From drafting to the pulpit
Born in Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1850, Larkin worked in banking before studying engineering and becoming a professional draftsman. He later taught blind pupils and entered manufacturing after ill health interrupted that work. Religious conviction eventually took him into a different career: he joined the Baptists in 1882 and was ordained two years later.
He served congregations at Kennett Square and Fox Chase, Pennsylvania. Large wall charts became a teaching aid as he developed a premillennial reading of Scripture, expecting Christ’s return before a future thousand-year reign. Dispensational Truth, first published in 1918, arranged biblical history and prophecy into a visual system of successive ages. The demand for his publications eventually drew him away from parish work into writing. He died in 1924.
A biblical answer to the séance room
The foreword to The Spirit World is dated March 1921 at his Fox Chase home, Sunnyside. Larkin explicitly addresses people mourning those lost in the war. He sees attempts to communicate with the dead as a religious danger and offers Scripture as the proper source of knowledge about the world to come. This is a work of theological argument, rather than a record of mediumistic experiments.
Its contents move from spiritual beings and Satan to the intermediate state, recognition after death, resurrection and judgment. Charts classify and connect ideas that the text draws from different biblical passages; pictures supply scenes of angelic ministry. Larkin’s training helps explain the precision of the presentation. The diagrams give a clear visual form to his particular reading of biblical prophecy and the afterlife.
