With sorrow we have learnt of the death of Charles H. We1ch at the great age of 87.

Over sixty years have passed since J. J. B. Coles wrote his paper "The Acts of the Apostles considered historically and dispensationally." This was published by Dr. Bullinger in Things to Come for February, 1907, and completely won him over, in spite of the mass of errors and misstatements it contained; and, in fact, it induced him to add some of his own to their number. Later, his essays, started in 1911, were posthumously published over his name (though Coles' paper was included without acknowledgment!) in a book, "The Foundations of Dispensational Truth," devoted to defending Coles' notion of a dispensational break or frontier at Acts 28:28.

Presently, in the March, 1909, issues of Things to Come, a new personality appeared on the scene—Charles H. We1ch. A young man, he naturally started from the position of Coles and Bullinger; but he soon showed signs of a wider outlook in his own magazine, The Berean Expositor, as well. This was launched at about the same time. By 1911 he had begun to concentrate on the Prison Epistles, though Bullinger was still enmeshed in his "foundations." Coles, having done immense harm, had disappeared from the scene.

This interest in the Prison Epistles is really the best thing in Welch's ministry; and it soon spread far and wide, a fact for which we have largely to thank him. The Prison Epistles are the summit of the Apostle Paul's teaching for ourselves; though many, like Welch himself, still fail to appreciate that their divorcement by Coles from Paul's earlier epistles makes it impossible to achieve the full knowledge of them we ought to Have.

R.B.W. Last updated 10.3.2006