Last night I spoke at the Albury History Society. The subject was “Edward Irving, the Albury Circle and the Origins of the Middle East Conflict”. I explained how the Arab-Israeli conflict could be traced right back to the eccentric views of Edward Irving and his colleagues, who met in the home of Henry Drummond in Albury, Surrey, during Advent 1826. Irving was largely responsible for popularising the notion that God had a separate purpose for the Jewish people apart from the Church and restored to Palestine. John Darby took these ideas further and fashioned them into what became known as Dispensationalism which is now the domnant theological framework of Evangelicals, Fundamentalists and Pentecostals in the USA. It is this constiuency that is underwriting financial and political support for the agenda of the Zionist Lobby, and hence a major obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
The full text is available here. Listen to the presentation here
The feedback was encouraging. I received this letter from the chairman following the presentation:
“I have never experienced such a positive reaction to a guest speaker as came about last night, and has continued to this morning. The audience was both numerous and responsive, and as one member put it to me “it is going to be a hard act to follow”. I think that we shall be talking about Christian Zionism for some time, having long harboured suspicions of chicanery in high political circles, and now being presented with conclusive evidence of it. We could also have brought in the French pope who set off the chain of crusades for his own political preservation.
I express my gratitude to you on behalf of the Albury History Society and thank you for a superb presentation, technically faultless, and intellectually challenging. With kindest regards…”