Origin of the Doctrine of the Rapture
November
4th 2006
This is indeed a prestigious day for this tiny website, and
for all those who love the truth around the world.
Since
the late 1970’s, there has been an ongoing battle between two
camps concerning this doctrine of the Rapture.
The first being those who have tried to show that this
“Doctrine of the Rapture” is modern, rather than something that
was believed some 1900 years ago by the Apostles and then by
Apostolic Fathers of the first, second, and third century.
In showing the Rapture to be a recent doctrine, various
people have published findings that this doctrine had its origin
in the Irvingite Revival in the England in the 1800’s - a pre-Azusa
Street revival / apostolic church where members spoke in other
tongues, prophesied and routinely had dreams and visions.
In all revivals, there have been things that have been true
and false, and the Irvingite Revival was no exception in that
regard. In the case of the doctrine of the Rapture,
it was “discovered” by one particular “prophetess” who had a series
of “Visions” and “prophecies” concerning “a secret coming”,
or “a secret catching away” by Christ.
The word rapture was not coined at that time.
All
of this would have been a big nothing, except one of the students
of this revival was Doctor C.I. Scoffield, who just happen to
put information garnered from this woman’s prophesies, and visions
into his annotated Baptist Study Bible, where it was dubbed
“The Rapture.” Perhaps
with some desire, to obscure the source of this great revelation
of “The Prophet CI Scoffield” – who for decades was accredited
with this revelation.
Several books have been written describing in great detail,
this woman, her revelations, and how it came to pass that Pentecostal
false doctrine, in a process of monkey see monkey do-ism, was
passed on between the usual suspects of know-nothing, wannabe
bible teachers among evangelicals, fundamentalists, Pentecostals,
and in more recent days Charismatic churches.
On the other side, we have a man who has made himself a multi-millionaire
profiting / trafficking from this doctrine. His books and movies in the last half-decade
have caused a great resurgence in this doctrine in the church. So much so, that an assortment of soft-brained
preachers, teachers, and evangelists, in a great variety of
denominations, have been increasingly teaching that if one does
not believe in a pre-tribulation rapture, they can not even
be saved.
These fundamentalist fanatics don’t know the history of their
churches or denominations, nor do they have any idea or care
as to what their founders’ doctrinally believed concerning the
second coming of Christ. The
truth is that their most heralded teachers and Bible scholars.
DL Moody, Billy Sunday, Charles Spurgeon, RA Torrey, Charles
Finney, John Calvin, Menno Simmons, the list goes on and on
. . . And not a single
one of these believed in any pre-tribulation Rapture – the reason
was that no such doctrine existed for them to believe or not
believe in. Consequently,
these scholars had greatly differing opinions on when the second
coming of Christ would occur -- but not a secret rapture. By teaching such utter nonsense today, these
arch-rapturists are ascribing all their leaders and founders
to hell as well.
In recent years this rapture profiteering multi-millionaire
has sunk in tens of thousands of dollars to try to prove the
ancientness of his pet doctrine, as he has now a vested interest
in seeing that his franchised doctrine stays as his cash cow
for as long it can. So in corrupt human reasoning, it is easy to understand why he has
tried to hard to make all the wood, hay, and stubble he could
out of these selective quotes from a epistle written by the
Roman Catholic priest / Saint named Ephraem who in 374 ad wrote
an epistle on “End Times.”
The utter folly of pretending to build sound fundamentalist
and Pentecostal doctrine off of the writings of a fourth century
Roman Catholic Priest is mind numbing to say the least, and
has the potential to open the flood gates of hell in Bible believing
circles in this vast-vast area of untapped writings for establishing
ones pet false doctrine.
In response to this, we cited fully the text in question,
and posted last year an examination of said text, and not surprisingly,
we found that what the writer had said was taught in this text
was not at all the case. This
document is posted and annotated on this website for anyone
to personally examine and decide for themselves as to what was
actually written.
What this espoused “Rapturist” did in his book is a very normal
tactic of taking selective quotes or even edited quotes and
using these to bolster a pre-determined claim.
This is a big reason why there is so much bad teaching
these days. So many people just want to prove their point
and are willing to fudge the Greek, the Hebrew, or the quotes
they use from commentaries and books.
The question comes, “How can a preacher cherry pick, and construct
truth,” truth that these ungodly lying preachers and teachers
expect their followers to stake their life and soul upon it?
In the case of what we were about to
post, it was purely a gift of the Lord that was found where
we were doing research for an article on a completely different
subject.
Tertullian
wrote the passage in about 200 AD, approximately 174 years before
the much-ballyhooed Epistle of St. Ephream’s.
It is located in a series of Epistles outlining the law
and doctrine Tertullian was creating concerning Christian wives
and their wearing burka’s, Christian virgin’s and their wearing
veils, rules regarding Christian marriage, and mounting rules
concerning a wife’s church duties.
Much of this, Tertullian admits he has no basis to speak
of because these things are not mentioned in scripture, the
gospels, the epistles, nor spoken of by any Apostolic father
before him – the way he wants to speak of these matters. We can not explain how this arch-Rapturist
passed up this passage – the only possibility is that with the
context around it, he would then be forced to explain how amid
this sea of obvious falsities – he could cherry pick this out
as truth. Or perhaps
it might be more that this passage destroys his doctrine, as
it has been falsely reordered beginning with this female “prophetess”
in the Irvingite Revival.
We
believe the latter is true because the Irvingites were known
students of the writings of the Apostolic Fathers.
Therefore, it is reasonable to assume, the prophetess
in question not only knew of, but may have also extensively
read the passage of Tertullian below, before she gave her fictitious
visions and prophecies containing her altered rendition of this
passage in that was termed in her day “The secret coming of
Christ or “The secret catching away of the church.”
Tertullian:
On the rapture
For
why did the Lord foretell a “woe to them that are with child,
and them that give suck,” (Matthew
24:19 The context here is of the “earthly church fleeing” at
the rise of the Antichrist as spoken of by Daniel, that the
“Great Shoa” has come, such as has never been seen upon the
earth.)
except because He testifies that in that day (In the day of the Great Shoa there shall be a) disencumbrance of the encumbrances
of children (This is an absolutely
breath taking interpretation of this passage by Tertullian. Here Tertullian’s has made out of whole cloth
the desolation of children – that babes and children shall cease.) (And these) Will (Cease to) be an inconvenience. (Tertullian declares children
in light of preaching the gospel children are “an encumbrance”
and “an inconvenience.) It is to marriage, of course, that those encumbrances appertain;
(So Tertullian’s inconvenience
goes beyond just babies and small children but engulf the whole
of marriage as well) but that (“woe”) will not
pertain to widows. At the first trump of the angel
(Christian wives) will spring forth disencumbered (from their babies, from their children that give suck, and
presumably from their “duties” as a wife [this sounds a lot
like feminism] and they) will freely bear (The message of the
Gospel across the earth.) to the end (The time of the last
trump, regardless of) whatsoever pressure and persecution, (Shall be set before them) with no burdensome
fruit of marriage heaving in the womb, none in the bosom. (They will not deny the faith. As previously encumbered and
inconvenienced wives did in earlier persecutions.) To his wife Book I
Chapter 5
So what we have here,
is a made up fantasy concerning a rapture or catching away taking
place at the first trumpet where of babies and children that are being breast fed are
whisked off so that these woman can fearlessly preach the gospel.
In
looking at this, we can see how the teaching of the rapture
is a word for word spiritualization of this passage – so what
is here spoken of is a catching away at the first trumpet of
babes and small children --
in the rapture it is taught there will be a catching away of
babes in the Lord and the Lord’s children.
And the mothers preaching
and dying for the faith are simply spiritualized to be the churches
of tribulated believers – who die for their faith as punishment
for not having believed sooner.
The flaw of the secret catching away at the
first trumpet is that it does not coincide with Matthew 24,or
with the record in the book of Revelation.
Revelation
8:6 And the seven angels
which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound. (So here the first trumpet sounds)
Revelation
7:14 And
I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These
are they which came out (perishing
during) of great
tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them
white in the blood of the Lamb.
Revelation
13:1 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and
saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having
seven heads and ten horns, (The Antichrist) and
upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
See the problem
is, in Matthew 24, there are no trumpets.
In 2 Thessalonians, there is only a last trumpet, and
in the Book of Revelation, the first trumpet does not mesh with
the doctrine Tertullian is trying to espouse here.
So we have to say
that Tertullian’s knowledge of the Bible in this area is a bit
flaky at best. No doubt, any 19th Century Bible
student of eschatology (And
we refer here specifically to the Irvingites)
would have instantly known that any mention of “the first
trump” or “the first trumpet” would have instantly sunk any
vision or prophecy given with such an obvious erroneous detail.
So removing this detail and spiritualizing the babes
and sucklings as believers and the women as churches of tribulation
believers, suddenly we can clearly see before us, the whole
of the doctrine of the Rapture in this passage.
Now if for a moment
we would pretend that Tertullian was so great a prophet here
(Which he was not at all.) we have someone prophesying that at the first trumpet, in
the church, children would cease to be born, families would
cease and even marriage. –
If someone would ask me what I thought this prophet was prophesying
of, I would answer: He is speaking of the day in which we live
in, that the trumpet of God is sounding and the judgment of
God is going on all around us, but none can see it or hear it. This is evidenced, in that for a generation
now, we have had 70% divorce rates in the church, the Sunday
school programs, except where they have bus programs, are empty. The population in all westernized Christian is waning. In the census taken, married couples for the
first time in the US, and that means in the church, are a minority. The church has hit the curse of God as prescribed
in Deuteronomy, where before our eyes the many are becoming
the few and soon their enemies shall begin to surround and devour
them.
There are things afoot in our midst in this hour that eye hath not
seen nor ear hath heard – and it is the sound of the coming
judgments.
2
Peter 1:8-9
For if these things be in you, and
abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful
-- But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see .
. .
