Todd Strandberg gives the following reference on http://www.raptureready.com/:
Epharaem the Syrian said, in 373 AD, “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.”
Whether you agree with the idea or not, it is still not a new one.
we must disagree on this non-essential doctrine. the historical and orthodox teaching has always been one coming of the Lord and then Judgement Day. the tribulation is a spiritual one, not physical.
According to Dave MacPherson, the Epharaem quote does not support rapture theory because it is taken out of context:
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!"
http://poweredbychrist.homestead.com/files/articles/deceiving.htm