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 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 Darby
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 of The
Rapture 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 1600’s, and John Gill in the 1700’s.[3] In the first decade of the 1700’s 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.
Again, the issue
is when that happens and how close it is to the general judgment of the dead.
Darby’s view was that it must take place before the return of Christ. The Bible
seems to indicate 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 believed they would
turn the world over to Christian principles and values without Christ present.
We must always remember that our understanding is incomplete until we stand
before our Saviour.
[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.https://openlibrary.org/works/OL245574W/Joyful_news_from_heaven_or_The_last_intelligence_from_our_glorified_Jesus_above_the_stars
[3]
Mal Couch, ed., Dictionary of
Premillennial Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1996).
No comments:
Post a Comment