Brethren Archive

Powerscourt Conferences


As per the notice on here, extracts from the 1831 Powerscourt Notebooks are to appear very shortly.

Current plan is to serialise the first of the three volumes on here.

Not a great deal is known about the conferences at present, but I would like to collect what background information we have; if anyone can help me with that then I'd be grateful. Particular interest would be to know more about the 1830 and even an alleged 1829 meeting.

Background Reading:

1831 Notes - Volume 1
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1831 Notes - Volume 2
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  3. Contents 2
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1831 Notes - Volume 3
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  48. Back Cover



Comments:
Tom said ...
On Page 365 of
Investigator and Expositor of Prophecy, Volume 1
there is an advertisement for a book/pamphlet "AN ADDRESS delivered at the conclusion of a meeting assembled for the purpose of considering the subject of unfulfilled prophecy by the Rev R Daly MA Rector of Powerscourt London Seeley Nisbet" .. Quite possibly this would be the closing address of the 1832 conference, so would be very interesting to see!



Wednesday, Feb 3, 2016 : 10:52
Tom said ...
Random comment, but if the person who found these notebooks ever looks up this page, would be very glad to hear from you and where you came across them?
admin@brethrenarchive.org
Thx!
Saturday, Feb 27, 2016 : 14:21
Bill said ...
Hi Tom,

Do you know when the third Powerscourt Notebook will be posted here. I have enjoyed the first two. I am willing to help transcribe as I have considerable experience at it doing some genealogy work some years ago.
Thanks,
Bill
Monday, Mar 20, 2017 : 15:49
Tom said ...
Hi Bill,
Yeah my usual transcriber I believe has his time taken up with work burdens recently so hasn't been able to help as before. I'm absolutely useless at reading old handwriting so that is why it has ground to a halt. Thanks a lot for your offer, which would of course be a great help, and thanks for the ones you did help with recently - I will continue to add the last pages of volume 2 and continue into volume 3 as transcriptions can be done. I think at the moment the last two pages I put up of volume 2 remain untranscribed, so that is why I haven't added any more yet!
best, Tom
Monday, Mar 20, 2017 : 19:58
Bill said ...
Sorry, Tom, I had not noticed there were 2 more pages. I think I can find some time in the next week or two. Are there more pages in Book 2?
All the best to you,
Bill
Thursday, Mar 30, 2017 : 05:45
Tom said ...
Thanks Bill! Yes just a couple more pages in Vol 2 now though.
Thursday, Mar 30, 2017 : 08:15
Bill said ...
Hi Tom,

I am transcribing the Powerscourt notes and am stuck at page 25 because no more scanned material is being put up. Is there anyway I can help with that?
Thanks,
Bill
Sunday, Dec 31, 2017 : 05:33
Tom said ...
Hi Bill, nice to hear from you again; I hadn't put any more up as there was no transcript for the last two, so I'd assumed you'd not had the time to look at those ones yet.
I've just added another couple though, and if you did do 24b and 25 already, then I can add those to the site, if you could leave them in a comment?
Thanks again,
Wednesday, Jan 3, 2018 : 02:20
James said ...
Tom, thanks so much for making these available. Thanks also to Bill for your work in transcribing them. My question to you Tom, do you have a term that you would like researchers to use when referencing them? (e.g. Chantry Notebooks, etc.)?
Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 : 03:17
Tom said ...
I've always referred to them as just the 'Powerscout Notebooks'; you are welcome to reference them to the website too if you like, though I won't be offended if you don't!
Thursday, Jan 30, 2020 : 19:49
Tom said ...
Monday, Jan 10, 2022 : 00:56
Syd said ...

James Fazio states in his “John Nelson Darby’s Early Resistance to Pre-Tribulational Premillennialism, As Expressed at the 1831 Powerscourt Prophecy Conference,” (see above) that “The extent to which Edward Irving, or as some have suggested, Margaret Macdonald, might have shaped Darby’s mind in this direction cannot be determined.” That is, his shift to pre-tribulational premillennialism.

This needs to be questioned in light of W. Kelly’s piece: The Rapture of the Saints: Who suggested it, or rather on what Scripture?

Wednesday, Jan 12, 2022 : 23:22
Jonathan said ...

Thanks for the link to James' paper Tom.

 

I wonder if James may be placing far too large a reliance on what Darby is reported in these notes to have labelled as 'absurd' (ie, a literal interpretation of the 1260 days) by extending this to encompass a more general resistance to pre-tribulational premillennialism.

 

It seems clear enough from Roy Huebner's treatise on the development of Darby's views (see here) that whereas some elements of understanding were in place in Darby's mind before others, Darby clearly expected an 'any-time' return of the Lord Jesus and saw a distinction between Israel and the Church by early 1827 - key elements of the eventual dispensational framework. Huebner had previously highlighted in a 1973 work that Darby still held a few elements of the year-day theory at least in 1830/1*. But Darby himself acknowledged, in retrospect, that in those early years he was "not able to put these things in their respective place, or arrange them in order, as I can now; but the truths themselves were then revealed of God, through the action of His spirit, by reading His word." He held some of these points individually, but was still stitching them together, as it were.

 

However I do not think this gives us any warrant to posit some sort of 'epiphany' between 1831 and 1833 whereby Darby overthrew his previous (?amilliennial?) views to become a fully-fledged pre-millennialist. The process of forming his eventual views was already well under way, as Huebner has demonstrated in his ordering of Darby's own writings & reflections.

 

Jonathan

 

* Not having access to these Powerscourt notes, Huebner subsequently concluded in his later work linked above that Darby had dismissed the year-day view a couple of years earlier. These new Powerscourt notes may suggest it was a little later. 

Thursday, Jan 13, 2022 : 01:29
Jonathan said ...
Tom
Further to your comment back in 2016 further up this thread, did you get any additional information that helps to document the provenance of these notes?
Friday, Jan 14, 2022 : 03:28
Dirk said ...
Does someone know a place in the web where one can find a digital version of the book: Dates of J.N. Darby's Collected Writings compiled by W. Kelly, or does someone have a version of it, which he could send me?
Saturday, Jan 15, 2022 : 03:59
Rodger said ...
Saturday, Jan 15, 2022 : 05:11
Dirk said ...
Great! Thanks a lot, Rodger!
Saturday, Jan 15, 2022 : 07:06
Tom said ...
Jonathan .. no never found out anythng unfortunately.
Monday, Jan 17, 2022 : 03:30
Celeste Wiseman said ...
I am searching for the letters written by Lady Powerscourt
Tuesday, Jan 18, 2022 : 01:46


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