23:10
¶ And six years thou shalt sow thy land,
and shalt gather in the fruits thereof: 11
But the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still; that the poor
of thy people may eat: and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat.
In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard, and with thy oliveyard.
12 Six days thou shalt do thy work, and
on the seventh day thou shalt rest: that thine ox and thine ass may rest, and
the son of thy handmaid, and the stranger, may be refreshed. 13 And in all things that I have said unto you
be circumspect: and make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it
be heard out of thy mouth. 14 Three
times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year. 15 Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened
bread: (thou shalt eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded thee, in the
time appointed of the month Abib; for in it thou camest out from Egypt: and
none shall appear before me empty:) 16
And the feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou
hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of
the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field. 17 Three times in the year all thy males shall
appear before the Lord GOD. 18 Thou
shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread; neither shall
the fat of my sacrifice remain until the morning. 19 The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou
shalt bring into the house of the LORD thy God. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in
his mother’s milk.
The Hebrews were to have a sabbath for the
land, not harvesting in the seventh year and permitting the poor and animals
eat freely. This also applied to grapes and olives.
The sabbath of rest for the seventh day of
the week is given: a day of rest also for animals, servants, and foreigners who
worked for the Hebrews.
In a world filled with idol worship and
devil worship and all under the pretense of worshipping gods, little g, the
Hebrews were not to even mention their names.
There were three feasts they were to keep
in a year; the feasts of unleavened bread, of harvests, and of ingathering.
These three times in the year all males were to appear before God in a place
appointed and to keep a feast.
The feast
of harvest is also called the feast
of weeks.
Exodus
34:22a And thou shalt observe the feast
of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest…
The feast
of ingathering, when everything is brought in, is also called the feast of tabernacles.
Deuteronomy
16:13 Thou shalt observe the feast of
tabernacles seven days, after that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine:
Deuteronomy
16:16 Three times in a year shall all
thy males appear before the LORD thy God in the place which he shall choose; in
the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of
tabernacles: and they shall not appear before the LORD empty:
There are specific instructions given
later for these feasts. It is interesting to note the three feasts, the three
times they were to come before the Lord. Three times in the Bible the phrase come up hither, meaning ‘come up here,’
is used in different contexts.
Proverbs
25:7 For better it is that it be said
unto thee, Come up hither; than that thou shouldest be put lower in the
presence of the prince whom thine eyes have seen.
Revelation
4:1 After this I looked, and, behold, a
door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of
a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee
things which must be hereafter.
Revelation
11:12 And they heard a great voice from
heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a
cloud; and their enemies beheld them.
Three times in one verse the pre-Flood
patriarch, Enoch’s, translation from earth to God’s presence is mentioned.
Hebrews
11:5 By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see
death; and was not found, because God had translated
him: for before his translation he
had this testimony, that he pleased God.
It is interesting to imagine that the translation of the church, popularly
called ‘the rapture’, a word not found in the Bible, takes place in three steps
with Christ and those who were resurrected at His resurrection being first.
Matthew
27:52 And the graves were opened; and
many bodies of the saints which slept arose,
And then two more times mentioned in
Revelation of the pre-Tribulation saints and then of those who come to Christ
during the Great Tribulation. However, we have enough to do with the clearer
statements in the Bible regarding our relationship with God in His ministry of
reconciling man to Himself, things that we are not doing, to spend time arguing
about the more obscure doctrines of the Bible.
However, several early church “fathers” like Hermas, Cyprian, Victorinus, and Ephraim the Syrian spoke of the
church being removed before God’s wrath is poured out at the end of time.
Christians today who do not believe in the Translation
of the church, popularly called ‘the rapture,’ will say that preacher of the early 1800’s, John Nelson Darby,
invented the doctrine. He did popularize it in opposition to a world that
regarded evolutionary progress as truth and that mankind and Christians in
particular were headed toward a ‘golden age’
of righteousness and peace.(6)
But, he obviously did not invent the doctrine, merely
gave it his own twist. As John Reeve wrote
two centuries before Darby’s, in the 1600’s, “Then shall the Elect, by the
Decree or Voice of Jesus Christ, the Archangel,
first appear out of the Graves, and, in the twinkling of an Eye, with all
the Elect that are then living, as one Man, with a glorious Shout, shall, with
distinct immortal Bodies, like unto their God, ascend to meet the Lord in the
Air, and with him and his mighty angels, as swift as Thought, enter into that
vast new Heaven and new Earth above the Stars….(7)
My intent here is not to approve of any preacher’s
particular doctrines or idiosyncrasies or even personal opinions or heresies
but simply to show that the doctrine was not invented by Darby, as some would
say. Only the timing of when it would happen, before the Great Tribulation
mentioned in Matthew and Revelation, during, or at the end of it were in contention
among those that believed in it. Although I have not read his work there is
supposedly another pretribulation rapture commentator named Morgan Edwards from
the century prior to Darby.
Other references to the idea of the church being
physically removed are from such diverse preachers and commentators as Jesuit
priest, Francisco Ribera, in 1590, Puritan Cotton Mather in the 1600s, and John
Gill in the 1700s.(8) In the first
decade of the 1700s Matthew Henry even uses the phrase, “rapture in the clouds,”
in his commentary on 1Thessalonians 4:17 which is so commonly free on the
internet I don’t need to give you directions here.
Darby’s view was that what he called “the rapture”
must take place before the return of Christ. The Bible seems to say that then
there is the thousand year reign of Christ and the general judgment follows.
My point in bringing all of this up is to only say
that a doctrine can exist in the Bible and either be misunderstood, not be
known by most believers, or that those against it or for it may misrepresent it
to justify their own beliefs. The Jews believed that Israel would be restored
to its past greatness, not seeing the Cross or the Resurrection of their
Messiah. Many Christians of the 1800s, the age of the so-called great revivals,
were Postmillennialists and believed they would turn the world over to
Christian principles and values without Christ present so, no rapture and
Christ’s rule coming after we had perfected the world. We must always remember
that our understanding is incomplete until we stand before our Saviour.
Early eighteenth century Bible commentator, Matthew
Henry, reported, apparently from older Jewish authorities, that it was common
for the Gentiles to boil (see Ezekiel 24:5 for seethe as to boil) a kid (goat)
in its mother’s milk and sprinkle that over fields to ensure a good harvest in
the future. God forbade such magical nonsense. What is important here is that
God has set up three feasts for the Hebrews to remember events by, to
commemorate what has happened.
(6)
J.N. Darby, “The Rapture of the Saints,” in The
Heavenly Hope, or, What is the Hope of the Christian? What is the Hope of the
Church? (Dublin: Dublin Tract Repository, 1844).
(7)
John Reeve, “An Epistle to a Kinsman,” in Joyful
News from Heaven (London: Francis Cosinet, 1658), 60.
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