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!