Good Men Differed by Donald L. Norbie
“Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God.” (Rom. 15:7 NKJ)
In the early 1800's there was a movement of the Spirit of God exercising the hearts of a number of godly men and women in the British Isles. They began to meet in a simple way, seeking to emulate the pattern of the early church. They had the Lord’s Supper every Sunday with opportunity for the priesthood of believers to function. They stressed the unity of the body of Christ and welcomed all believers. It was a bit of heaven on earth, marked by a love for the Lord, one another and the lost.
But soon a serious rift developed. A gifted leader in a Plymouth assembly named B. W. Newton began to teach some erroneous, speculative doctrine on the person of Christ. He later repented of this and the matter should have been dropped.. He had been disciplined. But J. N. Darby insisted that all churches must “judge the question.” He envisioned a world wide association of churches, united on doctrine, discipline and practice. Darby departed from the original practice of receiving all who were true believers in the Lord Jesus. This practice excludes other believers and has led to endless divisions among them.
George Muller, Robert Chapman and others believed discipline must be a local matter, decided by the local church and that each assembly was independent. These churches divided on this issue. Those following Darby became “exclusive assemblies.” Darby also held to infant baptism and rejected the concept of leadership by elders. It was a sad chapter in such a promising beginning.
Darby was a very gifted, well educated man, ordained and trained for the clergy. As such he knew Greek and Hebrew well and had a good theological education. He never married, had tremendous energy and accomplished much. His collected writings fill forty volumes and he wrote commentaries on a number of Biblical books. Darby translated the Bible into English and French and the New Testament into Italian; he was an able linguist. He also wrote a number of beautiful hymns. He traveled extensively and founded 1,500 exclusive assemblies throughout the world through his writings and personal teaching. (George Muller: Delighted in God by Roger Steer. Wheaton: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1975, p. 144)
But he was a very dominant personality and could not tolerate a rival. Hence, he parted ways with Newton, who was also a very strong personality. He insisted that other assemblies exclude Newton and all from his assembly. Darby would not accept Newton’s repentance. Other men such as Robert Chapman and George Muller disagreed with his position and the rift became permanent, persisting to this day. It was a great victory for Satan. Chapman and Muller along with many others continued the open policy that had marked their gatherings from the first, receiving all who were born of God to their fellowships.
In his early years Darby had said, “You are nothing, nobody, but Christians, and the moment you cease to be an available mount for communion for any consistent Christian, you will go to pieces, or help the evil.”(1833) By 1835 Darby’s views were changing and the assemblies where he was dominant were changing also.
When A. N. Groves came back from India he was very disappointed with the trend, finding that “their original bond of union in the truth as it is in Jesus, had been changed for a united testimony against all who differed from them.” (A quote from his widow.) No longer were saints welcomed because they belonged to Jesus but they must agree on every point of doctrine. Instead of being known for their love for all believers they became known for their exclusive, critical attitude toward all who disagreed with them. It was fertile ground for further division. They became the most sectarian of the sects.
Among the truths they discovered in those early days was the truth of the Lord’s return. Post millennialism was the dominant belief of the day; the Church would gradually "Christianize" the world and then Christ would return. As these men studied the Bible they became convinced that Christ would come back before the millennium and then set up his kingdom. But they all accepted that he would come back after the seven years of tribulation. Muller adopted this view in 1829.
By 1835, however, there were several divergent trends among these brethren. Darby was differing on the matter of the reception of all Christians to the Lord’s table. He also began to differ on his teaching concerning the Lord’s return. Here he and Newton, along with some other brethren, disagreed strongly. This was one of the reasons for the strong antipathy between the two men. By 1840 the assembly in Plymouth was very large, about 1,200 to 1,400 attending meetings. Newton was the most gifted teacher there.
In the early 1840's Newton began to question what he called Darby’s “strange system of dispensational doctrines”. Darby began to teach a strong break between the Old Testament believers and those of the church. This strong break was necessary to support his teaching of a Secret Rapture, a teaching put forth earlier in the Albury Prophetic Conference of 1830.
Christ would return in two phases, the first before the tribulation, then later again after the tribulation. Since some of the New Testament did not seem to support that view Darby began to teach that much of the New Testament did not apply to the Church but to the faithful Jewish remnant during the tribulation. For example, the Gospel of Matthew was not teaching Church truth but Kingdom truth and was for the Jewish remnant. This view Newton, Chapman, Muller and S.P. Tregelles, a famous textual scholar, did not accept.
In December, 1879 Muller was speaking at a conference in Toronto on the Lord’s return: “I know that on this subject there is great diversity of judgment and I do not wish to force on other persons the light I have received. The subject, however, is not new to me, for having been a careful, diligent student of the Bible for nearly fifty years, my mind has long been settled on this point, and I have not a shadow of a doubt about it. The Scriptures declare plainly that the Lord Jesus will not come until the apostasy shall have taken place, and the man of sin, the “son of perdition” (or personal Antichrist) shall have been revealed, as seen in 2nd Thessalonians chapter 2. ...This does not, however, alter the fact that the coming of Christ and not death is the great Hope of the Church...” (Steer, p. 276).
So these early brethren divided on the nature and practice of the churches and also on dispensationalism and eschatology. These truths still divided Christians. If only Darby and those who followed him had clung to their first position, that the assembly should welcome all of God’s children, but they did not.. And when it comes to eschatology one needs to recognize that believers do differ on these details. We sing hymns by Chapman, Watts, Darby, Wesley and many others who differed on the details but they all loved the Lord’s appearing. Believers are those who “have turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven” (I Thess. 1:9-10). May we welcome all such as our brothers and sisters.