For some time now I’ve been interested in Victorian Biblical interpretation, particularly regarding the Apocalypse. I love this stuff! One of the major authors on the subject in the period was a man who was somewhat of a Hal Lindsey in his day, the Reverend Alexander Keith of Edinburgh, who I’ve mentioned before. Two of his works, The Signs of the Times and Evidence of the Truth of the Christian Religion, were immensely popular, the latter going through thirty-nine editions! I’ve got a fifth edition (1834) of The Signs of the Times, and a thirty-fifth (1854) and thirty-ninth (1872) editions of Evidence…. Both books are often referred to in later works in the historicist tradition of interpretation of prophecy, like Daniel and the Revelation by Uriah Smith of the Seventh Day Adventists, but were of less direct lasting influence in the genre than Edward Bishop Elliott’s four volumes of Horae Apocalypticae, which went through five editions by 1862. In common to all of the above are the direct linking of the prophecies of the Book of Revelation to various historical events long post-dating the Apocalypse’s writing, in Keith’s place, particularly, bringing it up to the immediate past of his own day, as we’ll see below. Perhaps it’s the sheer, outrageous boldness of the interpretations that strikes me so, and to which one cannot respond but with some certain amount of gentle amusement, really, and a degree of bewilderment. It’s fascinating stuff.
In the back of volume two of Keith’s Signs of the Times is a tabular summary of the two volumes of his interpretation, serving as an index. If you never thought to see the American Revolution or Napolean in the Apocalypse, be prepared! The language and emphasis in the below is his, of course. So, here we are, an historicist interpretation of the Book of Revelation from 1834: