John Nelson Darby (1800-1882)
The most influential British leader of the separatist Plymouth Brethren movement (also known as Darbyites) and systematizer of dispensationalism. His ideas pervaded late nineteenth century millenarianism in England and America and became a prominent element in American fundamentalism. Although born in London, Darby was educated at Trinity College and began his practice of law in Ireland at the age of twenty-two. Following his conversion and call to the ministry he was a zealous deacon and priest in the Established Church and led a spiritual awakening among his parishioners and their Roman Catholic neighbors. However, he became deeply disillusioned when he perceived a sharp contrast between the moral and spiritual laxness of the contemporary church and the spiritual vitality of NT believers narrated in Acts. Declaring the church to be in ruins, Darby left Anglicanism in 1828 and joined the Brethren movement, nondenominational groups who met in private homes for Bible study and spiritual edification.
Under Darby's forceful
leadership Brethren groups grew rapidly. Darby distinguished the signs of a
true church as spiritual unity and fellowship, and obedience to Scripture under
a ministry guided by the Holy Spirit. Such criteria were juxtaposed against the
visible, ordained ministry and worldly, man-made systems of church government
in the Established Church and other dissenting denominations.
After 1840 sharp divisions
between Darby and other Brethren teachers erupted over increasingly narrow
theological and ecclesiastical questions. As a result Darby became the leader
of the Exclusive group after a bitter controversy with B. W. Newton. In a
series of lectures delivered at Lausanne, Darby synthesized his idea of the
apostasy of the contemporary church with his interest in biblical prophecy and
developed an elaborate philosophy of history. He divided history into separate
eras or dispensations, each of which contained a different order by which God
worked out his redemptive plan. The age of the church, like all preceding
periods, has ended in failure due to man's sinfulness. Darby broke not only
from previous millenarian teaching but from all of church history by asserting
that Christ's second coming would occur in two stages. The first, an invisible
"secret rapture" of true believers, could happen at any moment,
ending the great "parenthesis" or church age which began when the
Jews rejected Christ. Then literal fulfillment would resume OT prophecy
concerning Israel, which had been suspended, and fulfillment of prophecy in
Revelation would begin the great tribulation. Christ's return would be
completed when he established a literal thousand-year kingdom of God on earth,
manifest in a restored Israel.
Darby popularized
dispensationalism and attempted to proselytize converts to Brethrenism by
travels to Europe, New Zealand, and seven trips to Canada and the United States
between 1862 and 1877. His views gained gradual acceptance, as his basic
theological assumptions of verbal inspiration of Scripture, human depravity, and
the sovereignty of God's grace were compatible with traditional Calvinism. His
eschatological views were propagated through a series of prophecy conferences
such as the Niagara Bible Conference, an evangelical fellowship which met
annually from 1883 to 1897 to uphold biblical truth. Although many Baptists and
Old School Presbyterians accepted Darby's eschatology and his view that the
church was often corrupt, few actually left their denominations. And many
leaders criticized Brethrenism for weakening the church by its proselytizing.
Darby's eschatological views
figured prominently in American fundamentalism in the 1920s as conservative
Christians such as dispensationalists and Princeton Calvinists joined forces to
counter liberalism's rejection of biblical teaching.