Irving a Millenarian
The Millenarians proudly claim the late Edward Irving as having been one of the most earnest believers in the personal reign of Christ. In his latter days he was a Millenarian in the strictest sense of the word. From the year 1827 to 1830, the Millenarianism question was brought under the notice of thousands of Christians, who, though remarkable for their knowledge of Scripture on other points, had never bestowed a single thought on the question of Christ’s personal reign on earth. The cause of this was the prominence given to it by the Rev. E. Irving, then at the summit of his popularity. Solely with the generous view of assisting a Spanish friend, he had, in the previous year, studied the Spanish language, and had made such progress as to be able to translate it into English. Just at this time appeared in Spanish, The Coming of the Messiah in Glory and Majesty, with which Irving was much struck, as powerfully expressing his own views on the Millenarian question, that he at once set to work, and translated it into English. Its author professed to have been a Jewish convert to Christianity, and gave the name of Juan Josaphat Ben-Ezra on the title-page. He was, however, a Spanish priest and a Jesuit. It is not known whether Mr. Irving was aware of the fraud which had been thus practised upon the readers of the book; he described it as “the chief work of a master’s hand,” and “a masterpiece of reasoning,” and “a gift which he had revolved well how he might turn to profit.”
Irving likewise established The Morning Watch for the sole purpose of advocating Millenarian views; but the extravagance of some of the collateral notions which the preacher intermingled with simple Millenarianism rather impeded than promoted the object in view. The doctrine, too, of speaking with tongues, the assertion of the peccability of Christ’s humanity, the zealous advocacy of the opinion that the power of working miracles was still vested in the Church, and not the expectation only, but from time to time, the repeated assertion, most emphatically, that Christ would come immediately to reign personally on the earth—all these, and other sentiments no less confidently advanced, and earnestly inculcated both from Irving’s pulpit and through the press, injured rather than benefited the cause of Millenarianism among the more sober-minded men in the religious world.
Moreover, he retained these momentous errors till his dying hour, and added one more to them. When his physicians and friends, seeing him in the last stage of consumption, prepared him in the spirit of affectionate faithfulness for the solemn event which was at hand, he would not believe that he was dying, or ever would die, but that he would be changed in the twinkling of an eye, and in a transformed body, made unspeakably glorious, be caught up to heaven. The Millenarians therefore do not strengthen their cause by quoting the name of Edward Irving as an authority in favour of their views.
The intense enthusiasm with which Irving entered into the notion of a personal reign of Christ on earth is well described in his Life by Mrs. Oliphant. “The conception,” she says, “of a second advent nearly approaching was like the beginning of a new life. The thought of seeing his Lord in the flesh, cast a certain ecstasy on the mind of Irving. It quickened tenfold his already vivid apprehension of spiritual things. The burden of his prophetic mystery, so often darkly pondered, so often interpreted in a mistaken sense, seemed to him, in the light of that expectation, to swell into divine choruses of preparation for the splendid event which, with his bodily eyes, undimmed by death, he hoped to behold.” It is generally thought that the extravagancies which, towards the close of his career, proceeded both from his lips and his pen, were to be traced to a mind which, through its prophetic studies, had lost its balance. Yet, to the last, he made many proselytes to his Millenarian notions.
Irving originated the idea of Christ, with his saints, remaining and reigning in the air after he has caught up his people to meet him there, instead of reigning literally on the earth. Irving also originated the doctrine of secret rapture, or the assumption that Christ will come and take up his people who are alive with him into the air when he raises the saints who are in their graves, and summons them to meet him in aerial regions. So deeply did this notion take possession of many of those who adopted Mr. Irving’s Millenarian views, in conjunction with this other idea—that Christ’s second coming might be looked for at any hour—that they were as firmly persuaded they would not see death, as they were of any truth in the Word of God.22