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“No, that was invented by JN Darby via the visions of Margaret MacDonald.”

Do you remember your response to Uncle Chip on the MacArthur thread?

“You really don’t want to start engaging in guilt by association, now do you?”

When he posted this:

“without ever seeming to recognise that preterism is a Jesuit-Romanist invention, not a Protestant Reformed teaching.

ORIGINS Preterism was first advanced in 1604 by Jesuit Luis de Alcasar to destroy the Reformed Protestant teaching that the papacy was Mystery Babylon, the Great Whore and the historical Antichrist.”

715 posted on 05/08/2007 10:34:06 AM EDT by topcat54

No, that was invented by JN Darby via the visions of Margaret MacDonald.

The first time this was presented, I thought it was ignorance. So, I patiently informed otherwise. I shall do so again:

" . . . he [Grant Jeffrey] quotes many who had a definite understanding of the difference between the two phases of our Lord's coming, particularly His coming for His own people prior to the Tribulation and the revealing of the man of sin . . . "

Jeffrey's most important find was his discovery of a statement in an apocalyptic sermon from the fourth century. The author is designated "Pseudo-Ephrem" because there is some question whether or not it was written by Ephrem of Nisibis (c.306-373), a Syrian church father. Some prefer a later date for the sermon (attributed to him) called, "Sermon on the End of the World," suggesting it may have been written sometime between 565 and 627. For our purpose the real date is immaterial, for even allowing it to have been written as late as the seventh century proves that early Christians (1,100 years before John Darby) saw the Rapture happening before the Tribulation.

Here is the statement in English, translated from its Greek and Latin versions that date to that period. Challenging Christians to holy living (always the purpose of rapture teaching), he wrote:

Why therefore do we not reject every care of earthly actions and prepare ourselves for the meeting of the Lord Christ, so that he may draw us from the confusion, which overwhelms all the world? ... All the saints and elect of God are gathered together before the tribulation, which is to come, and are taken to the Lord, in order that they may not see at any time the confusion which overwhelms the world because of our sins. 3
--Pseudo-Ephrem, A.D. 372 (emphasis added by La Haye).

There can be no doubt this fourth- (or at the latest seventh-) century Bible scholar saw the saints gathered together by the Lord before the Tribulation. His statement has all the marks of a pre-Tribulation rapture of the saints as distinct from the glorious appearing, which our Lord promised would occur "immediately after the tribulation of those days" (Matthew 24:29). Admittedly, Ephrem only saw the Tribulation lasting 42 months or three-and-a-half years (as taught later in the sermon). The fact remains, however, that he saw a pre-Tribulation rapture of the church long before the nineteenth century, which some have

erroneously
claimed

to be the time when such a teaching first arose.

Considering that less than 10 percent of the ancient Christian books ever written have been preserved to our day, we have no doubt that even though the details of the pre-Tribulation rapture were not widely recognized back in the fourth century, there must have been other Bible students besides Ephrem who had discoved the "blessed hope" teaching. . . .

There were also other documented cases where scholars of earlier than the ninetheenth century, discussed a Pre-Trib Rapture.

One current era strident Bible 'expert' offered $500 to anyone who could prove an example of someone discussing such earlier than Darby et al. He lost his $500 and had to withdraw the challenge.

In my case, I shall consider any further trotting out of the Darby straw dog by anyone of our common hereon discussants of that perspective to be an example of deliberately peddling lies and untruths. Further, I shall logg such in my construction on reality as evidence of the degree of flawedness which which they also approach Prophetic Scriptures.