George Hawkins Pember was born in Hereford, England in 1837.... Read More
George Hawkins Pember was born in Hereford, England in 1837. He studied the classics at Cambridge. Not much is known about his conversion, but by the late 1800s he was among the British Brethren as an accomplished biblical scholar and author, who, according to Panton, “dominated prophetic study in the Victorian age.” He and other great teachers among the Brethren played a large role in bringing the matters of prophecy and the second coming of Christ into the awareness of the Christian public.
Pember is perhaps best known for his book, Earth’s Earliest Ages (Kregel Pub. Co., Grand Rapids, MI) where he elucidates the cataclysmic judgment of God on the pre-Adamic world, due to Lucifer’s fall. This occurred during the “gap” between verses 1 and 2 of Genesis chapter one. The original Scofield Bible published in 1917 helped to popularize this interpretation as an answer to Darwinism and prehistoric fossil records.
A contemporary of Robert Govett, G. H. Lang, and D. M. Panton, Pember shared many of the same unique hermeneutic principles which set them apart. They were vastly ahead of their time and produced teachings which perplexed many and blessed many others. Lang and Panton reprinted a condensed volume of some of of Pember’s writings in 1941, with this word expressed by Lang: “He was pre-eminently a teacher of teachers, and one of the best exponents of prophetic Scripture during his period, so rich in great teachers of the Word of God. It is in the hope that…the present volume may reach other and younger readers, eager for all heavenly knowledge, that it is issued. It will guide and fortify honest hearts for the wars of the Lord now upon us, in which the faithful must meet fierce and dangerous conflicts, and meet them with few older soldiers of Christ to lead and encourage them.”
