CAUTION DANGEROUS ICE!

 by Dave MacPherson

"Dangerous Ice" (better known as "Dr. Thomas Ice") has been shamelessly using every imaginable artifice when trying to desperately resuscitate the dying, 186-year-old pretribulation rapture theory.

You may be thinking: "Dave, you claim that Ice somehow omitted a total of 49 words when he reproduced in 1989 Margaret Macdonald's handwritten account of her discovery of pretrib in the Bible. Can you reveal the actual words stated by Margaret that Ice left out?"

If you've been thinking this way, I'll think back to you like this: "As I've claimed, 'Dr.' Ice left behind an awesome amount of Margaret's words. Right now, for the record, I'd like to show what Ice failed to include in his published reproduction in 1989 - the very same words that his partner Tim LaHaye omitted from the same parts of her account when he reproduced everything three years later in his 1992 book 'No Fear of the Storm.' " (!)

Here are the omissions by Ice (and copycat LaHaye who would rather repeat what Ice wrote than do original research on pretrib rapture beginnings):

Line 11: "darkness and error about it; but suddenly what it was"
Line 17: "eye; but 'tis spiritual discernment that is needed,'
Lines 74, 75: "attempt of the enemy to deceive--for it is with all"
Lines 76, 77: "for every part of God's truth, and an imitation"
Lines 111, 112: "his holy holy image seen in his people--"

Ice etc. also omitted single words in lines 51, 58, 78. In addition there were numerous errors involving misspelled words, punctuation, and the boldfacing of words.

As if this weren't enough, Ice added these 12 words in line 98: "All power that comes not the Spirit of God flows to us." Trouble is, this sentence is found nowhere in Margaret's account!

And Ice (copied by LaHaye) mistakenly listed Robert Norton's 1861 book "The Restoration of Apostles and Prophets; In the Catholic Apostolic Church" as the source of Margaret's account instead of correctly listing Norton's 1840 book "Memoirs of James & George Macdonald, of Port-Glasgow."

Thomas Ice is best known for making outrageous claims, many of which have been exposed in my various articles that my good friend Joe Ortiz has aired online on his worldwide blogs (see "Joe Ortiz Associates" and especially Joe's blog "Why Christians Will Suffer 'Great Tribulation' "). My Google articles include "Pretrib Rapture Pride," "Thomas Ice (Hired Gun)," "Thomas Ice (Bloopers)," "Pretrib Expert John Walvoord Melts Ice," "Be careful in polemics - Peripatetic Learning," "Edward Irving is Unnerving," and "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty."

According to World Net Daily "Dr." Ice obtained his "doctorate" from Tyndale Seminary in Texas - a tiny non-accredited school that was fined by the State of Texas for illegally issuing degrees!

Remember: Jesus warned that before His return as Judge, many would come in His name and deceive many. Can you think of a more delicious deception than the 186-year-old pretrib rapture getaway? 

http://son-of-encouragement.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/caution-dangerous-ice-by-dave-macpherson.html

THE GREAT CLIMATE CHANGE COVER UP!

by Dave MacPherson 

I agree with Obama, Gore and many others that climate change is very real.
But the climate change COVER-UP - something that Obama, Gore etc. don't talk about - is real too!
Here are some climate-related disasters that world leaders and the media have swept under the rug:
(1) The volcano that polluted so much of the oceans that a huge percentage of sea creatures died.
(2) Something like an asteroid polluted some major river systems, causing the deaths of many who tried to drink the water.
(3) A plague of scorpion-like creatures coming mysteriously out of the earth that attacked and poisoned vast numbers of persons - and no known treatment or medicine was able to stop the disaster.
(4) The sudden, record-breaking solar flare that horribly scorched many globally that's never been reported in the mainstream media!
(5) The unexplainable evaporation of all of the water in one of the greatest rivers on earth.
(6) A hailstorm with hail the largest in recorded history (when compared with hailstorms before and after it).
By the way, all of the above disasters were actually predicted, but Obama and other world leaders and activists have decided that total silence is the way to deal with such horrendous events.
There's a reason for their silence and cover-up and here it is:
They've been silent because all six disasters discussed above haven't happened yet and are still future! I decided to use my writer's imagination and imagined I was living in the last part of the book of Revelation and, as a survivor, was looking back at colossal events I had just somehow survived!
Yes, the same climate events are real and really ahead of us - and climate activists should focus on that future time which could be just around the corner. During that relatively short period of time, at least one-half of the world's population will die, as predicted in that same book!
One final thought: if any person wants to be a personal friend with the Author of that awesome book (a rewarding connection that millions have discovered is absolutely free and easy to make), the same person's own end will never be a never-ending dark night!

DR WATSON'S PRETRIB NON DISCOVERY

by Dave MacPherson

     Dr. William Watson, history prof at Colorado Christian University, has penned a 55-page paper declaring that he has found examples of pretribulation rapture teaching considerably earlier than the claims that such teaching was "begun by Darby in the late nineteenth century." (Somehow he wrote "late" instead of "early.")

     Those interested in his paper can Google "Pretribulational Rapture in 17th and 18th Century England (pdf)." It features the highlights of his book "Dispensationalism Before Darby" (Lampion Press, 2015) which has been lauded by LaHaye, Ice, Reagan and other pretrib diehards.

     Right off the bat I noticed his misspelling of well-known prophecy writers. Lindsey became "Lindsay," Benware became "Benaware," Jeffrey became "Jeffery," and Scofield became "Schofield."

     I soon noticed, when going over Watson's attempt to prove the existence of pretrib rapture belief in his 17th and 18th century sources, that what he quoted was anything but pretribism. Many times those writers of yesteryear would merely be talking about "preservation" (or synonymous terms). Just before the quotes, Watson in short prefaces psyched up readers with a liberal usage of "Pretribulation" (or pretrib) and he seemed to use the word "rapture" endlessly (his way of putting "rapture" glasses on readers!). Oddly, I found only one mention of "dispensationalism" in one of the featured quotes even though it is in Watson's book title!

     What would be announced as pretrib rapture doctrine would be nothing more than a rapture before the final "conflagration," or before "Israel's resurrection," or before the final days of the Beast's power, or before Babylon's destruction, or before the "great destruction" at Armageddon, or before the Beast's zenith of "power," or before the Beast and false prophet are "cast into the lake of fire."

     Watson at times would say that some ancient writer taught two future comings, but upon checking it was found that the writer was merely talking about a coming before, and another coming after, a future millennium - certainly nothing about a pretrib coming! He admitted that a good number of the writers he researched were actually posttribulational in outlook, but by including them wasn't he undercutting his main purpose of claiming discovery of pretribulationism in writers centuries before Darby?

     On the first page of his paper, Watson mentioned a debate he had in 2007 with a fellow CCU prof who stated that dispensationalism and related ideas "began only 150 years ago in the mind of Darby."

     Watson revealed that the same debate was what inspired him to search for pretrib teaching in old books in British libraries. Since no posttrib or prewrath profs that I know would have an incentive to purposely look for pretribulationism before Darby's time, it's apparent to me that Watson, well versed on the current international "rapture" debate, had already been favoring the pretrib view which in recent years has seen pretrib merchandisers like Thomas Ice claiming evidence of pretrib in pre-1830 writers like Pseudo-Ephraem. In fact, Watson's paper cited Ice far more than any other prophecy writer of today!

     And when analyzing 18th century preacher Morgan Edwards, Watson echoed Ice and selectively quoted Edwards in the manner Ice had done! For an accurate assessment of Edwards, Google "Morgan Edwards' Rapture View" which shows that Edwards tied his "rapture" to the cosmic signs in Matt. 24! For more on Ice, pretribism's bulldog, Google "Pretrib Rapture Pride," "Walvoord Melts Ice," "Thomas Ice (Bloopers)," and "Be careful in polemics - Peripatetic Learning" (the latter written by a doctoral student in England).

     At the end of his paper Watson listed four of the writers he analyzed, said that none of them were pretrib but that they did mention "others who were" pretrib. I checked the quotes from all four (Thomas Collier, 1674; Praisegod Barebones (sic), 1675; Thomas Burnett, 1681; and Pierre Jurieu, 1687) - and none of the four mentioned anyone they knew of who was pretrib! And after all the pretrib "hype" in his title and throughout his prefaces before the quotes he offers, Watson has no category of "Pretribulation" in his chart at the back but has other categories showing what his authors saw in the way of "two comings," "resurrection," etc. and of course those who used "rapture" (but not after the word "pretrib")!

     Watson does mention Edward Irving on p. 32, and says that Irving and Darby "had begun teaching a pre-tribulation rapture" by "1831." My research shows that Irving and his Irvingites (who, BTW, credited a Miss Margaret Macdonald in Scotland as being the very first person to "discover" a pretrib rapture in the Bible) publicly taught pretrib in Sep. of 1830 in their journal "The Morning Watch." Darby, on the other hand, was still defending posttrib historicism in Dec. 1830 in the "Christian Herald," saw in 1837 the church "going in with Him to the marriage, to wit, with Jerusalem and the Jews," and didn't clearly teach pretrib until 1839 ("Notes on the Revelation"); his pretrib rapture was then based on the man child "caught up" in Rev. 12:5 (but Irving had used the same symbol for the same purpose back in 1831 and Darby, an avid reader of Irving's journal, "borrowed" Irving's thought without giving him credit!).

     If anyone before 1830 had taught a pretrib rapture, I'm sure that Darby would have heard about it. He was well read, knew several modern languages and even some ancient ones. The earliest pretrib teachers (in the 1830s) all stated that the pretrib rapture concept was a brand-new idea. In an 1834 letter Darby, while discussing the novel pretrib coming, wrote that "the thoughts are new," adding that "it would not be well to have it so clear, as it frightens people. We must pursue it steadily; it works like leaven...."

     Finally, I've long known that writers who bring up the origin of the pretrib view usually pad their books by quoting writers living centuries before and after the real originator and fail to use a microscope or magnifying glass like Sherlock Holmes and really focus on "who done it." It's almost as if certain writers are using a telescope to find the pretrib origin while looking out the window of an airplane circling the earth!

     I can imagine Dr. Watson contacting me and saying "Are you accusing me of using a telescope?"

     With apologies to Arthur Conan Doyle and P. G. Wodehouse, I could reply: "Elementary, my dear Watson, elementary!"

PRETRIB RAPTURE: HOW WHAT BECOMES WHEN

by Dave MacPherson

Certain rapture verses in the Bible are a WHATers paradise!
WHATers can dazzle their audience with a lot of WHAT WHAT WHAT between Gen. 1:1 and Rev. 22:21 and, while you're not noticing, quickly sneak in their own WHEN of the rapture and ignore the Bible's WHEN!
WHATers read all of the WHAT details in I Thess. 4:13-18, emphasize the "comfort one another" at the end, and say something like "What a comforting thought that the rapture can happen at any moment BEFORE the tribulation!"
They often add: "It wouldn't be comforting if we had to face the Antichrist." (Maybe they believe a lighthouse wouldn't be comforting to sailors on a dark, stormy night but only when the sun is shining!)
WHATers avoid the next chapter (I Thess. 5) which says that the rapture's "times and seasons" happen WHEN "sudden destruction" (the "destruction" part of the "day of the Lord") happens.
(How can the wicked be destroyed before, or during, the time of their tribulational "reign"? Even their leader, the Antichrist, isn't destroyed until the trib's end!)
Now look at I Cor. 15:51-54. WHATers have a blast with the first half. They dwell on "mystery," read "in a moment" as if it really means "AT ANY MOMENT," spend an inordinate amount of time explaining how fast the "twinkling of an eye" is, and try to prove that "last" (in "the last trump") doesn't really mean "last"!
Seldom do WHATers dare to reveal WHEN we are changed into immortal bodies - but verse 54 dares to when it says our rapturous change occurs WHEN WHEN WHEN "Death is swallowed up" (same as "ended").
Obviously the trib's time of death can't be ended before, or even during, the trib!
And WHATers don't want you to realize that the "Death" quote is a paraphrase of Isa. 25:8 which even Scofield etc. agree is in a posttrib setting!
II Thess. 1:6-10 is further proof that our rapture ("rest" in vs. 7) happens WHEN the wicked are destroyed - and not several years ahead of time!
And Acts 2:34-35 and Acts 3:21 declare that Christ must stay in heaven UNTIL He comes down to earth to destroy the wicked (make them His "footstool") and restore "all things" - so how can He leave heaven ahead of time for a pretrib rapture?
II Tim. 3:14 says we should "vet" our teachers ("knowing of whom thou hast learned them"). You can do this if you Google or Yahoo "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty."
What I'm wondering is this: WHEN will everyone wake up and realize that a lot of WHAT will never take the place of WHEN?

THE MALE-DOMINATED PRETRIB RAPTURE

by Dave MacPherson

      By now most everyone knows that the famous pretribulation rapture can be traced back to1830 and to a young woman in Scotland named Margaret Macdonald. But how many are aware that this end time belief has been dominated by males during the 187 years of its existence?
     My book "The Rapture Plot" (available online) lists several reasons why the male-dominated theological world of 1830 gave her no public credit for her novel prophetic invention:
     She was a female.
     She was young.
     She was uneducated.
     And she had been a Christian only a year.
     A few months after her history making revelation, a journal published by Rev. Edward Irving known as "The Morning Watch" (which had sent writers to interview Margaret in mid-1830) repeated the essence of her new view in its Sep. 1830 issue but gave her no credit - the first instance I've found of plagiarism in pretribulationism's history which has long been riddled with dishonesty!
     Credit for Margaret was still lacking two years later when the same journal talked about recent advancements in theology. It didn't mention her but undoubtedly had her in mind when it stated:
     "The Spirit of God has caused several young women, in different parts of Great Britain, to condense into a few broken sentences more and deeper theology than ever Vaughan, Chalmers, or Irving uttered in their longest sermons; and therefore more than all the rest of the Evangelical pulpits ever put forth in the whole course of their existence."
     In 1833, after he had joined Irving's church in London and then had become disillusioned with the new pretrib rapture that Irving had accepted, British lawyer Robert Baxter left that assembly and wrote a book exposing the same rapture notion, referring to it as "the delusion" that had "first appeared in Scotland" - but again Margaret's name was missing.
     Margaret's pretrib revelation was included in a book in 1840 by Robert Norton M.D. who, by the way, had married her in 1835 and who later became a leading historian in the Irvingite church founded by Irving. Although he didn't reveal Margaret as the pretrib rapture originator in 1840 (since it wasn't customary then to identify the authors of personal revelations while they were living), after Margaret died in 1841 he finally named her as the theory's originator in an 1861 book of his.
     Meanwhile John Darby of the Plymouth Brethren knew that the Irvingites had been teaching the new pretrib doctrine while he had still been clinging to the historical posttribulation view. He also knew that the secretive and non-missionary-minded Irvingites had never wanted to share the new escapist doctrine with outsiders in a big way.
     In an 1834 letter while talking about the new pretrib view that Irving's journal had been teaching, Darby told fellow Brethren that "the thoughts are new," adding that during any teaching of it "it would not be well to have it so clear." In fact he gloated about this in an 1843 letter while telling about hearers who had been accepting the new fly-away belief "without knowing whence it came or how it sprung up all of a sudden"!
     Not one to let a good thing go to waste, Darby decided that he could capitalize on it if the Irvingites weren't going to. So between 1862 and 1877 opportunist Darby spread the "borrowed" pretrib escapism while planting new Brethren assemblies in countries around the world including the US.
     The highlight of my "Rapture Plot" book was my accidental discovery of a well engineered plot in the late 1800s to wrongfully credit John Darby of the Plymouth Brethren as the pretrib rapture originator. This was accomplished after his death by one of his followers who secretly and maliciously made many quiet revisions in early Irvingite and Brethren documents and skillfully covered everything up - a plot that has long been unknown by church historians everywhere!
     We now fast forward to Kansas and a simple gravestone in Mt. Calvary Cemetery in Atchison which is etched with "Leontine Cerre Scofield (1848  1936)." Leontine should have been one of the most famous women of all time. But she's still unknown because her husband never referred to her publicly after he became famous.
     He was obsessed with making money, legally and illegally. He stole thousands of dollars from friends and deserted Leontine and his children for several years. His desertion forced her to work for the family's support.
     He claimed he was converted to Christ in 1879. But a year later he was in a St. Louis jail for six months on a forgery conviction. He had stolen his mother-in-law's last $1300 in a real estate scam. On Dec. 8, 1883 Leontine divorced him for deserting her and their two daughters - and he remarried three months later!
     As late as 1899, when he preached D. L. Moody's funeral sermon, he was still issuing IOU's to keep  from paying back the thousands of dollars he'd stolen!
     In 1909 he pulled off the biggest coup of his money-obsessed career. He became the biggest trafficker of the pretrib rapture which he featured in the margins of a book. The published work that made him wealthy is still a big seller today and is known as the Scofield Reference Bible which states on the title page "Edited by Rev. C. I. Scofield, D.D." (but it doesn't reveal that he added the D.D. himself instead of letting some institution confer it!).
     Although many in recent days have been abandoning the same 187-year-old fly-away fantasy after finding out the facts about its dishonesty-riddled history (as outlined in web articles like "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty," "Pretrib Rapture Stealth" and "Pretrib Hypocrisy), males still seem to be dominating as writers, publishers, and promoters of it, and there seems to be no end of pretrib rapture books, videos, movies and internet articles.
     If women had had the same opportunities as men after 1830 (when a young lassie came up with the now-famous pretrib interpretation), their basically discerning and honest nature would have exploded this male-dominated theological hoax long before now!

GOOD FIGHT MINISTRIES DVD SURVIVES PAUL WILKINSON'S ATTACK!

by Dave MacPherson

John Darby defender Dr. Paul Wilkinson dropped some names when beginning his rebuttal of the electrifying "Left Behind or Led Astray?" DVD produced by Joe Schimmel's Good Fight Ministries. And Wilkinson concluded, even before offering any evidence, that the DVD is full of "myths" and "lies"!
So I'll start my response to him with the following conclusions, even before offering any evidence, that have come my way:
My first book "The Unbelievable Pre-Trib Origin" (1973) received undeserved kudos from "The Witness" (the oldest and largest Darbyist Brethren magazine in England) in April 1974: "What [MacPherson] succeeds in establishing is that the [pretrib] view outlined was first stated by a certain Margaret Macdonald...early in 1830."
Later on world-class Australian scholar Dr. F. Nigel Lee (with nine earned doctorates) stated: "Dave MacPherson, in his various books, has made a major contribution toward vindicating Historic Christian Eschatology. The 1830 innovations of the disturbed Margaret Macdonald documented by MacPherson - in part or in whole - immediately spread to Edward Irving and his followers, then to J. N. Darby and Plymouth Brethrenism, and were later popularized by the dispensationalistic Scofield Reference Bible, by Classic Pentecostalism, and by latter-day pretribulationists like J. F. Walvoord and Hal Lindsey."
And I haven't even thought of calling anyone a liar yet!
While feeling unqualified to respond to some of Wilkinson's points, I will give the following facts:
When Hal Lindsey's books see "the one taken and the other left" before the "man of sin" is revealed, we all know he's expressing the "kernel" of the pretrib view.
But when Darby defenders read Margaret Macdonald's 1830 pretrib rapture account (where on lines 58-63 we see what I've long said is her main point: "the one taken and the other left" before "THE WICKED" is "revealed"), they sound like Wilkinson who, in his rebuttal, dares to declare that "her utterance bears no resemblance whatsoever to a pre-trib Rapture."
Guess how he gets away with this. He stops quoting her at line 45 of her 117-line account and resumes quoting at line 60 and thus can omit quoting the rapture part ("the one taken") of her "kernel."
Thomas Ice, Wilkinson's American counterpart, does the same nervy thing. When quoting her account in his 1990 BibSac article about her, he stopped quoting her at line 58 (just before "the one taken" etc.) and resumed at line 72 - and thus censored ALL of her "kernel"! For insights into Ice, Wilkinson should Google "Pretrib Rapture Pride," "Walvoord Melts Ice," "Thomas Ice (Bloopers)," and (by a British Ph.D) "Be careful in polemics - Peripatetic Learning."
Wilkinson even calls Margaret a posttrib and somehow doesn't know that phrases like "The trial of the Church is from Antichrist" (lines 85-86) express her partial rapture view, that all partial rapturists (like Pember and Govett) talk the same way, and that even Walvoord's books describe partial rapturists as "pretribulationists"! (I also urge him to Google "X-Raying Margaret," "Margaret Macdonald's Rapture Chart," and "Pretrib Rapture's Missing Lines." And no one should confuse Margaret with Mary Campbell who was involved with telepathy and automatic writing.)
When many including Darby visited Margaret in mid-1830, all (except Darby) concluded she was teaching a partial rapture form of pretrib. John Cardale visited the prayer meetings held in the Macdonald home and described them in his Dec. 1830 article in Irving's journal "The Morning Watch" (hereafter: TMW). Cardale listed 17 details about the speakers and what they taught.
Amazingly, Darby's 1853 book described his visit to those meetings and listed practically word-for-word all of Cardale's details except one. Although Darby mentioned Margaret's "texts on overcoming" (the "tribulation" part of her "kernel"), he omitted the first half of her pretrib partial rapture "kernel" - what she taught about "the coming of the Lord" (rapture) as the church's "deliverance" before the "judgments coming on the earth" (which all, except Darby, understood as a pretrib separation!).
Irving reflected her novel view in TMW in June 1831 when he saw a pretrib rapture in Rev. 12:5's "man child" who's caught up, and described the scene as the "two-fold company - the one gathered before , and the other after the travailing woman is cast out into the wilderness...."
Is Wilkinson aware that TMW (Sep. 1830) was the first publication to publicly air pretrib? It saw "Philadelphia" raptured before "the great tribulation" and "Laodicea" left on earth. Meanwhile Darby was still defending posttrib in Dec. 1830 in the "Christian Herald."
Darby idolizer Wilkinson was not happy when he heard Joe Schimmel saying that "the evidence is quite clear that Darby and his followers were late-comers to pre-tribulationism and that Darby was quite familiar with pre-trib teaching among the Irvingites before he accepted and then proliferated the doctrine...." Dr. Mark Patterson also states on the DVD that Darby learned the pre-trib rapture from Irving.
Here's Wilkinson's knee jerk reaction to Schimmel and Patterson: "The evidence is not only unclear, it is non-existent!"
And here's my knee jerk reaction to Wilkinson: My Google piece "Edward Irving is Unnerving" - which mentions Patterson and Walker - proves that the evidence for Irving is existent!
Right now let's look briefly at the earliest "rapture" development of the Irvingites and the Darbyist Brethren during the contested period stretching from 1827 to 1839:
1827: A few, including John Bray, have claimed that Darby believed in pretrib this early. But Darby's first two papers (1827 and 1828) discussed only the "heavenly church" and the "church's unity" - and Darby then looked for only the posttrib "restitution" and "refreshing" in Acts 3. (I invite all to Google "Is John Bray a PINO?")
1829: Darby's first paper on prophecy. He expected only the Rev. 19 coming. And he showed Irvingite influence. He mentioned "Mr. Irving" five times, "Ben-Ezra" (Lacunza) once, and "Morning Watch" twice. Darby said he was an avid reader of Irving's works and journal and heard Irving preach. (My "Rapture Plot" discusses Darby on 145 pages.)
1830: Margaret had her pretrib revelation in the spring. TMW (Sep.) reflected her pretrib partial rapturism (church/church dichotomy) and saw worthy "Philadelphia" raptured before "the great tribulation" and less worthy "Laodicea" left behind. Darby was still defending posttrib historicism in Dec. in the "Christian Herald" and waiting for only Matt. 25's "judging of the nations." (Darby discusses TMW four times in his 1830 paper and five times in an 1831 letter. Let me add that from 1830 to 1833 TMW repeatedly taught pretrib and any-moment imminence while Darby was still defending the posttrib view, as my "Plot" portrays.)
1832: Darby still doesn't believe in a future Antichrist but only in "present antichristian principles."
1834: We find Darby and the Jews waiting for the same day (Heb. 10:37).
1837: Darby saw the church "going in with Him to the marriage [Rev. 19], to wit, with Jerusalem and the Jews"!
1839: Darby's first clear pretrib teaching. His pretrib basis then (and many more years) was Rev. 12:5's "man child" caught up before a 3.5-year tribulation - but Irving had been the first one to use this Rev. symbol for the same purpose in TMW in 1831! True, one can find a few minor errors in the "Left Behind or Led Astray?" DVD being discussed because no one is perfect including me. But I believe that as the world gets even more scary and dangerous, more and more pretribbers will overlook any blemishes in the same DVD and will congratulate Joe Schimmel and his group for their foresight and love for God's everlasting truth.

PRETRIB WAS NEW IN THE 1830s!

by Dave MacPherson

Those desiring evidence for this are invited to read the following:

     Spring of 1830: Margaret Macdonald's private handwritten account stated "I felt this [pre-Antichrist rapture] needed to be revealed."

     Fall of 1830: Rev. Edward Irving's journal was the first publication to publicly teach the new pretrib rapture idea.

     1833: British lawyer Robert Baxter revealed that "the [pretrib] delusion first appeared in Scotland" and was soon "adopted and upheld by Mr. Irving."

     1834: After seeing pretrib introduced in Irving's journal, a letter Plymouth Brethren leader John Darby wrote described the new escapist doctrine by stating that "the thoughts are new." He also advocated the subtle sneaking in of the new view into other (Brethren) groups when he wrote "ordinarily, it would not be well to have it so clear, as it frightens people [who have] been trained in most opposite habits."

     1842: Darby wrote that "There is much blessing in Switzerland, but a little commotion, because of the new [pretrib] wine, which does not suit well with the old bottles...."

     1843: In a letter Darby gloated that the Swiss Christians were rapidly accepting the pretrib rapture "without knowing whence it came or how it sprung up all of a sudden" - that is, not knowing how he had quietly stolen the idea from Irving and his followers!

     1861: Dr. Robert Norton (who had married Margaret in 1835) described her history-making 1830 pretrib revelation by writing "here we first see the distinction between that final stage of the Lord's coming, when every eye shall see Him, and His prior appearing in glory [before Antichrist's arrival] to them that look for Him."

     1864: British scholar S. P. Tregelles wrote that pretrib was "first brought forward...about the year 1832."

     1872: Thomas Croskery wrote that pretrib "was never heard of till it was proclaimed...in 1832."

     1918: E. P. Cachemaille traced the pretrib origin to someone in Irving's circle in the early 1830s, adding that "there has since been much scheming to give the doctrine a reputable origin, scheming by those who did not know the original facts"!

     1922: Canadian theologian Robert Cameron wrote that "the whole body of Christians, prior to the days of Edward Irving, were a unit in believing that the Church would not escape the Tribulation."

     1927: Philip Mauro wrote: "...'dispensational teaching' is modernistic in the strictest sense...it first came into existence within the memory of persons now living..."

     1936: Darby defender Napoleon Noel wrote that Darby "was first and foremost in teaching...the Rapture...."

     1937: Alexander Reese wrote that the " 'any-moment' view of Christ's return only originated about 1830."

     1957: In his book "The Rapture Question" (p. 162), top Darby defender John Walvoord, unable to find any pretrib teacher before the 1830s, described Darby as one of the "early pretribulationists"!

     When I began my pretrib origin research more than 45 years ago, historians had long traced pretrib back to John Darby and the 1830s. It wasn't until my research uncovered long forgotten evidence in libraries in Britain etc. (that Darby had been preceded by the Irvingites as well as Margaret) that pretrib protectors began desperately to claim they'd found pretrib earlier in the writings of Morgan Edwards (1788) and Pseudo-Ephraem (7th cent.?).

     Online articles condemning these and other claims for pretrib include "Morgan Edwards' Rapture View," "Pseudo-Ephraem Taught Pretrib - Not," and "Grant Jeffrey's Apocalypse Debacle." What you've just read is a tiny part of my most comprehensive 300-page book on pretrib rapture history titled "The Rapture Plot" - available online.

     I should add that it isn't hard to find persons attempting to write about the past - especially if they adopt the hysterical method more than the historical method!

JERRY JENKINS: BETTING ON PRETRIB!

by Dave MacPherson

     Maybe I should say that Jerry Jenkins is betting on fellow pretrib investors like Tim LaHaye and Thomas Ice who seem to have put all of their money - and a lot of their spin - on their pretrib rapture roulette wheel.

     Since the 1830s pretrib gamblers have been addicted to numbers including the numbers of Bible verses which they think can be combined to "prove" a pretrib rapture.

     Even worse is their desire to predict dates for it, some of which have been based on occult things like the measurements inside Egypt's Great Pyramid and constellations in the Zodiac! (See my book "The Three R's" for massive documentation on such speculation which so far has created only losers.)

     The earliest pretribs gambled with only their British reputations (lawyer Robert Baxter had predicted the rapture would occur on July 14, 1835). Today's rapture robber barons and tribulational tycoons, especially in America, make millions of dollars with books, videos, films, music, and radio and TV shows - and often predict actual dates or, while playing it safe, merely talk about only "times and seasons."

     Jerry Jenkins has to know that Corrie ten Boom's 1974 "Logos Journal" article "The Coming Tribulation" (which labeled pretribs as "the false teachers that Jesus was warning us to expect in the latter days") revealed that millions of Christians were tortured to death" in China when the communists took over 1949 simply because they had been trusting only in pretrib rapture escapism that had been brought in by foreign missionaries! (And pretrib date-setting fizzles since then have caused many other such tragedies like the Chinese one!)

     Even so, Jenkins has long seared his conscience and kept on making fortunes with the same fund-raising fly-away fraud. And he's even jumped willy-nilly into the current worldwide discussion on pretrib rapture history, preferring repeating to researching.

     In the May 18, 2016 issue of "Christianity Today" Jenkins, while politely pilfering the rapture "cards" that hired guns like Thomas Ice like to misleadingly shuffle with, audaciously referred to "the fiction that the rapture is as recent as John Nelson Darby."

     (Pretribs often like to say "rapture" instead of "pretrib rapture" as if they have a monopoly on that word - something I found Jenkins doing in that same May 18 magazine. And if you say you don't believe in a pretrib rapture, the pretrib rapturally-correct "thought police" like to make the dishonest claim that you don't believe in a rapture at all!)

     In the same "CT" piece Jenkins "found" pretrib is some "17th-century expressions of the rapture" and listed some practically unknown names, but gave no quotes or sources.

     He undoubtedly wouldn't have labeled "Baptist Morgan Edwards" in 1788 as a holder of "a pre-tribulation rapture" if he had chanced upon a Google item titled "Morgan Edwards' Rapture View" in which "Dr. " Ice deliberately stopped his quotation of Edwards just BEFORE the sentence where Edwards tied his rapture to the second coming to earth in Matt. 24!

     Well, Jenkins can find out if Ice (whose "Ph.D" came from a tiny unaccredited Texas school that was fined for illegally issuing degrees, according to World Net Daily!) is operating with a full deck if he Googles "Pretrib Rapture Pride," "Walvoord Melts Ice," "Thomas Ice (Bloopers)," "Be careful in polemics - Peripatetic Learning," and "Pretrib was NEW in the 1830s." And Jenkins may need some additional tranquilizers when he Googles "Prof. Wm. L. Craig Leaves Tim LaHaye Behind!" and "LaHaye's Temperament."

     Right now stop and take a deep breath because you're about to hit a jackpot involving a famous hypocrite!
     Not only has Jenkins been gambling with countless numbers of trusting believers around the world with his 186-year-old pretrib delusion (which no Greek scholar before 1830 ever found in the Word - Google "Famous Rapture Watchers"), but for quite some time he has been a below-the-radar secret casino gambler himself even though he is the Chairman of the Board at Moody Bible Institute, a longtime evangelical icon that DOES NOT allow its students to gamble!!!
     Now that you're really awake, Google "Left Behind's Jerry Jenkins: Casino Hypocrite," "Jerry Jenkins Apologizes for His Gambling in Casinos," and "Jerry Jenkins Rebuked for Gambling" (Examiner, Oct. 28, 2013). By the way, one of Jerry's sons (one of the "chips" off the old block who has discovered the "sin" in caSINo) has followed in Jerry's noble footsteps and has a high-up position in a casino, as the above info brings out!
     It's obvious that multi-millionaire pretribber (and prefibber) Jerry knows how to spin the lucrative rapture wheel of fortune.

     But does he have the Vegas idea how soon horrendous world events could collapse his ill-gotten pretrib house of cards and shuffle him off the scene?

BAD MOUTHING PROPHESY TEACHERS

by Dave MacPherson

Do you know any Bible prophecy teachers who can make the air blue with strong language like @$&!#*%X and !X@$%!!# ?
(BTW, I'm old enough to remember when mouths were cleaner than teeth - and that's pretty old, right?)
Let's have a little history on prophecy teachers of the past whose speech could be more acrimonious than harmonious.
Robert Cameron, a leading Canadian posttrib teacher and editor of "Watchword and Truth" during the last century, was militantly anti-pretrib.
In 1902, in a series in his publication covering pretrib rapture history and doctrine, Cameron described pretrib as a "novelty" and said that the first church it was taught in was Edward Irving's in London, England "by confessedly lying spirits" and "seducing spirits" who "were the authors of this novel, unscriptural, and misleading doctrine."
Cameron had been influenced by Robert Baxter who had joined Irving's church and soon had a "revelation" that the pretrib rapture would happen on July 14, 1835. Baxter eventually became disillusioned, left Irving's church, and wrote a tell-all book which stated that he and the other "prophets" in Irving's church who had been focusing on the same rapture "had all been speaking by a lying spirit, and not by the Spirit of the Lord."
My book "The Rapture Plot" reveals that the most vitriolic and caustic pretrib teacher of the past was John Nelson Darby of the Plymouth Brethren. In "The Coming of the Lord and the Translation of the Church" (Collected Writings, Prop. Vol. No. 4), he writes that his opponents are holders of "false doctrine."
They also have "a loss of all spiritual intelligence," are "unreasonable," exhibit "ignorance" and "confusion" and "blindness."
He declares: "How entirely this system destroys spirituality and divine intelligence!"
(Which reminds one of the p. 1090 note in the "Scofield Reference Bible" stating that none of the disciples, except Mary and Peter, had even one "spark of spiritual intelligence" before Christ's resurrection!)
But Darby was only getting warmed up.
He then added "unbelief and Satan," "absence of spiritual intelligence," "utter futility of its reasonings," "open blasphemy," "mass of unscriptural fancies and follies," "gross absurdities," "real blasphemies," and "blasphemies."
Was Darby applying these judgmental and offensive phrases to what he viewed as Irvingite aberrations? Or to persons openly hostile to God or the Bible? No. He was applying these abusive phrases to a published work defending the historic posttribulation rapture view!!
If John Darby the master "special effects" man had lived long enough, just think of the Hollywood studios who could have signed him up!

HAL LINDSEY: DATING BRINGS TROUBLES!

by Dave MacPherson

Hal Lindsey, a rapturous prophet without a single rapture so far, keeps rapturizing via his "Hal Lindsey Report" on TV.
And as long as certain facts remain hidden, he's still seen in certain quarters as an expert on dating.
Hal's flirting with dates came out in the open in his 1970 mega-seller "The Late Great Planet Earth." Many still don't seem to know that his "Late Great" (which blended in science-fiction and the occult - including pyramidology - with scripture!) came out on the heels of Curt Gentry's 1968 science-fiction thriller about an earthquake devastating all of the Golden State. Curt's book title: "The Last Days of the Late, Great State of California."
My book "The Three R's" quoted the late (and truly great) British scholar F. F. Bruce who referred to "the influence of Hal Lindsey and his religious 'science-fiction' (more fiction than science)."
Hal's "Late Great" (p. 54) stated that "a generation in the Bible is something like forty years." He then said "within forty years or so of 1948 [the birth of Israel], all these things could take place."
In short, Hal made many think that the second coming to earth could occur in 1988 and that the rapture - seven years earlier - could take place in 1981.
Hal psyched up his readers to warmly embrace his 1981 date by issuing "The Terminal Generation" (1976) and "The 1980's: Countdown to Armageddon" (1980). And the 1981 pretrib rapture date became even more attractive when compared with the horrible, city-smashing lineup of planets called "The Jupiter Effect" which Hal repeatedly claimed would happen the following year in 1982 and could help bring in the great tribulation!
Since these fizzles, date-setter Hal has seemingly divorced himself from specific predictions and relied basically on "the rapture is imminent" statements. I have a suggestion. Some have declared that a Biblical generation can be 70 years long. Since 2018 is 70 years after the establishment of Israel in 1948,Hal could continue to hold the hand of the Goddess of Mammon and with his other hand quickly write a book focusing on a 70-year generation and add another million to his estimated net worth of 15 million dollars (according to online site "richestcelebrities.org").

Also Google "Hal Lindsey's personal life (Wikipedia)" for some stunning info about 87-year-old Lindsey who can offer more than one definition of the word "dating."
My books have long covered Lindsey and I discuss him on 16 pages in my most important work on pretrib rapture history entitled "The Rapture Plot." For further details related to Hal, Google "Pretrib Hypocrisy," "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty," "Pretrib Rapture Secrecy," "Hal Lindsey's Pretrib Rapture Proof," and "Evangelicals Use Occult Deception."

Finally, let me end this composition by declaring that I really don't care a fig for date-setters!

PRETRIB RAPTURE PRIDE

by Dave MacPherson

Pretrib rapture promoters like Thomas Ice give the impression they know more than the early Church Fathers, the Reformers, the greatest Greek New Testament scholars including those who produced the KJV Bible, the founders of their favorite Bible schools, and even their own mentors! Ice's mentor, Dallas Sem. president John Walvoord, couldn't find anyone holding to pretrib before 1830 - and Walvoord called John Darby and his Brethren followers "the early pretribulationists" (RQ, pp. 160-62). Ice belittles Walvoord and claims that several pre-1830 persons, including "Pseudo-Ephraem" and a "Rev. Morgan Edwards," taught a pretrib rapture. Even though the first one viewed Antichrist's arrival as the only "imminent" event, Ice (and Grant Jeffrey) audaciously claim he expected an "imminent" pretrib rapture! And Ice (and John Bray) have covered up Edwards' historicism which made a pretrib rapture impossible! Google "Morgan Edwards' Rapture View" and my Google article "Deceiving and Being Deceived" for documentation on these and similar historical distortions.
The same pretrib defenders, when combing ancient books, deviously read "pretrib" into phrases like "before Armageddon," "before the final conflagration," and "escape all these things"!
BTW, the KJV translators' other writings found in London's famed British Library (where my wife and I have researched) don't have even a hint of pretrib rapturism. Is it possible that Ice etc. have found pretrib "proof" in the KJV that its translators never found?
Pretrib merchandisers like Ice claim that nothing is better pretrib proof than Rev. 3:10. They also cover up "Famous Rapture Watchers" (on Google) which reveals how the greatest Greek NT scholars interpreted it.
Pretrib didn't flourish in America much before the 1909 Scofield Bible which has pretribby "explanatory notes" in its margins. Not seen in the margins was jailed forger Scofield's criminal record throughout his life that David Lutzweiler has documented in his recent book "The Praise of Folly" which is available online.
Biola University's doctrinal statement says Christ's return is "before the Tribulation." Although universities stand for "academic freedom," Biola has added this narrow, restrictive phrase - a non-essential the founders purposely didn't include in their original doctrinal statement when Biola was just a small Bible institute! And some other Christian schools have also belittled their founders.
Ice, BTW, has a "Ph.D" issued by a tiny Texas school that wasn't authorized to issue degrees! Ice now says that he's working on another "Ph.D" via the University of Wales in Britain. For light on the degrees of Ice's scholarliness, Google "Bogus degree scandal prompts calls to wind up University of Wales," "Thomas Ice (Bloopers)," "be careful in polemics - Peripatetic Learning," and "Walvoord Melts Ice."
For more info on noisy pretrib rapture defenders like Thomas Ice, see my book "The Rapture Plot" (the most accurate documentation on pretrib rapture history) which is available online.
Can anyone guess who the last proud pretrib rapture holdout will be?

PRETRIB RAPTURE DISHONESTY

 by Dave MacPherson

When I began my research in 1970 into the exact beginnings of the pretribulation rapture belief still held by many evangelicals, I assumed that the rapture debate involved only "godly scholars with honest differences." The paper you are now reading reveals why I gave up that assumption many years ago. With this introduction-of-sorts in mind, let's take a long look at the pervasive dishonesty throughout the history of the 179-year-old pretrib rapture theory:


German scholar Max Weremchuk's work "John Nelson Darby" (1992) included what Benjamin Newton revealed about John Darby in the mid-1820's during his pre-Brethren days as an Anglican clergyman:
"J. N. Darby was a very subtle man. He had been a lawyer, or at least educated for the law. Once he wanted his Archbishop to pursue a certain course, when he (J.N.D.) was a curate in his diocese. He wrote a letter, therefore, saying he had been educated for the law, knew what the legal course would properly be; and then having written that clearly, he mystified the remainder of the letter both in word and in handwriting, and ended up by saying: You see, my Lord, such being the legal aspect of the case it would unquestionably be the best course for you to pursue, etc. And the Archbishop couldn't make out the legal part, but rested on Darby's word and did as he advised. Darby afterwards laughed over it, and indeed he showed a copy of the letter to Tregelles. This is not mentioned in the Archbishop's biography, but in it is the fact that he spoke of Darby as 'the most subtle man in my diocese.'"
This reminds me of an 1834 letter by Darby which spoke of the "Lord's coming." Darby added, concerning this coming, that "the thoughts are new" and that during any teaching of it "it would not be well to have it so clear." Darby's deviousness here was his usage of a centuries-old term - "Lord's coming" - to cover up his desire to sneak the new pretrib idea into existing posttrib groups in very low-profile ways!


In the spring of 1830 a young Scottish lassie, Margaret Macdonald, came up with the novel notion of a catching up [rapture] of Spirit-filled "church" members before Antichrist's "trial" [tribulation] of non-Spirit-filled "church" members - the first instance I've found of clear "pretrib" teaching (which was part of a partial rapture scheme). In Sep. 1830 "The Morning Watch" (a journal produced by London preacher Edward Irving and his "Irvingite" followers, some of whom had visited Margaret a few weeks earlier) began repeating her original thoughts and even her wording but gave her no credit - the first plagiarism I've found in pretrib history. Darby was still defending posttrib in Dec. 1830.
Pretrib promoters have long known the significance of her main point: a rapture of "church" members BEFORE the revealing of Antichrist. Which is why John Walvoord quoted nothing in her revelation, why Thomas Ice habitually skips over her main point but quotes lines BEFORE and AFTER it, and why Hal Lindsey muddies up her main point so he can (falsely) assert that she was NOT a pretribber! (Google "X-Raying Margaret" for info about her.)
NOTE: The development of the 1800's is thoroughly documented in my book "The Rapture Plot." You'll learn that Darby wasn't original on any chief aspect of dispensationalism (but plagiarized the Irvingites); that pretrib was initially based on only OT and NT symbols and not clear Scripture; that the symbols included the Jewish feasts, the two witnesses, and the man child - symbols adopted by Darby during most of his career; that Darby's later reminiscences exaggerated his earliest pretrib development, and that today's defenders such as Thomas Ice have further overstated what Darby overstated; that Irvingism didn't need later reminiscences to "clarify" its own early pretrib development; that ancient hymns and even the writings of the Reformers were subtly revised to make it appear they had taught pretrib; and that after Darby's death a clever revisionist quietly made many changes in early Irvingite and Brethren documents in order to steal credit for pretrib away from the Irvingites (and their female inspiration!) and give it dishonestly to Darby! (Before continuing, Google the "Powered by Christ Ministries" site and read "America's Pretrib Rapture Traffickers" - a sample of the current exciting internetism!)


Charles Trumbull's book "The Life Story of C. I. Scofield" told only the dispensationally-correct side of his life. Two recent books, Joseph Canfield's "The Incredible Scofield and His Book" (1988) and David Lutzweiler's "DispenSinsationalism: C. I. Scofield's Life and Errors" (2006), reveal the other side including his being jailed as a forger, dishonestly giving himself a non-conferred "D.D." etc. etc.!


Brethren scholar Harold Rowdon's "The Origins of the Brethren" quoted Darby associate Lord Congleton who was "disgusted with...the falseness" of Darby's accounts of things. Rowdon also quoted historian William Neatby who said that others felt that "the time-honoured method of single combat" was as good as anything "to elicit the truth" from Darby. (In other words, knock it out of him!)

Tim LaHaye's "The Beginning of the End" (1972) plagiarized Hal Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth" (1970).

Charles Ryrie"s "The Living End" (1976) plagiarized Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth" (1970) and "There's A New World Coming" (1973).


After John Walvoord's "The Blessed Hope and the Tribulation" (1976) brutally twisted Robert Gundry's "The Church and the Tribulation" (1973), Gundry composed and circulated a 35-page open letter to Walvoord which repeatedly charged the Dallas Seminary president with "misrepresentation," "misrepresentations" (and variations)!


"The Fundamentalist Phenomenon" (1981) by Jerry Falwell, Ed Dobson, and Ed Hindson heavily plagiarized George Dollar's 1973 book "A History of Fundamentalism in America."


After a prof at Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God in Florida told me that the No. 2 man at the AG world headquarters in Missouri - Joseph Flower - had the label of posttrib, my wife and I had two hour-long chats with him. He verified what I had been told. But we were dumbstruck when he told us that although AG ministers are required to promote pretrib, privately they can believe any other rapture view! Flower said that his father, an AG co-founder, was also posttrib. We also learned while in Springfield that when the AG's were organized in 1914, the initial group was divided between posttribs and pretribs - but that the pretribs shouted louder which resulted in that denomination officially adopting pretrib! (For details on this and other pretrib double-mindedness, Google "Pretrib Hypocrisy.")

Since 1989 Thomas Ice has referred to the "Mac-theory" (his reference to my research), giving the impression there's no solid evidence that Macdonald was the real pretrib originator. But Ice carefully conceals the fact that no eminent church historian of the 1800's - whether Plymouth Brethren or Irvingite - credited Darby with pretrib. Instead, they uniformly credited leading Irvingite sources, all of which upheld the Scottish lassie's contribution! Moreover, I'm hardly the only modern scholar seeing significance in Irvingism's territory. Others in recent years who have noted it, but who haven't mined it as deeply as I have, include Fuller, Ladd, Bass, Rowdon, Sandeen, and Gundry.

Greg Bahnsen and Kenneth Gentry produced evidence in 1989 that Lindsey's book "The Road to Holocaust" (1989) plagiarized "Dominion Theology" (1988) by H. Wayne House and Thomas Ice.

David Jeremiah's and C. C. Carlson's "Escape the Coming Night" (1990) massively plagiarized Lindsey's 1973 book "There's A New World Coming." (For more info, type in "Thieves' Marketing" on MSN or Google.)

Paul Lee Tan's "A Pictorial Guide to Bible Prophecy" (1991) plagiarized large amounts of Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth" (1970).

Militant Darby defender R. A. Huebner claimed in 1991 to have found new evidence that Darby was pretrib as early as 1827 - three years before Macdonald. Halfway through his book Huebner suddenly admitted that his evidence could refer to something completely un-rapturesque. Even though Thomas Ice admitted to me that he knew that Huebner had "blown" his so-called evidence, prevaricator Ice continues to tell the world that Huebner has "positive evidence" that Darby was pretrib in 1827! Ice also conceals the fact that Darby, in his own 1827 paper, was looking for only "the restitution of all things" and "the times of refreshing" (Acts 3:19,21) - which Scofield doesn't see fulfilled until AFTER a future tribulation!

Tim LaHaye's "No Fear of the Storm" (1992) plagiarized Walvoord's "The Blessed Hope and the Tribulation" (1976).

This was when the Los Angeles Times revealed that "The Magog Factor" (1992) by Hal Lindsey and Chuck Missler was a monstrous plagiarism of Prof. Edwin Yamauchi's scholarly 1982 work "Foes from the Northern Frontier." Four months after this exposure, Lindsey and Missler stated they had stopped publishing and promoting their book. But in 1996 Dr. Yamauchi learned that the dishonest duo had issued a 1995 book called "The Magog Invasion" which still had a substantial amount of the same plagiarism! (If Lindsey and Missler ever need hernia operations, I predict that the doctors will tell them not to lift anything for a long time!)

In 1996 it was revealed that Lindsey's "Planet Earth - 2000 A.D." (1994) had an embarrassing amount of plagiarism of a Texe Marrs book titled "Mystery Mark of the New Age" (1988).

My book "The Rapture Plot" reveals the dishonesty in Darby's reprinted works. It's often hard to tell who wrote the footnotes and when. It's easy to believe that the notes, and also unsigned phrases inside brackets within the text, were a devious attempt by someone (Darby? his editor?) to portray a Darby far more developed in pretrib thinking than he actually had been at the time. I found that some of the "additives" had been taken from Darby's much later works, when he was more developed, and placed next to or inside his earliest works! One footnote by Darby's editor, attached to Darby's 1830 paper, actually stated that "it was not worth while either suppressing or changing" anything in this work! If his editor wasn't open to such dishonesty, how can we explain such a statement?

Post-1995 - Thomas Ice's article "Inventor of False Pre-Trib Rapture History" states that my book "The Rapture Plot" is "only one of the latest in a series of revisions of his original discourse...." And David Reagan in his article "The Origin of the Concept of a Pre-Tribulation Rapture" repeats Ice's falsehood by claiming that I have republished my first book "over the years under several different titles."
Although my book repeats a bit of the Macdonald origin of pretrib (for new readers), all of my books are packed with new material not found in my other works. For some clarification, "The Incredible Cover-Up" has photos of pertinent places in Ireland, Scotland, and England not found in my later books plus several chapters dealing with theological arguments; "The Great Rapture Hoax" quotes scholars throughout the Church Age, covers Scofield's hidden side, a section on Powerscourt, the 1980 election, the Jupiter Effect, Gundry's change, and more theological arguments; "The Rapture Plot" reveals for the first time the Great Evangelical Revisionism/Robbery and includes appendices on miscopying, plagiarism, etc.; and "The Three R's" shows hypocritical evangelicals employing occultic beliefs they say they have long opposed!
So Thomas Ice etc. are twisting truth when they claim I am only a revisionist. Do they really think that my publishers DON'T know what I've previously written?
Re arguments, Google "Pretrib Rapture - Hidden Facts" and also obtain "The End Times Passover" and "Why Christians Will Suffer 'Great Tribulation' " (AuthorHouse, 2006) by media personality Joe Ortiz.

For years Harvest House Publishers has owned and been republishing Lindsey's book "There's A New World Coming." During the same time Lindsey has been peddling his reportedly "new" book "Apocalyse Code" (1997), much of which is word-for-word the same as the Harvest House book - and there's no notice of "simultaneous publishing" in either book! Talk about pretrib greed!

This is the year I discovered that more than 50 pages of Dallas Seminary professor Merrill Unger's book "Beyond the Crystal Ball" (Moody Press, 1973) constituted a colossal plagiarism of Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth" (1970). After Lindsey's book came out, Unger had complained that Lindsey's book had plagiarized his classroom lecture notes. It was evident that Unger felt that he too should cash in on his own lectures! (The detailed account of this Dallas Seminary dishonesty is revealed in my 1998 book "The Three R's.")

Tim LaHaye's "Understanding the Last Days" (1998) plagiarized Lindsey's "There's A New World Coming" (1973).

More than 200 pages (out of 396 pages) in Lindsey's 1999 book "Vanished Into Thin Air" are virtually carbon copies of pages in his 1983 book "The Rapture" - with no "updated" or "revised" notice included! Lindsey has done the same nervy thing with several of his books, something that has allowed him to live in million-dollar-plus homes and drive cars like Ferraris! (See my Google articles "Deceiving and Being Deceived" and "Thieves' Marketing" for further evidence of this notably pretrib vice.)

A Jack Van Impe article "The Moment After" (2000) plagiarized Grant Jeffrey's book "Final Warning" (1995).

Since 2001 my web article "Walvoord's Posttrib 'Varieties' - Plus" has been exposing his devious muddying up of posttrib waters. In some of his books he invented four "distinct" and "contradictory" posttrib divisions, claiming that they are either "classic" or "semiclassic" or "futurist" or "dispensational" - distinctions that disappear when analyzed! His "futurist" group holds to a literal future tribulation and a literal millennium but doesn't embrace "any day" imminency. But his "dispensational" group has the same non-imminency! Moreover, tribulational futurism is found in every group except the first one, and he somehow admitted that a literal millennium is in all four groups! On the other hand, it's the pretribs who consistently disagree with each other over their chief points and subpoints - but somehow end up agreeing that there will be a pretrib rapture! (See my chapter "A House Divided" in my book "The Incredible Cover-Up.")

Since my "Deceiving and Being Deceived" web item which exposed the claims for Pseudo-Ephraem" and "Morgan Edwards" as teachers of pretrib, there has been a piranha-like frenzy on the part of pretrib bodyguards and their duped groupies to "discover" almost anything before 1830 walking upright on two legs that seemed to have at least a remote hint of pretrib! (An exemplary poster boy for such pretrib practice is Grant Jeffrey. To get your money's worth, Google "Wily Jeffrey.")

FINALLY: Don't take my word for any of the above. Read my 300-page book "The Rapture Plot" which has a jillion more documented details on the long-hidden but now-revealed history of the dishonest, 179-year-old, fringe-British-invented, American-merchandised-until-the-real-bad-stuff-happens pretribulation rapture fad. If this book of mine doesn't "move" you, I will personally refund what you paid for it.

 

Dave MacPherson. What People are saying

What They Are Saying About ... THE RAPTURE PLOT!                                                                           

Gary DeMar (President American Vision): "A majority of prophecy writers and speakers teach that the church will be raptured before a future tribulational period. But did you know that prior to about 1830 no such doctrine existed. No one in all of church history ever taught pretribulational rapture. Dave MacPherson does the work of a journalistic private investigator to uncover the truth....The Rapture Plot is the never-before-told true story of the plot - how plagiarism and subtle document changes created the 'mother of all revisionisms.' A fascinating piece of detective work." Robert H. Gundry (Professor Westmont College): "As usual MacPherson out hustles his opponents in research on primary sources. C. S. Lovett (President Personal Christianity): You don't read very much of Dave MacPherson's work before you realize he is a dedicated researcher. Because his work has been so honest and open his latest work The Rapture Plot has produced many red faces among some of the most recognized rapture writers of our time. When their work is compared to his it is embarrassing for them to see how shallow their research is." R. J. Rushdoony (President Chalcedon): "Dave MacPherson has been responsible for major change in the eschatology of evangelical churches by his devastating studies of some of the central aspects thereof. In The Rapture Plot MacPherson tells us of the strange tale of 'rapture' writings, revisions, cover-ups, alterations and confusions. No one has equaled MacPherson in his research on the 'pretrib rapture.' Attempts to discredit his work have failed...."

About the Author: Born 1932 of Scotch/English descent Dave MacPherson is a natural for British historical research. His calling was journalism. Receiving a BA in English in 1955 he spent 26 years as a newsman reporting and filming many notable events persons presidents and dignitaries.

WHAT PRE-TRIBS DON'T SAY!

by Dave MacPherson 

Noisy pretribs can sure be quiet when they want to sell another book or video.

     Take the famous "rapture" passages in I Thess. 4-5 and I Cor. 15.

     Pretribs endlessly see an "any-moment rapture" in I Thess. 4 and paint it in glowing pretrib colors. But the same Paul in the same book ties together the "times and seasons" (5:1) of the rapture (4:17) with the "sudden destruction" (5:3) part of the (posttrib) "day of the Lord" (5:2) - which doesn't have even a hint of pretrib coloring!

     (The "day of the Lord" is posttrib because the posttrib sun/moon darkening happens BEFORE that "day" - see Joel 2:31 and Acts 2:20.)

     And can you guess what's in the rapturous I Cor. 15 that pretrib teachers love to cover up? They screech to a stop at "twinkling of an eye" and "last trump" and then omit telling that what is "changed" (vss. 51-2) is tied to the end of death (vs. 54). (Trib death ends when the posttrib arrival of the Victor over death ends trib death!)

     Ready for more? Look at Acts 2:34-35, Acts 3:21, and II Thess.1:6-10. Christ stays in heaven UNTIL it's time to come to earth to destroy His wicked foes and restore "all things" and give "rest" to His followers!

     If pretribism can easily skip over Scripture, wait till you see how they cover up their own history which was never a part of Christian theology or any organized church before 1830!

     Throughout most of the 1900s, leading Christian scholars assumed - while influenced by those who were repeating and not researching - that John Darby of the Brethren had fathered the pretrib rapture view in the 1830s. No scholar had ever found any clear public teaching of pretrib in the centuries preceding Darby. Even the late Dr. John Walvoord, the longtime No. 1 pretrib authority and head of Dallas Theological Seminary, had stated in his book "The Rapture Question" that Darby (who admitted in print that pretrib was then a totally "new" doctrine!) had been one of the "early pretribulationists"!

     My books, from the 1970s to the present time, have provided long forgotten and newly uncovered evidence (endorsed by many eminent scholars) that Darby furtively plagiarized British pastor Edward Irving and his followers, all of whom had credited a young Scottish woman with the initial pretrib "spark"!

     Trying to distance themselves from the scandals associated with the earliest pretrib developers and promoters of the 1830s, today's pretrib defenders have been desperately trying to find anyone before 1830 who seemed to have at least a hint of pretrib in their writings. Today's desperados can even "find" pretrib in Old Testament passages that tell about folks merely "escaping" trouble, or "find" pretrib in folks being raptured before an endtime "conflagration" in an obvious posttrib setting!

     Two historical figures of the past that present-day pretrib promoters have tried to put revisionist pretrib make-up on are Pseudo-Ephraem (8th cent. ?) and Rev. Morgan Edwards (whose quoted sermon is dated 1788).

     To see the hatchet job on Pseudo-Ephraem, Google "Pseudo-Ephraem Taught Pretrib - Not" and "Chuck Missler - Copyist" (and catch deceitful censors at work).

     For the complete skinny on Morgan Edwards, Google "Morgan Edwards' Rapture View" (and find out what Thomas Ice etc. knew they couldn't hide forever).

     For $15.00 and a smile you can get my 300-page book "The Rapture Plot" (the most accurate and detailed book on pretribism's sordid history). If you have just a smile, you can borrow it via inter-library loan at any library. Contrary to what pretribs say, the rapture is NOT so imminent that you don't have time to find and order my "Plot" book on the net!

PROF. WM L. CRAIG LEAVES TIM LAHAYE BEHIND!

by Dave MacPherson

Question: What happens when an elephant meets a mouse?

Answer: The same thing when an eminent Christian scholar meets "Left Behind" confidence man Tim LaHaye.

The elephant, Dr. William Lane Craig (leading Christian apologist and Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology), caused a tribulational tsunami last fall when he declared that LaHaye's "Left Behind" theology (which rests on a pretrib rapture) is "not biblical"!

Craig stated this in an August 5, 2015 Charisma News" article titled "Despite Popular Theology, Apologist Says Rapture Movies Are Not Biblical."  He wrote: "The rapture was made up by someone in the 1800s, and the story caught on among some groups who still believe it today. The simple truth is that it is not biblical, nor was it ever the historic position of the Christian church."

Craig added that "Many people have never known any other view than the rapture...[and have] never thought to examine or question its biblical credentials."  Building his case against pretrib theology, Craig said that pretrib has succeeded not because of evidence in the Bible but because it's been promoted by the Scofield Reference Bible and schools like Dallas Seminary - and of course by "Left Behind" books and films and even by a recently launched HBO program.

Well, after the Talbot research professor shot his cannonball across LaHaye's bow, you can imagine how quickly LaHaye stirred up from his rapture repose at his swanky Rancho Mirage home in the Southern California desert.

Six days later "Charisma News" ran LaHaye's response in a piece titled " 'Left Behind' Author Tim LaHaye Fires Back at Anti-Rapture Apologist."

LaHaye ignored Craig's thrust and regurgitated the usual pretrib arguments. He then maliciously and dangerously (see Matt. 5:22) tried to repeat the pretrib non-argument which asserts that those rejecting pretrib may not even be saved!!

LaHaye stated: "The good news for even a-Millennialists like Craig is if they believe in and have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior from sin, they will go up in the rapture with the rest of us."

At the end of his below-the-belt riposte, LaHaye twisted the knife even more when he audaciously added: "I certainly hope those who chose to disbelieve in the rapture will meet Jesus' qualifications for salvation, that way during the rapture we can discuss it in more detail."

When LaHaye's 1992 book "No Fear of the Storm" (which has a chapter entitled "MacPherson's Vendetta") reproduced Margaret Macdonald's 1830 pretrib revelation account, he carelessly left behind a total of 49 words, the same 49 words that would-be scholar Thomas Ice had left out in the same places in her account when he had reproduced it three years earlier!

(It was apparent that LaHaye had merely copied Ice's errors-filled reproduction instead of researching original sources. If Dr. Craig, an apologist who has debated famous antagonists including the late Christopher Hitchens, had left behind even one word when reproducing Macdonald's short handwritten account of her "discovery," I'm sure he would have been greatly embarrassed!)

What's really fascinating is that Prof. Craig is associated with a school that is part of Biola University and that back in 1953 I was kicked out of Biola (when it was only a Bible institute in downtown Los Angeles) for giving copies of my father's 1944 posttrib book "Triumph Through Tribulation" to some students and profs on that campus.

How times have changed!

Meanwhile LaHaye is still making LaHay while LaSun shines in Rancho Mirage - a name that fits in with a rapture that's truly a mirage in the real world the rest of us live in!

READY FOR RAPTURE ASTROLOGY?

 by Dave MacPherson

     The date-setting pretrib rapture merchandisers are back - and this time the desperate diehards are armed with occultic astrology symbols as well as Bible symbols!

     They claim that their pretrib rapture will occur on Sep. 23, 2017! I wonder if they've forgotten that date-setting necessarily cancels out their foundational principle of any-moment imminence.

     To see how the symbolism-crazy pretribs explain their latest date-setting, Google "Sep. 23, 2017 Rapture" and, if you live long enough, check out all of the "4,270,000 results"!

     Briefly, their claim rests on Rev. 12 and they focus on the woman "clothed with the sun" and tie her to the zodiac woman known as "Virgo" and also see their pretrib rapture in the symbol of the "man child" that is "caught up unto God" (vs. 5) - an event occurring before the great tribulation which they see in verses 13-16.

     My 1998 book "The Three R's" has a chapter revealing early pretrib rapturists who realized that their new fly-away view needed a boost in order to counter opposition coming from many others.
     The answer that dropped out of the sky was the creation of a "Christian" zodiac which arbitrarily began with Virgo (The Virgin) and ended with Leo (The Lion) - a zodiac covering Christ's life from His birth to His return as the lion-like Judge (Rev. 5:5).
     You can't believe which zodiac constellation (appearing shortly before Leo) was the "pretrib rapture" symbol. Keep reading.
     The "Christian"zodiac can be traced back to a Miss Frances Rolleston of Keswick in northern England. Key pretrib promoters in this zodiac chain, stretching from Rolleston down to today's soothsayers like Hal Lindsey, include Joseph Seiss (American) who was plagiarized by E. W. Bullinger (British) who was plagiarized by Lindsey (American). The side-by-side quotes in the same book of mine clearly prove all of the plagiarism.
     By the way, when Bullinger looked at Ursa Minor (under Cancer), Bullinger could see "pretrib rapture" written all over it! (Now you know.)
     The same zodiac arbitrarily tied together Virgo and Leo because, as Bullinger and others asserted, the Great Sphinx in Egypt was the only thing that could bind together "the two ends of this circle of the heavens" - everyone then assuming that the Sphinx has the head of a woman and the body of a lion and also noting the "astrological significance" in the nearby Great Pyramid!
     Lindsey plagiarized Bullinger on pp. 123-24 in "The Late Great Planet Earth," evidently unaware that Bullinger's Sphinx research was occultic nonsense, and also unaware that today's encyclopedias state that the famous Sphinx has the head of a man - a pharaoh!
     Today's rapture astrologers are not the only ones who've seen a pretrib rapture in Rev. 12:5. Many still don't know that John Darby, the so-called "father" of pretrib dispensationalism, rested his first clear teaching of pretrib on this verse for at least 30 years beginning in 1839. What's shocking is that we have solid evidence that Darby merely plagiarized Edward Irving who'd been using the same Rev. 12 symbol for the same purpose in his journal in 1831 - eight years before Darby quietly copied him - and Darby admitted in print that he had long been a reader of Irving's journal and that he had been in Irving's church to hear him preach. We also know that Darby wasn't first on any crucial aspect of dispensationalism and that Irving and his followers preceded Darby on every detail of that system!
     For more on these two preachers Google "Edward Irving vs. John Darby" and "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty."

     Remember:  the entire occultic 2017 "Rapture in Rev. 12" craze is built on the 187-year-old pretrib rapture fantasy which was never part of any Christian theology or organized church before 1830! (Google "Famous Rapture Watchers" to find out which rapture view was the original one.)

     True, today's occultic rapturists do love the Bible. They love it so much they want to fulfill the prediction that in the end times many will come in Christ's name and will deceive many!

DAVID REAGAN: !TEXAS-SIZED REPEATER

 by Dave MacPherson

     Truthful prophecy writers are needed as much as truthful politicians - and I'm thinking of prophecy "six-shooter" David Reagan, a Texan who profits more by repeating than by researching!

     I'm honored that my decades-long research on pretrib rapture history is part of Joe Schimmel's fantastic DVD titled "Left Behind or Led Astray?" However, my documentation soon became a lightning rod attracting angry rebuttals from British pretrib defender Paul Wilkinson and also from American pretrib repeater David Reagan whose response is titled "In Defense of the Pre-Tribulation Rapture: Left Behind or Led Astray?"

     But something's missing. Reagan's response isn't Texas-sized. It isn't even Rhode Island-sized. And much of his "research" is merely his repeating of totally groundless - and malicious - gossip from other hired guns including some from Texas. Here's an example:

     My article "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty" - appearing on the net since 2009 - states:

     "Thomas Ice's article 'Inventor of False Pre-Trib Rapture History' states that my book 'The Rapture Plot' is 'only one of the latest in a series of revisions of his original discourse....' And David Reagan in his article 'The Origin of the Concept of a Pre-Tribulation Rapture' repeats Ice's falsehood by claiming that I have republished my first book ["The Unbelievable Pre-Trib Origin"] 'over the years under several different titles.' " (Google "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty" to see how I expose their deliberate prevarications.)

     Since my research used a "microscope" for close-ups on the pretrib origin (unlike many others who used a "telescope"covering so many centuries before and after the origin they somehow missed the exact origin itself!), allow me to comment on some points Reagan brought up.

     Because he saw older writers like Ribera, Edwards, and Lacunza as possibly being part of the pretrib origin search, I invite interested readers to Google "Catholics Did NOT Invent the Rapture," "Morgan Edwards' Rapture View," and "The Real Manuel Lacunza," and, no, neither Ribera nor Lacunza "believed the Rapture would occur 45 days before the end of the Tribulation," as Reagan, foolishly copying others, asserted.

     Re Margaret Macdonald (the real pretrib rapture originator), Reagan described her as a "hyper-Charismatic"who had "emotional trances in 1830 which are portrayed as demon-induced."

     For the record: I have never said (or even thought) that "demon" or "demonic" should ever be applied to her, or have ever believed she experienced anything like a "trance"!

     Her 1830 pretrib "revelation" (or "vision") was merely her INTERPRETATION of scripture, no matter what any pretrib "straw" men want to project!

     Reagan quotes "Rapture Ready" founder Todd Strandberg who says he can't recall ever hearing any speaker say "I believe in the Rapture because Margaret MacDonald told me so." What Todd doesn't want to recall are my Google pieces titled "Open Letter to Todd Strandberg" (dated 2001) and "The Rapture Index (Mad Theology)" (dated 2006).

     When Hal Lindsey's books write about "the one taken and the other left" before the Antichrist is "revealed," everyone knows he's expressing pretrib rapture doctrine. But when Reagan looked at Margaret's words saying the very same thing in the same order (in lines 58-63 in her 117-line pretrib discovery account), he had the audacity to declare that "not one trace of that [pretrib] doctrine could be found in the vision MacPherson presents as proof!"

     Naturally Reagan would never want anyone to Google "X-Raying Margaret," "Margaret Macdonald's Rapture Chart," "Margaret Macdonald's Main Point" (which shows Wilkinson and Ice deviously omitting all or part of her main point in order to dishonestly declare that she wasn't teaching pretrib!), "Pretrib Rapture's Missing Lines," and "Scholars Weigh My Research" (in which even "The Witness," the oldest and largest Darbyist Brethren publication in England, has endorsed my historical evidence about Margaret!!). 

     Reagan then discussed early Church Fathers. Since he evidently loves repeating more than researching, you may be wondering about the much-repeated "Pseudo-Ephraem" claim. But instead of wondering, feel free to Google "Pseudo-Ephraem Taught Pretrib - Not!" Other related Google items would include "Grant Jeffrey's Apocalypse Debacle" and "Wily Jeffrey."

     Reagan also talks about John Darby. Since many - including Darby idolizer Paul Wilkinson - still (wrongfully) view Darby as the "father" of pretrib dispensationalism, I invite all to Google "The Unoriginal John Darby," "John Darby Did NOT Invent the Rapture," and "Edward Irving Vs. John Darby."

     Since Reagan doesn't overlook Thomas Ice - the No. 1 pretrib "bulldog" or maybe "pit bull" - I hereby draw attention to these Google articles: "Pretrib Rapture Pride," "Walvoord Melts Ice," "Edward Irving is Unnerving," "Thomas Ice (Bloopers)," and "Be Careful in Polemics - Peripatetic Learning."

     Finally, one can wonder why David Reagan, with his background as an educator, is so taken up with the 187-year-old pretrib rapture. Perhaps it's because there's more profit in eschatology than there is in education!