"DECEIVING, AND BEING DECEIVED"
By Dave MacPherson
You've probably heard that the pretribulation rapture view was published
by a Rev. Morgan Edwards in 1788 and also by a Medieval writer called
Pseudo-Ephraem 1000 years earlier.
The Edwards claim (promoted by John Bray and copied by Frank Marotta,
Thomas Ice, Tim LaHaye etc.) is based on a 1980 book by Thomas McKibbens and
Kenneth Smith, while the claim for Pseudo-Ephraem (promoted by Grant Jeffrey
and copied by Thomas Ice, J. R. Church, Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, Chuck
Missler, Dave Hunt, Hal Lindsey etc.) rests on a 1985 book by Paul
Alexander.
Not only have these promoters covered up and twisted what McKibbens/Smith
and Alexander have written, but they've also concealed and perverted Morgan
Edwards' and Pseudo-Ephraem's own words!
Let's focus first on Morgan Edwards (hereafter: M.E.).
Promoters see a pretrib rapture in the following words by M.E.:
"...the dead saints will be raised, and the living changed at Christ's
'appearing in the air' (I Thes. iv, 17); and this will be about three years
and a half before the millennium...."
If promoters had been sure of their pretrib claim, they never would have
had to collusively cover up the following M.E. statements that contradict
their claim:
On p. 14 M.E. described the "Turkish or Ottoman empire" (which began
around 1300 A.D.) as the "beast that started out of the earth" (Rev. 13's
second beast). (Since Bray etc. repeatedly claim that M.E. had only a
"futurist" outlook, without which M.E. couldn't have logically expected a
pretrib rapture, Bray deliberately skips over the historicism in M.E.'s
"Ottoman" remark - historicism being the belief that the tribulation,
covering many centuries, began at some point in the distant past.)
On p. 20 M.E. wrote that the "wicked one" (II Thess. 2:8) has "hitherto
assumed no higher title than 'the vicar general of Christ on earth'" and
described "Antichrist" as "popery" and a "succession of persons." (Promoters
emphasize M.E.'s comments about the "last" Pope and ignore M.E.'s view that
"popery" had "hitherto" (for many centuries) been playing the role of II
Thess. 2:8's "wicked one" while wearing a "mask" (as he put it) - a first
beast that historicism could easily see during the second beast's reign!)
Since historicism - and not preterism or futurism - is the only one of
these three schools which often thinks "years" when reading "days" in the
Bible, it isn't surprising to find such year/day historicism in M.E.
On p. 19, for example, while discussing Rev. 11's two witnesses, M.E.
says "there are no more than about 204 years between now and their death: I
should therefore expect that their appearance is not far off." (Bray quotes
M.E.'s very next sentence, on another matter, but ignores this one! Could a
futurist ever apply a couple of centuries - instead of only 1260 days - to
those witnesses?)
Something else. The authoritative 1980 book about M.E. that inspired the
claim promoted by Bray, Ice, LaHaye etc. never classified M.E.'s view as "pretrib,"
or even remotely resembling it, and the book's authorship had the same
conclusion when later interviewed by both phone and correspondence!
And when Thomas Ice's "Pre-Trib Perspectives" newsletter (Sep./Oct.,
1995) ran his own article promoting Edwards as a teacher of "pretribulationism."
he couldn't find any of the heavyweight authorities on Edwards, that he
listed and quoted, evaluating that 18th century pastor as a pretrib!
In light of the fact that Edwards embraced historicism (which can see
some future things yet to be fulfilled) and not pure futurism (which sees no
past tribulational fulfillment), it's easy to believe that Edwards, like
some other historicists of that period, saw a three-and-a-half-year period
at the end of a 1260-year tribulation - the same percentage a futurist would
have if he were to see a period of three and a half days at the end of a 1260-day tribulation; such a percentage would of course be a posttrib view!
At least I don't have to juggle or cover up historical data to come to
such a conclusion!
But now it's time to analyze Pseudo-Ephraem (hereafter: P-E), the name
attached by scholars to manuscripts that were possibly, but not probably,
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!" (Like Morgan Edwards and Manuel Lacunza, Pseudo-Ephraem has the nasty, non-pretrib habit of blending the
rapture with the final advent!)
In the July/Sep., 1995 BIBLIOTHECA SACRA, Dallas Seminary's journal,
Thomas Ice and his co-author Timothy Demy pulled off one of the worst
revisionisms of P-E ever: when summarizing Section 10 they carefully deleted
what P-E included between "trumpet" and "judgment" (deleted the distinctive
I Thess. 4 aspects in that posttrib setting), giving unsuspecting readers
this utterly misleading condensation: "A trumpet will sound, calling forth
the dead to judgment."
But P-E says much more, as can be seen; he 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!
A moment ago I said that Edwards and Lacunza had the same rapture/advent
blending. Here's evidence. Edwards in his 1788 work (pp. 21-22) speaks of
"the son of man in the clouds, coming to raise the dead saints and change
the living....The signs of his coming, in the heavens, will be 'the trump of
God [I Thess. 4:16], vapour and smoke, which will darken the sun and moon
[Acts 2:19,20]....'"
Lacunza's 1812 work THE COMING OF MESSIAH IN GLORY AND MAJESTY (Vol. I,
p. 113) declares: "...you will find St. Paul and the Gospel speaking one and
the same thing: He shall send his angels and they shall gather his elect
from the four winds; who can be no other than those very ones who are in
Christ, who sleep in Jesus." (A few have assumed that there's pretrib in an
earlier Catholic, Franciscus Ribera, but in his 16th century Revelation
commentary he viewed Rev. 12's "woman" in the tribulation as the Christian
Church!)
But let's go back to Pseudo-Ephraem.
Dr. Paul Alexander, the leading authority whose book inspired the P-E
claim, is portrayed in Jeffrey's book, FINAL WARNING, as "perhaps the most
authoritative scholar on the writings of the early Byzantine Church." But
this misleading statement, designed to make readers think that Professor
Alexander supports the P-E claim, covers up the fact that this world famous
scholar sees not even a smidgen of pretrib in the same Medieval writer!
In fact, Alexander writes that the phrase "taken to the Lord" (which has
become a bonanza for pretrib history revisionists) means "participate at
least in some measure in beatitude." While Jeffrey and Ice do include this
"beatitude" phrase, all P-E promoters carefully avoid revealing that the
Catholic doctrine of "beatitude," according to the NEW CATHOLIC
ENCYCLOPEDIA, has to do with "the highest acts of virtue that can be
performed in this life" - works on earth and not being raptured off earth!
(Elsewhere in his sermon P-E repeats the importance of doing "penance,"
because of "our sins," so that church members will be "sustained" during the
tribulation!)
In fact (again), Alexander has two summaries (textual and outline), in
chronological order, of P-E's endtime events. And guess what. Alexander
demonstrates both times that P-E saw only one future coming ("Second Coming
of Christ" for the "punishment of the Antichrist") which follows (!) the
great tribulation ("tribulatio magna lasting three and a half years") -
claim-smashing summaries that self-serving promoters, with malice
aforethought, have jointly swept under their "secret rapture" rug!
Since "Dr." Thomas Ice is the most rabid pretrib defender who's long
promoted the (false) claims for John Darby and, more recently, Edwards and
Pseudo-Ephraem, and at the same time covered up or twisted the (true) claims
for Margaret Macdonald and the Irvingites, it's fitting to quote the first
sentence of a recent news item:
"WorldNetDaily reported on March 7 that a Texas district court has
ordered the Tyndale Theological Seminary to pay fines totalling $170,000 for
issuing 34 theological degrees without receiving approval from the state
education agency."
This is the Fort Worth seminary that gave the title of "Dr." to Ice -
which is at least an improvement over "Dr." C. I. Scofield who, in the
1890's, began deceitfully adding "Dr." to his name instead of waiting for
some institution to confer it upon him!
Well, I didn't mean to write a book here; I merely wanted to share some
long covered up facts about pretrib dispensationalism. My 300-page book THE
RAPTURE PLOT (with footnotes, index, bibliography, appendices, plus great
commendations from leaders, and obtainable by calling 800-967-7345) has the
sort of info I've just outlined plus much, much more.
If you decide to get a copy of my PLOT book, I won't have to tell you
about the rest of the bizarre history of the 171-year-old, British-born pretrib rapture view.
I won't tell you that the same promoters have used the same unscrupulous,
"twistorical" methods to try to discredit Margaret Macdonald, the real
pretrib originator in early 1830, and cover up the fact that other partial
rapturists who followed her and taught the same thing have all been
classified as pretribs!
I won't tell you that promoters who claim that John Darby was pretrib as
early as 1827 won't admit that he then had only his "heavenly church" theme,
that he was still clearly posttrib as late as a Dec., 1830 article (he was
waiting "to meet Him in the air in order to His judging of the nations"),
that he wasn't clearly pretrib before 1839, that in 1839 Darby's only
pretrib basis was Rev. 12's "man child" symbol (which symbol had been Edward
Irving's pretrib basis since 1831!), that in his 1991 book (p. 100) R. A.
Huebner admitted that his source for his 1827 claim for Darby could just as
easily refer to something completely un-rapturesque, and that Ice since 1991
has covered this up and continues to declare, while searing his conscience,
that Huebner "documents" his belief that Darby was pretrib in 1827!
I won't tell you that all of Darby's so-called "thoughts" which promoters
for generations have claimed led him to pretrib (thoughts like the "Gentile
parenthesis," "Church/Israel dichotomy," and the "literal method") were
taught by others much earlier and that he subtly plagiarized them!
(Dispensationalist scholars must have known that airing even a tiny fraction
of this would have been a deathblow to their system!)
I won't tell you that throughout most of the 1800's the leading church
historians - whether Irvingite or (Plymouth) Brethren - overwhelmingly
credited the Macdonald/Irvingite orbit with pretrib; none credited Darby!
I won't tell you that in 1880, a year after his Christian conversion, C.
I. Scofield was in jail in St. Louis for forgery (he'd stolen his
mother-in-law's life savings by means of a real estate scam; would most
non-Christian crooks do this?), that after he deserted his wife and children
she divorced him in 1883 and he remarried three months later and covered
everything up, and that as late as 1899 he still owed thousands of dollars
he'd stolen 20 years earlier and had been writing phony IOU's to keep from
paying back the money!
I won't tell you that after Darby's death in 1882, the editor of his many
books, William Kelly, plotted to steal credit for pretrib away from the
Macdonald/Irvingite connection and give it posthumously to Darby, that he
achieved this between 1889 and 1903 by changing and covering up portions of
early Irvingite and Brethren documents, and that 20th century British and
American publishers have conspired to continue this historical revisionism
in order to enjoy phenomenal sales of pretrib rapture material!
And I won't tell you that during the past century and a half, some of the
most influential pretrib rapture books, by British as well as American
authors, have been filled with sloppy scholarship and, what's worse,
breathtaking amounts of plagiarism and even occultic teachings mixed in with
evangelical theology!
Or that my PLOT book and my later book THE THREE R'S reveal, with
comparison quotes and in more or less chronological order, embarrassing
plagiarism in writings by John Darby, Joseph Seiss, E. W. Bullinger, Hal
Lindsey, Tim LaHaye, Merrill Unger, Jerry Falwell, Ed Dobson, Ed Hindson,
Charles Ryrie, David Jeremiah, C. C. Carlson, Paul Tan, Chuck Missler, and
Jack Van Impe, for starters!
Finally, let me say that although I've been researching rapture roots
more than 30 years now, I've been into computers only a relatively short
time. The discovery of the extent to which misinformation about the pretrib
origin has been circling the earth at computer speed still boggles my mind!
But authors are only part of the problem. After all, if an author gets
royalties of, say, 10 percent, the other 90 percent goes to the publisher -
which means that publishers can have much more incentive to keep churning
out bestselling books that are filled with historical error and even
deliberate deception simply because they receive far more money than the
authors!
Which leads me to give you some of my reactions to publishers that are
less than pleasant. After I gave proof to a well-known publisher in the
Chicago area that one of its authors had plagiarized one of my books, I
received a sympathetic letter from the publisher expressing concern; but no
changes to my knowledge were made in the dishonest book which was kept in
print, and neither my publisher nor I was ever financially reimbursed.
I know a pretrib book publisher in California that was caught publishing
a pretrib book that was a huge plagiarism of a book that had come out
several years earlier. After being confronted by the other publisher, the
offending publisher promised to withdraw the book, which it did for a while.
But sometime later the offending book was quietly reissued with the same old
plagiarism but with a new book title to avoid detection!
In recent years Hal Lindsey has learned what publishers have always
known, that there's far more money if you can be your own publisher or at
least control the publishing of your own books. If a person looks closely at
his 1999 book, VANISHED INTO THIN AIR (published by the same Western Front
Ltd. which was, oddly enough, his "neighbor" when his home was in Palos Verdes, California), he discovers that more than 200 pages (out of 396
pages) are virtually carbon copies of corresponding pages in his 1983 book
THE RAPTURE - with no "updated" or "revised" notice included!
This is robbery on a grand scale for unsuspecting buyers who've been
assured that VANISHED is a "new" book! Hal has done the same nervy thing
with several of his books, something that's allowed him to live in
million-dollar-plus homes and drive cars like Ferraris!
And what about Lindsey's THERE'S A NEW WORLD COMING which Harvest House
Publishers has owned and been republishing for years? During the same time
Lindsey has been peddling his reportedly "new" APOCALYPSE CODE, much of
which is word-for-word the same as the Harvest House book! And there's no
notice of "simultaneous publishing" in either book! Think of the feelings of
customers who buy Lindsey's version only to find out that it's largely a
mirror image of the other publisher's version which they had bought
previously! Talk about greed!
And then there's Tim LaHaye. His 1992 book NO FEAR OF THE STORM,
published by Multnomah Press Books, has an entire chapter entitled "MacPherson's
Vendetta." Relying on miscopied secondhand sources that in turn miscopied
still earlier sources, he gives the impression that my decades of rapture
roots research is my revenge for the troubles pretrib caused my family in
the 1950's including my expulsion from Biola in downtown Los Angeles. (My
mother went to be with the Lord not long after I was "raptured away" from
L.A.) But LaHaye's "crystal ball" is cracked because I didn't even wonder
about the pretrib origin, or start any research on it, until two decades
later - long after the chief troublemakers had been off the scene and
forgotten!
Since my origin research has never had any reason to hide or twist any
historical facts, my practice in my eight book titles has always been to
give proper credit and list sources when quoting or discussing others
including pretrib critics. In light of LaHaye's chapter about me, maybe he
(or Multnomah) can explain why he doesn't list any of my books in his
footnotes or even his bibliography!
But his bibliography does list John Bray's 1982 pretrib origin booklet,
containing only 34 pages of "origin" text, even though LaHaye has denounced
Bray's claim that Lacunza taught pretrib (the same Lacunza that Bray has
long since de-emphasized!) and even though Bray's little booklet is packed
with miscopying errors, misspelled names, and even two instances of his
plagiarism! How fair is it for LaHaye to discuss me at length without
listing my books and publishers so that readers can learn what I've actually
written?
The same LaHaye book (reprinted in 1998 as RAPTURE UNDER ATTACK) is
filled with mountains of copying errors and missing footnotes, and his
inclusion of Margaret Macdonald's short 1830 revelation account has 48
missing words - the same 48 words that Thomas Ice somehow left out (which
changed the meaning) when he reproduced it three years earlier!
Why is it that Multnomah and other pretrib publishers almost never make
any changes whenever errors and dishonesty in their books are pointed out to
them? Don't they have time or money for necessary proofreading? Don't they
have any self-respect? Don't they fear God?
One happy exception to publishing dishonesty is Thomas Nelson Publishers.
After I convinced that company, with a stack of photocopies of marked pages,
that David Jeremiah's and C. C. Carlson's ESCAPE THE COMING NIGHT (1990) is
a massive plagiarism of Lindsey's THERE'S A NEW WORLD COMING, a top TNP
official sent me a letter, part of which revealed that "we at Thomas Nelson
are very concerned about this matter. Accordingly, we are destroying all our
current inventory of this title and will not reprint the book. Thank you for
bringing this matter to our attention." (Anyone wishing a copy of this TNP
letter can send a SASE and request it from me: Dave MacPherson, Box 1226,
Monticello, Utah 84535.)
But as I've shown, many pretrib publishers are a far cry from Thomas
Nelson. Their bottom line consists of three things: money, money, and money!
They don't care that pretrib is less than 200 years old and that it didn't
take over American evangelicalism much before "Doctor" Scofield's Bible in
1909! They don't care that the late Corrie ten Boom stated in a published
article that pretrib leaders are "the false teachers Jesus was warning us to
expect in the latter days" and that pretrib caused the deaths of "millions"
of Chinese Christians when the Communists took over China! And they don't
care that the dishonest pretrib theory they peddle for money in fact makes
them accessories to the past, present, and future mass-murder of fellow
believers!
Since the same evanjellyfish publishers don't care, I intend from now on
to focus as much on their business practices and personal lives as I have on
past and present pretrib authors. If anyone can send me documented evidence
in this regard, I'll be happy to share it on the internet and in other ways.
But I really must stop. If this article has whetted your curiosity, call
800-967-7345 in South Carolina and get my book THE RAPTURE PLOT, the most
detailed and documented book on the pretrib rapture's astonishing and long
hidden history. Or you can order it through online bookstores such as
http://armageddonbooks.com.
As a historian I confess that I am no expert on where the different kinds
of "wrath" (e.g. Satan's wrath and God's wrath) should be placed on prophecy
charts. To me, a really important "wrath" question is whether or not the
rapture will happen before the coming of pretrib wrath against those who
expose pretrib dishonesty!
Dave MacPherson
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