Excerpt from "The Origin of the Pretribulation Rapture Doctrine"
by Pastor Tim Warner pages 1-4
The story of the development of pretribulationism is a tangled one. From its inception in the early 1800s, there has been a deliberate attempt to cover up its origins. And the cover up continues to this day. This has been perpetrated along two lines of revisionism. One was to hide the real origin of pretribulationism in 19th century Scotland, and attribute it to John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren. The other has been a recent attempt to selectively quote and misrepresent ancient Christian documents to make it appear early Christian writers were pretribulationists. The purpose of this
article is to document a timeline of the major events in the development of this relatively new prophetic viewpoint.
THE REFORMATION CHURCH
During and after the Protestant Reformation (16th century), Protestant Christians held to what is called historicism, a view of prophecy that considers the events of Revelation as occurring all throughout the Church's history. This was supported by employing the year-day theory that the 1260, 1290, & 1335 days mentioned in Daniel and Revelation should be interpreted as years. It was common for Protestants to identify the Roman Catholic Church with Mystery Babylon, and the papacy with the Antichrist. Since historicists considered the tribulation as encompassing most of the
Church age, and viewed themselves as being in the tribulation, they were necessarily posttribulationists. This view lent itself to a flurry of date-setting in the first half of the 19th century, where the 1260, 1290, & 1335 days (years) were calculated from the Roman Church's rise to supreme power under the Roman Emperors, until the second coming.
THE RETURN TO PREMILLENNIALISM
Morgan Edwards
Morgan Edwards was a Baptist minister in Pennsylvania in the mid-late 1700s. As a teenager and seminary student, Morgan wrote a hypothetical essay as part of his seminary training. Morgan was assigned the task, by his tutor, to write an essay on the Millennium using literal interpretation. In Morgan's hypothetical scenario, he separated the rapture from the second coming by at least 3.5 years. His work seems to be a mixture of futurism and historicism. And, Morgan contradicted himself and made many obvious errors. Yet, his work appears to be the very first time the rapture was separated from the second coming of Christ. Many years later (1788), Morgan published his essay in a book. While Morgan Edwards is sometimes cited as a pretribulationist, his
work indicates that he did not wish to be seen as a literalist, and was content with the typical historicist view of the times. He insisted that his work was purely hypothetical. Furthermore, there is no apparent connection between Morgan Edwards essay and modern pretribulationism. Morgan's later works do not display pretribulationist thinking. We must look elsewhere for the origins of modern pretribulationism.
Father Manuel de Lacunza
Fr. Manuel de Lacunza was a Roman Catholic Jesuit priest, born in Chili in 1731, and sent to Spain at the young age of 15 to become a Jesuit priest. When the Jesuits were expelled from Spain in 1767, Fr. Lacunza moved to Italy. In 1790, he wrote a book on prophecy, called The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty, which was published in Spain in 1812. Fr. Lacunza wrote under the pen name, Juan Josafat Ben-Ezra (a converted Jew), allegedly to avoid detection since his book ended up on Rome's banned books list.
Fr. Lacunza's book promoted a return to the literal interpretation of Old Testament prophecy, and the primitive futurist view of Revelation. He rejected the year day theory of the historicists. Consequently, he saw a personal Antichrist and future tribulation of 1260 days, followed by the second coming of the Lord. He did not espouse a pretribulation rapture.
Edward Irving
Edward Irving was the pastor of a Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) congregation in London in the 1820s. Irving became aware of Fr. Lacunza's book, and was so impressed with it, he took it upon himself to translate it into English, adding a lengthy Preliminary Discourse of his own. Irving's English translation was published in 1827. Irving's developing prophetic views can be clearly discerned from his Preliminary Discourse, including, surprisingly, all the key elements of dispensationalism that later showed up in Darby's writings, (see Appendix A for excerpts). Irving indicated that he had been teaching these things to his congregation beginning in Christmas 1825, several years before Darby embraced dispensational ideas.1
Irving strongly denounced the apostasy of the Christian denominations in his preaching. He proclaimed that God was about to restore Apostles and prophets to the Church in the last days, and that a great Pentecostal outpouring would come just before the soon return of Jesus Christ. Right on schedule, rumors of healings, tongues, visions, and other manifestations began circulating in Port Glasgow, Scotland, from the home of James and George MacDonald and their sister Margaret. People came from England, Ireland, and Scotland to observe the strange manifestations in the prayer meetings held by the MacDonalds.
The revival quickly spread to Irving's church, with tongues, prophecy, and other manifestations breaking out. Irving was eventually defrocked by the Church of Scotland because of the strange goings on, and his heretical views of the person of Christ, (he taught that Jesus had a fallen human nature). So, Irving moved his congregation to a rented hall, forming the Catholic Apostolic Church. Not only were tongues, prophetic revelations, and other alleged miracles occurring in Irving's congregation, but these ecstatic utterances focused on end-time prophecy concerning the coming of the Lord.
Margaret MacDonalds Visions March, 1830
In March or April of 1830, after being ill and bed-ridden for about 18 months, Margaret MacDonald claimed to have seen a series of visions. She wrote down these visions in a series of letters, and sent copies to Edward Irving. A month later (June), Irving claimed in a private letter, that Margaret's visions had a huge impact on him: "the substance of Mary Campbell's and Margaret MacDonald's visions or revelations, given in their papers, carry to me a spiritual conviction and a spiritual reproof which I cannot express." (See Appendix B for the full text of the letter).
The outstanding feature of Margaret's visions was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on an elite group within Christianity, just prior to the coming of Antichrist. (See Appendix C for the full text of Margaret MacDonalds letter). She saw only Spirit filled Christians being caught up to meet Jesus in the air, which she identified as the five wise virgins of Jesus parable in Matthew 25. The rest of Christianity, the foolish virgins, would be left to be purged and purified by suffering at the hands of the Antichrist, until they were fit to be with the Lord.
The Morning Watch September 1830
The official quarterly publication of the Irvingite charismatics was called, "The Morning Watch." It had exclusively promoted a posttribulation second coming through mid- 1830. But, the September 1830 issue featured part two of an article by someone named, Fidus, promoting the theory that the seven letters in Revelation describe seven consecutive Church Ages. In this article, Fidus articulated the new idea of a partial pretribulation rapture. He saw the Philedelphian (Spirit filled) church being raptured prior to the tribulation, and the Laodicean church representing the rest of Christianity.
(See Appendix D for the full text of this article). The Morning Watch was quickly becoming the vehicle for providing a biblical basis for Margaret MacDonalds pretribulation rapture of Spirit filled Christians.
The Morning Watch June, 1831
In the June 1831 issue of The Morning Watch, Edward Irving made his pretribulationism crystal clear. His biblical support for the elite Spirit-filled believers being raptured before the tribulation was the catching up of the man-child in Revelation 12. Irving argued that the body of Christ has been "united to Him by regeneration of the Holy Ghost, 'born of God, sons of God,' (Rev. ii. 27; xii. 5). And therefore we with him are called Christ (1 Cor. xii. 12)." Irving went on to say that, "with this key [that Spirit filled Christians are also Christ, and that the catching up of the man child refers to the rapture of Spirit-filled believers] the Old Testament prophecies which speak of
Christ must be interpreted, ... and especially those prophecies which speak of the pregnant woman: to all which an explicet key is given to us in the xiith chapter of Revelation; where, though the child is spoken of as one (ver. 5), it is also described as many (ver. 11), who overcame the acuser; and when that number is accomplished, there are still a remnant of her seed, whom the dragon doth persecute and seek to destroy (ver. 17). This two-fold company the one gathered before, and the other after the travailing woman is cast out into the wilderness, ... do together constitute the New Jerusalem, the bride of the Lamb, which cometh down from heaven." (pp. 301-302).
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The rest of the article and the documentation for it is available at the link below.
Origin of the Pretrib Rapture Doctrine
http://www.answersinrevelation.org/pretrib_history.pdf
You are attempting to coerce those with a different point of view into believing that unless we are quiet and do not speak against the newer pretrib doctrine, we will be left behind if it is true.
