Blumhardt and the Victorious Christ

The other key factor in Johnn Christoph Blumhardt's legacy is his unshakable conviction in 'realised eschatology', that the promises of scripture for the end times are meant for the Church now. His influences here were twofold:

1. He was acquainted with the prophecy of Johann Albrecht Bengel, who had calculated from bible numerology that the Millennium (a period of one thousand years referred to in Book of Revelation, 20:1-10, in which Christ's followers would rule the earth spiritually) would begin in 1836. This had heightened expectancy in some church circles for new outbreaks of the miraculous.

2. From Bible College onwards, he had had dealings with missionaries, doctors and exorcists, who had first hand experience of the power of the risen Christ to free those enslaved by evil.

So when the young woman in Möttlingen was delivered from evil after eighteen months of prayer and spiritual warfare, Blumhardt was convinced of two things: Jesus is victor and His kingdom has come on earth.

Blumhardt's experiences of healings at the sanatorium of Bad Boll caused him to interpret this in-breaking of God's kingdom in an individual way. Jesus was doing for precious people what He did as He walked the earth: making the blind see, opening the prison door and releasing the bound (see Luke 4:16-21).

It would be his son who would take the interpretation of the kingdom deeper and wider, as we shall see.

"Christ Loved The Church"

So, what makes Johann Christoph Blumhardt significant enough to warrant an English edition of his works? In what ways was he a "mover and shaker"?

This post looks at a key (and at first sight unlikely) factor: his conservatism, his belief in the established church. England by this time had seen the Quakers, then the Great Awakening, the powerful movings of God associated with the Wesleys and george Whitefield (an overview of which is given here). These times of the in-breaking of God's power had, however, led to large numbers leaving the Anglican communion to found new groups and movements.

Germany had always been resistant to sectarianism - look how it treated the Anabaptists (see some of my posts of 2010). But in Blumhardt, the message of renewal, and the manifest power of God with signs and wonders, came from a solid son of the church who had no intention of seceding from it. This resonated far and wide, and Blumhardt's parsonage welcomed thousands of visitors, including author/parson Eduard Mörike and novellist Hermann Hesse.

A short article in German assesses the reactions of some of these visitors.

1. FAITH. "He really does believe! It isn't magic!", wrote Blumhardt's bishop. Real faith, "the faith that pulls the fire from heaven" (Salvation Army hymn) has always fascinated and attracted. People want to believe in the miraculous. Blumhardt made it seem quite ordinary.

2. LOVE. "Love is his religion", wrote a noted painter. Blumhardt's God was compassionate, offered hope, gave repentance and a new start even to the most damaged and dirty, and any manifestation of healing etc was a signpost to that nature in Him. This too is timelessly attractive, especially to Christians stultified by habit - what Blumhardt called "religion".

3. HOPE. Blumhardt's heightened understanding of light and darkness (through the exorcism of 1842) made him see that God was ready at any moment to invade the darkness of human life with the light that is the real Jesus - not of "religion" but of life . Darkness, he wrote, is contrary to our nature if we are of God, so there will always be a way to escape from it if we put our trust in Him.

All of these, Blumhardt believed, were available within the orbit of the church. But because of much encrusting of "church-ianity", God's lavish heart in these areas had to be actively and stongly preached, which is what Blumhardt spent a lot of his time doing.