“The great manager of the world’s theatre is the Lord Jesus Christ, whose dramatic programme is the Apocalypse or Revelation given to him by the Father; the nations and powers are mere performers played off by him against one another for the denouncement of the plot divinely conceived.”
Bro. John Thomas wrote this in his third and final volume of Eureka: an Exposition of the Apocalypse. How exciting is it that we can turn the words of Bro. Thomas (and our Lord Jesus Christ) into a dramatic presentation, having seen the historical events of this “programme” unfold over the last 2000 years.
The play Napoleon: The Man of the Hour is a dramatic presentation portraying the events Bro. Thomas expounds in Revelation 16 – the working of the angels during the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte to judge Catholic Europe.
The play goes back and forth between the events surrounding Napoleon as described in Revelation, and Bro. Thomas’ life while he wrote his third volume of Eureka. We learn how Bro. Thomas was able to raise funds to publish his works, as well as the history surrounding the choosing of the name “Christadelphians” to identify us as a community.
Here is a link to watch the play online (note: due to a windstorm near the beginning of the play we apologize for the sound quality)
Although the play can be done as a standalone; it was also written to follow chronologically after the play A Revolution without a Head: Still Feeling the Aftershocks.
The title of the play, Napoleon, the Man of the Hour: The Pouring Out of the Wrath of God, was taken from Bro. Thomas’ writing:
Napoleon, the most gigantic being of modern times was a man of destiny but not the Man of Destiny; who is indeed yet to appear, and before whose almightiness the gigantic proportions of Napoleon’s glory and renown will shrink into the dwarfish insignificance of a babe. He was the man of the hour, whose tormenting pains and ulcers caused their victims to “gnaw their tongues” as the earnest of that more terrible torment that awaits the “hour of judgment” in the presence of the Lamb.
This PDF document is the script.
This PDF document is a program for the audience.
This PDF document is all of the scrolls needed for the play.
“Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments.” Revelation 16:7