Biography
John Nelson Darby was born on November 18, 1800, in London, England, into an Anglo-Irish family of wealth and standing. He was educated at Westminster School and at Trinity College, Dublin, where he graduated in classics with high honors. He was called to the bar in 1822, but he was dissatisfied with the law. He was drawn to the ministry and was ordained a priest in the Church of Ireland in 1826. He was assigned to a poor parish in County Wicklow, where he worked with great zeal. He rode through the mountains on horseback, visiting the Catholic peasants and giving them what he could.
In 1827, he had a fall from a horse and was laid up for a long time. During his recovery, he reflected deeply on the nature of the church. He had become troubled by the state of the church and by the relation of the church to the state. He concluded that the established church was a human arrangement and that the true church was a spiritual body, made up of all believers. He came to a new understanding of the Scriptures. He felt that the Spirit was the head of the church and that official orders and forms were not needed. In 1828, he left the Church of Ireland and began to meet with a group of believers in Dublin for the breaking of bread.
This was the beginning of the movement known as the Plymouth Brethren, named after the English town of Plymouth, where a large assembly gathered. The Brethren met without clergy and without any fixed order. They believed that every believer was a priest, and they celebrated the Lord's Supper each week. Darby was among the first and most important of their leaders. He traveled widely in Britain, Switzerland, France, Germany and North America, planting assemblies. He was a man of great energy and of intense conviction.
He was a prolific writer. He produced a large body of work, including thirty-four volumes of collected writings, as well as a translation of the Bible into English, French and German. His translation, the New Translation, is notable for its literal approach. He wrote on a wide range of topics, but he is best known for the system of interpretation that bears his name. Dispensationalism is a way of reading the Bible that divides history into a series of ages or dispensations, in each of which God deals with humanity in a different way. It distinguishes between Israel and the church, and it places stress on the future of the Jewish people. He taught that the church would be taken up to heaven before a period of tribulation, an idea known as the rapture. These ideas became very influential in evangelical Christianity, especially in America, through the Scofield Reference Bible.
He was a man of piety and of generosity, and he gave away his possessions. He lived a simple life, often traveling with few belongings. Yet he was also a strong and domineering person. In 1848, a bitter division arose among the Brethren, in a dispute over the discipline of a leader at Plymouth, Benjamin Newton, and over the teaching of the church. Darby took a strict view and insisted on separation from those who did not agree with him. The Brethren split into two groups, the Open Brethren and the Exclusive Brethren, who followed Darby. The latter were marked by strict control and by a tendency to further division. The harshness of the division is a stain on his record.
He was often in conflict, and many found him difficult. His writings are dense and hard to read. He saw himself as a servant of the truth. He did not marry and lived for his work. He died on April 29, 1882, in Bournemouth, England, at the age of eighty-one. His life shows the way that a man of strong conviction may begin a movement, and also how a hard spirit can lead to division.