"Brethren writer Roy A. Huebner claims and documents his belief that J.N. Darby first began to believe in the pretrib rapture and develop his dispensational thinking while convalescing from a riding accident during December 1826 and January 1827.
If this is true, then all of the origin-of-the- rapture conspiracy theories fall to the ground in a heap of speculative rubble. Darby would have at least a three-year jump on any who would have supposedly influenced his thought, making it impossible for all the "influence" theories to have any credibility.
Huebner provides clarification and evidence that Darby was not influenced by Margaret Macdonald, Lacunza, Edward Irving, or the Irvingites. These are all said by the detractors of Darby and the pretrib rapture to have been bridges which led to Darby's thought. Instead, he demonstrates that Darby's understanding of pretribulationism was the product of the development of his personal interactive thought with the text of Scripture as he, his friends, and dispensationalists have long contended.
Darby's pretrib and dispensational thoughts, says Huebner, were developed from the following factors:
When reading Darby's earliest published essay on biblical prophecy (1829), it is clear that while it still has elements of historicism, it also reflects the fact that for Darby, the rapture was to be the church's focus and hope Even in this earliest of essays, Darby expounds upon the rapture as the church's hope."
Conclusion
... Only when the imminent expectation of the Parousia diminishes, only when life is no longer lived in constant reference to the Last Day and no longer takes its direction from the Last Day was an organization of the church as an institution even possible or necessary. This took place in the second half of the second century."
While Brethren theologian J.N. Darby may have restored the pretribulational rapture doctrine into the life of the church, he did not originate it. Pretribulationism is found first in the New Testament and at times throughout the history of the church. Oh that we would recapture for the church in our day this "blessed hope" which would help stir her to life with the mighty implications of such a truth. This cannot be accomplished when there are those who are disturbing the faith of some by the misuse of the history of the rapture. Maranatha!"
By: Dr. Thomas Ice, PhD.
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