The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 3

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Continental Society and Albury Conference

I. Drummond-Patron of Advent-awakening Organizations

ANOTHER great organizer and promoter of group study and action was HENRY DRUMMOND (1786-1860), banker and member of Parliament. Educated at Harrow and Christ Church, Oxford, he became an active partner in his father’s bank at Charing Cross in London. He toured Russia in 1807, and served as a member of Parliament for Plympton Earles from 1810 to 1813. He was intimate with Pitt and other leading statesmen of his time. Whenever he rose to speak in Parliament, there was a hush of expectation owing to his high character, wealth, and scholar ship. He was an authority on currency and scientific agriculture, a shrewd debater, and a daring wit. Young Drummond had the highest offices of the state open to him. ¹ PFF3 435.1

Then, in June, 1817, “satiated with the empty frivolities of the fashionable world,” and constrained by Christ’s counsel to the rich young ruler, he broke up his hunting establishment and sold his Grange, that he might devote his whole life to Christian service. Drummond seceded from the Church of England and joined the evangelicals by immersion. With his wife he started on his way to the Holy Land in 1817, to orient himself to his new relationships. A terrific storm caused the ship to put into the port of Genoa, and his wife appealed to him not to attempt to complete the trip. PFF3 435.2

He had heard of the difficulties of Robert Haldane at Geneva, ² and being invited by Professor Gaussen of Geneva, he joined Haldane in the movement against the Arian tendencies of the Consistory at Geneva. His wealth and zeal made him so formidable a power that he was summoned before the Consistory, or Council of State. He therefore withdrew just across the border into France, carrying on the work of reform from there. Circulating Martin’s version of the Scriptures, instead of the one corrupted by the Arian clergy, he encouraged the ministers ejected by the Venerable Company to form a separate body. Because of his concern over the Geneva situation, Drummond helped form the Continental Society in 1819, of which we shall hear later, and sustained it with his own means. This brought him into contact with Edward Irving. PFF3 436.1

While still at Geneva he also became interested in Joseph Wolff, son of a Jewish rabbi, then a student in the Papal College of Missionary Propaganda, at Rome, whom he persuaded to leave Rome, and whose patron he became, financing his ex tensive missionary trips, which began in 1821, ³ under the auspices of the Society to Promote Christianity Amongst the Jews. In 1826 the notable Albury Park Prophetic Conference was held in his palatial home in Surrey. ⁴ He was to be found wherever there was activity in the great Advent Awakening. PFF3 436.2

He supported the prophetic journal The Morning Watch (1829-30), was editor and sponsor of Dialogues on Prophecy (3 volumes), was author of Introduction to the Study of the Apocalypse (1830), Social Duties on Christian Principles (1839), Conditions of the Agricultural Classes (1842), and participated in the production of some ninety books and pamphlets. Drummond was unsparing in his exposure of the iniquities of Romanism. In 1825 he founded the professorship of political economy at Oxford, and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1839. PFF3 436.3

Later he became one of the founders of the Catholic and Apostolic, or Irvingite, Church, ⁵ serving as pastor at Albury in 1832, and having charge of their interests in Scotland and Switzerland until his death. He built the Irvingite church at Albury in 1854, at the cost of L16,000, sustaining it with his own means, and erected a parish house in 1841. In 1847 he again entered Parliament, representing West Surrey thenceforward until his death, and was a frequent speaker. His Speeches in Parliament, volume 1, contains 131 speeches. His personal views on prophecy are on record. PFF3 437.1

1. SCOPE OF THE SEALS AND TRUMPETS

Drummond’s Introduction to the Study of the Apocalypse gives a comprehensive survey of the leading prophetic outlines and symbols. The seven seals, he believes, trace the course of the Christian church through the centuries from purity to apostasy, with the sixth as “the punishment of the papacy, beginning at the French Revolution,” and the seventh “when a similar event destroys all Christendom.” ⁶ PFF3 437.2

The trumpets, he holds, represent the barbarian scourgings of the West. The fifth and sixth trumpets “are almost unanimously believed to represent the armies of the faith of the Mohammedan imposture, the Saracens and Turks, who destroyed ‘the third part,’ of the Roman Empire, extirpated the name of Christianity, and still hold the ‘land of Immanuel.’” ⁷ The Euphrates rises in the country from which the Saracens sprang, after the apostate Mohammed had “entered upon his pretended mission.” The power represented by the Euphrates wanes again under the sixth vial of Revelation 16. ⁸ The seventh trumpet completes the mysterious proceedings of God; and time is superseded by the “countless ages of eternity.” The seven plagues, Drummond holds, are component parts of the seventh trumpet. ⁹ PFF3 437.3

2. MESSAGES OF Revelation 14 BEING PROCLAIMED

Furthermore, in Revelation 12 the woman is the church, and the child is Christ Jesus. The beast of Revelation 13 is Rome, and the 144,000 are “undefiled with the Papal harlot,” having “come out of the false church.” ¹⁰ The “works enumerated” in the angelic messages of Revelation 14, have been going on for thirty years. Societies have been sending out the everlasting gospel; the testimony that Babylon is about to fall has been given and God’s people have been called to come out of her. The chapter ends with the coming of the Son of man at the close of the harvest. ¹¹ Application of these angelic messages to movements and organizations of the time became increasingly common among Drummond and his associates. PFF3 438.1

3. PLAGUES AFFECT PAPACY AND TURKEY

The plagues are the detailed parts of the seventh trumpet, Drummond points out, like the seventh sounding of the trumpet at Jericho, with its seven blasts. ¹² The fifth vial is concentrated on the throne of the papal beast, and the sixth symbolizes the exhaustion of the Turkish power. ¹³ Drummond makes particular reference to the fleet of Protestant England, the fleet of Catholic France, and the fleet of Greek Catholic Russia joining in 1830 to sweep the crescent “off the face of the deep.” ¹⁴ PFF3 438.2

4. REIGNS WITH SAINTS ON THIS PLANET

The final scenes concern the war of the great day of God Almighty, when Christ gathers His people at the beginning of the millennium, as He comes to the judgment upon Babylon. Then will follow the triumphant reign of Christ with His church on this planet. ¹⁵ Two helpful diagram-maps outline the boundaries of the four kingdoms of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. Then the Roman Empire is pictured as it was overrun by the papal apostasy in the West and the Mohammedan apostasy in the East. But before continuing with Drummond we must pause long enough to present the part played by Haldane. PFF3 438.3