Subject: Fwd: Rapture, etc,
From: Dave MacPherson <post1226@hotmail.com>
To: <alrogers@gmx.com>
Date: Tuesday, June 19, 2001
Dear Brother Al:
You've probably known that in recent years pretrib rapture
promoters like Thomas Ice have swamped pretrib sites with pretrib
origin articles that are sloppy and at times even dishonest. I re-
cently wrote the following article (which may well be my last one on
this topic since after 30 years of research I'm starting to exper-
ience burn-out!). Am now sending this to a number of non-pretrib
sites and hoping that some, including yours, will be led to air it.
Lord bless!
Rapturously in Christ alone, Dave
"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 ("tribulatio 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.)
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!
|