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!