Articles by Dave MacPherson
Dave Macpherson is the author of "The Rapture Plot", "The Incredible Cover Up", "The Great Rapture Hoax", "Unbelievable Pre-Trib Origin" and "Late Great Pre-Trib Rapture."
I have followed Dave's impeccable work in documenting the true history of the pre-trib lala land false doctrines that are part of the great falling away from THE Faith in these last days of Strong Delusion. I have read most of Dave's books and have not found anything in them that has not been verifiably accurate. I would recommend his book THE RAPTURE PLOT (300 pages) which has the most detailed and documented history of pretrib of any book that I know. It is available for about $15.00 from Armageddon Books online - http://www.armageddonbooks.com/425raptureplot.html
In the Deceiving and Being Deceived article below you will see how the big name promoters of the pretrib rapture like Grant Jeffries with full knowledge do lie, make lies, modify and misquote historical documents, WITH FULL KNOWLEDGE AND WILLFUL INTENT TO DECEIVE.
Pretrib Hypocrisy!
By Dave MacPherson
Yes, hypocrisy! Hypocrisy tied to pretrib rapture leaders as well as to the
pretrib rapture view. (You can't believe how many "pretribbers" have told me
over the years that they either have doubts about pretrib or don't even believe
it----but they promote it anyway!)
Pretrib icon C. I. Scofield could be hypocritically double-minded. In a 1921
letter to his daughter Abigail, who had a financial need while then living in
San Luis Obispo, California, he advised her to pray to a Catholic saint: "...why
don't you seek the special intercession of the San Luis in whose name-town you
live?" (This entire letter is in Joseph Canfield's classic work The Incredible
Scofield and His Book published by Ross House Books.)
But a dozen years earlier in his Scofield Bible (p. 1346) he had begun
predicting a future reign of "apostate Christendom, headed up under the Papacy"!
Many evangelicals are still unaware that during the 1980's Hal Lindsey proudly
announced that two of his daughters, Robin and Jenny, were then enrolled at
Gonzaga University, a Jesuit Catholic school. (The Jesuits were originally
Catholicism's arm to terroristically infiltrate and destroy the growing
Protestant Reformation.)
But years earlier Lindsey's There's A New World Coming (pp. 58, 103) stated, and
continues to state, that the "dominant church" of the "Middle Ages" which "bound
the people to image-worship, superstition, and priestcraft" is the "prostituted
form of Christianity" that will eventually become "the Antichrist of Rome"!
I still have a letter I received dated Nov. 14, 1971 and signed by a William T.
Bruner. Here's the eye-catching part:
"I was brought up to be a strong Pre-Tribulationist. In fact I never even
thought that the other view was worth inquiring into. When Dr. Bob Jones called
me to teach in the Bob Jones College one of the first questions he asked me was,
whether I held to this view, and of course I said Yes. But while I was professor
of Greek New Testament at the Bob Jones University, 1949-1955, one of my
colleagues, Robert Besancon, happened to ask me if I had ever read anything on
the Post-Trib side. I had to confess that I never had. He recommended two little
books by Horner. I read them and was truly astonished to find that the Post-Trib
view is the simpler, more Scriptural, and more reasonable of the two. So I am
now a Post-Tribulationist. Very interestingly, though, there was at that time on
the BJU faculty a great scholar, Dr. Charles Brokenshire, who could teach 25
languages and every subject in the School of Religion. But he was a Post-Tribulationist.
Dr. Jones considered him worth more than any other faculty member, perhaps worth
more than all of us put together. During the school year 1954-55 Dr. Brokenshire
died. After he died Dr. Jones went before his faculty meeting and announced that
from that time on he would be true to his old-time promise to the Christians of
America that he would strongly emphasize the Pre-Tribulation doctrine of the
Second Coming of Christ and that he wanted all his teachers in the School of
Religion to stand in favor of that doctrine!"
Well, it's apparent that the first Dr. Bob had been playing the role of
hypocrite! (Dr. Roland Rasmussen, pastor of Faith Baptist Church in Canoga Park,
California, can verify the late Dr. Bruner's letter. As a BJU prof then,
Rasmussen was at the same faculty meeting.)
Several years ago my wife and I found ourselves chatting on the BJU campus with
one of its best-known profs. We were astounded when he admitted that even though
that school publicly promotes pretrib, professors can privately hold to
differing rapture views as long as they retain at least a premill outlook!
The year 1973 found me handing out posttrib literature on a Kansas City sidewalk
to delegates going into the annual conference of the General Association of
Regular Baptist Churches. It was easy for them to react by saying bluntly "We're
pretrib!" and just as easy for me to say just as bluntly "Not only is pretrib
not in the Bible, but it isn't in even your GARBC statement of faith!"
After I widely aired their hypocrisy, they added pretrib wording to their
official statement during a following conference so that their doctrine could
finally begin practicing what the GARBC "doctors" had long been preaching!
A Dec. 31, 1983 letter written on Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God
stationery by one of their profs, J. Bashford Bishop, contained these shocks:
"Thanks for the book. [I had given him my 1983 book The Great Rapture Hoax.]
I'll do what I can to circulate your book through our Assemblies of God [who],
as you know, are opposed to Post-tribism. Make a point of getting acquainted
with Joseph Flower, our General Secy. at headquarters in Springfield. He and I
were schoolmates and both of us were Post-trib then and ever since. He would be
glad to discuss with you the subject----a real man of God."
We'd been doing research there in Springfield, Missouri that winter and soon
enjoyed two hour-long chats with Flower, the No. 2 AG leader. Secretaries
outside his open office door could easily hear everything discussed. I asked how
he could hold to a non-approved rapture view. He replied that AG ministers are
required to uphold pretrib but privately can believe any other rapture view.
When I remarked that such a rule encourages hypocrisy, Flower sheepishly agreed.
Incidentally, those chats took place several years before any of the
hypocrisy-filled scandals having to do with Bakker and Swaggart, two AG
ministers!
What you've just read is a tiny fraction of the gigantic amount of pretrib
dishonesty uncovered by my decades-long research. To get your money's worth, get
my 300-page book The Rapture Plot via armageddonbooks.com or by phoning (800)
967-7345
Deceiving and Being Deceived
By Dave MacPherson
You've probably heard that the pretribulation rapture view was published by a
Rev. Morgan Edwards in 1788 and also by a Medieval writer called Pseudo-Ephraem
1000 years earlier. The Edwards claim (promoted by John Bray and copied by Frank
Marotta, Thomas Ice, Tim LaHaye etc.) is based on a 1980 book by Thomas
McKibbens and Kenneth Smith, while the claim for Pseudo-Ephraem (promoted by
Grant Jeffrey and copied by Thomas Ice, J. R. Church, Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye,
Chuck Missler, Dave Hunt, Hal Lindsey etc.) rests on a 1985 book by Paul
Alexander.
Not only have these promoters covered up and twisted what McKibbens/Smith and
Alexander have written, but they've also concealed and perverted Morgan Edwards'
and Pseudo-Ephraem's own words! Let's focus first on Morgan Edwards (hereafter:
M.E.). Promoters see a pretrib rapture in the following words by M.E.: "...the
dead saints will be raised, and the living changed at Christ's 'appearing in the
air' (I Thes. iv, 17); and this will be about three years and a half before the
millennium...."
If promoters had been sure of their pretrib claim, they never would have had to
collusively cover up the following M.E. statements that contradict their claim:
On p. 14 M.E. described the "Turkish or Ottoman empire" (which began around 1300
A.D.) as the "beast that started out of the earth" (Rev. 13's second beast).
(Since Bray etc. repeatedly claim that M.E. had only a "futurist" outlook,
without which M.E. couldn't have logically expected a pretrib rapture, Bray
deliberately skips over the historicism in M.E.'s "Ottoman" remark - historicism
being the belief that the tribulation, covering many centuries, began at some
point in the distant past.)
On p. 20 M.E. wrote that the "wicked one" (II Thess. 2:8) has "hitherto assumed
no higher title than 'the vicar general of Christ on earth'" and described
"Antichrist" as "popery" and a "succession of persons." (Promoters emphasize
M.E.'s comments about the "last" Pope and ignore M.E.'s view that "popery" had
"hitherto" (for many centuries) been playing the role of II Thess. 2:8's "wicked
one" while wearing a "mask" (as he put it) - a first beast that historicism
could easily see during the second beast's reign!) Since historicism - and not
preterism or futurism - is the only one of these three schools which often
thinks "years" when reading "days" in the Bible, it isn't surprising to find
such year/day historicism in M.E. On p. 19, for example, while discussing Rev.
11's two witnesses, M.E. says "there are no more than about 204 years between
now and their death:
I should therefore expect that their appearance is not far off." (Bray quotes
M.E.'s very next sentence, on another matter, but ignores this one! Could a
futurist ever apply a couple of centuries - instead of only 1260 days - to those
witnesses?) Something else. The authoritative 1980 book about M.E. that inspired
the claim promoted by Bray, Ice, LaHaye etc. never classified M.E.'s view as "pretrib,"
or even remotely resembling it, and the book's authorship had the same
conclusion when later interviewed by both phone and correspondence!
And when Thomas Ice's "Pre-Trib Perspectives" newsletter (Sep./Oct., 1995) ran
his own article promoting Edwards as a teacher of "pretribulationism." he
couldn't find any of the heavyweight authorities on Edwards, that he listed and
quoted, evaluating that 18th century pastor as a pretrib! In light of the fact
that Edwards embraced historicism (which can see some future things yet to be
fulfilled) and not pure futurism (which sees no past tribulational fulfillment),
it's easy to believe that Edwards, like some other historicists of that period,
saw a three-and-a-half-year period at the end of a 1260-year tribulation - the
same percentage a futurist would have if he were to see a period of three and a
half days at the end of a 1260-day tribulation; such a percentage would of
course be a posttrib view!
At least I don't have to juggle or cover up historical data to come to such a
conclusion!
But now it's time to analyze Pseudo-Ephraem (hereafter: P-E), the name attached
by scholars to manuscripts that were possibly, but not provably, written by the
well-known Ephraim the Syrian who lived from 306-373 A.D.
And what's the discovery in P-E's early Medieval sermon on the end of the world
that's led pretrib promoters to see pretrib in it? It's basically these words:
"For all the saints and elect of God are gathered, prior to the tribulation that
is to come, and are taken to the Lord lest they see the confusion that is to
overwhelm the world because of our sins." A pretrib rapture is seen by promoters
in the phrase "taken to the Lord." It needs to be emphasized that pretrib in P-E
has been palmed off on unsuspecting Christians by promoters seeing rapture
aspects in P-E's sermon where none exist and by covering up such aspects where
they do exist in his 10-section sermon! In Section 2, P-E says that the only
event that's "imminent" is "the advent of the wicked one" (that is, Antichrist).
Nevertheless, Grant Jeffrey in his 1995 book, FINAL WARNING, had the audacity to
claim that P-E "began with the Rapture using the word 'imminent'" and added in
the next sentence that "Ephraem used the word 'imminent' to describe the
Rapture." (If he and other P-E promoters can look at a coming of Antichrist and
see a coming of "Christ," is it any wonder that in his endtime view folks will
look at Antichrist and see "Christ"? Ephraim the Syrian, reportedly P-E's
inspiration, said the same thing (SERMO ASCETICUS, I): "Nothing remains then,
except that the coming of our enemy, Antichrist, appear...." (Nobody's ever
found even a trace of pretrib in this earlier work!)
In the before-the-tribulation sections, P-E mentions neither a descent of
Christ, nor a shout, nor an angelic voice, nor a trumpet of God, nor a
resurrection, nor the dead in Christ, nor a rapture, nor meeting Christ. So
where does P-E place the rapture? The answer is found in his last section (10)
where he writes that after "the sign of the Son of Man" when "the Lord shall
appear with great power," the "angelic trumpet precedes him, which shall sound
and declare: Arise, O sleeping ones, arise, meet Christ, because the hour of
judgment has come!" (Like Morgan Edwards and Manuel Lacunza, Pseudo-Ephraem has
the nasty, non-pretrib habit of blending the rapture with the final advent!) In
the July/Sep., 1995 BIBLIOTHECA SACRA, Dallas Seminary's journal, Thomas Ice and
his co-author Timothy Demy pulled off one of the worst revisionisms of P-E ever:
when summarizing Section 10 they carefully deleted what P-E included between
"trumpet" and "judgment" (deleted the distinctive I Thess. 4 aspects in that
posttrib setting), giving unsuspecting readers this utterly misleading
condensation: "A trumpet will sound, calling forth the dead to judgment." But
P-E says much more, as can be seen; he places the resurrection of those who
sleep in Jesus and the rapture of those who meet Jesus (details found only in I
Thess. 4) at the Matt. 24 coming!
A moment ago I said that Edwards and Lacunza had the same rapture/advent
blending. Here's evidence. Edwards in his 1788 work (pp. 21-22) speaks of "the
son of man in the clouds, coming to raise the dead saints and change the
living....The signs of his coming, in the heavens, will be 'the trump of God [I
Thess. 4:16], vapour and smoke, which will darken the sun and moon [Acts
2:19,20]....'" Lacunza's 1812 work THE COMING OF MESSIAH IN GLORY AND MAJESTY
(Vol. I, p. 113) declares: "...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." (A few have assumed that there's pretrib in an earlier
Catholic, Franciscus Ribera, but in his 16th century Revelation commentary he
viewed Rev. 12's "woman" in the tribulation as the Christian Church!)
But let's go back to Pseudo-Ephraem. Dr. Paul Alexander, the leading authority
whose book inspired the P-E claim, is portrayed in Jeffrey's book, FINAL
WARNING, as "perhaps the most authoritative scholar on the writings of the early
Byzantine Church." But this misleading statement, designed to make readers think
that Professor Alexander supports the P-E claim, covers up the fact that this
world famous scholar sees not even a smidgen of pretrib in the same Medieval
writer!
In fact, Alexander writes that the phrase "taken to the Lord" (which has become
a bonanza for pretrib history revisionists) means "participate at least in some
measure in beatitude." While Jeffrey and Ice do include this "beatitude" phrase,
all P-E promoters carefully avoid revealing that the Catholic doctrine of
"beatitude," according to the NEW CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA, has to do with "the
highest acts of virtue that can be performed in this life" - works on earth and
not being raptured off earth! (Elsewhere in his sermon P-E repeats the
importance of doing "penance," because of "our sins," so that church members
will be "sustained" during the tribulation!)
In fact (again), Alexander has two summaries (textual and outline), in
chronological order, of P-E's endtime events. And guess what. Alexander
demonstrates both times that P-E saw only one future coming ("Second Coming of
Christ" for the "punishment of the Antichrist") which follows (!) the great
tribulation ("tribulation magna lasting three and a half years") -
claim-smashing summaries that self-serving promoters, with malice aforethought,
have jointly swept under their "secret rapture" rug!
Since "Dr." Thomas Ice is the most rabid pretrib defender who's long promoted
the (false) claims for John Darby and, more recently, Edwards and Pseudo-Ephraem,
and at the same time covered up or twisted the (true) claims for Margaret
Macdonald and the Irvingites, it's fitting to quote the first sentence of a
recent news item: "WorldNetDaily reported on March 7 that a Texas district court
has ordered the Tyndale Theological Seminary to pay fines totalling $170,000 for
issuing 34 theological degrees without receiving approval from the state
education agency."
This is the Fort Worth seminary that gave the title of "Dr." to Ice - which is
at least an improvement over "Dr." C. I. Scofield who, in the 1890's, began
deceitfully adding "Dr." to his name instead of waiting for some institution to
confer it upon him!
Well, I didn't mean to write a book here; I merely wanted to share some long
covered up facts about pretrib dispensationalism. My 300-page book THE RAPTURE
PLOT (with footnotes, index, bibliography, appendices, plus great commendations
from leaders, and obtainable by calling 800-967-7345) has the sort of info I've
just outlined plus much, much more. If you decide to get a copy of my PLOT book,
I won't have to tell you about the rest of the bizarre history of the
171-year-old, British-born pretrib rapture view.
I won't tell you that the same promoters have used the same unscrupulous, "twistorical"
methods to try to discredit Margaret Macdonald, the real pretrib originator in
early 1830, and cover up the fact that other partial rapturists who followed her
and taught the same thing have all been classified as pretribs!
I won't tell you that promoters who claim that John Darby was pretrib as early
as 1827 won't admit that he then had only his "heavenly church" theme, that he
was still clearly posttrib as late as a Dec., 1830 article (he was waiting "to
meet Him in the air in order to His judging of the nations"), that he wasn't
clearly pretrib before 1839, that in 1839 Darby's only pretrib basis was Rev.
12's "man child" symbol (which symbol had been Edward Irving's pretrib basis
since 1831!), that in his 1991 book (p. 100) R. A. Huebner admitted that his
source for his 1827 claim for Darby could just as easily refer to something
completely un-rapturesque, and that Ice since 1991 has covered this up and
continues to declare, while searing his conscience, that Huebner "documents" his
belief that Darby was pretrib in 1827!
I won't tell you that all of Darby's so-called "thoughts" which promoters for
generations have claimed led him to pretrib (thoughts like the "Gentile
parenthesis," "Church/Israel dichotomy," and the "literal method") were taught
by others much earlier and that he subtly plagiarized them! (Dispensationalist
scholars must have known that airing even a tiny fraction of this would have
been a deathblow to their system!)
I won't tell you that throughout most of the 1800's the leading church
historians - whether Irvingite or (Plymouth) Brethren - overwhelmingly credited
the Macdonald/Irvingite orbit with pretrib; none credited Darby!
I won't tell you that in 1880, a year after his Christian conversion, C. I.
Scofield was in jail in St. Louis for forgery (he'd stolen his mother-in-law's
life savings by means of a real estate scam; would most non-Christian crooks do
this?), that after he deserted his wife and children she divorced him in 1883
and he remarried three months later and covered everything up, and that as late
as 1899 he still owed thousands of dollars he'd stolen 20 years earlier and had
been writing phony IOU's to keep from paying back the money!
I won't tell you that after Darby's death in 1882, the editor of his many books,
William Kelly, plotted to steal credit for pretrib away from the Macdonald/Irvingite
connection and give it posthumously to Darby, that he achieved this between 1889
and 1903 by changing and covering up portions of early Irvingite and Brethren
documents, and that 20th century British and American publishers have conspired
to continue this historical revisionism in order to enjoy phenomenal sales of
pretrib rapture material!
And I won't tell you that during the past century and a half, some of the most
influential pretrib rapture books, by British as well as American authors, have
been filled with sloppy scholarship and, what's worse, breathtaking amounts of
plagiarism and even occultic teachings mixed in with evangelical theology!
Or that my PLOT book and my later book THE THREE R'S reveal, with comparison
quotes and in more or less chronological order, embarrassing plagiarism in
writings by John Darby, Joseph Seiss, E. W. Bullinger, Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye,
Merrill Unger, Jerry Falwell, Ed Dobson, Ed Hindson, Charles Ryrie, David
Jeremiah, C. C. Carlson, Paul Tan, Chuck Missler, and Jack Van Impe, for
starters!
Finally, let me say that although I've been researching rapture roots more than
30 years now, I've been into computers only a relatively short time. The
discovery of the extent to which misinformation about the pretrib origin has
been circling the earth at computer speed still boggles my mind! But authors are
only part of the problem. After all, if an author gets royalties of, say, 10
percent, the other 90 percent goes to the publisher - which means that
publishers can have much more incentive to keep churning out bestselling books
that are filled with historical error and even deliberate deception simply
because they receive far more money than the authors!
Which leads me to give you some of my reactions to publishers that are less than
pleasant. After I gave proof to a well-known publisher in the Chicago area that
one of its authors had plagiarized one of my books, I received a sympathetic
letter from the publisher expressing concern; but no changes to my knowledge
were made in the dishonest book which was kept in print, and neither my
publisher nor I was ever financially reimbursed. I know a pretrib book publisher
in California that was caught publishing a pretrib book that was a huge
plagiarism of a book that had come out several years earlier. After being
confronted by the other publisher, the offending publisher promised to withdraw
the book, which it did for a while. But sometime later the offending book was
quietly reissued - with the same old plagiarism but with a new book title to
avoid detection!
In recent years Hal Lindsey has learned what publishers have always known, that
there's far more money if you can be your own publisher or at least control the
publishing of your own books. If a person looks closely at his 1999 book,
VANISHED INTO THIN AIR (published by the same Western Front Ltd. which was,
oddly enough, his "neighbor" when his home was in Palos Verdes, California), he
discovers that more than 200 pages (out of 396 pages) are virtually carbon
copies of corresponding pages in his 1983 book THE RAPTURE - with no "updated"
or "revised" notice included!
This is robbery on a grand scale for unsuspecting buyers who've been assured
that VANISHED is a "new" book! Hal has done the same nervy thing with several of
his books, something that's allowed him to live in million-dollar-plus homes and
drive cars like Ferraris!
And what about Lindsey's THERE'S A NEW WORLD COMING which Harvest House
Publishers has ownded and been republishing for years? During the same time
Lindsey has been peddling his reportedly "new" APOCALYPSE CODE, much of which is
word-for-word the same as the Harvest House book! And there's no notice of
"simultaneous publishing" in either book! Think of the feelings of customers who
buy Lindsey's version only to find out that it's largely a mirror image of the
other publisher's version which they had bought previously! Talk about greed!
And then there's Tim LaHaye. His 1992 book NO FEAR OF THE STORM, published by
Multnomah Press Books, has an entire chapter entitled "MacPherson's Vendetta."
Relying on miscopied secondhand sources that in turn miscopied still earlier
sources, he gives the impression that my decades of rapture roots research is my
revenge for the troubles pretrib caused my family in the 1950's including my
expulsion from Biola in downtown Los Angeles. (My mother went to be with the
Lord not long after I was "raptured away" from L.A.) But LaHaye's "crystal ball"
is cracked because I didn't even wonder about the pretrib origin, or start any
research on it, until two decades later - long after the chief troublemakers had
been off the scene and forgotten! Since my origin research has never had any
reason to hide or twist any historical facts, my practice in my eight book
titles has always been to give proper credit and list sources when quoting or
discussing others including pretrib critics. In light of LaHaye's chapter about
me, maybe he (or Multnomah) can explain why he doesn't list any of my books in
his footnotes or even his bibliography!
But his bibliography does list John Bray's 1982 pretrib origin booklet,
containing only 34 pages of "origin" text, even though LaHaye has denounced
Bray's claim that Lacunza taught pretrib (the same Lacunza that Bray has long
since de-emphasized!) and even though Bray's little booklet is packed with
miscopying errors, misspelled names, and even two instances of his plagiarism!
How fair is it for LaHaye to discuss me at length without listing my books and
publishers so that readers can learn what I've actually written?
The same LaHaye book (reprinted in 1998 as RAPTURE UNDER ATTACK) is filled with
mountains of copying errors and missing footnotes, and his inclusion of Margaret
Macdonald's short 1830 revelation account has 48 missing words - the same 48
words that Thomas Ice somehow left out (which changed the meaning) when he
reproduced it three years earlier!
Why is it that Multnomah and other pretrib publishers almost never make any
changes whenever errors and dishonesty in their books are pointed out to them?
Don't they have time or money for necessary proofreading? Don't they have any
self-respect? Don't they fear God? One happy exception to publishing dishonesty
is Thomas Nelson Publishers. After I convinced that company, with a stack of
photocopies of marked pages, that David Jeremiah's and C. C. Carlson's ESCAPE
THE COMING NIGHT (1990) is a massive plagiarism of Lindsey's THERE'S A NEW WORLD
COMING, a top TNP official sent me a letter, part of which revealed that "we at
Thomas Nelson are very concerned about this matter. Accordingly, we are
destroying all our current inventory of this title and will not reprint the
book. Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention." (Anyone wishing a
copy of this TNP letter can send a SASE and request it from me: Dave MacPherson,
Box 1226, Monticello, Utah 84535. You may also view the letter by clicking
here.) But as I've shown, many pretrib publishers are a far cry from Thomas
Nelson. Their bottom line consists of three things: money, money, and money!
They don't care that pretrib is less than 200 years old and that it didn't take
over American evangelicalism much before "Doctor" Scofield's Bible in 1909! They
don't care that the late Corrie ten Boom stated in a published article that
pretrib leaders are "the false teachers Jesus was warning us to expect in the
latter days" and that pretrib caused the deaths of "millions" of Chinese
Christians when the Communists took over China!
And they don't care that the dishonest pretrib theory they peddle for money in
fact makes them accessories to the past, present, and future mass-murder of
fellow believers!
Since the same evanjellyfish publishers don't care, I intend from now on to
focus as much on their business practices and personal lives as I have on past
and present pretrib authors. If anyone can send me documented evidence in this
regard, I'll be happy to share it on the internet and in other ways.
But I really must stop. If this article has whetted your curiosity, call
800-967-7345 in South Carolina and get my book THE RAPTURE PLOT, the most
detailed and documented book on the pretrib rapture's astonishing and long
hidden history. Or you can order it through online bookstores such as
armageddonbooks.com.
As a historian I confess that I am no expert on where the different kinds of
"wrath" (e.g. Satan's wrath and God's wrath) should be placed on prophecy
charts. To me, a really important "wrath" question is whether or not the rapture
will happen before the coming of pretrib wrath against those who expose pretrib
dishonesty!
Roots of (Warlike) Christian Zionism
(or Armageddonism and Politics)
by Dave MacPherson
First, let's get something straight. Many conservative evangelicals in America
are not longing for the "world's end" or "judgment day" or a "millennium" or an
"antichrist" or even the "second coming."
Although these phrases are in their theology books, the same books emphasize
what they are waiting (and would almost die) for: the "any-moment pretribulation
rapture" which is expected several years ahead of the second coming and most
assuredly BEFORE a future "great tribulation"!
Hal Lindsey, the big rapture guru of the late 20th century, ended his
bestselling book "The Late Great Planet Earth" with the word "MARANATHA" which
pretribulation rapturists know is a code word for their rapture. And the same
literal removal from earth at any moment lurks in Lindsey's other writings.
Tim LaHaye, the current rapture tycoon whose "Left Behind" bonanza has left even
Lindsey behind, knows how to milk the rapturized masses. After his 1992
pro-rapture book "No Fear of the Storm" was published, it was revealed that he
had sloppily omitted 48 words when airing a brief 19th century document - hardly
good publicity! After sales slowed down, it was re-issued as "Rapture Under
Attack" (with the same 48 missing words) and appeared to the public to be a new
book. But not even the title change seemed to help things, and merchandiser
LaHaye knew it was time to come up with some other titles that could further his
rapture obsession.
And Jerry Falwell never seems to miss an opportunity, when preaching, to remind
his audience that he most certainly believes in the "pretribulational rapture"
view.
I can almost believe that the middle name of many Christian Right leaders is
"Rapture"!
When checking pre-19th century prophetic development, one finds that
"dispensational" thinking as well as Christian Zionistic roots had been in
existence long before the emergence of pretribulation rapturism. Even the
prophetic word "rapture" had been in print well before the 19th century - but
always in reference to only an after-the-tribulation coming and never to a
pretribulation coming.
Many are still unaware that the pretrib rapture idea was first publicly aired in
the fall of 1830 in "The Morning Watch" (hereafter: TMW), a little-known
quarterly journal published by the Irvingites (followers of famed London
preacher Edward Irving) from 1829 to 1832 in Britain. Not only was this
innovative publication years ahead of John Darby and his Plymouth Brethren
colleagues, rapturally speaking, but in it we find shocking militancy that can
be observed today in Christian Zionist preachers like John Hagee and Jerry
Falwell.
As early as the September 1830 issue of TMW (pp. 510-514) a writer declared that
only worthy Christians (which he labeled "Philadelphia") would be raptured
before "the great tribulation" and less worthy ones (labeled "Laodicea") would
be left on earth.
The September 1832 issue of the same journal (pp. 6-7) saw "Jews" as well as the
less worthy Christians left behind.
But the March 1833 issue (p. 147) said that only "the Jews" would be excluded
from the rapture.
So within a short period of time the Irvingites, while following the same
Scriptures, revealed their innate anti-Jewishness by switching from a
"church/church" dichotomy to a "church/Israel" dichotomy after convincing
themselves that only "the Jews" would deserve a future tribulation!
After their adoption of an escapist view that no organized church had ever
taught before 1830, the same early pretrib rapturists, feeling superior, began
exhibiting some vices that often come to powerless persons who suddenly obtain
power - vices like pride, hatred and persecution of others, playing God, and so
on.
Sounding like Hagee and other warlike warmongers, TMW expressed even more
delusional, rapture-inspired fantasies:
The September 1830 issue (p. 514), looking ahead to the hoped for "great
escape," declared that the raptured believers would then collectively become
"the victorious ministerer of the great tribulation" upon those left behind!
In March of 1832 the same Irvingite journal (p. 3) taught that the "vials" of
wrath in the book of Revelation "shall be poured out by the risen [raptured]
saints"!
And TMW in September 1832 (p. 27) went even further and announced that the
collective group of raptured ones will "wield the thunders of its power against
the dragon [Satan] and his angels, and cast them down from heaven"!
Note that these fanatics were more than willing to be the "chosen ones" to pour
out tribulation and wrath on those not worthy to be "chosen": the Jews.
(I'm glad to report that Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in North
Carolina is now the only North American institution that contains a complete set
of every issue of "The Morning Watch." I recently gave SEBTS my 35-year
collection of rare material including those issues and Robert Norton's valuable
1861 book.)
We've just had a glimpse of vengeful and power-crazy fanaticism within the very
earliest pretrib rapture group. But where in the Bible did those deluded
Britishers find support for such "rapture rage"? And where are the followers of
Christ commanded to pick up a sword and conquer or convert non-believers with it
- or even support such sword-bearers? Why have so many Christian Zionists, who
seemingly give more attention to governments than to their Gospel, turned the
Great Commission into the Great Commotion?
Many of the above historical details are in my 300-page book "The Rapture Plot,"
the most complete and documented history of the 176-year-old pretribulation
rapture merchandised today by Hagee, LaHaye, Falwell, Lindsey, Swaggart, Van
Impe etc. for their pet agendas - an escapist view never taught by any church
for 1800 years! If you don't have time for my book, I invite you to read my
internet items including "Pretrib Rapture Diehards," "Deceiving and Being
Deceived," "Famous Rapture Watchers," "Thomas Ice (Bloopers)," "Appendix F: Thou
Shalt Not Steal," "The Rapture Index (Mad Theology)," and "Pretrib Hypocrisy."
All of my royalties, by the way, have always gone to a nonprofit corporation and
not to me or anyone else. Interested in obtaining my unique "Plot" book? Just
call 800.643.4645 or visit online bookstores. (Type in "Scholars Weigh My
Research" on Google etc. to read endorsements of it by leading scholars.)
Do Hagee and his fellow preachers really love Jewish persons as much as they say
they do? Then why do they pervert Scripture to try to get themselves raptured
off earth before their future and final "tribulation" instead of wanting to
remain on earth during that period to minister love to ALL of earth's citizens?
Hagee stated on July 19, 2006 that "The United States must join Israel in a
pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel
and the West...." Which Bible verse inspired him to utter this - the one that
says "Love ye your enemies" or the one saying "Vengeance is mine; I will repay,
saith the Lord"?
It would appear that Hagee, Falwell and other pretrib rapture merchandisers and
Christian Zionists are trying to identify with the predicted group whose love
will "wax cold" (a la Matthew 24:12) during what Hagee etc. see in the future as
earth's darkest days!
The GJiGT Book Has the KJV Holy
Bible Scriptures IN FULL CONTEXT on this important Subject
CLICK HERE TO SEE WHAT
THE LORD JESUS CHRIST SAID ABOUT IT
IN THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW
CLICK HERE TO
SEE WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO KNOW THE TRUTH
ABOUT THE RAPTURE
CLICK HERE TO READ CORRIE TEN BOOM'S LETTER