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Since the 1970's
stunning new data has been surfacing about the pretribulation
rapture's long-covered-up beginnings in the 1800's. In recent
years several persons associated with Dallas Theological
Seminary (which had long been pretribized) have reportedly gone
to
Britain
to check on my research sources and then write books opposing my
claims. In 1990 an
Ohio
pastor told me that Dr. _____ _____, the most qualified DTS prof,
traveled there and came back and wrote nothing! The pastor added
that he and some others had a good laugh. But change was coming.
In 1993 Chuck Swindoll, who became DTS president after John
Walvoord, stated: "I'm not sure we're going to make
dispensationalism [the chief attraction of which is a pretrib
rapture] a part of our marquee as we talk about our
school." When asked if the word "dispensationalism"
would disappear, he answered: "It may and perhaps it
should" ("Christianity Today,"
Oct. 25, 1993
)!
But a few diehards (with the stubbornness of Iraqi insurgents
and
New
Orleans
looters) keep on milking their cash cow while
continuing to cover up and twist the following historical facts
about their latter-day, cult-like belief:
1825:
British preacher Edward Irving revealed that he
had been teaching some of dispensationalism's key aspects as
early as late 1825. (John Darby-exalter R. A. Huebner has never
even claimed to find any original prophetic idea in Darby before
late 1826!)
1827-1830:
Darby was still posttrib during these years. His
1827 paper had him waiting for only the posttrib
"restitution of all things." After discussing in 1828
the "unity" of the church, he looked for only the Rev.
19 coming in 1829 and 1830.
1830:
During the spring a young woman in
Scotland
,
Margaret Macdonald, declared that she had discovered in the
Bible what had never been seen by others: a rapture of
"church" members described as a
"pre-Antichrist" (or pretrib) event. Her words:
"one taken and the other left" before "THE WICKED [Antichrist] be
revealed." She was a partial rapturist seeing only part of
the "church" raptured and the rest of the
"church" left on earth. When she wrote that the
"trial of the Church is from Antichrist," she meant
the part of the church not included in her pretrib rapture.
Leading partial rapturists including Pember and Govett have
always applied the word "church" to the ones
"left behind." Robert Norton, Irvingite historian and
on-scene witness of Margaret's utterances, wrote that Margaret
was the "first" to privately teach pretrib.
A September article
in "The Morning Watch" (Irvingite journal) saw
the "
Philadelphia
"
church raptured before a "period of great tribulation"
and the "
Laodicea
"
church left on earth. Huebner's "Precious Truths"
claimed that
Philadelphia
was seen raptured before only the "seventh vial" and
not before "the great tribulation" even though the
article writer added twice on following pages
that this "period" was indeed "the great
tribulation"! In the previous (June) issue the same
writer had seen
Philadelphia
on earth until the final posttrib advent. In between these two
issues, TMW writers had visited Margaret who explained her new
"revelation" which was soon reflected on TMW pages
without giving her credit!
In December a published article
by Darby was still defending the posttrib view!
1833:
British lawyer Robert Baxter, an ex-Irvingite,
wrote that the pretrib "delusion first appeared in
Scotland
"
before it began to be taught in
London
the following year.
1834:
A Darby letter referred to the new pretrib
rapture view, stated that "the thoughts are new," and
advocated the subtle introduction of it by writing "it
would not be well to have it so clear"! Darby also called
it the "new wine." Others who knew that pretrib was
then a new view included other Plymouth Brethren, Irvingites,
Margaret, and later 19th century historians such as Margaret
Oliphant who referred to "a new revelation" in 1830 in
western
Scotland
where Margaret Macdonald lived.
1837:
Years after Darby supposedly had derived a
distinction (or separation) between the "church" and
"
Israel
,"
his 1837 article saw the church "going in with Him to the
marriage, to wit, with
Jerusalem
and the Jews"!
1839:
The first year Darby was clearly pretrib. His
pretrib basis then (and during the next three decades) was Rev.
12:5's "man child" that is "caught up." But
this "new" Darby teaching was actually a plagiarism of
Edward Irving who had been using this verse for the same (pretrib)
purpose since 1831!
1843:
In a letter written from
Switzerland
,
Darby referred to "the dissemination of truth and
blessing...thus spreading on the right hand and on the left,
without knowing whence it came or how it sprung up all of a
sudden...." Here he gloated that others didn't know
"whence" pretrib came or that he had advocated the
subtle sneaking of the new pretrib view into existing groups
(see "1834" above)!
1853:
Darby's book "The Irrationalism of
Infidelity" recalled his visit to Margaret Macdonald and
her brothers in mid-1830. He remembered 23 minor details but
carefully omitted the most important one: Margaret's teaching of
a coming of Christ that would exempt believers from the great
tribulation "judgments"----a detail that all others
who visited her and then wrote accounts could easily remember!
(It's obvious that Todd Strandberg's mother didn't soap his
mouth enough because even though he knows better after the
airing of "Open Letter to Todd Strandberg" on the
internet, his falsehood-packed "Margaret MacDonald
Who?" article on his "Rapture Ready" site
continues to pollute minds by stating that I "have never
been able to prove that Darby had ever heard of MacDonald or her
vision"!)
1855:
An article by eminent Brethren scholar S. P.
Tregelles tied "Judaisers" to pretrib. But in an 1864
book he tied "
Irving
's
Church" to pretrib. Both Huebner and Walvoord claimed that
Tregelles contradicted himself, and Huebner charged Tregelles
with "untruth and slander." But even William Kelly,
Darby's editor, saw no contradiction and wrote, concerning
"Judaising," that "nowhere is this so patent as
in Irvingism"!
1861:
Robert Norton, medical doctor and Irvingite,
wrote that the "true origin" of pretrib had been
"hidden and misrepresented." (This was about the time
that Kelly was working towards the goal of elevating Darby and
giving the false impression that Darby should be credited with
the pretrib view.) Several pages later, in the same book, Norton
revealed Margaret as the true originator of pretrib.
1863:
In his "Five Letters" leading Brethren
scholar Tregelles wrote that some Brethren had been
unscrupulously issuing tracts by the thousands in which they
changed the "words and doctrines" of "the
Reformers and others" to give the impression that those
ancient writers had actually been teaching the novel doctrines
that some Darbyist Brethren were then circulating in the 1800's!
1864:
Brethren scholar Tregelles charged fellow
Brethren with changing even the words in ancient hymns:
"Sometimes from a hymn being altered,
writers appear to set forth a secret rapture of
which they had never heard, or against which they have
protested." I should add that in an 1865 letter Darby asked
his editor to preserve the newer (pretrib) hymns and
"correct the others," that is, the older (posttrib)
ones!
1860's:
From the 1860's to the 1880's William Kelly,
editor of Darby's works, was busy putting together some volumes
known as "The Collected Writings of J. N. Darby."
Opposition to Darbyism had been increasing and Kelly was
determined to fight it and continue to exalt Darby. His goal was
to present a Darby that was prophetically "mature"
long before he actually matured. He achieved this dishonesty
with misleading words in brackets inside sentences in Darby's
early works, and with footnotes that he "borrowed"
from Darby's much later works when he was obviously more
developed! Darby even gave this deviousness his blessing. In an
1865 letter to Kelly he wrote: "I should think that some of
the Notes would require some revising....Even the sermons
contain things I should not accept...." Kelly even flaunted
his shameful manipulation in a footnote to Darby's 1830 article;
the note said that "it was not worth while either
suppressing or changing it."
Interestingly, since the
Irvingites were clear (and clearly first) when it came to public
pretrib teaching, they didn't need later "fixers" to
dishonestly correct their original statements!
1872:
In an article in "The Princeton
Review," Thomas Croskery of
Ireland
listed beliefs of the Plymouth Brethren including these:
"That the moral law is of no use at all to believers"
and "that believers have nothing to do in the way of
keeping themselves from sin for God must look to them if He
will...." He said that "Mr. Darby" pursues his
opponents"with a virulence that has no parallel in the
history of religious controversy."
1877:
A medical doctor, James Carson, wrote that
"the Darbyites have managed to cloak their opinions by
using language in a Jesuitical sense...." He added:
"Unless a person makes himself properly acquainted with the
opinions" of Darbyites and argues "with the utmost
precision on every point...it is impossible to manage such wily
and slippery customers."
1879:
A later work by Thomas Croskery declared that
"Brethrenite doctrine...clearly tends to immorality."
He then quoted Darby's editor, William Kelly, who stated:
"I am no longer, as a Christian man, having to do with the
responsibility that attaches to mortal man, but am passed now
into a new state, even while I am in the world." Rev.
Frederick Whitfield spoke of "the flagrant immoralities
among the Plymouth Brethren" while James Grant
commented: "Darbyism is the most selfish religious system
with which I am acquainted."
1880:
William Reid's work on Brethrenism revealed that
"no other sect was, perhaps, ever so fruitful of
divisions" and referred to "the novel doctrines
propounded by some of its leaders." He quoted Lord
Congleton, a leading Brethren member, who asked: "Have you
tried these Brethren
----the Darbyites?....They are false in what they
say of their brethren, they are false in doctrine, and they are
false in their walk."
And Henry Craik, a
colleague of George Muller, was also quoted: "The truth is,
Brethrenism as such, is broken to pieces. By pretending to be
wiser, holier, more spiritual, more enlightened, than all other
Christians; by rash and unprofitable intrusions into things not
revealed; by making mysticism and eccentricity the test of
spiritual life and depth; by preferring a dreamy and imaginative
theology to the solid food of the Word of God...." (Leading
Brethren scholar Harold Rowdon's 1967 book "The Origins of
the Brethren," p. 253, quoted earlier Brethren member Lord
Congleton who was "disgusted with...the falseness" of
Darby's narratives. Rowdon also quoted a historian of the
Brethren, W. B. Neatby, who wrote that "the time-honoured
method of single combat" was as good a method as any
"to elicit the truth" from Darby!)
1880's:
In 1880, a year after his Christian
conversion, C. I. Scofield was in the
St. Louis
jail for forgery because he'd stolen his mother-in-law's life
savings in a real estate scam. In 1883 his first wife divorced
him (for desertion) and he remarried three months later.
Although he had no formal theological training, he began putting
a non-conferred "D.D." after his name in the 1890's.
In 1899, when he preached D. L. Moody's funeral sermon, he still
owed thousands of dollars that he had stolen from acquaintances
20 years earlier. (In 1921 he advised his daughter, who then had
financial problems, to pray to an ancient Catholic saint; at the
same time his Scofield Bible, p. 1346, was predicting a future
reign of "apostate Christendom, headed up under the
Papacy"!)
1889:
Aware that for 60 years the leading
historians----whether Brethren or Irvingite----had been
crediting someone in Irving's circle (and not Darby's
circle!) with the pretrib rapture, Darby's editor William Kelly
embarked on a sinister plan to discredit the Irvingites (and
their female inspiration) and belatedly (and falsely) give
credit for pretrib to Darby. He achieved this in 1889-1890 in a
series of articles in his own British journal while analyzing
the Irvingites in a supposedly fair and honest manner. Let's see
a few of the many examples of his clever dishonesty:
When quoting early
Irvingites like Baxter and Norton, Kelly would consistently skip
over their clear pretrib teaching but quote just before and
after it! And he was a change artist. When Irvingites would
write about their pretrib "rapture," Kelly loved to
water it down into only their belief in the "Second
Coming"! If the Irvingites expressed their belief in an
imminent pretrib catching up, Kelly revised it into their
"constantly to be expected Lord"! When
Irving
's
followers hoped to escape, by rapture, the coming
"tribulation," their "tribulation" was
changed by Kelly into only "corrupt or apostate
evils"! My 300-page book "The Rapture Plot" has
16 pages (!) of glaring specimens of short quotes exhibiting
Kelly's shameful revisions of Irvingite doctrine!
1918:
A prophetic book by E. P. Cachemaille discussed
the pretrib origin, tied it to the 1830's, then added:
"There has since been much scheming to give the doctrine a
reputable origin, scheming by those who did not know the
original facts, not being contemporaries of Dr. Tregelles."
1942:
Noted prophecy teacher H. A. Ironside, who
had a Brethren background, dared to assert, minus evidence, that
what early Brethren taught re the rapture was "so
contrary" to what the Irvingites had been teaching, adding
that no links had existed between the two groups!
1960:
After mentioning that the claim that Darby
originated pretrib "is certainly open to question,"
evangelical scholar Clarence Bass wrote: "More probably,
however, its origin can be traced through the Irvingite
movement." But he failed to elaborate, evidently aware that
he would be opening a can of you-know-what!
1973:
Darby worshiper R. A. Huebner wrote that
"The Irvingites (1828-1834) never held the pretribulation
rapture or any 'any-moment' views." He was aware that many
couldn't know how close he had repeatedly come to clear pretrib
teaching by Irvingites and then had covered up everything while
using the same devious tactics his inspiration William Kelly had
used a century earlier while analyzing the same Irvingites!
My "Plot" book
has a 31-page chapter of many quotes from the earliest
Irvingites showing that they repeatedly and clearly taught
pretrib as well as imminence. For example, in 1832 the Irvingite
journal said that "some" will be "left in the
great tribulation...after the translation of the saints."
We've already seen clear pretribism in the Sep., 1830 issue of
the Irvingite journal. It's bad enough that Huebner (who never
attended seminary, college, or even Bible school) has
mind-poisoned his tiny circle of Darby-idolizers, but disastrous
that pretrib leaders like Walvoord, Ryrie, LaHaye, and Ice were
apparently "too busy" to check Huebner's sources and
later on too proud to admit they'd been taken in by him!
The parallels between
Huebner and his two inspirations, Darby and Kelly, are
astounding. Like them, he easily applies "demon" to
opponents and their beliefs. Like them, he exaggerates and even
purposely muddies up Darby's earliest pretrib development
and Darby's later reminiscences. And like them, he can deftly
dance around pretrib "cobras" in Irvingism (and its
female inspiration) without getting bitten! In his 1973 book,
Huebner had 95 copying errors when quoting others including
pretrib leaders! (For more shocks on the internet, type in
"Humbug Huebner.")
1989:
Thomas Ice, one of the biggest pretrib diehards,
doesn't have favorites when he discusses the pretrib origin; he
can use deviousness
as well as sloppiness. When he reproduced
Margaret's short "revelation" account he somehow left
out 48 words! As if his carelessness wasn't bad enough, his
reproduction also included four distinctive errors that Hal
Lindsey had made in his own reproduction of it in 1983----what
Ice chose to do instead of going to the original 19th century
sources! (See my internet piece "Thomas Ice - Hired
Gun" if you are shockproof.)
1990:
A year after his "rapture" of 48 words
from Margaret's handwritten "revelation" account, Ice
was elevated all the way up to Dallas Seminary's journal which
published his article on pretrib history. In it he had some
copying errors when quoting John Bray, Huebner, and Walvoord.
Even worse, when he quoted the same Margaret Macdonald account,
he skipped right over what he knew was her main point
(a catching up of church members just before the Antichrist is
revealed) even though he quoted shortly before and after it! And
when quoting present-day Brethren scholar Harold Rowdon, he used
an ellipsis to cover up Rowdon's evidence in his 1967 book that
Irvingite development preceded Darby's!
1991: After
many objective, no-axe-to-grind scholars had publicly endorsed
my research (which emphasized Margaret, the Irvingites, and
1830), R. A. Huebner, aware of the same objective scholarship
and determined to negate it, came out with a book in which he
claimed to find Darby teaching pretrib in 1827----that is, three
years before Margaret etc. But halfway through his book (which
had more than 250 copying errors!), he admitted that his 1827
"proof" could refer to something completely different!
Nevertheless, diehard Thomas Ice, after admitting to me that he
was indeed aware of Huebner's change, continues to declare
publicly that Huebner's 1991 book "proves" that Darby
was pretrib as early as 1827!
1992:
When Tim LaHaye's "No Fear of the
Storm" reproduced Margaret's short account, he "left
behind" 48 words----the same 48 words that Ice had left out
in 1989! In the same book LaHaye made 84 other copying errors
when discussing pretrib beginnings! Although he had a whole
chapter focusing on my origin research, un-scholar LaHaye didn't
list any of my books in footnotes or bibliography which kept
readers from being able to find out what I had actually written!
And LaHaye based his analysis on inaccurate secondhand sources
and also made many copying errors when quoting them.
For many years Tim and
Beverly LaHaye's "conservative" organizations have
raked in millions of dollars while telling folks to vote for
only "moral" political candidates, and while appearing
to be very pro-family and anti-gay. What they haven't revealed
is that their son Lee LaHaye has long been the Chief Financial
Officer of Concerned Women for
America
and that Lee is openly gay ! Can we be sure that
"Left Behind" Tim isn't just as hypocritical with his
pro-pretrib stance? (If you're man or woman enough, warm up your
computer and type in "Pretrib Hypocrisy,"
"LaHaye's Temperament," "Tim LaHaye's gay
son," "God to Same-Sexers: Hurry Up," and
"Thieves' Marketing"----for starters!)
2005:
In the August "Pre-Trib Perspectives" Thomas Ice again
had the audacity to claim that the late Prof. Paul Alexander saw
a "pretribulational translation" in Pseudo-Ephraem's
now famous Medieval sermon. But Ice has known since 1995 that
Alexander's 1985 book has textual as well as outline
summaries of P-E's chronological order of endtime
events----both summaries showing only one final coming of Christ
that follows the great tribulation and not even a hint of a
pretrib coming in either summary! Is it possible that Ice knows
more than the professor whose book somehow inspired one of
the desperate pretrib diehards? As Eph.
4:14
puts it, Ice
knows how to "lie in wait to deceive." And lie and
lie! (See my internet paper "Deceiving and Being
Deceived" and discover the calculated dishonesty in the
Pseudo-Ephraem and Morgan Edwards claims plus other dishonesty
including massive plagiarism in some of today's leading pretrib
diehards! Type in my name and see all of my internet items.
Since Ice and LaHaye are associated with the
Pre-Trib
Research
Center
which has its own site, you may feel inspired to write
them, ask them some blunt questions, and even send them a copy
of this paper.)
PS - You can win $1000.00
if you can prove that I have ever covered up or watered down any
crucial aspect of pretrib rapture history! If you would like to
obtain my No. 1 book on pretrib history entitled "The
Rapture Plot" which expands the info in this paper and has
much other documentation, call 800.643.4645.
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