Darby was not the first dispensationalist.
Ephraem (A.D. 373) wrote extensively on the Rapture, but his writings were not translated from Latin until 1995.
See “Final Warning” by Jeffrey ISBN 0-921714-24-6
The Ephraem quote of which you speak is from PSEUDO- Ephraem. Meaning the FALSE Ephraem. As opposed to the well known true Ephraem. Ephraem the Syrian, who lived AD 306 to 373. Pseudo-Ephraem, writing years after the true Ephraem, wrote under a false name, falsely ascribing his writing to Ephraem the Syrian. He falsely impersonated the true Ephraem. No one knows the false Ephraem’s true name.
On the second coming, the writings of the true Ephraem, Ephraem the Syrian, are in perfect agreement with Barnabus, Justin Martyr, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Hyppolyutus, Victorinus, Lactanius, Methodius, etc., and vitually everyone else who wrote in those times.
Everyone of these writers listed here were what we would call today, post-tribulationists, that is, they spoke of only one second coming taking place at the end of the tribulation. None of them said a thing about a pretrib rapture, or a two stage second coming. They obviously had never heard of it, else they would have addressed the issue. They weren’t shrinking violets afraid to address the issue of two very different doctrines of the second coming, which one is right? far from it, they in fact wrote to set forth what they believed to be the true doctrines handed to them from the Apostles.
So, did the false Ephraem actually believe in a pretrib rapture and a two stage second coming? If so, he assuredly didn’t get it from the true Ephraem. If so, he was a virtual loner, as no one else back then believed it.
Truth is, modern pretribers, casting about trying to find at least one early centuries writer in support of their doctrine, interpret P-D’s (Pseudo-Ephraem) words to mean what they want it to say.
Quoting Dave McPherson here, the last section of P-E “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!” The same post-tribulational coming that the real Ephraem wrote about, in other words.
To summarize, P-E couldn’t have meant a pretrib rapture in the section Grant Jeffery quotes from, because in P-E’s last section he has the resurrection and rapture taking place at the Matt. 24 coming.