I have a question based on my limited knowledge of John Nelson Darby. First, I have used his translation for years because he was touted to be a spiritual giant among the group I was affiliated with. They promote and sell JND's translation of the Bible because many of his tenets have been passed on to their members. For many years, however, I heard different reports of JND that would imply he was a very divisive, strong-willed brother who caused many rifts within the Brethren.

The group I was affiliated with are for the ONE body of Christ and are supposedly inclusive of all of God's children. They have uplifted JND as the "founding father" of the Brethren movement in the early 1800's initiating the so-called "Lord's Recovery" on the earth. They claim that they stand on the shoulders of ones including JND.

Yes, I would have to agree with the description of "strong-willed" in Darby's case. What makes things difficult is that he could also be very tender-hearted. But if "truth," as he understood it to be, was ever questioned or endangered he could be very, very hard. I think there was a trait in Darby's character which encouraged divisiveness.

After very carefully looking into the Newton/Darby/Mueller controversy the only conclusion I can draw is that Darby acted incorrectly. To this day Brethren in general view Newton as some kind of personification of evil based on Darby's action against him. Oh yes, Newton made mistakes, but he confessed to and repented of them. It was a clash of very strong personalities. Years later Darby would walk a line (on the Lord's sufferings) which was hardly distinguishable from Newton's (for an outsider). Why even bother to do that?

My research has brought me to the conclusion that Darby was often, not a step ahead but, a step behind others. He waited. Then he would take and modify existing ideas into a form distinctly his own - which then (perhaps unconsciously) became a validity of orthodoxy. One of the things which greatly surprised me was the depth of devotion and spirituality among the clergy Darby worked with in the beginning. What has been presented in the past (sadly in my own first edition of Darby's biography as well due to relying on biased sources) is a gross caricature. Evils are everywhere. The time Darby left the Establishment was not worse than elsewhere. Actually there were very positive movements going on. I have often asked myself, if Darby would have stayed and helped - instead of going on to create something new on his own - would not the Church at large have profited more from it? Much of what Darby taught and held to only makes sense when understood on the background of his views on Church ruin and the Lord's soon coming. It is time which has proven Darby wrong and made his system intolerable - in the end it actually hinders growth in a spiritual sense. "Members" repeat phrases that appear to be topical and new to them, but are actually almost 200 hundred years old!

The enemy has succeeded, under the cloak of a deeper spirituality, in distracting us (Christians) from our duties and responsibilities. We point to current events around us as evidences of the end times, evidence of the ruin and the fast approaching judgment. We don't realize that we are the cause for the decline we see. We have allowed it to happen because we have withdrawn.