Help me understand my great-grandfather's chart

August 18, 2016 8:32 PM

And maybe give me some historical / religious context here into the mind of a premillennialist man of God.

Here's a photo of some of my ancestors (full size available here). That's my great-great grandfather Thomas Adrian Northcutt in the middle beside his wife. The rest of the people are his children and family including my grandmother. This photo would have been taken somewhere between 1948 and 1950.

What I'm interested in, however, is the wall hanging behind them all. According to my mother, my great-grandfather "was a bible teacher of renown and I *think* the charts were original with him. Did he draw them? No idea. I wish I could say I memorized them but sadly did not. I remember 3 crosses dealing with the resurrection and such."

She goes on to say that he attended or was involved in a premillennial church in Brandon, Florida. This photo was taken at the Northcutt home which my mother described as a "residence/former hotel/grocery/boarding house."

I understand that the names I can see there are Ephesus, Philadelphia, and Laodicea which are three of the seven churches of Asia. The 1:13-19 on the left-hand side is clearly a reference to Revelation chapter 1 verses 13-19 which read (in the King James version, at least):

13 And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. 14 His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; 15 And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. 16 And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.

17 And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: 18 I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. 19 Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter;

Likewise the phrase "left thy first love" is from Revelation 2:4. I haven't gotten any farther in my explorations.

I guess my question to you, MetaFilter, is: was this a normal thing? Were "biblical scholars" in the WW2-era premillennial church obsessed with the book of Revelation and drawing huge wall hangings about it? Or was this something unique to my great-grandfather? I have no frame of reference for any of this.

Also, any further insight you can give me into the words, symbols, etc. would be appreciated.

I only have one other family photo that shows any of his(?) work, and the most you can make out is a single word in bold:
SIN
which isn't particularly helpful other than to say he had more than one chart hanging up around the house.

posted by komara to Religion & Philosophy (6 answers total)

Best answer: The premillennial crowd has always loved to draw big, complicated wall hangings to help explain their particular theology. See, for instance, this site, especially Chart No. 7.

Many charts were professionally produced and could be purchased from suppliers or traveling salesmen. The Legion of Honor in San Francisco used to sell a great poster of the Falls of Destruction with rivers feeding into it, denoting various "bad" things such as adultery and "Sunday Papers".

Many of these theologians created their own teaching aids, demonstrating whatever. It sounds like your grandfather was one of these.
posted by blob at 8:59 PM on August 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

Best answer: Oh yeah, this is a big thing in premillennial Chrsitianity. Jesus is clearly being depicted here as a reigning king, likely during the millennium (premilennialism argues there will be a literal 1,000 year reign on earth by Jesus before God's universal kingdom unites with Jesus' earthly kingdom). Often, big drawings like this were used, and even are now being used (check out John Hagee), to organize a lot of disparate and sometimes confusing data not only in Revelation, but also with other books in the Bible that depict the return of Jesus at the end of the age.

There is a menorah next to Jesus. There is often a focus in premillennialism on Jesus being a fulfillment of OT Messianic expectations, but there was/is also a branch of premillennialism that sees a significant and important role of ethnic Israel at the end of the age, and specifically during the millennium. Jesus is depicted in Revelation as having the keys over life and death (also in the picture), and it's connected theologically to his resurrection (seen in the empty tomb by its side), which is seen as a first-fruit example that connects our relationship in Christ and our literal participation in his resurrection to participation in the millennial (and eternal) kingdom. Participating in the death (vicariously) and resurrection (literally) of Jesus secures one's place with God.

Additionally, the seven church (which are represented in part by the seven stars in the picture) are also seen as case studies that allow people to establish their own readiness for this future state and standing before God. At least two of the big warnings were the church in Ephesus of "losing their first love" of God and Laodicea neither being "hot nor cold" for the things of God, which has the potential result of being "spit out of [the Lord's] mouth." So, big pictures were designed to take a complicated subject and make it visually manageable, but also encourage the viewer to think about their role in a cosmically huge salvation history that goes from the beginning of the Bible to the present day viewer. There is more a tendency to do this in premillennialism, versus someone who is post- or a- millenial, due to the higher stakes being viewed with this theological position: namely, Jesus is coming back in a literal body for those who are is, so it's important to know where you stand in the cosmic scope of salvation history. Jesus and his resurrection, and his relationship to his church, stand at the center of the whole narrative.
posted by SpacemanStix at 9:52 PM on August 18, 2016 [6 favorites]

Best answer: My parents fell in with a casting-out-spirits talking-in-tongues type sect in the 1980s (this is in Australia), and we had blob's 'this site' stuff in our house (there's a whole heap more over here - scroll down to 'Charts'). They were in a series of landscape folios, quite large (longer than A3, maybe narrower), with plain-coloured paper covers. I used to pore over these, especially the bits about Satan and pyramids, which went well with my passion for Bigfoot and henge-building aliens.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 10:31 PM on August 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Best answer: A couple of modifications/additions: the menorah is likely a reference to the "golden candlesticks" (I just noticed it is written on the tomb) that are generally associated with the seven stars and seven churches in a positive way, and is likely a reference to the use of the menorah in tabernacle worship in the Old Testament, also (again making a connection between the Old Testament plans of God and the New Testament).

Also, for Philadelphia, we see a reference to God offering "on open door" to his people, which is often a metaphor that is used as an invitation to respond to God in faith to participate in eternal life through Jesus. If we could see the whole picture, I would not be surprised if we found Revelation 3:20, which has often historically been used to in the same way: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice, I will come into him, and I will eat with him, and he with me." Next to Philadelphia in the picture, a quote is hidden behind the man in the white shirt. I'm fairly certain it's quoting from 3:10: "Because you have kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell on the earth." This is important, because a lot of premillenialists are also pretribulationsists, meaning that they believe there is wrath that is going to be poured out upon a sinful world before the millennial reign of Jesus, but that the Lord will take his people up from the world before this time, to return with them later during the millennial reign.

This is where the phrase "pre trib rapture" comes from, and where you see a number of popular movies that depict people being raptured up and planes falling out of the sky, for example, before a difficult time that comes upon the world. This is supposed to happen before the return of Jesus, so it is designed to prepare people for both the judgment and salvation of God (to get people's attention and make them think about the call for salvation), while also comforting people who are "in the fold" that they will not experience the worst of it, but be protected by God, as long as they "patiently endure" in the faith.
posted by SpacemanStix at 10:36 PM on August 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I don't know about the drawings, but you could get a lot of relevant background by looking at a contemporary edition of the Scofield Reference Bible, especially the scholarly footnotes in Revelation.

(I say "contemporary edition," because later ones were sanitized of such piercing insights as The Great Whore of Babylon being the Roman Catholic Church, for example.)
posted by Short Attention Sp at 6:11 AM on August 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

One more detail: on the top left of the picture you can see the bottom part of a date. It's almost certainly A.D. 96, which is one of the likely dates for the composition of Revelation (making it a response to the persecutions under Domition). Others hold to a pre-70 date, and then there are weirdos like me who think there was probably a first draft in the 60s and and edit around 96. So your grandfather supported the "late date" theory of Revelation, which is not at all surprising for a premillenialist. Early date folks tend to be preterists.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 9:56 AM on November 30, 2016