PRETRIB RAPTURE STEALTH!

by Dave MacPherson

     Many evangelicals believe that Christ will "rapture" them to heaven years before the second coming and (most importantly) well BEFORE Antichrist and his "tribulation."
     But Acts 2:34-35 reveal that Jesus is at the Father's right hand in heaven until He leaves to destroy His earthly foes at the second coming.
     And Acts 3:21 says that Jesus “must” stay in heaven with the Father "until the times of restitution of all things” which includes, says Scofield, “the restoration of the theocracy under David’s Son” which obviously can’t begin before or during Antichrist’s reign.
     ("The Rapture Question," by the long-time No. 1 pretrib authority John Walvoord, didn't dare to even list, in its scripture index, the above verses! They were also too hot for John Darby - the so-called "father of dispensationalism" - to list in the scripture index in his "Letters"!)      
     Paul explains the “times and the seasons” (I Thess. 5:1) of the catching up (I Thess. 4:17) as the “day of the Lord” (5:2) which FOLLOWS the posttrib sun/moon darkening (Matt. 24:29; Acts 2:20)  WHEN “sudden destruction” (5:3) of the wicked occurs!
     The "rest" for "all them that believe" is also tied to such destruction in II Thess. 1:6-10! (If the wicked are destroyed before or during the trib, who'd be left alive to serve the Antichrist?)
     Paul also ties the change-into-immortality “rapture” (I Cor. 15:52) to the end of trib “death” (15:54). (Will death be ended before or during the trib? Of course not! And vs. 54 is also tied to Isa. 25:8 which Scofield views as Israel's posttrib resurrection!)
     It's amazing that the Olivet Discourse contains the "great commission" for the church but not even a hint of a pretrib rapture for the church!
     Many don't know that before 1830 all Christians had always viewed I Thess. 4’s “catching up” as an integral part of the final second coming to earth. In 1830 this "rapture" was stretched forward and turned into an idolized separate coming of Christ.
     To further strengthen their novel view, which evangelical scholars overwhelmingly rejected throughout the 1800s, pretrib teachers in the early 1900s began to stretch forward the “day of the Lord” (what Darby and Scofield never dared to do) and hook it up with their already-stretched-forward “rapture.”
     Many leading evangelical scholars still weren’t convinced of pretrib, so pretrib teachers then began teaching that the “falling away” of II Thess. 2:3 is really a pretrib rapture (the same as saying that the “rapture” in 2:3 must happen before the “rapture” ["gathering"] in 2:1 can happen – the height of desperation!). Google "Walvoord Melts Ice" for more on this.
     My many online articles on various aspects of the 187-year-old pretrib rapture view include “X-Raying Margaret,” "Margaret Macdonald's Rapture Chart," "Pretrib Rapture's Missing Lines," "Edward Irving is Unnerving," "The Unoriginal John Darby," "Edward Irving vs. John Darby," "Catholics Did NOT Invent the Rapture," "The Real Manuel Lacunza," "C. I. Scofield's Hidden Side," "Pretrib Rapture Pride," “Thomas Ice (Bloopers),” “Wily Jeffrey,” “The Rapture Index (Mad Theology),” “Scholars Weigh My Research,” “Pretrib Hypocrisy,” " "Pretrib Rapture Secrecy," “Deceiving and Being Deceived,” "GFM's DVD Survives Paul Wilkinson's Attack," "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty," and (in response to the outrageous claim that the rapture could occur this coming September!) "Ready for Rapture Astrology?"
      If you would like to find my articles on pretrib rapture history and theology in one location on the net, I would invite you to check out the worldwide British blog "Wolves in Sheep's Clothing" hosted by Treena Gisborn who is an outstanding researcher and authority on Biblical topics including prophecy.

C.I. SCOFIELD'S HIDDEN SIDE

 by Dave MacPherson

     C. I. S. can stand for "Crime Investigation Scene" or C. I. Scofield.

     But I repeat myself. The venerable old C. I. Scofield of Scofield Bible fame was, in a sense, a 19th century "crime scene" that many still don't know about.

     Cyrus Scofield is best known in Christian circles as the greatest promoter of the pretrib rapture during the past century by means of his Scofield Reference Bible which came out in 1909.

     He preferred the pretrib rapture view over other prophetic views and never missed an opportunity to plug that 19th century fantasy and sneak it into his "explanations" which he included alongside Bible verses.

     Maybe we should call his Bible the Scofield "Preference" Bible!

     Some remarkable things happened after his reported conversion to Christ in 1879:

     An article in the "Topeka [Kansas] Daily Capital" on Aug. 27, 1881 began in this manner:

     "Cyrus I. Schofield [sic], formerly of Kansas, late lawyer, politician and shyster generally, has come to the surface again, and promises once more to gather around himself that halo of notoriety that has made him so prominent in the past. The last personal knowledge that Kansans have had of this peer among scalawags, was when about four years ago, after a series of forgeries and confidence games he left the state and a destitute family and took refuge in Canada."

     It continued: "Within the past year [1880]...Cyrus committed a series of St. Louis forgeries" which landed him "in the St. Louis jail for a period of six months." (I obtained a copy of this article at the Kansas State Historical Society in Topeka.)
     One of the forgeries was a real estate scam he cooked up during which he robbed his own mother-in-law of her life savings ($1300.00)! (Would most crooks target their own family members?!)
     Scofield deserted his first wife Leontine (and their two girls), she divorced him in 1883, he remarried three months later and also lied to "Who's Who in America" about his criminal past. (To see a copy of C. I. Scofield's divorce decree which I found in the Atchison County Courthouse in Kansas, Google "Scofield: The Man Behind the Myth."  I included highlights of the above in my 1983 book "The Great Rapture Hoax.")
     Leontine died in 1936 fifteen years after Cyrus died. She never remarried and spent many years as the librarian at the Atchison Library. To see where she is buried in a Catholic cemetery, Google "gravestone of Leontine Cerre Scofield."
     Although Scofield never had any theological training, he brazenly added "D.D." after his name in the 1890s even though no institution had conferred that degree on him!

     Those interested in many other shocked aspects of Scofield's hidden (and criminal) side are invited to obtain "The Incredible Scofield and His Book" (1988) by Joseph M. Canfield. Another great book on C. I. S. in "The Praise of Folly" (2009) by David Lutzweiler.

     Somehow the Scofield saga continues. His pretribized Bible is still being merchandised in numerous Christian bookstores and I am forced to conclude that many pretribbers are still Scofieldelirious!

CHRIST'S RETURN IS NOT IMMINENT!

by Dave MacPherson

(Pretrib rapturists claim that Christ's return is imminent, that is, capable of occurring at any moment. My wonderful father and theologian Norman MacPherson, in his excellent book "Triumph Through Tribulation," offers proof that the Bible has never taught an any-moment return of Christ. Here are the points brought out and discussed at length by him:)

     1. Great Commission fulfillment implies a long period of time.
     2. Seed growth in Matthew 13 is a time-consuming process.
     3. Paul expected death, not rapture, in II Timothy 4:6-8.
     4. Jesus predicted Peter's martyrdom in John 21:18-19.
     5. Matthew 24 teaches that signs must come first.
     6. Many passages speak of a large interval between Christ's ascension and return: Jewish dispersion into "all nations" (Luke 21); "man travelling into a far country," "after a long time the lord of those servants cometh" (Matthew 25).
     7. Apostasy of last days takes time to develop.
     8. Bridegroom tarried in parable of virgins.
     9. Pastoral epistles teach Church's continuing ministry, which involves time.
   10. Paul says Christ's coming is not imminent (II Thessalonians 2:1-3), for apostasy and Antichrist must come first.
   11. View of seven phases of church history (seven churches of Revelation) involves big lapse of time and imminence difficulties for pre-tribs; could Christ have come before the last phase?
   12. Exhortations to watch and be ready are tied to what pre-trib teachers regard as the second stage (which is necessarily non-imminent) in Matthew 24 and 25, I Corinthians 1:7, Colossians 3:4, I Thessalonians 3:13, II Thessalonians 1:7-10, I Peter 1:13 and 4:13, and I John 2:28.

(How can an "imminent" return of Christ have a greater practical effect on us than the indwelling of the Holy Spirit already has, or should have, on us?  For more on pretrib beliefs and history, Google "Pretrib Rapture Secrecy," "Pretrib Rapture Diehards," "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty," "Roots of Warlike Christian Zionism," and "Pretrib Rapture Politics.")

PRETRIB RAPTURE'S MISSING LINES

by Dave MacPherson

     R. A. Huebner, fanatical follower of John Darby, noticed that several lines in Margaret Macdonald's 1830 pretrib account (such as "The trial of the Church is from Antichrist") were omitted when Robert Norton reproduced it a second time. In order to keep crediting Darby with pretrib, Huebner asserted that Margaret taught only a posttrib coming, her "Antichrist" statement being proof of it.
     In order to falsely claim this, Huebner ignored her MAIN POINT in lines 58-63: "one taken and the other left" BEFORE the revealing of Antichrist. He also suppressed the truth that she saw a pretrib coming of only PART of the church (partial rapturism) and that leading partial rapturists like Govett and Pember, after seeing a rapture of PART of the church, refer to the other PART left on earth as simply the "church"! (Google "X-Raying Margaret," "Margaret Macdonald's Main Point," and "Margaret Macdonald's Rapture Chart" and see my pioneer work "The Rapture Plot" for a full analysis of her account.)
     Actually, when Norton aired his abridgement of her account later on he kept intact her main point and also the essence of the omitted lines with different wording.
     The only change comes when a few misguided pretribs deviously change factual info about Margaret on Wikipedia - which should be called Wicked-pedia since anyone with any ulterior motive can insert lie after lie therein!
     HERE'S THE BIG POINT BEING MADE HERE: If Margaret did initially teach posttrib in the lines later omitted, then the removal of those partial rapturistic lines (such as "The trial of the Church is from Antichrist") would have her teaching a pretrib rapture of ALL of the church!
     Since many pretrib leaders still falsely assert that Darby couldn't have been influenced by the Irvingites since they held to only "partial rapture" while Darby and his followers held to only "pretrib," here is a portion of my 1983 book "The Great Rapture Hoax":
     Although he doesn't go into much detail, Harold Rowdon's "The Origins of the Brethren" does reveal several early Brethren who, at the first, were under the spell of the partial rapturistic Irvingites; Rowdon includes Bulteel, Douglas, Hall, Groves, Lord Congleton, Wigram, Clarke, Stoney, and Darby himself!
     In a letter dated August 19, 1833 ("Letters," Vol. 1, pp. 22-24) Darby revealed the partial rapturism within his own circle. He discussed a Rev. Hardman who believed that "Philadelphia" would be raptured and "Laodicea" would be left behind. Darby summarized Hardman's view: "And then the church left in its Laodicean state...." (Note that Darby called those left behind the "church" - the term Margaret and other Irvingites used.) Darby added that partial rapturism "is an important consideration in the present state of things. It commends itself morally to one's mind." Near the end of the letter Darby wrote: "He will surely draw substantially His saints together before the end come, though there may be some left in...."
     Since Darby was an avid reader of the Irvingite journal "The Morning Watch," he was well aware that as early as the September 1830 issue the Irvingites were clearly expressing a partial rapture form of the pretrib catching up; it declared that "Philadelphia" would be raptured up to meet the Lord in the air BEFORE the great tribulation and that "Laodicea" would be left behind.
     By drawing attention away from early partial rapturism in Margaret and the Irvingites, Huebner was hoping no one would discover that the same partial rapturism in Darby's earliest development was what he had furtively "lifted" from the Irvingites!
     Incidentally, Darby didn't clearly eliminate all of the partial rapturism from his own system until the 1870s!
     By seeing something sinister in the later missing lines in Margaret's history-making revelation account and talking ignorantly about them on "Wicked-pedia," today's pretrib critics are actually  drawing attention to the innovative Irvingites and their female inspiration as well as to Darby's long hidden plagiarism of them!

PRETRIB RAPTURE SECRECY

by Dave MacPherson

     The word "secrecy" when applied to Christ's return can refer to two different things: time and visibility. Before 1830 the only coming Christians looked for was the "every eye shall see him" second advent to earth - secret only in point of time.
     Enter Margaret Macdonald in 1830. She saw "the one taken and the other left" before "THE WICKED" [Antichrist] will "be revealed" - and added that her pretrib rapture would not be "seen by the natural eye" but only by "those who have the light of God within." Her rapture was doubly secret: at an unknown day and hour and also invisible to "outsiders."
     Desperate to eliminate Margaret as the pretrib originator and the Irvingites as the first public teachers of pretrib, Darby defender Thomas Ice foolishly claims that they taught a secret POSTTRIB coming even though he knows that when Hal Lindsey teaches "one taken" etc. before the Antichrist "is revealed" Lindsey is expressing the kernel of the pretrib view - what MM and the Irvingites clearly taught before Darby did! (Google "Margaret Macdonald's Rapture Chart," "Edward Irving is Unnerving," and "Be careful in polemics - Peripatetic Learning" for proof that Margaret, Irvingites, and Darby all taught a secret rapture that was a PRETRIB one!)
     As early as June 1832, Irving's journal taught that only "to those who are watching and praying...will Christ be manifested...as the morning star. To the rest of the church, and to the world, this first appearance will be...unintelligible." ("Present State of Prophetic Knowledge" etc., p. 374)
     Always trailing and "borrowing" quietly from the Irvingites who in turn had "borrowed" from Margaret, Darby in 1845 finally sounded like them when he wrote that "the bright and morning Star...is the sweet and blessed sign to them that watch...And such is Christ before He appears [at the final advent to earth]. The Sun will arise on the world....The star is before the [Sun], the joy of those who watch. The unwakeful world, who sleep in the night, see it not." ("Thoughts on the Apocalypse," p. 167)
     And Lindsey's "Late Great Planet Earth," p. 143, says that "the second coming is said to be visible to the whole earth (Revelation 1:7). However, in the Rapture. only the Christians see Him - it's a mystery, a secret."  
     My bestselling book "The Rapture Plot" (available at online stores including Armageddon Books) has 300 pages of such documentation and proves that Margaret was the first to "see" a secret, pretrib rapture, that the Irvingites soon echoed her in their journal (which Darby admitted he avidly read), and that Darby was last on all of the crucial aspects of dispensationalism.
     Shockingly, all of the earliest pretrib development rested solely on unclear OT and NT types and symbols and NOT on clear Biblical statements. Margaret's rapture was inspired by Rev. 11's "two witnesses." And her "secret visibility" rested on the "types" of Stephen, Paul, and John - all of whom saw or heard what others couldn't see or hear.
     For 30 years Darby's pretrib basis was the rapture of Rev. 12's "man child" - actually his plagiarism of Irving's usage of this "pretrib" symbol eight years earlier!
     As I said at the start, the "second advent to earth" is secret in point of time with its unknown "day and hour," as Christ stated. Pretribs assert that if Christ returns for the church after the tribulation, we could count down the days and figure out the actual date of His return - which would contradict Christ's words.
     But pretribs deliberately ignore the fact that Christ said that the tribulation days will be shortened - and He didn't reveal the length of the shortening!
     Our opponents also assume that the "watch" verses prove the "any-moment imminence" of Christ's return. But do they? II Peter 3:12 says we are to be "looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God" which all premills claim is at least 1000 years ahead of us and therefore hardly "imminent"! What's the difference between "watching for" and "looking for"?
     Another gimmick has pretribs saying "Would you want Jesus to return at any moment and find out you're sinning?" But Jesus ALREADY knows all about us! And the Holy Spirit, who's also God, is ALREADY here (Rom. 8:27)!
     You have just learned a few of the many secrets that the Secret Rapture Gang has hidden for a long time. Evidently they have forgotten Luke 12:2's warning that "there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed"!
     PS - For the ultimate in uncovered secrets, see engines like Google and type in "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty."
     [The above message was not approved by the I.L.L. (Ice, LaHaye, Lindsey) Consortium of the Rapture Defense League!]

CHARISMATICS & PRETRIB RAPTURE

by Dave MacPherson

    Question: Why on earth would any charismatic believe in a pretrib rapture?
     You may recall my recent article unveiling "Dallas Seminary Secrets." In it I wondered why DTS president John Walvoord, when publicly opposing my pretrib origin research, would lean almost exclusively on a biased, Darby-idolyzing, no-theology-degree-holding fanatic like R. A. Huebner instead of his own seminary profs!
     And here's something else about the late Huebner that will make charismatics cringe.
     The 1973 Huebner booklet that Walvoord leaned on had a chapter titled "The Allegation that the (Truth of the) Pretribulation Rapture Came from a Demon."
     Huebner's goal was to deviously portray Margaret Macdonald and Irvingites (all of whom taught pretrib before Darby did) as "demonic" or under "demon" influence so that no one would believe that Darby (whom Huebner saw as the pretrib originator) would ever have been influenced by Macdonald (whom he visited in mid-1830) or any of Edward Irving's followers!
     My book "The Rapture Plot" quotes several that Huebner quoted who wrote about pretrib beginnings. Here are the quotes. I have added, in parentheses, the way Huebner dishonestly summarized the quotes later on in the same chapter in order to see "demons" where none existed:
     In 1864 S. P. Tregelles wrote: "It came...from that which falsely pretended to be the Spirit of God." (Huebner: "In 1864, he said it came from a demon.")
     In 1903 William Kelly referred to the Irvingite "oracles." (Huebner: Kelly was talking about "Irvingite demon-inspired utterances.")
     In 1956 H. A. Baker said that pretrib came from a "spirit." (Huebner: Baker said it came from a "demon.")
     In 1957 Oswald J. Smith declared that pretrib came from "a vision received by a woman" in Irving's church. (Huebner: Smith said it came from a "demon.")
     In 1962 J. Barton Payne traced pretrib to "a woman...speaking in tongues." (Huebner: Payne traced it to a "demon.")
     [I should add, for the sake of accuracy, that Margaret did not begin to speak in tongues until several months after she had her history-making pretrib rapture revelation in the spring of 1830. Therefore, the pretrib rapture concept did not spring from "tongues," as a few have wrongfully asserted.]
     Note Huebner's gross exaggeration while creating his "demon" straw men. Tregelles mentioned pretense and lack of spirituality, Kelly spoke of human mouthpieces, Baker's "spirit" can mean "force" or "mood," Smith's "vision" can mean "interpretation," and Payne merely credited a woman tongues-speaker!
     My "Plot" book summarized the above by saying:
     "Charismatics will be happy to learn that leading pretrib authority John Walvoord, when opposing my research, leans not on just a non-charismatic like Scofield but on a Huebner who's so violently anti-charismatic he can easily, and glibly, and repeatedly equate charismatic gifts with Satanic demonism!"
     I now go back to my earlier question: Why on earth would any charismatic believe in a pretrib rapture?

CATHOLICS DID NOT INVENT THE RAPTURE

by Dave MacPherson

     Many assert that the "rapture" promoted by evangelicals was first taught, at least seminally, by some Jesuit Catholic priest of the past. They usually name either Francisco Ribera of the 16th century or Manuel Lacunza of the 18th century. First, let's look at Ribera.
     To see what is claimed, Google "Francisco Ribera taught a rapture 45 days before the end of Antichrist's future reign." (Oddly, many claimants are anti-Catholic and merely use Ribera in order to "find" much earlier support for their rapture which actually isn't found in any official Christian theology or organized church before 1830!)
     After seeing this claim repeated endlessly without even one sentence from Ribera offered as proof, I decided to go over every page in Ribera's 640-page commentary on the book of Revelation published in Latin in 1593.
     After laboriously searching for the Latin equivalent of "45 days" ("quadraginta quinque dies"), "rapture" ("raptu," "raptio," "rapiemur," etc.) and other related expressions, I couldn't find anything in Ribera's work even remotely resembling a prior rapture!
     While Ribera can be claimed as the pretrib rapture originator, more pretrib defenders seem to pinpoint Manuel Lacunza and point to his lengthy work "The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty," a work that was translated from Spanish to English under the direction of Edward Irving who, by the way, did not obtain his pretrib view from Lacunza, as has been claimed.
     (The late Southern Baptist evangelist John Bray claimed to find pretrib teaching in Lacunza before he changed his mind and later on gave that "honor" to a Baptist named Morgan Edwards! For the real skinny on Edwards, Google "Morgan Edwards' Rapture View.")
      Does Lacunza teach a rapture 45 days before the coming to earth, as Bray claims? Let's look at Vol. I.
     On p. 83 Lacunza refers to the book of Revelation and says that "the nineteenth chapter speaks of the coming of the Lord in glory and majesty, which Christians with one consent do wait for."
     On pp. 99-100 after quoting I Thess. 4:13-18  Lacunza quotes Matt. 24:30 and then writes: "If you compare this text with that of St. Paul, you shall find no other difference than this, that those who are to arise on the coming of the Lord, the apostle nameth those who are dead in Christ, who sleep in Jesus; and the Lord nameth them his elect."
     Lacunza (p. 113) quotes I Thess. 4 and Matt. 24 in this manner: "...He shall descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we who are alive, &c and it appears to me, that you will find St. Paul and the Gospel speaking one and the same thing: He shall send his angels and they shall gather his elect from the four winds; who can be no other than those very ones who are in Christ, who sleep in Jesus."
     Lacunza's monumental work, which helped to revive futurism, was distributed widely in manuscript form as early as 1791 - so widely, in fact, that Pope Leo XII later placed it on the official list of prohibited books. (Lacunza says in his first volume, p. 220, the "our priesthood" will eventually become the two-horned beast of Rev. 13!)
     If Lacunza's book contains a pretrib coming, why was such doctrine unknown before 1830? It wasn't that John Darby and Edward Irving were unaware of Lacunza's work, for both discussed it in their pre-1830 writings. And it wasn't that Darby and Irving were opposed to novel ideas, for both began to embrace pretribulationism after it emerged in early 1830!
     Are you curious about the real beginnings of this evangelical belief (a.k.a. the "pre-tribulation rapture") merchandised by Darby, Scofield, Lindsey, Falwell, LaHaye, Ice, Van Impe, Hagee and many others?
     Google "Famous Rapture Watchers," "Pretrib Rapture Diehards," and "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty," for starters.
     I will end this by saying it's a distinct honor to have these and other articles of mine on this excellent and much needed blog hosted by my friend and Bible expert Treena Gisborn!