I see from the dates that I have arrived upon this thread a little bit late in the discussion to expect dialogue with all who were posting a few months ago, but not too late to provide a bit of input about the origins of this doctrine.
Q.: Why do you suppose no material seems to be available about the doctrine of the rapture before the 19th century?
A.: Because it wasn’t there!
I was doing a bit of research on that subject some time ago at Southern Wesleyan University library, which has some fairly old books in its collection, so I was tracking down some of the older sources to check for differences in the way they treat the doctrine, and to my surprise, they treated it very little at all, and certainly not in the manner that most of the discussion takes place in our time. In fact, the two oldest sources I found dealing with the Second Advent were dated 1865 and 1879, and neither of them had anything about a rapture.
I consulted a Bible encyclopedia, and the information there pointed me to the name of John Darby as a person considered the originator of the rapture theory. Darby was an Anglican priest who suffered a leg injury, and while recuperating, he had a significant religious experience. Apparently feeling he had received some sort of revelation from the experience, he began having disagreements with others in the Anglican Church, after which he began meeting in cell groups, drawing others with him, and also became increasingly critical of the established church.
A group eventually was formed and broke away from the Anglican Church, and in 1830 they officially founded a group known as the Plymouth Brethren. There was an emphasis within this group on what they referred to as “rediscovered truths.” All the Church Fathers and the leaders of the Reformation were rejected as having been “deceived by man-made doctrines,” and only the Brethren were understood by them to have the “True Word.” They held to a strict literal interpretation of the Bible, resulting in some beliefs that sounded offbeat, to say the least.
One example of problems caused by strict literal interpretation was, Darby concluded from the Psalms (particularly Psalm 22) that at least some of the suffering Jesus endured was for punishment. But Jesus had no need to be punished, so the theory is suspect. Another example is the separation of meaning between two similar biblical phrases, “Kingdom of God” and “Kingdom of Heaven.” Darby viewed the Kingdom of Heaven as a reference to the Davidic Kingdom, and the Kingdom of God as a universal, world-wide Kingdom. As I will show a bit later, that separation in meaning between the two is a false distinction. Yet another example of Darby’s thinking is his view that the church is not seen as a fulfillment of God’s covenant, but rather as a “parenthesis,” a period of God’s dealing with the Gentiles between God’s “actual” two-fold plan of dealing with the nation of Israel.
The rapture developed out of this separation of Israel and the church. In places where the church created a problem in his interpretation, he simply had the church “raptured out.” This was particularly true in Revelation where, because the word “church” does not appear anywhere from chapter 3 to the last chapter, he concludes a rapture occurred. Some of his followers even developed the idea of a “secret rapture,” which would occur without anyone left on earth knowing that it had happened—rather strange when you consider how many people would suddenly be missing.
Darby brought his teaching to the U.S. during the Civil War and Reconstruction—a situation in which people were ripe for a message of God’s judgment. Darby wanted to form a new group in the U.S., but the strange occurrence was that people accepted the teaching but remained in their own denominations. His early followers in the U.S. owned a publishing house, so he acquired the power of the printed word, so that his teaching spread rapidly, and an interest in the Second Advent rose accordingly. James H. Brookes, a Presbyterian minister, started the Niagara Bible Conferences, which ran from 1875-97, providing another format for Darby’s teachings to take root.
In Darby’s system, the emphasis placed on “rightly dividing the word of truth led to a “discovery” of “dispensations.” Dispensational teaching holds that there have been seven different ages or “dispensations” in the dealings of God with humankind. They are: the dispensation of (1) innocence, (2) conscience, (3) human government, (4) promise, (5) law, (6) grace, and (7) kingdom. In 1909, Cyrus Scofield published the Scofield Reference Bible. Dispensationalism was made popular by Scofield, who spoke of “four gospels” found in the N.T.: (1) the gospel of grace, (2) the gospel of the Kingdom, (3) the “everlasting gospel,” and (4) what Paul referred to as “my gospel.”
HERE’S HOW HE DESCRIBED IT:
(1) The Gospel of the Kingdom was preached by Jesus and John the Baptist, until it was “interrupted” when the Jews rejected it.
(2) The gospel of grace entered in, the “Church Age” began, and Jesus “changed over” to this gospel and preached it until His death.
(3) Paul began to preach “his” gospel, and this is the one we are also to preach, because it is an “improvement” over the one Jesus taught.
(4) After the Church Age, the “everlasting gospel” will be taught until the millennium comes, then the Jews will preach the Gospel of the Kingdom once more.
Scofield said the Bible is to be interpreted differently according to which of three groups is reading it: Jew, Gentile, or Christian. The Jews will be left on earth as God’s people during the millennium; the Gentiles will go to heaven after the Rapture; the Jews will be saved by repentance, while the Gentiles are saved by faith; and the church functions as a “parenthesis” in God’s plan.
On this idea of the church as a “parenthesis”: It is based on an interpretation of Daniel’s prophecy of the “70 weeks.” Scofield said that 69 of the 70 weeks have passed already, and the “dispensation of grace,” or the “Church Age,” is an interruption until the 70th week, which is interpreted to be the tribulation period. The millennium was supposed to happen at the First Advent, says Scofield, but the Jews rejected it. If it had been accepted, he says, THE CROSS WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN THE MEANS OF SALVATION, and the O.T. SACRIFICES WOULD HAVE BEEN THE MEANS INSTEAD! Scofield had no theological training, he knew no biblical languages, and he wrote his notes on Scripture in between the lines, as though correcting or adding to it.
In 1919, the Philadelphia School of the Bible was founded with Lewis Sperry Chafer on the faculty. Chafer later founded the Evangelical Theological College in 1924. It was renamed Dallas Theological Seminary in 1936, and is now a very well-known school. Guess who came through this educational system and has become a prolific writer with Second Advent emphasis?—Hal Lindsey, author of The Late Great Planet Earth, The 1980’s: Countdown to Armageddon, Apocalypse Code, and several other books with an end-times flavor and emphasis to them.
WELL, WHAT ARE WE TO MAKE OF ALL THIS?
First of all, I would simply point out just how many odd groups have come out of the 19th century interest in the Second Advent. For one, the Millerites, follows of William Miller, who later became the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, who in their early days predicted that Jesus would return in 1844. As I recall, he led a group of people to a place somewhere in Missouri, which was where Jesus was supposed to appear. Many people sold all their possessions and followed him there. Another group were the Russellites, followers of Charles Taze Russell, who later became the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who began from an emphasis on the Kingdom similar to the follolwers of John Darby (but I do not intend to imply there was any connection between the groups). The Darbyites, as they were known, seem to have been simply one more group of separatists, among many, who had some peculiar and offbeat ideas. Their group seems to have had more influence and gained more acceptance than the others for a number of factors:
(1) some wealthy backers joined the movement;
(2) some of those backers just happened to own a printing press and offered it for use;
(3) Darby was well-known as a hard worker, and he worked tirelessly, particularly in getting published materials distributed as widely as he could.
OBJECTIONS I WOULD RAISE IN LIGHT OF WHAT I’VE PRESENTED:
(1) I object to the notion that there is any difference of meaning between the phrases “Kingdom of God” and “Kingdom of heaven.” The idea falls apart when we take into consideration the synoptic nature of the first three gospels and place them side by side to compare the parallel passages in each. It becomes quickly apparent that most of the differences are accounted for by comparing Matthew’s preference of “Kingdom of Heaven” with Luke’s preference for “Kingdom of God.” But even more plainly, it really falls apart when we read Matthew 19:23-24, a context in which Jesus uses both phrases interchangeably in talking about the same thing!
(2) I also object to the idea of the Church as a “parenthesis.” It is extremely hard to maintain such a view when reading Ephesians 1:23 where the church is described as the “fullness of Christ.”
(3) Dispensationalism says the Church is never mentioned in the O.T., and has nothing to do with the O.T. But in Ephesians 5:31-32, Paul clearly views the church as the continuation of God’s relations with His people.
(4) Dispensationalism claims that Israel and the Church are separate and will forever remain so. But Ephesians 2:11-16 clearly declares they are to be one, with the “middle wall of separation” broken down. Also, in comparing the O.T. and the N.T. usage of terms like “chosen,” “elect,” “people of God,” etc., they are used synonymously in describing the people of both Old and New Covenants.
(5) The “70 weeks of Daniel” are problematic in dispensational thinking. The problem is, these 70 weeks are based on a very definite and literal understanding of a “week” as a literal 7-year period of time. Yet on the other hand, when they reach the “69th” week, suddenly the strict literal interpretation becomes an extremely loose one, and the “69th” week becomes stretched out for nearly 2,000 years—and still counting. Then they turn right back around, and make the interpretation a literal one again, and the “70th week” becomes a literal seven-year period known as “The Great Tribulation.”
Most Bible scholars agree that the prophecy of the 70 weeks had to do with the time that would elapse between the time of the prophecy and the “times of the Gentiles,” interpreted by most to be the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
ONE QUESTION THAT COMES TO MIND:
What was the position of the church before the 19th century, since it clearly was not modern-day rapture beliefs?
Well, rather than speaking of a rapture, they simply spoke of the return of Christ. Where the millennium was concerned (1,000-year reign of Christ on earth), they were post-millennial. They knew Christ was to return, and they assumed when it did not happen as soon as they thought, it meant He would return after 1,000 years had passed. After 1,000 years had passed since the First Advent, they remained post-millennial, and assumed it meant that the 1,000 years had not started immediately after Christ’s Ascension as they had originally thought.
WHAT ARE THE THINGS WE CAN KNOW FOR SURE?
(1) Jesus promised, “I will return.”
(2) He said it will come “like a thief in the night,” and we cannot know “the day or the hour.”
(3) Most importantly, He told us: “Therefore, be ready. For at such an hour as you think not, the Son of Man is coming to you.”
