by Tim Twinam
Portions of “Aberdeen & Aftermath” were first published in 1998 on the ‘Wyman Website‘ – a website forced to close in 2003 due to Exclusive Brethren litigation.
As an eighteen-year-old, I spent two weeks in Peterhead, Scotland in late summer 1972.
Andy Wraight, one of my friends from the Strood Assembly, invited me to accompany him on the long drive north through England in his brand-new mini. We skirted Edinburgh and missed Glasgow, heading for the North-East coast of Scotland. When we arrived at Aberdeen, we were only a few miles away from our destination.
Tired after the many hours of driving, we experienced a burst of adrenalin as we entered the gray granite town. Built from local stone, the gray walls seemed to absorb the evening sun as we passed along the main street. This was Aberdeen, and was a name that every member of the Exclusive Brethren knew. Eyes alert, we peered into passing windows. This town had a history and even though two Teen sassenachs, we were part of it. A battle raged here once and there was still blood pooled in the streets.
Two years earlier, Big Jim had come over from USA for a series of meetings. His visit culminated in an event, now known as the Aberdeen Incident. I learned of the details from a cosy spot outside the bathroom door in my family home. Dad spoke quietly on the telephone downstairs, but what I heard was enough to let me know that this was Big!
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There are many aspects to this work that deserve consideration. The writer draws upon quotes and writings from Brethren, ex-Brethren and other authors. His focus is not upon the ‘Open’ Plymouth Brethren, but upon the Darbyite followers of J.N. Darby – the original Exclusive Brethren.
Key quotations:
“The first thing which strikes us on marking the piety of Brethrenism, is its exclusiveness. The theory of those composing it is, that all the churches are wrong – that all sects are unscriptural – that Christendom is in ruins. Were it so, the natural conclusion would be, to set to work and build up what has fallen, and reunite what is scattered. But no. To end sectarianism, as John Duncan used to say, the Brethren began by making a new sect, and that sect, of all sects, the most sectarian.” – William Reid
“Have you tried these brethren – the Darbyites? I have tried them (try the spirits whether they are of God), and found them false prophets – in every sense of the word, false. They are false in what they say of their brethren, they are false in doctrine, and they are false in their walk” – Lord Congleton
“Your union will daily become one of doctrines and opinions, more than of life and love; Continue reading »
Your government, unseen perhaps and unexpressed, will soon become one wherein is overwhelmingly felt the authority of men;
You will be known more for what you witness against, than by what you witness for; and practically this will prove that you witness against all but yourselves.”
- Anthony Groves (historical founder of the Brethren)
James Grant carefully traces the progress of the Plymouth Brethren and the major figures involved from the origins in Ireland to Plymouth and then to Bethesda. He quotes from the tracts and pamphlets of the time and leaves the reader in no doubt who was in control and by whose orders the Bethesda division was instigated.
Grant has a number of unique insights and information about the Darbyites following Bethesda, not least of which is a remarkable chapter dealing with Brethren Hymnology.
The publishers of the first Brethren hymnals were apparently adept at taking a well-known hymn and altering the words very subtly so that the Brethren doctrines would be thus embedded. Grant provides a number of examples of this practice – which seem to be an early form of subliminal advertising?
Grant proves his point and states: “There lies against the compilers of the Darby hymn book the double charge of transposition and unjustifiable mutilation …”.
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by Tim Twinam
“We now move into Assembly” was first published in 1998 on the ‘Wyman Website‘ – a website forced to close in 2003 due to Exclusive Brethren litigation.
The Exclusive Brethren create spiritual and social refugees as dramatically as any regime in history
I have a horror of arriving late for an appointment. I believe that this minor psychosis has its origins in the acute embarrassment of arriving late for an Exclusive Brethren meeting.
If you arrived late for the Lords Supper in the late sixties, you would have a problem – unless you possessed a key to the locked door. If determined to enter, you would have to knock on the door to alert an investigating brother.
A gentle tap on a window to attract attention would fail miserably today as anyone that knows the structure of a modern Exclusive Brethren Meeting Room would understand. Further adding to access problems are the padlocked steel gates and perimeter security fences.
One could slip fairly anonymously into a Preaching, in the 1960′s, as long as only the lectern faced the door, but as most gatherings involved a circular arrangement of chairs, you were almost certainly going to be noticed. Arriving late therefore was not an option and only bearable in dire emergencies.
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by Tim Twinam
Let the Priestly Visits Begin was first published in 1998 on the ‘Wyman Website‘ – a website forced to close in 2003 due to Exclusive Brethren litigation.
I was probably the only member of the Brethren who fantasized over the benefits of being ‘shut up’: no meetings; no noisy meals with five sisters; treated like royalty with meals on a tray; I’d be able to read with every meal! As a teenage boy, I could only think of advantages.
Sure, I’d miss my friends, but it wasn’t as though it was for ever, was it? I didn’t know anyone who had not been allowed back in eventually. It was just the thought of all that time to myself. I once calculated that travelling to the meetings and the meetings themselves occupied more than 22 hours in a 7 day week. It would be like being given an extra day each week!
I knew that the ‘holiday’ could not last too long. There would be the standard series of visits by the priests – two, maybe three brothers from the local assembly. They would come and visit to check on the state of my ‘leprosy’ to see if I was feeling repentant yet. I would imagine mentally checking the calendar … I would be shaking my head slowly at them if it was any time during the long summer vacation. I’d plan to start nodding by mid-September.
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by Tim Twinam
‘Be Ye Separate’ was first published in 1998 on the ‘Wyman Website‘ – a website forced to close in 2003 due to Exclusive Brethren litigation.
Being Separate always was fundamental to the Exclusive Brethren. As a child it was an unquestioned part of our existence, I knew of no other way. The family was enough because it was a huge Family. The Family was more than my parents and five younger sisters, it included all Exclusive Brethren everywhere.
As a teenager, long before the Aberdeen fiasco, I was aware that I could travel to almost any UK town and to many other countries around the world and would always be able to find a friendly door upon which to knock. Once announced as a brother belonging to the Sevenoaks Local Assembly, I would be given a welcome and immediate unconditional hospitality.
This was always the greatest aspect of the Little Flock. We shared a commonwealth of each other. We were the Church. We were the Bride. We, the ‘Un-named’, were the lonely banner-wavers of the only Truth in an evil world. We looked after each other.
From the time that an invited audience of local brethren gathered in a room to witness the complete immersion in warm water of a week-old infant, a new member of the church was added to the list of the Beloved. Each child was nurtured and became the spiritual responsibility of the wider community. I answered to my parents of course, but I was also expected to be subject to all members of the assembly. Well, some more than others if I’m honest.
From the earliest age the boundaries were carefully explained. I remember the time that an older relative told me firmly not to use a drinking fountain in the park because “Unclean people drink from there, dear.” I must have been between three and four years old. Evil was portrayed as a disease that we would be damaged by, if we allowed ourselves to come into contact with it. Eating with others was not a problem in the pre-school years because we were only ever in the family environment. But all that changed when we entered the public school system. At that time, during the Taylorite 1960′s, there was no such thing as an Exclusive Brethren school.
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The Errors of the (Exclusive) Plymouth Brethren
Feelings ran high in the established churches as disaffected parishioners left to taste the Plymouth Brethren during the early to mid-19th century.
It wasn’t so much that they were leaving other churches or the fact that the early Plymouth Brethren actively prosetalyzed established churches and their members. It was the fact that many saw errors in their doctrine and already, the public testimony of the now multi-split Exclusive Plymouth Brethren, was anything but attractive.
This is an 1869 transcript of three sermons delivered by one Rev. James Carmichael in Montreal, Canada.
The Right Rev. Carmichael was eventually the 4th Bishop of Montreal. He was born in 1835 around the time that the ‘Brethren from Plymouth‘ began to be noticed. Rev Carmichael died in 1908.
“Once it was a compact body, composed soley of believers … now its ranks are broken; its body of believers split up into antagonistic parties, who not only will not commune together, but who speak in anything but a Christian way of each other.”
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by Tim Twinam
Of Microphones and Politics was first published in 1997 on the ‘Wyman Website‘ – a website forced to close in 2003 due to Exclusive Brethren litigation. Of Microphones and Politics is a continuation of the earlier: The Lords Supper – a teen in 1968.
A view inside a recent Exclusive Brethren Meeting Room
The Exclusive Brethren Sunday ‘ Lords Day’ schedule in the late 1960′s was increasingly busy. Maybe a year earlier, Sevenoaks had merged with Tunbridge Wells, just 12 miles away. I had found some wonderful friends there, teenage boys of my own age, and it was a treat to travel through the Kent countryside to the larger town. The Tunbridge Wells hall was larger, although in a rather dismal area of the spa town.
The novelty wore off a little when it was realized that an Exclusive Brethren ‘merger’ also meant combined weekday schedules too, but the immediate impact was a geographically extended Lords Day. Prior to Maidstone being nominated a regional Exclusive Brethren City, Tunbridge Wells hosted a Bible Meeting at 9:00am, followed by a break for lunch, when we dashed back to Sevenoaks for a quick bite, prior to returning for the joint Gospel Meeting at 3:00pm. Eventually, we would all return to Sevenoaks for a 6:00pm Local Gospel Meeting, followed by a well-earned early night. So much for Sunday being a ‘Day of Rest’!
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The Exclusive Brethren today physically enforce the biblical concept of spiritual Separation
This 19th century document is probably the closest thing to a Constitution for the Exclusive Brethren. To this day, the Exclusive Brethren verbally use the title of this pamphlet in response to questions about their anti-social activities.
John N. Darby taught that a physical separation from the world was necessary for the Exclusive Brethren and this philosophy, together with his insistence upon central administration of the ‘Assembly’, were some of the early major influences behind today’s cult.
In typical Darby form, he broaches no criticism and allows no deviation. It must be done this way. His way is right. This is why many years later, Alfred J. Gardner, a London-based senior member of the Exclusive Brethren, wrote a paper on The Recovery and Maintenance of the Truth which extolled the development of the philosophy described in the attached document.
To those unfamiliar with the ways of the Exclusive Brethren and who baulk at the thought of trying to understand Darby’s words, we will attempt a quick paraphrase:
The established Church (Roman, Anglican, in fact most other established churches) has fallen into Apostasy (disagree with our teachings – this is Bad).
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John Nelson Darby by Edward Penstone
These notes cover Darby’s ‘Apostolic’ travels and church planting activities in Europe where he spent a great deal of his time during 1840′s and 1850′s. These notes were taken at “The Tea Meeting at Rawstorne Street, 24th November 1853″.
The raw energy of Darby should not be overlooked and these notes speak of the way in which he worked, whether in the peat bogs of Ireland or deep in the civilized centers of Europe. His mission was to create a new church by calling out congregants from other churches. Note his frequent use of the term ‘the truth’ and ‘infidel’ applied even to clergymen. The ‘Irish Clergyman’ certainly held no punches!
The most noticable aspect of the report, which reads like a contemporary version of Acts, has to be the assumptive tone implying that there was no real light outside of the new movement. This characterization of the Darbyite movement would become even more focused in years to come as new Exclusive Brethren leaders followed in Darby’s footsteps and even those few cracked-open doors began to be closed and padlocked.
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