Journal: Conservative Theological Journal
Volume: CTJ 01:1 (Apr 1997)
Article: Émile Guers: An Early Darbyite Response to Irvingism and a Precursor to Charles Ryrie
Author: Michael D. Stallard

CTJ 1:1 (April 1997) p. 31

Émile Guers: An Early Darbyite Response to Irvingism and a Precursor to Charles Ryrie

Mike Stallard

Associate Professor of Systematic Theology
Baptist Bible Seminary, Clarks Summit, PA

This article was originally presented by Dr. Stallard at the annual Pre-Trib Study Group meeting. The meetings were held at Tyndale Theological Seminary, Ft. Worth, TX, on January 8–9, 1997.

Introduction

Modern dispensational theology has always been discussed in the light of historical controversy. To covenant theologians, dispensational theology is a rather recent theological phenomena dating from the early 1800s. Its founder, John Nelson Darby, is considered to be, at best, an aberration in Bible interpretation. In fact, some covenant theologians have referred to dispensationalism in the same way that they would refer to cults like Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses.1

In this article, I would like to address, at least indirectly, two recent claims which attempt to cast doubt upon the validity of traditional dispensationalism by using historical arguments. The first claim is the continuing shrill rhetoric of Dave MacPherson who claims (once again) in his recent book, The Rapture Plot, that dispensationalists have been dishonest in representing their own historical development in order to avoid the embarrassment that the origin of the “secret rapture” (two-phase Second Coming) can be traced to the charismatic visions of a deluded teenage girl.2 The second claim is the more serious use of dispensational history by progressive dispensationalists to demonstrate historical discontinuity. The discontinuity found in dispensational thought in the historical record of the last two centuries, in their minds, justifies the abandonment of any essentialist interpretation of dispensational history.3

For both cases above, the nineteenth-century Genevan pastor Émile Guers provides an interesting insight. In response to MacPherson’s claim, Guers shows an early Darbyite understanding of Irvingism which is quite negative. In Guers’ book Irvingism and Mormonism (1853), Pastor Guers responds to these two “cult-like” movements within the first twenty-five years of their existence. Of special note is his rejection of charismatic revelations found in both. In Guers’ book La Future D’Israël (1856), Guers presents a sine qua non of Darbyite theology that foreshadows by over one hundred years

CTJ 1:1 (April 1997) p. 32

the famous sine qua non of Charles Ryrie’s...