American Baptist pastor, Bible
teacher, and writer, Clarence Larkin was born October 28, 1850, in
Chester, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. He was converted to Christ at
the age of 19 and then felt called to the Gospel ministry, but the doors
of opportunity for study and ministry did not open immediately. He then
got a job in a bank.
When he was 21 years old, he left the bank and
went to college, graduating as a mechanical engineer. He continued as a
professional draftsman for a while, then he became a teacher of the
blind. This last endeavor cultivated his descriptive faculties --
something God would later use in him to produce a monumental work on
dispensational theology. Later, failing health compelled him to give up
his teaching career. After a prolonged rest, he became a manufacturer.
But he was not happy. He felt that God wanted him
in the Gospel ministry. When he was converted he had become a member of
the Episcopal Church, but in 1882, at the age of 32, he became a Baptist
and was ordained as a Baptist minister two years later. He went directly
from business into the ministry.
His first charge was at Kennett Square,
Pennsylvania; his second pastorate was at Fox Chase, Pennsylvania, where
he remained for 20 years. He was not a premillennialist at the time of
his ordination, but his study of the Scriptures, with the help of some
books that fell into his hands, led him to adopt the premillennialist
position. He began to make large wall charts, which he titled,
"Prophetic Truth," for use in the pulpit. These led to his being invited
to teach, in connection with his pastoral work, in two Bible institutes.
During this time he published a number of prophetical charts, which were
widely circulated.
When World War I broke out in 1914, he was called
on for addresses on The War and Prophecy. Then God laid it on his heart
to prepare a work on Dispensational Truth (or God's Plan and Purpose in
the Ages), containing a number of charts with descriptive matter. He
spent three years of his life designing and drawing the charts and
preparing the text. The favorable reception it has had since it was
first published in 1918 seems to indicate that the world was waiting for
such a book.
Because it had a large and wide circulation in
this and other lands, the first edition was soon exhausted. It was
followed by a second edition, and then, realizing that the book was of
permanent value, Larkin revised it and expanded it, printing it in its
present form. Larkin followed this masterpiece with other books: Rightly
Dividing the Word, The Book of Daniel, Spirit World, Second Coming of
Christ, and A Medicine Chest for Christian Practitioners, a handbook on
evangelism.
Larkin, a kind and gentle man, deplored the
tendency of writers to say uncharitable things about each other, so he
earnestly sought to avoid criticisms and to satisfy himself with simply
presenting his understanding of the Scriptures. Though he did not intend
to publish his own works, the Lord led in that direction. During the
last five years of his life, the demand for Larkin's books made it
necessary for him to give up the pastorate and devote his full time to
writing. He went to be with the Lord on January 24, 1924.
