The Signs of the Times

The signs of the times formed a rather elastic and expansive category. Adventist Fundamentalists, at their most excitable, were tempted to find significance and meaning in almost anything and everything happening in the world. Even Pankhurst herself could make the prophetic news rather than just report it: the Revd H. Tydeman Chilvers, the Baptist minister at Spurgeon's Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, once remarked about her in a burst of enthusiasm, ‘Surely she herself is a “sign” for this day and generation’, although he did not bother to elucidate what biblical prophecy regarding the end times found its partial fulfilment in the redeemed Suffragette. Moreover, even when the field is narrowed to a strict correlation between an event and a specific biblical text, there is such a dizzying array of obscure verses that might suddenly come to the fore in the light of contemporary events that members of the faithful who had not made prophetic study a special hobby might not have even been aware that such a ‘sign’ had been foretold in the Bible until its apparent fulfilment had been announced to them. Familiar imagery could continually take on new meanings in the light of current events. As Communist Russia became more of a concern, the Advent Witness could write knowingly of the prophecy in Revelation that speaks of the so-called four horses of the apocalypse under the proof-texting title: ‘Another Horse that was Red’. On the other hand, there is no doubt that, if asked what the signs of the times were, almost any member of the movement could have listed the major themes that were perennially emphasized by prophetic teachers.

Pankhurst, in particular, largely limited her teaching to a few major themes, finding ample room for variation and expansion in the hunt for their fulfilment. At one point, she expounded a three-fold scheme of the signs of the times that encapsulates well her preoccupations in this area throughout the whole of her ministry: