliation

Barrister; priest of the Church of Ireland (deacon 1825, priest 1826); leader of the Plymouth, then Exclusive, Brethren

Appears in

The Plymouth Brethren and dispensationalism

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Life

A privileged beginning

John Nelson Darby was born in Westminster, London, on 18 November 1800, the youngest son of John Darby, a wealthy Anglo-Irish merchant with an estate at Leap Castle in County Offaly; his godfather was Admiral Lord Nelson. He was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in 1819 with the classical gold medal. He trained for the bar and was called in 1822, but within a year gave up the law, to his father's displeasure, out of conviction that it was incompatible with following Christ.

Curate in Wicklow

He was ordained deacon in the Church of Ireland in 1825 and priest in 1826, and served as curate of Calary, a poor mountain parish in County Wicklow. He lived ascetically among the Catholic peasantry, fasting and visiting at night, and many converted. In October 1827 he injured his leg in a riding accident; during a long convalescence in Dublin he came, through reading Scripture, to a new assurance of salvation and a conviction that the believer is "seated in heavenly places" with Christ, distinct from the world.

Breaking with the Establishment

In 1827 Archbishop William Magee of Dublin required converts from Catholicism to take an oath of allegiance to the king. Darby protested that this made conversion a political act and tied the Church to the State. His disillusion grew. From about 1827 he joined small groups in Dublin - among them Anthony Norris Groves, Edward Cronin and J.G. Bellett - who broke bread together on Sundays without a clergyman, as believers only.

He attended the Powerscourt conferences on prophecy organised by Lady Theodosia Powerscourt in County Wicklow (1831-33), where his views on the Church and the end times took shape and were debated. He resigned his curacy and, by the early 1830s, had left the Church of Ireland.

Plymouth and the Brethren

In 1831-32 he visited Oxford and then Plymouth, where with Benjamin Wills Newton and others he helped form a large assembly; its members became known as the "Plymouth Brethren". For fifteen years he travelled tirelessly - Switzerland (1838-45), where he gained many followers in Vaud and Geneva, France, Germany, and later North America, the West Indies and New Zealand - preaching, founding assemblies and writing.

The great division

In 1845 he returned to Plymouth and attacked Newton for his prophetic views and for controlling the assembly; in 1847 Darby charged Newton with heresy about Christ's sufferings. Newton withdrew, but some of his supporters were received at Bethesda Chapel in Bristol, led by George Müller and Henry Craik. In August 1848 Darby issued the "Bethesda Circular", declaring that any assembly receiving anyone from Bethesda would itself be cut off. The movement split into the "Exclusive" Brethren, who followed Darby, and the "Open" Brethren, who did not.

Later years

Darby continued to travel, write and translate into old age, making seven journeys to North America between 1862 and 1877. In 1879-81 a dispute at Ramsgate led his party to excommunicate a large group associated with his long-time collaborator William Kelly. He never married.

Key dates

• 1800 - Born in Westminster, 18 November
• 1819 - Graduates from Trinity College, Dublin
• 1825-26 - Ordained deacon and priest in the Church of Ireland
• 1827 - Protests the Archbishop's oath for converts; begins breaking bread with Dublin believers
• 1831-33 - Powerscourt prophecy conferences
• 1832 - Plymouth assembly established
• 1838-45 - Ministry in Switzerland
• 1845-47 - Conflict with B.W. Newton at Plymouth
• 1848 - The Bethesda Circular; Open and Exclusive Brethren divide
• 1862-77 - Seven visits to North America
• 1881 - Kelly division
• 29 April 1882 - Dies at Bournemouth

Teachings and claims

The ruin of the Church

Darby taught that the professing Church had fallen into ruin, like Israel before it, and that no one now had authority to restore its offices. Ordained clergy, denominations and national churches were all part of the ruin. Faithful believers should separate from them and gather "to the name of the Lord" alone, breaking bread each Lord's Day, with any brother free to speak as the Spirit led.

Israel and the Church

Darby made a sharp distinction between Israel and the Church. Israel is God's earthly people with earthly promises, which will be fulfilled literally in a future kingdom; the Church is a heavenly people, a "parenthesis" in God's plan unknown to the Old Testament prophets. Prophecies about Israel do not apply to the Church.

Dispensations

History is divided into dispensations - periods in which God tests humanity under a particular arrangement, each ending in failure and judgement. The present age of the Church is one of them and will end in apostasy.

The pre-tribulation rapture

Because the Church is heavenly, Darby taught that Christ will come secretly for the Church - the "rapture" (1 Thessalonians 4:17) - before a seven-year tribulation, when God will resume His dealings with Israel. Christ's visible return to judge and reign comes at the end of the tribulation. This two-stage Second Coming was new.

Translation

He translated the Bible into German (the Elberfeld Bible, with others), French (the Pau Bible) and English (the New Translation), working carefully from the original texts.

Documented controversies

• The origin of the rapture teaching. Some writers claim that Darby took it from Margaret Macdonald's 1830 vision or from Irving's circle; others, including most Brethren historians, say he reached it independently through his ecclesiology around 1827-33. The question is disputed (see the topic page).
• The Newton affair and the Bethesda Circular. Darby's attack on Newton, and his demand that all assemblies cut off Bethesda, are generally regarded even by sympathetic historians as harsh. The division has never healed.
• Autocratic leadership. Friends and opponents alike described his leadership as domineering. The Exclusive Brethren after him divided repeatedly - Kelly (1881), Grant (1884), Raven (1890) and others.
• Contradiction. Critics noted that a movement founded on the principle that no one has authority in the ruined Church came to exercise, through him and later leaders, an authority stricter than any bishop's.

Death

Darby died at Sundon House, Bournemouth, on 29 April 1882, aged 81, after a period of declining health, and was buried in Bournemouth. His gravestone carries the words "As unknown and well known", from 2 Corinthians 6:9.

Legacy

Dispensationalism, carried to America by Darby's visits and taken up by James H. Brookes, the Niagara Bible Conference, Moody, and above all the Scofield Reference Bible (1909), became the dominant end-times teaching of American fundamentalism and much of Pentecostalism. Dallas Theological Seminary (1924) became its academic centre. Popular prophecy culture - from Hal Lindsey's books to the Left Behind novels - and much Christian Zionism grew from it.

The Brethren in their many branches, Open and Exclusive, descend from him and the early Dublin and Plymouth groups. They have produced notable Bible scholars, missionaries and philanthropists, as well as, in some Exclusive branches, extreme forms of separation.

Measured against the creeds

Darby was orthodox on the Trinity and the person of Christ, a fine scholar and a devoted, self-denying man. But his doctrine of the Church cannot be reconciled with the creeds. The Nicene Creed confesses "one holy catholic and apostolic Church"; Darby taught that the Church on earth was in ruins and that its ministry had no authority. The Lord promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church (Matthew 16:18) and that the Spirit would guide it into all truth (John 16:13).

His separation of Israel and the Church also contradicts the apostolic teaching that in Christ the promises to Abraham are fulfilled for Jew and Gentile together, "one new man" (Ephesians 2:14-16; Galatians 3:29). And his secret rapture is unknown to the Fathers and the whole Church before the nineteenth century, which confessed one return of Christ "in glory to judge the living and the dead". Lutherans, in the Augsburg Confession (Article XVII), also reject "Jewish opinions" that before the resurrection the godly will rule an earthly kingdom.

Major writings

• The Nature and Unity of the Church of Christ (1828)
• Synopsis of the Books of the Bible, 5 vols (1857-67)
• The Collected Writings of J.N. Darby, ed. William Kelly, 34 vols
• Letters of J.N.D., 3 vols
• The Holy Scriptures: A New Translation from the Original Languages (English New Testament 1871; Old Testament completed after his death)
• Spiritual Songs (hymns)

Affiliation

German Pietist convert; Open Brethren leader at Bethesda Chapel, Bristol; founder of the Ashley Down orphanages

Appears in

The Plymouth Brethren and dispensationalism

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Life

A dissolute youth

Johann Georg Ferdinand Müller was born on 27 September 1805 at Kroppenstedt, near Halberstadt in Prussia, the son of a tax collector. By his own account he was a thief and liar from boyhood: he stole government money from his father, ran up debts, and at sixteen was jailed for several weeks for leaving hotels without paying. His father intended him for the Lutheran ministry, a comfortable living, and in 1825 he entered the University of Halle to study divinity.

Conversion

In November 1825 a fellow student took him to a Bible study and prayer meeting in a private house. Seeing a man kneel to pray moved him deeply; he returned, and within weeks was converted. He gave up drinking and gambling, began to read Scripture seriously, and resolved to be a missionary. Halle, the home of August Hermann Francke's famous orphan house, impressed on him the example of a work of faith; he lived for a time in free lodgings at Francke's institution.

England and Teignmouth

In 1829 he went to London to train with the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews. Falling ill, he went to recover at Teignmouth in Devon, where he met Henry Craik, a Scottish tutor who became his lifelong colleague, and came under the influence of Anthony Norris Groves's teaching on simple dependence on God. He left the Society, became minister of Ebenezer Chapel, Teignmouth, in 1830, and the same year married Groves's sister, Mary. Soon afterwards he gave up his fixed salary and pew rents, taking only what was freely given in a box, and resolved never to ask anyone but God for money or to go into debt.

Bristol and the orphanages

In 1832 he and Craik moved to Bristol as joint pastors of Gideon and Bethesda Chapels. In 1834 he founded the Scriptural Knowledge Institution for Home and Abroad, which supported schools, Bible distribution and missionaries. In April 1836 he opened his first orphan house, for thirty girls, in a rented house in Wilson Street. More houses followed. In 1849 he opened the first purpose-built house at Ashley Down on the edge of Bristol, and by 1870 there were five large houses accommodating about 2,000 children at a time. The orphanages provided food, clothes, schooling and training, and placed children in apprenticeships and service.

His Narrative recorded each gift and each answer to prayer, including the often retold mornings when the children sat down to empty plates and food arrived before the meal.

Bethesda and the Brethren

Bethesda Chapel was one of the early Brethren assemblies. In 1848, when Darby demanded that Bethesda refuse fellowship to anyone from Newton's former congregation at Plymouth, Müller, Craik and the elders declined to judge individuals without examination, while condemning Newton's errors. Darby's Bethesda Circular cut them off, creating the division between Exclusive and Open Brethren. Müller remained a leader of the Open Brethren.

Preaching journeys

After Mary died in 1870, he married Susannah Grace Sanger in 1871. From 1875, aged seventy, he handed the daily running of the orphanages to his son-in-law James Wright and spent seventeen years travelling - some 200,000 miles in forty-two countries, including the United States, India, Australia, China and Russia - preaching to perhaps three million people.

Key dates

• 1805 - Born at Kroppenstedt, Prussia, 27 September
• 1825 - Studies at Halle; converted in November
• 1829 - Comes to London
• 1830 - Pastor at Teignmouth; marries Mary Groves; gives up a fixed salary
• 1832 - Moves to Bristol with Henry Craik
• 1834 - Founds the Scriptural Knowledge Institution
• 1836 - Opens the first orphan house
• 1848 - Refuses Darby's demand; Bethesda is cut off
• 1849-70 - Builds five orphan houses at Ashley Down
• 1875-92 - World preaching tours
• 10 March 1898 - Dies at Ashley Down

Teachings and claims

The faith principle

Müller taught that a Christian work should depend on God alone. He would not ask anyone for money, take out loans, or reveal current needs while they were pressing, and published accounts only afterwards. He described the orphanages as a public demonstration that "God is still the living God" who hears prayer, aimed at Christians who doubted that faith could be practical.

Scripture and prayer

He read the Bible through some two hundred times and taught that the first business of each day is to get one's soul happy in the Lord through Scripture and prayer. He kept a lifelong record of prayers and their answers.

Brethren principles

He held the Brethren practice of weekly breaking of bread, believer's baptism and an unpaid, unordained ministry, but was more moderate than Darby on separation. He did not accept every element of dispensational teaching; he expected Christ's return but did not hold that it could happen at any moment before certain prophecies were fulfilled.^†

Documented controversies

• The Bethesda question. Darby and the Exclusive Brethren regarded Müller as compromised by the decision of 1848 and refused fellowship with Bethesda; the breach was never healed.
• Publicity as appeal. Some critics have asked whether publishing detailed annual reports of answered prayer functioned as an indirect appeal for funds. Müller replied that the reports always came after the need had been met.
• Institutional care. Later writers on child welfare have noted the strict, regimented life of large Victorian orphanages, of which Ashley Down was one, though it was regarded as humane by the standards of its time.

No personal or financial scandal is recorded. At his death his personal estate was valued at about £160, most of it in household goods and books.

Death

Müller died peacefully in his room at the New Orphan House No. 3, Ashley Down, early on 10 March 1898, aged 92; he had led a prayer meeting the evening before. Tens of thousands lined the streets of Bristol for his funeral, and he was buried in Arnos Vale Cemetery.

Legacy

Over his lifetime the orphanages cared for some ten thousand children, and the Scriptural Knowledge Institution supported hundreds of missionaries, including Hudson Taylor in his early years. His example inspired the faith-mission movement - the China Inland Mission and many others - and countless orphanages and works of charity worldwide. The George Müller Charitable Trust continues in Bristol.

He is one of the most widely admired figures in evangelical history, cited by Christians of every tradition as an example of prayer and trust in God.

Measured against the creeds

Müller's charity, honesty and humility are beyond question, and they reflect the Church's ancient care for orphans, enjoined in Scripture (James 1:27) and practised by the Fathers and religious orders through the centuries. His trust in Providence would be recognised by any of the four traditions, and has close parallels in the mendicant orders and in Francke's Lutheran orphanage that inspired him.

Where he stood with the Brethren, he shared their rejection of an ordained ministry, of infant baptism and of the historic sacramental order, which the four traditions cannot accept. But in 1848 he chose charity and careful judgement over sweeping separation, and in this he stood closer to the mind of the Church than his critics.

Major writings

• A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller (in parts, from 1837)
• Annual Reports of the Scriptural Knowledge Institution
• Preaching Tours and Missionary Labours of George Müller, by Susannah Grace Müller (1883)

Affiliation

Port Glasgow, Scotland; part of the 1830 charismatic revival in the west of Scotland associated with Edward Irving

Appears in

The Plymouth Brethren and dispensationalism, Edward Irving and the Catholic Apostolic Church

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Life

Port Glasgow

Margaret Macdonald was born in 1815 in Port Glasgow, on the Clyde in the west of Scotland, into a pious family of the Church of Scotland. Her twin brothers, James and George, were shipyard workers. Little is known of her early life except what appears in the accounts of the 1830 revival, written by sympathisers.

The west of Scotland revival

In 1828-30 a movement of expectation spread through parishes of the west of Scotland, encouraged by the preaching of John McLeod Campbell at Row (Rhu) and by Edward Irving's teaching that the gifts of the Spirit had been lost through unbelief and could be restored. Groups met to pray for an outpouring of the Spirit. In March 1830 Mary Campbell of Fernicarry, a young invalid, began to speak in tongues and was reported healed.

The vision

Margaret Macdonald was seriously ill in early 1830. During her illness, in the spring of that year, she experienced a series of visions of the coming of Christ and of the Church filled with the Spirit, which she described at length to visitors and wrote down. Soon afterwards, in April 1830, her brother James commanded her in the name of Jesus to rise, and she was reported to have been healed. James and George began to speak in tongues and to interpret, and visitors came from England and Scotland to see the Macdonald household. Among them, in the summer of 1830, was J.N. Darby, who later wrote that he had found the phenomena unconvincing.

Irving and London

Reports of Port Glasgow reached Irving's congregation in London, where tongues and prophecy broke out in 1831. The Macdonalds remained in Port Glasgow; the movement there was closely watched and widely discussed. James and George Macdonald both died in 1835.

Later years

Margaret is said to have married, possibly to a member of the movement, and to have died young. Almost nothing about her later life is documented.^†

Key dates

• 1815 - Born in Port Glasgow
• 1828-30 - Revival in the west of Scotland
• March 1830 - Tongues and healing reported at Fernicarry
• Spring 1830 - Her illness and visions
• April 1830 - Reported healing; her brothers begin to speak in tongues
• Summer 1830 - J.N. Darby visits Port Glasgow
• 1831 - Tongues in Irving's London congregation
• 1835 - Death of James and George Macdonald
• 1840 - Robert Norton publishes her account
• c. 1840 - Dies
• 1861 - Norton's second, altered version of the vision
• 1970s - The vision becomes the centre of the rapture-origins debate

Teachings and claims

The vision of 1830

As published by Robert Norton in 1840, her account describes a vision of the coming of the Lord "in glory", seen not by the natural eye but by those filled with the Spirit; a fiery trial to come upon the Church, in which the wicked one would be revealed; and the need for the Church to be filled with the Spirit to be ready. She wrote that "the trial of the Church is from Antichrist" and that it is "by being filled with the Spirit that we shall be kept".

The restoration of the gifts

She shared the conviction of the revival that God was restoring the gifts of tongues, prophecy and healing in preparation for Christ's return.

Documented controversies

The rapture debate

In the twentieth century some writers, beginning with an American journalist in 1973, argued that her 1830 vision was the source of the pre-tribulation rapture - the doctrine that believers will be removed from the earth before the tribulation - and that Darby took the idea from Port Glasgow. Most historians, including those sympathetic to neither side, have rejected this. Her account speaks of the Church passing through the trial of Antichrist, which is the opposite of a pre-tribulation rapture, and Darby's own teaching developed from his reading of Scripture and his ecclesiology over several years.

The two texts

The debate is complicated by the fact that Norton's 1861 version of the vision omits passages, present in the 1840 text, about the Church's trial under Antichrist. Writers on both sides have used the differences. Scholars have generally concluded that the 1840 text is the more reliable.

The phenomena

Contemporary observers, including Darby and later the Church of Scotland, disputed whether the Port Glasgow tongues and healings were genuine. McLeod Campbell was deposed by the General Assembly in 1831 for his teaching on the atonement, and Irving in 1833.

Death

She died young, around 1840. The date and place of her death are not recorded in the standard sources.^†

Legacy

Her significance is almost entirely posthumous. Within the Catholic Apostolic Church that grew from Irving's movement, the Port Glasgow events were remembered as the first signs of the restoration of the gifts. In the twentieth century she became the centre of a dispute about the origin of dispensational teaching on the rapture - a dispute that says more about modern controversy than about her.

Measured against the creeds

The creeds confess that Christ "shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead", a single, public return. Margaret Macdonald's vision, as first published, expects the Church to pass through trial and to be kept by the Spirit - closer to the historic expectation than the dispensational scheme with which she has been linked.

The difficulties lie in the setting of her vision. The historic churches have always tested private revelations by Scripture and the Church's faith, and treated them with great caution; they do not receive them as guidance for the Church's teaching about the last things (1 Thessalonians 5:20-21; 1 John 4:1). The movement of which she was part claimed a restoration of gifts that the Church, through its ordinary means, had never lacked, and its teaching was examined and rejected by the Church of Scotland.

Affiliation

Congregationalist layman; independent evangelist; founder of the Moody Bible Institute (1886) and the Northfield schools

Appears in

Revivalism and the "second blessing", The Plymouth Brethren and dispensationalism

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Life

Northfield and Boston

Dwight Lyman Moody was born on 5 February 1837 at Northfield, Massachusetts, the sixth of nine children. His father, a stonemason, died when Dwight was four, leaving the family in debt; his mother, Betsey, kept them together and raised them in the liberal Unitarian church of the village. Moody had about five years of schooling and wrote poorly all his life.

At seventeen he went to Boston to work in his uncle's shoe shop, on condition that he attend the Mount Vernon Congregational Church. On 21 April 1855 his Sunday-school teacher, Edward Kimball, came to the shop and spoke to him about Christ, and Moody was converted. The church at first delayed his membership because he could not explain his faith.

Chicago

In 1856 he moved to Chicago and became a successful shoe salesman, but he spent more and more of his time recruiting children for Sunday school. His North Market Hall mission school grew to some 1,500 pupils; Abraham Lincoln visited it in 1860. That year Moody gave up business to work full time for the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) and his mission. He married Emma Revell in 1862. During the Civil War he served with the YMCA's Christian Commission among soldiers. His independent church, the Illinois Street Church, was formed in 1864.

In 1871 he said he had been praying for a filling of the Spirit after two women of his congregation told him they were praying that he would receive "the power". In the weeks after the Great Chicago Fire destroyed his church and home in October 1871, while walking in New York, he had an experience of God's presence so strong that he "had to ask Him to stay His hand". He spoke of it as an anointing for service rather than a second blessing of perfection.

Britain, 1873-75

Moody had visited Britain in 1867 and 1872 and met Brethren and other evangelical leaders, including George Müller and Henry Varley. In 1873 he returned with the singer Ira D. Sankey for a campaign that began quietly in York and grew into a national phenomenon: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin, and finally London in 1875, where an estimated two and a half million people attended meetings over twenty weeks. Sankey's songs, published as Sacred Songs and Solos, sold in vast numbers.

American campaigns and schools

Moody returned to America a celebrity and held great city campaigns in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago and Boston (1875-77), supported by businessmen such as John Wanamaker. He founded the Northfield Seminary for girls (1879) and the Mount Hermon School for boys (1881) near his home, the Northfield summer conferences (from 1880), and the Chicago Evangelization Society (1886), later the Moody Bible Institute. At a 1886 student conference at Mount Hermon, the Student Volunteer Movement for foreign missions was born. He returned to Britain in 1881-84 and later held a massive campaign at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

Key dates

• 1837 - Born at Northfield, Massachusetts, 5 February
• 1855 - Converted in Boston
• 1856 - Moves to Chicago
• 1860 - Gives up business for mission and YMCA work
• 1871 - Chicago Fire; experience of the Spirit's power
• 1873-75 - British campaign with Ira Sankey
• 1875-77 - Great American city campaigns
• 1879-81 - Founds the Northfield schools
• 1886 - Founds what became Moody Bible Institute; Student Volunteer Movement begins at Mount Hermon
• 1893 - World's Fair campaign in Chicago
• 22 December 1899 - Dies at Northfield

Teachings and claims

The simple gospel

Moody preached what he called the "three Rs": ruin by sin, redemption by Christ and regeneration by the Holy Ghost. His sermons were short, warm and full of stories, emphasising God's love more than His wrath. He asked hearers to decide for Christ and directed them to an "inquiry room" where trained workers prayed with them, replacing Finney's anxious bench with a quieter, more personal setting.

Premillennial expectation

Through Brethren contacts in Britain, Moody came to expect that Christ could return at any moment, before a millennium, and that the world would not be converted beforehand. In a well-known sermon he said: "I look on this world as a wrecked vessel. God has given me a lifeboat and said to me, 'Moody, save all you can.'" His Northfield conferences gave a platform to dispensational teachers, and his Bible institute became one of its main schools.

Power for service

He taught that believers should seek a baptism of the Spirit for service, as distinct from conversion. This "Keswick" emphasis on empowerment, taught by his associate R.A. Torrey, fed into the Holiness and early Pentecostal movements.

Documented controversies

• Lack of training. Moody was never ordained and had no theological education. Critics in Britain and America charged him with oversimplifying the gospel and with bad grammar; he cheerfully admitted the latter.
• Business methods. His campaigns were organised like commercial enterprises, with advertising, committees of businessmen, ticketing and careful preparation. Critics thought this made revival a product; admirers saw efficient stewardship.
• Theological breadth. Conservatives later criticised him for inviting modernists such as Henry Drummond and George Adam Smith to speak at Northfield.
• Race. In the American South he accepted segregated meetings, which drew criticism from Black church leaders including Ida B. Wells.

^†

No significant personal or financial scandals are documented; he refused to take money from his campaigns for himself, and royalties from the hymn books went to his schools.

Death

Moody fell ill during a campaign in Kansas City in November 1899 and returned to Northfield, where he died of heart failure on 22 December 1899, aged 62. His son recorded his last words as "Earth recedes; heaven opens before me... This is my triumph; this is my coronation day!"

Legacy

Moody created the modern city-wide evangelistic campaign later carried on by Billy Sunday and others, and the Bible institute movement that trained generations of lay workers and missionaries. Moody Bible Institute, the Moody Church and the Northfield schools continue. He was also a principal channel by which premillennial, dispensational expectation entered mainstream American evangelicalism and, through it, Pentecostalism. He was generous, humorous and personally humble, and drew support across denominational lines.

Measured against the creeds

Moody's preaching of sin, redemption and new birth stood within the historic faith, and he avoided the perfectionism of many of his contemporaries. His weakness was the absence of the Church and the sacraments from his message: conversion became an individual decision in an inquiry room, detached from baptism, the Lord's Supper and the life of a congregation. The creeds confess "one holy catholic and apostolic Church" and "one baptism for the remission of sins"; in mass evangelism these were often left to others, or forgotten.

His adoption of the "any moment" return and the view that the world is a wreck to escape also helped spread an eschatology foreign to the ancient Church, which confesses simply that Christ "will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead", without a secret rapture or a separate destiny for the Church and Israel.

Major writings

Moody wrote little; most of his books are edited sermons.

• Twelve Select Sermons (1880)
• Secret Power, or the Secret of Success in Christian Life and Christian Work (1881)
• The Way to God and How to Find It (1884)
• Heaven (1880)

Affiliation

Confederate soldier; Kansas legislator and U.S. attorney; Congregationalist minister (ordained 1883); editor of the Scofield Reference Bible

Appears in

The Plymouth Brethren and dispensationalism

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Life

Michigan, Tennessee and the war

Cyrus Ingerson Scofield was born on 19 August 1843 in Lenawee County, Michigan. His mother died soon after his birth and his father remarried. As a teenager he went to live with a married sister in Lebanon, Tennessee. When the Civil War broke out he enlisted in the Confederate army (7th Tennessee Infantry) in 1861, served in the Virginia campaigns, and was discharged in 1862 as a non-combatant on grounds of his Northern birth and age. His later accounts - that he won the Cross of Honour for bravery at Antietam - are not supported by the records. ^†

St Louis, Kansas and scandal

After the war he lived in St Louis, read law, and married Léontine Le Beau Cerré, a Catholic from a prominent French family, in 1866; they had two daughters. In 1869 the family moved to Atchison, Kansas, where Scofield entered Republican politics. He was elected to the Kansas House of Representatives (1871-72) and in 1873, through the influence of Senator John J. Ingalls, was appointed U.S. District Attorney for Kansas. He resigned after only six months amid newspaper reports of bribery and financial irregularities connected with Ingalls's election campaign.

He returned to St Louis, drank heavily, and left his wife and daughters. Local newspapers and later court papers record charges that he obtained money with promissory notes bearing forged signatures, including those of his mother-in-law; he was briefly jailed in St Louis in 1879 according to some accounts. ^†

Conversion and ministry

In September 1879 a St Louis lawyer and YMCA worker, Thomas McPheeters, led him to faith. He came under the teaching of James H. Brookes, pastor of Walnut Street Presbyterian Church and the leading American disciple of Darby's prophetic teaching, who taught him dispensationalism. Scofield worked for the YMCA and for Moody's St Louis campaign of 1880. In 1882 he became pastor of the small First Congregational Church of Dallas, Texas, and was ordained in 1883. The same year his wife divorced him for desertion, and in 1884 he married Hettie van Wark, a member of his Dallas church.

The Dallas church grew from fourteen members to over five hundred. He wrote Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth (1888), began a popular Comprehensive Bible Correspondence Course, founded the Central American Mission (1890), and spoke at the Niagara Bible Conferences. From 1895 to 1902 he was pastor of Moody's Trinitarian Congregational Church at Northfield, Massachusetts, and taught at Moody's schools, then returned to Dallas.

The Reference Bible

At the Sea Cliff Bible Conference in 1901-02 Scofield proposed a reference Bible with notes to help ordinary readers. With financial support from businessmen and a panel of consulting editors - among them A.T. Pierson, W.J. Erdman and James M. Gray

• he worked on it for several years, partly in Switzerland and England. Oxford

University Press published The Scofield Reference Bible in January 1909, with a revised edition in 1917. He founded the New York School of the Bible in 1914.

Key dates

• 1843 - Born in Lenawee County, Michigan, 19 August
• 1861-62 - Confederate service
• 1866 - Marries Léontine Cerré
• 1871-73 - Kansas legislator; U.S. District Attorney for Kansas; resigns
• 1879 - Conversion in St Louis
• 1882-83 - Pastor in Dallas; ordained; divorced by his first wife
• 1888 - Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth
• 1890 - Founds the Central American Mission
• 1895-1902 - Pastor at Northfield, Massachusetts
• 1909 - The Scofield Reference Bible published by Oxford
• 1917 - Revised edition
• 24 July 1921 - Dies at Douglaston, New York

Teachings and claims

Rightly dividing

Taking 2 Timothy 2:15 ("rightly dividing the word of truth") as his key, Scofield taught that the Bible must be divided by dispensations and by the peoples to whom each part is addressed - Jews, Gentiles and the Church. Much of the Old Testament and parts of the Gospels, including the Sermon on the Mount, belong to the "kingdom" message for Israel rather than directly to the Church.

Seven dispensations

His notes define a dispensation as "a period of time during which man is tested in respect of obedience to some specific revelation of the will of God", and name seven: Innocency, Conscience, Human Government, Promise, Law, Grace and the Kingdom.

Israel, the Church and the rapture

Following Darby, he taught that Israel and the Church are distinct, that the Church will be raptured before a seven-year tribulation, that Christ will then return to reign on earth for a thousand years, and that the promises to Israel, including the land, will be fulfilled literally.

The gap theory

His notes on Genesis 1:1-2 taught that a long gap may lie between the original creation and the six days, during which a pre-Adamic world was judged - allowing geological ages without conceding evolution.

Documented controversies

• His early life. His resignation as U.S. attorney, desertion of his family and financial dealings in St Louis are documented in newspapers and court records of the time. Some biographers, notably Joseph Canfield and David Lutzweiler, have argued that he also concealed and misrepresented much of this; sympathetic writers argue that his conversion was real and that he made some restitution. His authorised biography (Trumbull, 1920) omitted his first marriage altogether.
• His titles. He used the title "D.D." though no institution conferring it has been identified.^†
• His military record. His claims to Confederate honours do not match the surviving records.
• The notes as authority. Critics then and since have argued that printing a single school's interpretation beside the text, in a prestigious Oxford edition, gave its readings an authority that readers confused with Scripture itself.

Death

Scofield's health declined after 1917. He died at his home in Douglaston, Long Island, on 24 July 1921, aged 77.

Legacy

The Scofield Reference Bible sold millions of copies and became the standard Bible of American fundamentalism, of Bible institutes, and of most early Pentecostals. Oxford still publishes a revised version. Dallas Theological Seminary (1924), founded by his disciple Lewis Sperry Chafer, made his system academic. Through the Bible, his scheme shaped popular prophecy writing and American evangelical attitudes to the State of Israel throughout the twentieth century.

Measured against the creeds

Scofield's system carried Darby's teaching on the Church, Israel and the rapture to millions, with the same difficulties: the creeds confess one Church and one return of Christ to judge the living and the dead, not a secret rapture or a separate destiny for the Church and Israel. Assigning the Sermon on the Mount and much of the Gospels to another dispensation also sets aside the way the Church has always read them - as the Lord's own teaching to His disciples of every age.

His method raises a further issue. The four traditions read Scripture within the rule of faith handed down in the Church, guarded by creeds and councils; Scofield offered instead a private system of notes, printed beside the sacred text, which for many readers became an unrecognised authority of its own. His personal story - a real conversion after real wrongdoing - is one the Church can honour; the system he popularised is another matter.

Major writings

• Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth (1888)
• Comprehensive Bible Correspondence Course (1890s)
• The Scofield Reference Bible (Oxford, 1909; revised 1917)
• Addresses on Prophecy (1910)
• In Many Pulpits (1922, posthumous)

Affiliation

New York linen merchant; leader of the Raven-Taylor Exclusive Brethren from 1959

Appears in

The Plymouth Brethren and dispensationalism

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Life

A Brethren family

James Taylor Jr. was born in 1899, the son of James Taylor Sr. (1870-1953), an Irish-born businessman in New York who became the leading figure of the largest party of the Exclusive Brethren.^† The Exclusive Brethren had divided several times since J.N. Darby's day; Taylor Sr. led the party descended from F.E. Raven, who had been followed in 1890 by those who accepted his teaching that the eternal Son became Son only at the Incarnation. Under Taylor Sr. that teaching was confirmed in the 1920s, and the party came to be known as the "Raven-Taylor" Brethren. The movement increasingly looked to one man, the "Elect Vessel" or "Man of God", for its ministry.

The younger Taylor worked in the linen trade in New York and was active in Brethren meetings from early adulthood.

Leadership

After his father's death in 1953 there was a period without a single acknowledged leader. From about 1959 Taylor Jr., then around sixty, emerged as the dominant voice in the fellowship's ministry, and his addresses, printed and distributed through the Brethren's own publishers, came to be treated as authoritative throughout the world.

The separation doctrine

From 1959 Taylor taught a series of increasingly strict applications of the principle of "separation from evil", drawn from 2 Timothy 2:19-22 and 2 Corinthians 6:14-17. In 1960 he ruled that members must not eat with anyone outside the fellowship, including their own family members who had left or never joined, applying 1 Corinthians 5:11. Members were forbidden to belong to professional associations or trade unions, to live in buildings with shared walls or drains with non-members, to go to university, to own radios or later televisions, or to keep pets. The breaking of bread was moved to early Sunday morning.

Division and the press

The new rules divided families: husbands and wives, parents and children were separated when one side remained in fellowship and the other did not. Large numbers left in the early 1960s, and newspapers in Britain, Australia and New Zealand reported cases of families broken apart, leading to questions in the British Parliament.^†

Aberdeen, 1970

In July 1970 Taylor visited Brethren meetings in Aberdeen, Scotland. Local Brethren reported that he was drunk at meetings, used obscene and abusive language, and was discovered in bed with the wife of a member of the fellowship at the house where he was staying. Taylor and his supporters said that nothing improper had occurred and that the episode was a test of the saints' loyalty. Many assemblies in Scotland and elsewhere withdrew from him, forming separate fellowships; those who remained, the majority worldwide, accepted his account.

Key dates

• 1899 - Born
• 1953 - Death of James Taylor Sr.
• c. 1959 - Emerges as leader of the Raven-Taylor Exclusive Brethren
• 1960 - Rule against eating with non-members
• 1960s - Wave of departures and press coverage
• July 1970 - The Aberdeen meetings
• 1970 - Divisions follow; dies in New York

Teachings and claims

Separation from evil

Taylor taught that the true Church is preserved by separating from all association with evil, and that the world - including other Christians and family members outside the fellowship - is a source of defilement. Separation must be practised in every area of daily life.

Authoritative ministry

He taught, in practice if not in theory, that the ministry of the leading brother was the voice of the Spirit to the assembly, and that those who questioned it were rebellious.

The Raven-Taylor doctrines

He maintained his father's and Raven's teaching that the Son's sonship is not eternal but belongs to the Incarnation, and that the Spirit should not be addressed in prayer.

Documented controversies

Broken families

The rules introduced from 1959 led to the separation of spouses, children and parents across the English-speaking world, documented in press investigations and later in academic studies.

Aberdeen

The events of July 1970 were described in contemporary statements by Aberdeen Brethren and reported in the press. Taylor's defenders denied immorality.^†

Authority

Critics, including former members and other Brethren, argued that the movement had come to treat one man as infallible, a contradiction of the early Brethren's rejection of clerical authority.

Death

He died in New York in October 1970, a few months after the Aberdeen meetings, aged about 71.^†

Legacy

His successors, beginning with James Symington (leader 1970-87), kept and extended his separatist rules. The fellowship, now known as the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, has tens of thousands of members worldwide and has been the subject of government inquiries, charity-law cases and press investigations in Britain, Australia and New Zealand, particularly over its treatment of those who leave. The assemblies that broke away in 1970 and later form several smaller Exclusive fellowships. The history of the Taylor era is the most frequently cited example of the danger inherent in Exclusive Brethren ecclesiology.

Measured against the creeds

The Nicene Creed confesses "the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds"; the Raven-Taylor teaching that the Son's sonship began at the Incarnation is a departure from that confession, which the creed's language was framed to secure.

The doctrine of separation as Taylor practised it also contradicts the historic understanding of the Church. The creeds confess "one holy catholic and apostolic Church", which is holy because it is Christ's, not because its members have separated from defilement; the Lord ate with sinners (Luke 15:2), and Paul's instruction not to eat with a professing brother living in open sin (1 Corinthians 5:11) applies to discipline within the Church, not to separation from family members outside it. Paul explicitly says that believers are not to withdraw from unbelievers in the world, "for then must ye needs go out of the world" (1 Corinthians 5:10), and he forbids a believer to leave an unbelieving spouse (1 Corinthians 7:12-14).

The concentration of authority in a single "man of God", without creed, council or accountable ministry, is the opposite of the ordered ministry the historic churches maintain, and the events of 1970 show how such a system can turn moral failure into a test of loyalty.

Affiliation

Sikh convert (1929, Canada); founder of the Hebron assemblies, Hyderabad

Appears in

The modern movements in India, The Plymouth Brethren and dispensationalism

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Life

A Sikh childhood

Bakht Singh Chabra was born on 6 June 1903 at Joia, in the Punjab (now in Pakistan), into a prosperous Sikh family. He was educated at a Christian school, but he despised Christianity and once tore up a copy of the New Testament. He studied at Punjab University and in 1926 went to England to study agricultural engineering at King's College, London. He adopted a Western way of life, cut his hair and gave up his Sikh observances.

Conversion in Canada

In 1928 he moved to Canada to continue his studies and work in Winnipeg, Manitoba. There, through a Christian family who befriended him and through reading the New Testament, he was converted in 1929. He was baptised in Canada in 1932.^† He resolved to return to India as an evangelist.

Return to India

He arrived in Bombay in 1933. His family, who had expected him to return as an engineer, were bitterly hurt by his conversion and disowned him. He began preaching in the streets and in churches of every denomination, and was soon in demand as an evangelist. In the late 1930s campaigns he led in Karachi, the Punjab and Madras saw many conversions and a revival among Christians, marked by public confession of sin and restitution.

Indigenous assemblies

Bakht Singh became convinced that the denominational churches of India, dependent on foreign missions and divided by Western traditions, did not follow the New Testament pattern. From 1941 he began to establish independent congregations, the first of them Jehovah Shammah in Madras (Chennai). In 1950 he made Hyderabad his base, where the Hebron assembly became the centre of a network of hundreds of local churches across India and in Pakistan and beyond, known informally as the Hebron or "Brother Bakht Singh" assemblies. They had no formal denomination, no foreign funding and no paid clergy in the usual sense.

Holy Convocations

From 1941 he held annual "Holy Convocations", gatherings of believers lasting several days, at which thousands camped together for prayer, preaching, the breaking of bread and baptism. They became the signature of the movement.

Later years

He travelled widely in India and abroad, including Britain, North America and Australia, and was regarded by many evangelical leaders as one of the most significant Indian Christians of his age. In his last years he was frail, and leadership passed to elders of the assemblies.

Key dates

• 6 June 1903 - Born at Joia, Punjab
• 1926 - Goes to England to study engineering
• 1928 - Moves to Canada
• 1929 - Converted in Winnipeg
• 1932 - Baptised
• 1933 - Returns to India
• late 1930s - Revival campaigns in Karachi, the Punjab and Madras
• 1941 - Jehovah Shammah assembly, Madras; first Holy Convocation
• 1950 - Hebron, Hyderabad, becomes his base
• 17 September 2000 - Dies in Hyderabad

Teachings and claims

The New Testament pattern

Bakht Singh taught that the local church should follow the pattern of the New Testament as he understood it: believers' baptism by immersion, the breaking of bread every Lord's Day, leadership by a plurality of elders, prayer and fasting, and dependence on God alone for finances.

Indigenous Christianity

He insisted that Indian churches should be led and supported by Indians, worshipping in Indian languages and with Indian forms - sitting on the floor, singing Indian lyrics, men and women seated separately, women with covered heads.

Holiness and prayer

He preached repentance, holiness, separation from worldly practices, and the power of persistent prayer. Many of his hymns in Hindi, Urdu and Telugu are still sung.

Against denominations

He taught that denominational divisions were unscriptural and that believers should gather simply in the name of the Lord.

Documented controversies

Rejection of the historic churches

His assemblies, like the Brethren whom they resembled, regarded the historic churches' ministry and sacraments as unnecessary or worse, and rebaptised members who had been baptised as infants. Churches of the Church of South India and other bodies lost members to the assemblies and criticised his teaching as divisive.

Succession

After his death, and in his last years, the assemblies experienced divisions over leadership and property.^†

No personal scandal is recorded.

Death

He died in Hyderabad on 17 September 2000, aged 97.

Legacy

Bakht Singh is widely regarded as one of the most important leaders of indigenous Indian Christianity in the twentieth century. The Hebron assemblies continue in India and the diaspora, and his example of an Indian-led, self-supporting church movement influenced many other independent churches. His hymns remain part of Indian Christian worship.

Measured against the creeds

Bakht Singh confessed the Trinity, the deity of Christ and salvation by grace through faith, and his evangelistic zeal, his personal holiness and his insistence that the Church in India should not depend on foreign money command respect.

His ecclesiology, however, departs from the historic churches at the same points as the Brethren. The creeds confess "one baptism", which the Church has given to infants since the earliest centuries; to rebaptise those already baptised in the triune name denies that their baptism was Christ's. The Church is "catholic and apostolic", not a fresh gathering recovering a pattern lost for centuries; the Lord promised to be with His Church always (Matthew 28:20). The weekly breaking of bread was a recovery of ancient practice, but the historic churches hold that the Supper is the Lord's body and blood given by Him through His ordained ministry, not only a memorial of the gathered assembly.

The movement's dependence on one leader's gifts, and the divisions that followed his death, also illustrate the difficulty of churches without a wider order.