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GAEBELEIN, ARNO C. 1861-1945

FUNDAMENTALIST EDITOR

The Fundamentals.

With the publication, between 1910 and 1915, of The Fundamentals, the fundamentalist Christian movement became a more organized and prominent Protestant voice in American religion during the 1910s. Conservative Protestants such as Reuben A. Torrey and Amzi Dixon, an editor of The Fundamentals, hotly debated modernist and liberal theologians such as Shirley Jackson Case and Shailer Mathews, both of the University of Chicago Divinity School. Among the strongest voices of fundamentalist Christianity was that of Arno C. Gaebelein, the editor of one of fundamentalism's sturdiest platforms, the monthly magazine Our Hope. Gaebelein was himself a contributor to The Fundamentals, with interpretation of biblical prophecy as his specialty. He had been active in the nascent fundamentalist movement during the 1890s and remained vehemently attached to dispensational premillennialism (the belief that human history is divided into seven ages, or dispensations, and that the present one will end with the return of Christ to establish his millennial kingdom) until his death in 1945.

Early Years

Gaebelein took a circuitous route to Fundamentalism. He was born in Germany in 1861 and immigrated to America in 1879, where he procured work in a woolen mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts. In 1880 he joined the German Methodist Episcopal Church and made the acquaintance of Augustus Wallon, whose father was a pastor in New York City. In 1881 Gaebelein moved to New York to become Louis Wallon's assistant. Wallon was postmillennial in belief and led young Gaebelein through a home study of church history and theology, while leading him away from seminary study. Gaebelein instead became a preacher, first in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on weekends and then in 1882 at a church in Baltimore after he had passed a candidacy exam for the Methodist ministry. He made language study his specialty, learning Greek, Hebrew, and Latin while also studying Aramaic, Arabic, Syrian, and Persian. He was successful as a pastor and in 1884 was ordained as a deacon. He married in 1885, and in 1886, at the age of twenty-five, he became an elder of the Methodist Episcopal Church and was assigned to a church in Hoboken, New Jersey,

The Mission

In 1887 Gaebelein met Sam Goldstein, a Jew who had converted to Christianity. Goldstein suggested that Gaebelein travel to New York and preach to the growing Jewish immigrant population there. Reluctant at first, Gaebelein began to preach at Jacob Freshman's Hebrew Christian mission. The experience changed both Gaebelein's thinking and the direction of his life. Gaebelein became a convinced premillennialist as a result of his exposure to Orthodox Judaism, which taught that a literal messiah would come to claim King David's throne. Gaebelein began studying the Bible in a new light and became convinced that his future work should be with the Jews. In 1891 he moved to New York City and began preaching to Jews full-time while studying their culture. Though he met with some resistance, he drew large crowds to his "mission," to which he later gave the name Hope of Israel. In 1893 he began publishing Tiqweth Israel—The Hope of Israel Monthly, a magazine in Hebrew. The following year Gaebelein was joined by professor Ernst F. Stroeter, another German Methodist. Together they formed Our Hope, an English-language monthly that served their mission as well as other Hope of Israel missions that had sprung up in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Saint Louis.

Our Hope.

The purpose of the Hope of Israel missions was evident in Our Hope. Besides serving the poor immigrant communities of the economically depressed 1890s, Gaebelein and Stroeter both believed that the Jewish people, as prophesied in the Bible, were the key to the Scriptures. Zionism became a focus of Our Hope. Gaebelein criticized Christians who were anti-Semitic and who acted "triumphant" in regard to the Jews. For Gaebelein, Christian prophecy could not be realized without Jewish "help." Thus, he became a supporter of the Jewish people, though much later in his life he began to have doubts about these sentiments. His vehicle for spreading his belief was Our Hope, which was in existence from 1894 to 1957. Our Hope was among the early supporters of Jewish colonization in Palestine. It supported the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, though it disagreed with his plan to purchase Palestine. The journal castigated Christians who remained ignorant of Jewish customs, while following closely all international developments regarding the Jewish people. In 1895 Gaebelein traveled to Russia, Germany, Poland, Romania, and England to observe the situation of the Jews and report for Our Hope. By 1897 Our Hope had become independent of the Methodist Episcopal Church's Missionary Society. That same year, however, Gaebelein changed his thinking on a major aspect of his work, sending his career in a different direction.

Fundamentalist

Prior to 1897 Gaebelein had made the acquaintance of early fundamentalist leaders such as James M. Gray, Cyrus I. Scofield, and George L. Alrich. In 1898 he participated in the Niagara Bible Conference along with Reuben A. Torrey and William G. Moorehead, the president of the United Presbyterian Theological Seminary. By 1899 Gaebelein, now influenced by fundamentalist teachings, was forced to confront the question that was challenging the Hope of Israel's founding principles. Essentially, he came to discard the idea that a Jew converted to Christianity was still a Jew. From this point on, he believed that Jews could no longer be part of "Christ's body," the church. He now argued that converted Jews became Gentiles, and that "ordinances, etc. are no longer in existence for a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ." Stroeter disagreed and left Our Hope. Gaebelein resigned from the Methodist Episcopal Church. Our Hope essentially became a fundamentalist organ with an emphasis on interpreting scriptural prophecy. At the start of the new century Gaebelein was a rising fundamentalist leader who, now removed from mission work, began to write and publish in abundance. He published a series of commentaries on books of the Bible, beginning with Studies in Zechariah (1900) and following up with The Gospel of Matthew (1903-1907), The Prophet Daniel (1911), The Prophet Joel (1909), The Prophet Ezekiel (1918), The Book of Revelation (1915), and The Gospel of John (1925). He worked on Cyrus I. Scofield's Reference Bible, published in 1909, and in 1912 he began ten years of work on his own Annotated Bible. He published The Jewish Question in 1912, which affirmed what Gaebelein thought was the Christian church's failure in dealing with Judaism while advocating the need for a Jewish homeland.

1910s and Beyond

Gaebelein remained active through the 1910s and beyond. His article for The Fundamentals, titled "Fulfilled Prophecy, A Potent Argument for the Bible," was the only chapter that dealt specifically with prophecy. He became a featured fundamentalist speaker, participating in the Fifth International Prophetic Conference at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago in 1914 and acting as president of the sixth conference in 1918. Gaebelein led the charge in defense of Fundamentalism against vehement attacks from liberal theologians. His response to World War I was one of both horror and caution. While many saw the carnage in Europe as an expected sign of Armageddon, Gaebelein pointed out that, according to the book of Revelation, "Armageddon is in Palestine and not in Europe." He also pointed out that the Jews had not been "restored to their land nor do we see anything of Anti-Christ." He saw, in fact, the capture of Jerusalem from the Turks in 1917 as a significant sign, anticipating the eventual return of the Jews, though he would not live to see the state of Israel established in 1948. After the war Gaebelein became an ardent anticommunist and spent the 1920s and 1930s vehemently opposing Bolshevism. His own prophecy seemed to anticipate the horrors of World War II, while at the same time, his anticommunism often seemed tainted with anti-Semitism when Jews were acting on behalf of the forces of the Left. He wrote that "too often the Jews have brought disaster upon themselves by meddling with the politics of the countries into which the Lord has scattered them." He considered leftist Jews "apostate," thinking that they did not fit neatly into his interpretations of the Bible. In light of his career, however, and the genuine horror he felt at the Holocaust, charges of anti-Semitism seem only loosely founded. Gaebelein died on Christmas Day in 1945, his influence on the fundamentalist movement well established.