A spectacular set of teaching charts published in 1941 by the Review and Herald Publishing Association, the principal publishing house of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Founded in the 1860s, the Church is distinguished by its emphasis on biblical prophecy, Saturday Sabbath observance, and a reading of history in which the rise and fall of empires is understood to follow a providential, prophetic order.

The denomination arose directly out of the Millerite movement of the 1830s and 1840s, whose followers—anticipating the imminent Second Coming of Christ—developed a powerful visual culture of prophetic charts to explain the Books of Daniel and Revelation (Here’s one example.) After the Millerites fractured following the “Great Disappointment” of 1844, the Adventists became one of its principal successor groups, retaining and refining many of the same interpretive frameworks, chronological schemes, and visual motifs.

Description
Offered here is a complete set of 13 colorful teaching charts, together forming a coherent visual curriculum intended to be displayed sequentially. Together they trace sacred history from the ancient Near East through classical antiquity, into the Christian era, forward to the modern world, and ultimately to the Second Coming. All use bold imagery and hyper-saturated color to reduce complex teachings to powerful, even unforgettable teaching and mnemonic tools.

The early charts establish the basic prophetic framework. A standing human figure marked by dates summarizes the succession of ancient empires—Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome—followed by allegorical renderings of the symbolic beasts of Daniel. This figure closely recalls the anthropomorphic empire imagery found on earlier Millerite prophecy charts, including the familiar “Man of History” motif used to visualize successive world powers.

Subsequent charts develop the narrative. In the third chart, for example, a fearsome dragon represents the use of political or religious power to compel conformity in matters of faith, as in the persecution of early Christians under imperial Rome; in the fourth chart, the ram and the goat illustrate imperial conflict and territorial succession.

Midway through the series, attention shifts from history to doctrine. A paired depiction of the earthly tabernacle (fifth chart) introduces the Adventist teaching that the ancient sanctuary served as a symbolic model for Christ’s ongoing work of judgment and reconciliation, followed by a sixth chart that visually links Old Testament sacrifice to the crucifixion. The seventh chart presents the Ten Commandments, and in the eighth a courtroom-like scene depicts angels recording human deeds beneath the tablets of the law.

The ninth through twelfth charts address authority, worship, and the end times. On the ninth chart, beasts from the Book of Revelation dramatize competing world powers; they stand in sharp contrast to the tenth chart, which places a lamb upon a map of the United States. The eleventh depicts the Three Angels’ Messages—understood by Adventists as a worldwide call, at the end of history, to faithfulness, moral accountability, and freedom of conscience. The twelfth chart depicts the collapse of earthly kingdoms amid desolation and ruin.

The tenth chart merits further comment. In Seventh-day Adventist interpretation, the “lamb-like beast” of Revelation 13:11 was identified with the United States. Adventist writers understood its two horns, shown without crowns, as signifying a non-monarchical power founded on principles of civil and religious liberty, often described in Adventist literature as republicanism and Protestantism. The prophecy’s further assertion that the lamb-like power would later “speak as a dragon” was read as a warning that a nation founded on liberty could come to exercise coercive authority in matters of faith, above all through a union of church and state.

The thirteenth and largest chart, titled “Unto 2300 Days (Years); Then Shall the Sanctuary Be Cleansed,” brings the whole series to its climax. Laid out as a long timeline running from 457 B.C. to 1844, it presents Adventist teaching on the prophecy of Daniel 8:14 by linking that verse to Christ’s baptism, Crucifixion, work in Heaven after the Resurrection, and the belief that in 1844 he entered a new phase in the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary. That date was of course charged with special meaning for Adventists, for 1844 was also the year of the Millerites’ failed prediction of Christ’s Second Coming, remembered thereafter as the “Great Disappointment.” More spare and direct in design than some of the other sheets, it reduces a complicated prophetic scheme to a single bold image clearly meant to be read at a glance before an audience.

Robert M. Eldridge (1903-1979)
Robert M. Eldridge was a commercial artist and art director whose career was closely tied with the publishing and evangelistic work of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. By the mid-1930s he was already employed in the art department of the Review and Herald Publishing Association in Washington, D.C., the denomination’s principal publishing arm, where he would remain for approximately eighteen years.

In 1945, he relocated to Nashville to become head of the art department of the Southern Publishing Association, the Adventist publishing house serving the southern United States. Contemporary press accounts describe the move as part of an institutional expansion, noting his long prior service with Review and Herald and his role in professionalizing visual presentation across Adventist publications. He appears to have held this position until his retirement.

During the late 1940s and 1950s, Eldridge appears in regional newspapers as a speaker at Adventist churches, delivering illustrated lectures and programs of “colored slides”, sometimes integrating music. One advertisement credits him as the creator of a devotional visual presentation titled “The Way, the Truth, and the Life,” described as a “deeply devotional presentation of colored pictures and music, carried forward with amplified narrative” intended to “lift heart and mind in contemplation of the One altogether lovely, and to exalt the Name that is above every other name”.

Several articles document Eldridge’s involvement in Adventist missions, including a trip to South America, where he traveled to film and photograph Adventist mission schools, hospitals, and evangelistic work across seventeen countries and Caribbean islands.

According to a short obituary in the Nashville Tennessean for Nov. 20, 1979, he died in New Johnsonville, Tennessee, survived by his wife, Elaine Yeast Eldridge; a son, Hobert Lesley Eldridge of Nashville; and five grandchildren. Oddly, the obit describes him simply as a “retired commercial artist”, belying his decades-long role shaping the visual language of Adventist publishing.

References
OCLC #1353728207 (Andrews University only, the complete set of 13). Michigan State University holds charts 1-12, but not 13.