Exodus
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.
Leviticus 25:1 ¶
And the LORD spake unto Moses in mount Sinai, saying, 2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say
unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land
keep a sabbath unto the LORD. 3 Six
years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard,
and gather in the fruit thereof; 4 But
in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the
LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. 5 That which groweth of its own accord of thy
harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed:
for it is a year of rest unto the land. 6
And the sabbath of the land shall be meat for you; for thee, and for thy
servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy stranger that
sojourneth with thee, 7 And for thy
cattle, and for the beast that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof
be meat.
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. It is interesting how Christians who
bring forward the Ten Commandments and the Law given to Moses in general as
applicable to Christians don’t also regard the Sabbath of rest, a day of the
week given to man and beast to rest from their labors, as also applicable.
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.[1]
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….[2]
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.[3]
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.
[1]
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).
[2]
John Reeve, “An Epistle to a Kinsman,” in Joyful
News from Heaven (London: Francis Cosinet, 1658), 60.
[3]
Mal Couch, ed., Dictionary of
Premillennial Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1996).
No comments:
Post a Comment