Post by Daniel on Jan 6, 2016 9:07:23 GMT -5
In Defense of the Pre-Tribulation Rapture
Dr. David R. Reagan
A pastor in California recently issued a video album titled,
“Left Behind or Led Astray?”
It is a very hard-hitting
documentary film that is designed to debunk the concept of a
Pre-Tribulation Rapture.
The album contains two DVD discs that run a total of 4
hours and 22 minutes. The presentation is very tedious and
highly repetitious, to the point of quickly becoming downright
boring. It was tiresome, to say the least. I wanted to shout
“Hallelujah!” when it finally ended — and in order to prepare
this review, I had to sit through it twice!
The video was produced by Joe Schimmel, the pastor of
Blessed Hope Chapel in Simi Valley, California. He also serves
as president of an apologetics ministry called Good Fight
Ministries (www. GoodFight.org). It is this ministry that actually
produced the video.
Pastor Schimmel is a Premillennialist who believes in a
Post-Tribulational Rapture. In other words, he believes that the
Rapture and the Second Coming are all one event that will
happen at the end of the Tribulation. The purpose of this video
documentary is to disparage the doctrine of a Pre-Tribulational
Rapture.
An Exercise in Character Assassination
The program begins with a very irenic spirit, emphasizing
that differences in opinion about the nature and timing of the
Rapture should not divide Christians. It also ends with the same
spirit as the host, Pastor Schimmel, gives a big bear hug to Colin
Le Noury, the director of the oldest Pre-Trib Rapture ministry in
the world — namely, The Prophetic Witness Movement Interna-
tional in England.
But between those irenic bookends there is an all-out effort to
besmirch the reputations of every major person that Schimmel consid-
ers to have played a role in the development of the Pre-Trib doctrine.
He begins with a “sinister” 16th Century Spanish Jesuit priest
named Francisco Ribera, followed by an 18th Century Baptist pastor
from Wales, Morgan Edwards, who ends up being defrocked for immo-
rality, and then quickly focuses on another “devious” Latin
American Jesuit Priest, Manuel Lacunza, who wrote in the 19th
Century. He then ties that priest to Edward Irving, a “flamboyant
and eccentric” English prophecy teacher who also ends up being
defrocked for heresy. To make matters worse, he spends most of
the four hours of the program trying to prove that the real turning
point in the development of the Pre-Trib doctrine came in 1830
when a 15 year old Scottish girl named Margaret MacDonald got
caught up in Charismania and began to experience emotional
seizures and visions that were demonic in nature.
The concept of a Pre-Trib Rapture was supposed to have
emerged from all these warped people, only to be picked up by
another Englishman, John Darby, who systematized the doctrine
and then falsely claimed he had originated it. Darby then sup-
posedly became a dogmatic and tyrannical cult leader. When the
doctrine spread to the United States, it was popularized by C. I.
Scofield in his popular study Bible. The only problem being that
Scofield was a drunk, a crook, a jail bird, a shyster and a ruffian,
among other nefarious things!
And then there is Clarence Larkin, the great illustrator of
prophetic truths who turned out to be involved in pyramidology.
And if that is not enough to turn your stomach against the Pre-
Trib Rapture doctrine, then consider some of the doctrine’s
modern day proponents like Chuck Missler and J. R. Church who
are portrayed as dabblers in astrology. Whew! By the time you
get to the end of the video you feel like you have been watching
an episode from some slimy modern-day TV reality program.
And then there is their treatment of the foremost contempo-
rary spokesman in behalf of the Pre-Trib Rapture doctrine —
namely, Tommy Ice, the director of the Pre-Trib Research Center
located in the Dallas, Texas area. He is derisively written off as
“Tim LaHaye’s bulldog.” I found that label particularly interest-
ing in view of the fact that two of the leading experts featured in
the video are Jacob Prasch and Dave MacPherson, both of whom
come across as sarcastic, mocking, vilifying pit bulls who make
Tommy Ice look tame in comparison.
An Irrelevant Focus
Personally, I found all this character assassination totally
irrelevant to the question of the validity of the Pre-Trib Rapture
doctrine. After all, the only people God has to work through here
on this earth are sinners. Take Morgan Edwards, for example.
Yes, he was defrocked when he experienced what appeared to be
an emotional breakdown and stopped attending church and
started drinking. But no mention was made of his many years of
faithful service to the church in Wales, Ireland and here in the
United States after he emigrated to this country in 1761. Nor was
there any mention of the fact that he co-founded the first Baptist
university in the American colonies, known today as Brown
University. Oh, and also, no mention was made of the fact that
he was completely restored to the church and thereafter lived an
exemplary life.
And then there are the two Jesuit priests who believed the
Rapture would occur 45 days before the end of the Tribulation
and the return of Jesus. Over and over we are reminded that they
were Catholics who were members of the sinister Jesuit Order —
as if nothing good could ever come from a Catholic priest. On
that basis, I guess we will have to fault the revival of the true
Gospel by Martin Luther in the 16th Century since he was also
a Catholic priest.
In fact, based on the reasoning of this video presentation, we will
have to throw out all of Martin Luther’s reforms since he ended up
becoming the worst anti-Semite in the history of Christendom. Keep in
mind that he wrote a pamphlet near the end of his life in which he pro-
vided the blueprint for the Holocaust. This was acknowledged by
Hitler in his book, Mein Kampf, when he described Luther as “a
great warrior, a true statesman, and a great reformer.”
Later, after he came to power,
Hitler paid further tribute to Luther by
saying: Martin Luther has been the greatest
encouragement of my life. Luther was a great man.
He was a giant. With one blow he heralded the coming
of the new dawn and the new age. He saw clearly that the
Jews need to be destroyed, and we’re only beginning to see
that we need to carry this work on.
Margaret MacDonald
And then there is Margaret MacDonald, the hyper-Charis-
matic 15 year old Scottish girl who supposedly affirmed the Pre-
Trib Rapture in her emotional trances in 1830 which are por-
trayed as demon-induced. They have an actor portraying her in
the video, and she is shown over and over and over again
throughout the tedious four hours of the program sitting in the
corner of a room rocking back and forth and looking terribly
distressed.
I grew up in an Amillennial church were I never once ever
heard the word, Rapture. After attending that church for 30 years,
if you had asked me to define the Rapture, I probably would
have said, “It is a sensation you feel when your girlfriend kisses
you.” I came to a belief in a Pre-Trib Rapture through my study
of the Scriptures, and it was years later before I ever even heard
of Margaret MacDonald.
Todd Strandberg, the founder of the Rapture Ready website, has
written, “I cannot recall ever hearing any Pre-Trib speaker say, ‘I
believe in the Rapture because Margaret MacDonald told me so.’”
He goes on to say that he searched all the prophecy books in his library
written by those with a Pre-Trib viewpoint, and he could never find
even one reference to Margaret MacDonald. He concluded, “It was
like looking for the cartoon character, ‘Where’s Waldo.’ Only in this
case, no Waldo was to be found.”
I first heard of Margaret MacDonald when a Pre-Trib critic
told me that the Pre-Trib Rapture doctrine had to be false
because it originated with a teenage Scottish girl who experi-
enced a demonic seizure. That perked my curiosity, so I went
searching for this girl, and I found her in a book written by Dave
MacPherson in 1973 entitled, The Unbelievable Pre-Trib Origin.
Since that time, MacPherson has written at least six
subsequent books on the topic, several of which come across as
being nothing but the original book with a new title. As one
writer has put it, “MacPherson has dedicated his life to full time
Rapture hating . . .”
I will never forget how amazed I was when I finished reading Mac-
Pherson’s book. That’s because the book had an appendix that con-
tained Margaret MacDonald’s prophetic vision, and I could not find
even so much as a hint of a Pre-Trib Rapture in what she supposedly
said. Here was a whole book dedicated to the proposition that this girl
was the originator of the doctrine and not one trace of that doctrine
could be found in the vision that MacPherson presents as proof!
And what is really amazing is that Pastor Schimmel admits
this in his video program when he says:
Our personal position at Good Fight Minis-
tries is that Margaret MacDonald’s end time
Rapture vision is convoluted, and we can’t say
for sure that Margaret MacDonald had a
partial Pre-Trib Rapture in mind . . .
The fact of the matter is that this young woman’s vision was
about the Second Coming, and the only novel things about it
were, first, her unbiblical concept that it would be “secret and
invisible” rather than an event that “every eye will see” (Revela-
tion 1:7), and second, that it would consist of a partial rapture of
Spirit-filled saints.
The claims concerning the importance of Margaret Mac-
Donald in the development of the Pre-Trib concept of the
Rapture are so silly that Todd Strandberg was motivated to
write:
From reading the writings of anti-Rapture
authors, one would think we Pre-Tribbers
would be reverencing MacDonald as Catho-
lics do Mary. But clearly we don’t. Pre-Trib-
bers don’t go around reciting, “Hail Margaret
full of grace, blessed art thou among visionar-
ies, pray for us sinners at the time of the Rap-
ture.”
continue reading
lamblion.com/xfiles/publications/magazines/Lamplighter_JanFeb16_Rapture-Defense.pdf
Dr. David R. Reagan
A pastor in California recently issued a video album titled,
“Left Behind or Led Astray?”
It is a very hard-hitting
documentary film that is designed to debunk the concept of a
Pre-Tribulation Rapture.
The album contains two DVD discs that run a total of 4
hours and 22 minutes. The presentation is very tedious and
highly repetitious, to the point of quickly becoming downright
boring. It was tiresome, to say the least. I wanted to shout
“Hallelujah!” when it finally ended — and in order to prepare
this review, I had to sit through it twice!
The video was produced by Joe Schimmel, the pastor of
Blessed Hope Chapel in Simi Valley, California. He also serves
as president of an apologetics ministry called Good Fight
Ministries (www. GoodFight.org). It is this ministry that actually
produced the video.
Pastor Schimmel is a Premillennialist who believes in a
Post-Tribulational Rapture. In other words, he believes that the
Rapture and the Second Coming are all one event that will
happen at the end of the Tribulation. The purpose of this video
documentary is to disparage the doctrine of a Pre-Tribulational
Rapture.
An Exercise in Character Assassination
The program begins with a very irenic spirit, emphasizing
that differences in opinion about the nature and timing of the
Rapture should not divide Christians. It also ends with the same
spirit as the host, Pastor Schimmel, gives a big bear hug to Colin
Le Noury, the director of the oldest Pre-Trib Rapture ministry in
the world — namely, The Prophetic Witness Movement Interna-
tional in England.
But between those irenic bookends there is an all-out effort to
besmirch the reputations of every major person that Schimmel consid-
ers to have played a role in the development of the Pre-Trib doctrine.
He begins with a “sinister” 16th Century Spanish Jesuit priest
named Francisco Ribera, followed by an 18th Century Baptist pastor
from Wales, Morgan Edwards, who ends up being defrocked for immo-
rality, and then quickly focuses on another “devious” Latin
American Jesuit Priest, Manuel Lacunza, who wrote in the 19th
Century. He then ties that priest to Edward Irving, a “flamboyant
and eccentric” English prophecy teacher who also ends up being
defrocked for heresy. To make matters worse, he spends most of
the four hours of the program trying to prove that the real turning
point in the development of the Pre-Trib doctrine came in 1830
when a 15 year old Scottish girl named Margaret MacDonald got
caught up in Charismania and began to experience emotional
seizures and visions that were demonic in nature.
The concept of a Pre-Trib Rapture was supposed to have
emerged from all these warped people, only to be picked up by
another Englishman, John Darby, who systematized the doctrine
and then falsely claimed he had originated it. Darby then sup-
posedly became a dogmatic and tyrannical cult leader. When the
doctrine spread to the United States, it was popularized by C. I.
Scofield in his popular study Bible. The only problem being that
Scofield was a drunk, a crook, a jail bird, a shyster and a ruffian,
among other nefarious things!
And then there is Clarence Larkin, the great illustrator of
prophetic truths who turned out to be involved in pyramidology.
And if that is not enough to turn your stomach against the Pre-
Trib Rapture doctrine, then consider some of the doctrine’s
modern day proponents like Chuck Missler and J. R. Church who
are portrayed as dabblers in astrology. Whew! By the time you
get to the end of the video you feel like you have been watching
an episode from some slimy modern-day TV reality program.
And then there is their treatment of the foremost contempo-
rary spokesman in behalf of the Pre-Trib Rapture doctrine —
namely, Tommy Ice, the director of the Pre-Trib Research Center
located in the Dallas, Texas area. He is derisively written off as
“Tim LaHaye’s bulldog.” I found that label particularly interest-
ing in view of the fact that two of the leading experts featured in
the video are Jacob Prasch and Dave MacPherson, both of whom
come across as sarcastic, mocking, vilifying pit bulls who make
Tommy Ice look tame in comparison.
An Irrelevant Focus
Personally, I found all this character assassination totally
irrelevant to the question of the validity of the Pre-Trib Rapture
doctrine. After all, the only people God has to work through here
on this earth are sinners. Take Morgan Edwards, for example.
Yes, he was defrocked when he experienced what appeared to be
an emotional breakdown and stopped attending church and
started drinking. But no mention was made of his many years of
faithful service to the church in Wales, Ireland and here in the
United States after he emigrated to this country in 1761. Nor was
there any mention of the fact that he co-founded the first Baptist
university in the American colonies, known today as Brown
University. Oh, and also, no mention was made of the fact that
he was completely restored to the church and thereafter lived an
exemplary life.
And then there are the two Jesuit priests who believed the
Rapture would occur 45 days before the end of the Tribulation
and the return of Jesus. Over and over we are reminded that they
were Catholics who were members of the sinister Jesuit Order —
as if nothing good could ever come from a Catholic priest. On
that basis, I guess we will have to fault the revival of the true
Gospel by Martin Luther in the 16th Century since he was also
a Catholic priest.
In fact, based on the reasoning of this video presentation, we will
have to throw out all of Martin Luther’s reforms since he ended up
becoming the worst anti-Semite in the history of Christendom. Keep in
mind that he wrote a pamphlet near the end of his life in which he pro-
vided the blueprint for the Holocaust. This was acknowledged by
Hitler in his book, Mein Kampf, when he described Luther as “a
great warrior, a true statesman, and a great reformer.”
Later, after he came to power,
Hitler paid further tribute to Luther by
saying: Martin Luther has been the greatest
encouragement of my life. Luther was a great man.
He was a giant. With one blow he heralded the coming
of the new dawn and the new age. He saw clearly that the
Jews need to be destroyed, and we’re only beginning to see
that we need to carry this work on.
Margaret MacDonald
And then there is Margaret MacDonald, the hyper-Charis-
matic 15 year old Scottish girl who supposedly affirmed the Pre-
Trib Rapture in her emotional trances in 1830 which are por-
trayed as demon-induced. They have an actor portraying her in
the video, and she is shown over and over and over again
throughout the tedious four hours of the program sitting in the
corner of a room rocking back and forth and looking terribly
distressed.
I grew up in an Amillennial church were I never once ever
heard the word, Rapture. After attending that church for 30 years,
if you had asked me to define the Rapture, I probably would
have said, “It is a sensation you feel when your girlfriend kisses
you.” I came to a belief in a Pre-Trib Rapture through my study
of the Scriptures, and it was years later before I ever even heard
of Margaret MacDonald.
Todd Strandberg, the founder of the Rapture Ready website, has
written, “I cannot recall ever hearing any Pre-Trib speaker say, ‘I
believe in the Rapture because Margaret MacDonald told me so.’”
He goes on to say that he searched all the prophecy books in his library
written by those with a Pre-Trib viewpoint, and he could never find
even one reference to Margaret MacDonald. He concluded, “It was
like looking for the cartoon character, ‘Where’s Waldo.’ Only in this
case, no Waldo was to be found.”
I first heard of Margaret MacDonald when a Pre-Trib critic
told me that the Pre-Trib Rapture doctrine had to be false
because it originated with a teenage Scottish girl who experi-
enced a demonic seizure. That perked my curiosity, so I went
searching for this girl, and I found her in a book written by Dave
MacPherson in 1973 entitled, The Unbelievable Pre-Trib Origin.
Since that time, MacPherson has written at least six
subsequent books on the topic, several of which come across as
being nothing but the original book with a new title. As one
writer has put it, “MacPherson has dedicated his life to full time
Rapture hating . . .”
I will never forget how amazed I was when I finished reading Mac-
Pherson’s book. That’s because the book had an appendix that con-
tained Margaret MacDonald’s prophetic vision, and I could not find
even so much as a hint of a Pre-Trib Rapture in what she supposedly
said. Here was a whole book dedicated to the proposition that this girl
was the originator of the doctrine and not one trace of that doctrine
could be found in the vision that MacPherson presents as proof!
And what is really amazing is that Pastor Schimmel admits
this in his video program when he says:
Our personal position at Good Fight Minis-
tries is that Margaret MacDonald’s end time
Rapture vision is convoluted, and we can’t say
for sure that Margaret MacDonald had a
partial Pre-Trib Rapture in mind . . .
The fact of the matter is that this young woman’s vision was
about the Second Coming, and the only novel things about it
were, first, her unbiblical concept that it would be “secret and
invisible” rather than an event that “every eye will see” (Revela-
tion 1:7), and second, that it would consist of a partial rapture of
Spirit-filled saints.
The claims concerning the importance of Margaret Mac-
Donald in the development of the Pre-Trib concept of the
Rapture are so silly that Todd Strandberg was motivated to
write:
From reading the writings of anti-Rapture
authors, one would think we Pre-Tribbers
would be reverencing MacDonald as Catho-
lics do Mary. But clearly we don’t. Pre-Trib-
bers don’t go around reciting, “Hail Margaret
full of grace, blessed art thou among visionar-
ies, pray for us sinners at the time of the Rap-
ture.”
continue reading
lamblion.com/xfiles/publications/magazines/Lamplighter_JanFeb16_Rapture-Defense.pdf