In the middle 1820’s a religious environment began to be established among a few Christians in London, England which proved to be the catalyst from which the doctrine of the Rapture emerged. Expectations of the soon coming of our Lord were being voiced. This was no new thing, but what was unusual was the teaching by a Presbyterian minister named Edward Irving that there had to be a restoration of the spiritual gifts mentioned in 1 Corinthians chapters 12–14 just before Christ’s Second Advent. To Irving, the time had come for those spiritual manifestations to occur. Among the expected gifts was the renewal of speaking in tongues and of prophetic utterances motivated by the spirit.
Irving began to propagate his beliefs. His oratorical skills and enthusiasm caused his congregation in London to grow. Then a number of people began to experience the “gifts.”
In 1830 a revival of the “gifts” began to be manifested among some people living in the lowlands of Scotland. They experienced what they called the outpouring of the Spirit. It was accompanied with speak-ing in “tongues” and other charismatic phenomena. Irving preached that these things must occur and now they were.
On one particular evening, the power of the Holy Spirit was said to have rested on a Miss Margaret Macdonald while she was ill at home. She was dangerously sick and thought she was dying. In spite of this (or perhaps because she is supposed to have come under the “power” of the spirit) for several successive hours she experienced manifestations of “mingled prophecy and vision.” She found her mind in an altered state and began to experience considerable visionary activity.
The message she received during this prophetic vision convinced her that Christ was going to appear in two stages at His Second Advent, and not a single occasion as most all people formerly believed. The spirit emanation revealed that Christ would first come in glory to those who look for Him and again later in a final stage when every eye would see Him. This visionary experience of Miss Macdonald represented the prime source of the modern Rapture doctrine.
Many people have thought that John Darby, one of the leaders in the beginnings of the Plymouth Brethren Movement, was the originator of the Rapture doctrine. This is not the case. John Darby received the knowledge of the doctrine from someone else. His source was Margaret Macdonald. Her sickness during which she received her visions and revelations occurred sometime between February 1 and April 14, 1830. By late spring and early summer of 1830, her belief in the two phases of Christ’s coming was mentioned in praise and prayer meetings in several towns of western Scotland. In these meetings some people were speaking in “tongues” and other charismatic occurrences were in evidence. Modern “Pentecostalism” had its birth.
These extraordinary and strange events so attracted John Darby that he made a trip to the area to witness what was going on. Darby visited Miss Macdonald in her home. Though he did not approve of the ecstatic episodes that he witnessed, there can hardly be any doubt that the visions and spiritual experiences of Miss Macdonald are the source of the modern doctrine. After returning from Scotland, Darby began to teach that Christ’s Advent would occur in two phases.
Darby was a brilliant theologian with outstanding scholarly abilities. The renewal of language studies, the teaching of the doctrine of ‘dispensationalism’ came from Darby and the Plymouth Brethren. The Rapture doctrine originated with Margaret Macdonald, and Darby popularized it. Scofield and others took it over. But Darby provided the intellectual mantle that helped make it respectable.
I was brought up under this teaching. My Great grandfather in England was contemporary with Darby and was a part of the Plymouth Brethren movement. He and Darby were friends. And no, I am not an advocate of the pre-trib rapture teaching, nor am I a dispensationalist.
I do think of the parable of the ten virgins...it is imperative for us to be ready for what is to come, for we do not know the time nor the season.
There's the crux of the matter. The PRIME SOURCE (the impetus, the revelation) was NOT Scripture. It was a visionary experience of one person (in contradistinction to Scripture, which is a matter of General Revelation). And from there a few who sought to validate that visionary experience (for perhaps their own individual reasons) turned back to Scripture to find verses and re-interpret them in a novel way to validate the vision.