A few of my acquaintances, especially John Bray, have claimed that a
Catholic priest named Manuel de Lacunza (using the pen name
"Ben-Ezra") originated the pretribulation rapture belief and
introduced it in his notable work "The Coming of Messiah in Glory
and Majesty" (1812). Well, now is the right time to tell you that I
am forced to kindly disagree with the Lacunza claim. Here's
why:
Bray, in his 1982 booklet "The Origin of the Pre-Tribulation
Rapture Teaching," admitted that he'd been influenced by an early
20th century pastor, Rev. Duncan McDougall of the Free Church of
Scotland, who wrote the booklet "The Rapture of the Saints."
McDougall, copied by Bray, was inspired by "much before"
speculation in a Lacunza quote (Vol. I, p. 99) which declared that
"much before" Christ's "arrival at the earth" He
"will give his orders" involving a shout, the archangel's
voice, and the trumpet of God (I Thess. 4:16).
But both McDougall and Bray were evidently unaware that a few
paragraphs after the "much before" quote (and in the same
context), Lacunza reveals that other writers of his time commonly
believe that "a few minutes will suffice----five or six"
between the catching up and the touchdown at Jerusalem. Although Lacunza
doesn't explain his "much before," a day----or even an
hour----would be "much before" when compared with only five or
six minutes.
Lacunza speculates (Vol. II, p. 250) that the "wrath" and
"commotion" of the "day of the Lord's coming" (that
is, the second advent) will last at least "forty-five natural
days." Bray somehow sees these days as part of "the
tribulation period" and claims that in Lacunza's view the raptured
saints are up in the air with Christ throughout the same 45-day
period. Even though Lacunza places a rapture
before this period, he repeatedly notes that this period is "after
the entire ruin of Antichrist," "after the coming of Christ in
glory and majesty," "in the age to come,"
etc.!
After the meeting in the air, Lacunza even has the raptured saints
back on earth during the 45 days! In Vol. II (pp. 262-3) he declares
that they will immediately become Christ's messengers; he quotes Isa.
18:2: "Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and
peeled"----in other words, to "the relics of all nations which
shall survive" Antichrist's reign.
Does Lacunza teach a rapture occurring 45 days before the coming to
earth, as Bray claims? Let's look at Vol. I. On p. 83 Lacunza
refers to the book of Revelation and writes that "the nineteenth
chapter speaks of the coming of the Lord in glory and majesty, which
Christians with one consent do wait for." Pages 99-100: after
quoting I Thess. 4:13-18 Lacunza quotes Matt. 24:30 and then comments:
"If you compare this text with that of St. Paul, you shall
find no other difference than this, that those who are to arise on the
coming of the Lord, the apostle nameth those who are dead in Christ,
who sleep in Jesus; and the Lord nameth them his elect."
Lacunza (p. 113) again quotes I Thess. 4 and Matt. 24 in this manner:
"...He shall descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ shall
rise first; then we who are alive, &c. and it appears to me, that
you will find St. Paul and the Gospel speaking one and the same thing:
He shall send his angels and they shall gather his elect from the four
winds; who can be no other than those very ones who are in Christ, who
sleep in Jesus."
For years I sent Lacunza quotes like the ones above to Bray and urged
him to abandon that Catholic priest. Finally, in a letter dated Oct. 17,
1990 (still in my files), Bray wrote: "I don't even know what all
Lacunza was talking about." (He's the same Bray who's been
promoting 18th century pastor Morgan Edwards as a pretrib. But I've been
telling Bray that Edwards believed that "Antichrist" was the
Catholic papacy which had already been on earth for 1200 years before
Edwards wrote his book! I've also told Bray that Edwards viewed the
Ottoman Empire as Rev. 13's second beast----a beast that was already
four centuries old in Edwards' day! It would have been impossible for
Edwards to expect an event which logically should have happened
centuries earlier!)
Interestingly, even Tim LaHaye's 1992 book "No Fear of the
Storm" (alias "Rapture Under Attack," alias "The
Rapture"), p. 169, admits that "Lacunza never taught a pre-Trib
Rapture!"
If Lacunza's 1812 book contains pretrib, as McDougall and Bray have
claimed, why was such doctrine unknown before 1830? It wasn't that John
Darby and Edward Irving were unaware of Lacunza's work, for both
discussed it in their pre-1830 writings. And it wasn't that Darby and
Irving were opposed to novel ideas, for both began to embrace pretrib
after it emerged
in 1830.
One final thought: why did the world have to wait until McDougall's
time to hear something about Lacunza that it had never heard before?
|