Dispensations: The Clarence Larkin Collection

Clarence Larkin was a famous Baptist pastor during the late 1800s and early 1900s. As a Bible teacher and author, he is mostly known for his works on Dispensationalism, which considers biblical history, as well as the future of all creation and mankind's role on earth, as divided into "ages." (Within this context, "ages" are specific periods of time that God has set in motion that will ultimately reach their climatic end at the Great White Throne judgment--the moment when God will judge everybody that has ever lived according to their works, followed by their destiny in Heaven or Hell.) Larkin's books, charts, and wood cuts greatly influenced Protestant conservatives in early America as well as Church evangelism throughout the twentieth century. Larkin was born in 1850 and became a Christian at the age of nineteen. He later joined the Episcopal Church but eventually left that denomination to become a Baptist pastor. He espoused many ideas from premillennialist theology, which was rapidly growing in popularity among early evangelicals at the time, drawn from major prophetic concepts shared by C.I. Scofield, William Eugene Blackstone, and John Nelson Darby. Larkin created original, detailed, prophetical wall charts to use while teaching his convictions around these ideas from the pulpit. This unique approach quickly became so popular that articles based on his teachings were published in the Sunday School Times, and soon, invitations for him to explain his ideas involving eschatology--the future and end-times prophecy--began coming in from across America and around the world.