Title: Just Before Dawn
Author: Cornelius Vanderbreggen
Date: 1988
Publisher: Reapers Fellowship
ISBN: none
Length: 152 pages
Illustrations: Kodachrome photos of the Caribbean coast by
the author
Quote: “My purpose is to present a very simple chronological
outline of God's plan of the ages...right down to the day when there will be
peace on earth.”
Cornelius Vanderbreggen was not exactly an
Anglo-Israelite—for starters “Cornelius Vanderbreggen” is not an Anglo-American
name! His interpretation of Bible prophecy has points in common with mainstream
Protestants', with Anglo-Israelites, and with other minority Christian groups',
but it is his own. He anticipates, at some unspecified future time, the
destruction of modern Israel, of “some of the physical descendants of Abraham,”
at the hands of others—too many European Christians and Jews have preferred to
forget that, although Isaac was the chosen heir, Abraham had other sons. Arabs,
Ethiopians, and possibly other people are physical descendants of Abraham too.
And in Vanderbreggen's vision their failure to choose to take their place among
the spiritual descendants of Abraham will cause them to destroy one another.
The Middle East conflict will go on and on and get worse and worse until not
much of what used to be called “the Semitic race” is left alive. The spiritual
descendants of Abraham—Christians, basically—will then inherit the Earth.
Well. It's a point of view. As long as the focus remains on
faith in God, which Vanderbreggen's does, it's a legitimate point of view.
Whether it's a true or false interpretation of Bible prophecy remains to be
seen.
As regular readers know, I was brought up a whole-Bible
Christian among three different sets of whole-Bible Christians, each of whose
understanding of the Bible was similar but not identical to my parents', whose
understanding was similar but not identical to each other's or to mine. With
the passing of time, it's become possible to say that:
(1) The Lord's Covenant Church fell apart because, although
it was a church for sincere Christians rather than the hate group some wanted
to imagine that it was, its understanding of Bible prophecies was inaccurate.
The unfolding years did not actually prove that Russians are not the
physical descendants of “Red” Esau, nor that no generation of Russians will ever
attack North America, but they did prove that that was not the way the Cold
War was destined to end in the 1980s (as the L.C.C. had been expecting).
(2) The Worldwide Church of God has undergone schisms and
upheavals since its founder's death because, although it too was (and is) a
legitimate church, its understanding of Bible prophecies was somewhat inaccurate.
Herbert W. Armstrong lacked a solid peer group to tell him when he was straying
off into private interpretations that few even of his followers took seriously,
and when he visualized and preached about “The World Tomorrow,” that
happened...even though, when he recalled people's attention to obscure Bible
texts, he was seldom if ever proved wrong.
(3) The Seventh-Day Adventists formed out of the collapse of
an earlier, misguided movement, and became a growing church partly because its
members' understanding of Bible prophecies were reality-tested. While
the Adventist church gained publicity from the “prophetic” genius of a sickly,
disfigured little girl who experienced remarkable healing visions and grew up
to make an impressive mark in both theological and medical research, its
doctrines were hammered out by a committee of grown-up Bible scholars as well
as the gifted fourth-grade dropout Ellen White. The first generation of
Adventists had experienced a “Great Disappointment” when their first understanding
of Bible prophecies proved not to be true; their revised explanation of those
prophecies was further corrected by the process of consensus.
Certainly there are more than three ways to interpret the
Bible's prophetic books. The one into which Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series
fits is very popular. Vanderbreggen's hope that Christians will be kept safe
from the apocalyptic war he envisions raging around Israel and Palestine fits
into the same general “pre-tribulation” category with LaHaye's interpretation,
but Vanderbreggen's expectations of what will happen during the pre-apocalyptic
“tribulation” period obviously differ from LaHaye's.
My own view? The prophet Daniel, admitting that he himself
didn't know what (if anything) some visions he had when he was old and ill
might mean, foretold that their meaning would be revealed only in the last days
of this world. No generation since Daniel's has lacked someone who thought his
(or rarely her) generation might be the last, and he (or she) might have found
the correct interpretation of Daniel's and the other mysterious prophecies. It
is not a sin to look forward to the Second Coming of Christ. It is probably not
a sin to imagine that you know what the last prophecies of Daniel mean, as long
as you remember that a hundred generations of Bible scholars have imagined
that, and been wrong, and it is unlikely that you are a better Bible
scholar than any in all those hundred generations. It is probably wise to
temper any enthusiasm you feel for any particular interpretation with a memory
of the Great Disappointment of 1844.
St. Paul's “determin[ation] not to know any thing...save
Jesus Christ, crucified” [1 Corinthians 2:2] may have been exaggerated. Paul had, after all,
been a scholar before he became a Christian, and his writing shows his
understanding of the Law and the Prophets. I aspire to know a little about the
Bible Jesus studied and taught before He was crucified, but I don't presume to
know what the mysterious last prophecies of Daniel mean. Bible prophecies are
conditional; when everyone agreed that they've come to pass, how they have come
to pass has depended on what people have chosen to do. Only God knows which
generation will be the last, and whose interpretation of “last days”
prophecies, based on contemporary events, will thus turn out to be true.
It might be Vanderbreggen's.
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