Sunday, October 15, 2017

Book Review: Just Before Dawn

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.

Though Cornelius Vanderbreggen no longer has any use for the percentage we'd send him if Just Before Dawn were a Fair Trade Book,  it's still become a collectible book, and this web site still has to ask you to send $10 per book plus $5 per package + $1 per online payment in order to buy it here. However, you could fit several books into one $5 package, which often makes our prices more competitive than they may appear when you glance at the Amazon pages! If they're all the same size as the paperback copy I have, probably nine additional books would fit into the package. Scroll to see more. (Does everyone Out There know that, if you're buying books, you can request titles from your own Wish List?)



No comments:

Post a Comment