A Pilgrimage Of Faith, J.B. Toews, 1993

the Lord's return and events related to it: forty-four before 1910; 176 between 1910 and 1935; and 172 from 1936 to 1950, In the articles before the mid-1950s, the focus was on the hope of Christ's return as the motivation for holy living and service: "Are we ready for the Lord's coming? Are we a peo- ple waiting for the Lord's return?" The 398 articles were written by a total of 120 authors, but four of the authors were responsible for 153 of the articles: William Bestvater, 62 articles; Peter E. Penner, 35; Nickolas N. Hiebert, 32; and J J. Neufeld, 24 The writings of 116 authors carried as the central concern an admonition to purity and faithfulness. Likewise the writings of N.N. Hiebert were an admonition to God's people to be faithful and wait for the im- minent return of Christ. To some extent the same applied to 109 A PILGRIMAGE OF FAITH the writings of P.E. Penner, although he also frequently ad- dressed the how and when of Christ's return. The writers who vigorously promoted a precise sequence of end time events, with details on the when and how, were William Best- vater and J.J. Neufeld.1* A common theme in many of these articles was the place of present-day Israel in God's plan for the consummation of history. Most of the writers in the Zionsbote understood escha- tology in the framework known in Europe as Darbyistic mil- lenarianism, and in North America as dispensationalism. The Darbyistic hermeneutic came to the Russian Menno- nite Brethren chiefly through the Blankenburg Conferences. Jacob W. Reimer, a prophetic voice in Russia and later in Cana- da, developed his system of interpretation through attendance at these conferences,14 In the United States, the eschatoiogical perception of a large segment of Mennonite Brethren came from the millenarian dispensations! interpretation of funda- mentalism, of which William Bestvater was a prominent expo- nent among the Mennonite Brethren. He had been a student of the legendary Cyrus L Scofield, and had completely adopt- ed his method of interpreting Scripture, Bestvater's series of thirty articles in the Christian Leader between April 1937 and May 1940 offered a comprehensive treatment of dispensation! eschatology, A highly effective teacher, he had broad popular appeal to the people of his day. His large chart (twenty feet long and almost seven feet high) laid out the dispensational understanding, including details as to the how and when of fu- ture events,15 Other Bestvater writings on eschatology, in addi- tion to the sixty-two articles in the Zionsbote and the thirty i