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!
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