Many modern-day Christians presume that today’s patented eschatological views have been around since the dawn of the Christian Era. Furthermore, many believe that their particular view of eschatology is the same as that of the Apostles and early Church Fathers. Rarely do you run across an honest scholar like the late Dr. John Walvoord, who readily admitted that his premillennial dispensational view of eschatology was unheard of before the 19th century.
Most Christians today prefer to avoid looking into the history of modern-day schools of eschatology. Apparently, insecurities over their personal end-time beliefs render any study of the history of modern-day schools of eschatology too uncomfortable for them to conduct. While this avoidance of such a vital component to the understanding of modern-day eschatological views leaves them ignorant of how we derived these various schools of thought, it does allow today’s Christians to cherry-pick the Scripture and the writings of the early Church Fathers in an attempt to prove that their personal view of eschatology has been the church’s orthodox view all of the way back to the 1st century.
It is important for us to understand that our view of Bible prophecy is neither proved nor disproved by its longevity. This is not to say that the views of the divinely inspired authors of Scripture and their contemporaries are unimportant. Obviously, their views give credence to all similar views today. The problem, however, is found in the fact that we have no detailed spelling-out or systematizing of the eschatological views of Scripture’s authors or their contemporaries in any of their writings. Thus, we are left to sparsely glean from their writings what little we can, as well as to surmise from these sparse gleanings whatever suppositions we can without any pretense of dogmatism.
Instead of the longevity of our eschatological views, what really proves or disproves them is how well they square with the clear teachings of Scripture. While the Bible may not tell us everything that we want to know about prophecy, it does tell us everything that we need to know. Whereas it doesn’t provide us with enough information to produce haughtiness, it does provide us with enough information to produce hope. Within the needed information provided for us by the Word of God may be found certain clear-taught prophetic tenets. It is to the degree that our personal beliefs about the end-times line up with these clear biblical tenets that we may determine the validity of our eschatology.
The late J. M. Carroll erroneously concluded that the Baptist Church was proven to be the only New Testament church by the fact that Baptists alone can trace their footprints back to New Testament times. Ever since the publishing of Carroll’s book, The Trail of Blood, Landmark Baptists have insisted that they are not Protestants, but the present-day inheritors of New Testament Christianity that began with John the Baptist and has continued unabated down through the centuries.
Although J. M. Carroll’s romp down through history puts Baptists in bed with some pretty strange bedfellows, not to mention heretics; my real fault with his work is the faulty premise upon which it is based. To be a New Testament church does not require tracing one’s footprints back to John the Baptist’s first baptismal service at the river Jordan. Instead, it only requires a church to be solidly and soundly based upon the teachings of the New Testament.
Likewise, the validity of our understanding of Bible prophecy should be gauged by how Scripturally sound it is, not by the fact that we can trace it back to a sermon of the Apostle Paul’s. Granted, it should never be in contradiction of a Pauline Epistle, but it doesn’t have to be traced back to three points and a poem first preached by Paul in the city of Philippi and then handed down through succeeding generations to the adherents of our particular present-day school of eschatology. Don’t get me wrong, it would be nice if we could do this; but unfortunately we can’t. We simply lack the historical wherewithal to build such airtight cases for our present-day end-time beliefs.
Just as Landmark Baptists consider anyone scrutinizing Carroll’s version of Baptist history a heretic, many today see any scrutiny of the history of their particular brand of eschatology as heresy. This fact was recently brought home to me in a most undeniable way. On a recent Sunday evening, I taught a lesson in my church on the history of today’s most popular school of eschatology. I merely told the history of its development by presenting to my congregation the facts, figures and dates. Afterward, I was told that some visitors in our evening service left the church irate, feeling that I had poked fun at their personal beliefs. Needless to say, I was dumbfounded, especially in light of the fact that I personally share some of their end-time beliefs.
Upon further query and contemplation, I came to the conclusion that what really irritated these folks was the discovery that their particular brand of eschatology had been fleshed out over time, instead of dropped out of heaven into their predecessors’ laps and passed down from one generation to the next untainted. Any serious study of Christian history, whether it is the history of the English Bible or that of modern-day schools of eschatology, will lead the honest student around many unexpected turns and down into some deep dark valleys, where both shining saints and unscrupulous scoundrels will be encountered. Still, this fleshing out of divine providence in the preservation of both God’s Word and its eternal truths should not cause us undue consternation; after all, what other feet are available for God’s use in the running of His Word and its truths down through the ages than man’s frail feet of clay?
Apparently, many Christians today are like the rich man who lifted up his eyes in torment; that is, they believe that the Word of God—“Moses and the prophets”—is insufficient to lead their “brethren” to faith (Luke 16:19-31). They believe that God’s Word is only credible when carried by miraculous rather than mortal messengers. Yet, as Abraham pointed out to the rich man, the Word of God stands on its own merits and is sufficient in and of itself to lead men to faith. It needs not the additional authentication of supernatural heralds or spotless histories. This should not be misinterpreted to mean that it is anything less than crucial for us to practice what we preach. Instead, it should only be understood to mean that the imperfections of God’s witnesses can do nothing to take away from the perfection of God’s Word.
Far from causing us great distress, the fact that the eschatological truths of the Bible are being figured out over time and are becoming clearer to us as we approach the end of time is a truth that is actually hinted at in the Scripture itself. For instance, in Genesis 5:21 we are told that Enoch’s son was named “Methuselah.” According to Genesis 5:27, Methuselah lived to the ripe old age of 969, which makes him the oldest man in the Bible. It is not Methuselah’s longevity, however, but his unusual moniker that serves our purposes at this point.
The Hebrew name “Methuselah” actually means “when he dies it shall come.” A quick computation of biblical dates will reveal that the flood came the same year Methuselah died. Granted, Methuselah’s cryptic moniker failed to specify what was coming and when it would come. It only pointed to the fact that whatever it was would happen when Methuselah died.
Although this first prophecy of the coming flood was nonspecific, later prophesies were very specific, even to the point of pinpointing the flood’s starting point. Take for example Genesis 6:3, where God specifically warned the prediluvian world that it had but 120 more years to repent. Even more specific is Genesis 7:4, where God precisely pinpointed for Noah that in seven days it would begin to rain for forty days and forty nights. Notice, as the flood drew closer the prophecies concerning it became clearer and clearer.
How many times do we read in the New Testament that the disciples failed to understand prophecy until after Jesus fulfilled it? Time and time again we are told that it was not clear to Christ’s disciples until He pointed them back to it in His explanation of it or until they looked back upon it themselves through the eyes of the Spirit with 20/20 hindsight (Mark 9:31-32; Luke 9:43-45; 18:31-34; 24:1-8, 25-27, 44-48; John 2:18-22; 12:12-16; 14:25-26; 16:4). Likewise, much of the Bible’s unfulfilled prophecy may remain unclear to Christ’s present-day disciples until we approach the time of its fulfillment. Only when all of the pieces begin falling into place will we be able to see the whole prophetic puzzle clearly.
In Matthew 24:33-34, Jesus explains how the generation that sees all of the predicted signs of the times fulfilled in their time will not pass away until all of prophecy is fulfilled. The closer we get to the end, the more signs of the times will appear, and the easier it will be for us to read the signs and to know with an ever-increasing certainty that the coming of Christ is imminent. It’s like going on a long trip. When you first start out there are no signs along the road telling you about your destination. As you get closer, however, signs about your destination begin to appear. Finally, once you arrive, all of the signs are about your destination.
As soon as all of the signs of the times appear, we’ll know that we’ve arrived at the end of time. Furthermore, we’ll be able to better interpret the signs as we see all of the pieces to the prophetic puzzle falling into place before our very eyes. It is this generation that will not only see prophecy fulfilled, but will also be far more capable of figuring it out than all previous generations. Still, until then, each succeeding generation should see prophecy clearer than the generation that proceeded it.
The Histories of Amillennialism and Postmillennialism
The historical tracks of both amillennialism and postmillennialism lead us back to the same individual, a man named Augustine (354-430 AD). Augustine was the Bishop of Hippo, which is the ancient name of the present-day city of Annaba, Algeria. Not only is Augustine numbered among the Church Fathers—the early and influential theologians and writers of Christianity—but he is also deemed to have had more influence on the development of Western Christianity than any other member of this illustrious band.
Augustine is famous for having framed some of Christianity’s most important doctrines; such as, the doctrines of original sin and just war. He is also known as “the father of amillennialism.” This distinction is due to the fact that he is the first known person to have ever taught that the millennium is not to be understood literally, but figuratively, as the time between the first and second Advents of Christ.
Although known as “the father of amillennialism,” postmillennialism must also be traced back to Augustine, since prior to him all views of Christ’s Second Coming appear to have been premillennial. This is not to say that Augustine was a postmillennialist; he was definitely an amillennialist. It is to say, however, that without Augustine, postmillennialism would have had no figurative interpretive foundation upon which to be built.
It may be argued that the novel notion of postmillennialism—the church’s eventual triumph over the world—had initially surfaced prior to Augustine during the days of Constantine’s “Christianizing” of the Roman Empire, a process which began with Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313 AD. Still, Augustine was never caught up in such wishful euphoria. Instead, he insisted in his classic work, The City of God, that Christians focus on the promotion of heaven rather than on earthly politics.
Lacking the optimism necessary to give birth to postmillennialism, Augustine planted the pessimistic seeds that germinated into amillennialism. The birth of postmillennialism would be postponed to a later time, since the embryonic euphoria conceived in the church during the days of Constantine ended up violently aborted by the rise of militant Islam in the 7th century, not to mention the fact that it had already been considerably dimmed by the blackening darkness of the Dark Ages (476-1000 AD).
It was not until the time of the Protestant Reformation that the church finally emerged from the darkness of the Dark Ages. In spite of the fact that God used them to lead the church out of papal bondage and back into “the perfect law of liberty” (the Bible), the Protestant Reformers, like the Catholic Augustine before them, were a pessimistic lot of amillennialists. There was, however, a glaring difference between the amillennialism of the Protestant Reformers and that of Augustine who predated them by more than a thousand years; namely, the Reformers firm belief that the pope was the antichrist and the Roman Catholic Church “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH” (Revelation 17:5).
Though the Catholic Augustine would have never imagined such a belief in his day, the Protestant Reformers so popularized it in theirs that it is still widespread among today’s amillennialists. It is also very popular among present-day premillennialists. That such a belief possesses an unpartisan appeal to both amillennialists and premillennialists may be attributed to its undeniable credence, which is shored up in no small part by the documented dark deeds of the Roman Catholic Church from the days of the Dark Ages to the present.
It was not until the post-Reformation era that postmillennialism actually appeared on the eschatological horizon. Its systematizing and spread is attributed to a liberal, freethinking, English preacher by the name of Daniel Whitby (1638-1726). As an alternative to the negativism of amillennialism—the belief in inevitable decay—the positivism of postmillennialism—the belief in eventual utopia—quickly caught on, becoming the dominant eschatology of Europe. One can hardly blame the Europeans for preferring this new positive belief in a triumphant church and a glorious future to the old pessimistic belief in impending tribulation and a gloomy future. Still, the validity of our eschatological views is not founded upon our personal preferences, but upon their scriptural soundness.
It is Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), the predominant preacher in the First Great Awakening, who is credited with the championing and popularizing of postmillennialism in America. With throngs of sinners being converted to Christianity in America’s Great Awakenings, and with Christian societies being spawned everywhere for everything from the abolition of slavery to temperance, it was easy for America’s Christians to believe that the millennium—the golden age of Christianity—was at the door. Furthermore, it was easy for Christians to persuade their fellow-countrymen of an impending golden age as well, since optimism over the future was already sweeping the country, thanks to things like revolutionary social reforms and tremendous advancements in science and industry.
As it’s forever destined to be in a world at enmity with God, the optimistic bubble of postmillennialism was soon burst. One of the main pins to prick it was the French Revolution, which essentially served as a declaration of all out war on the Christian faith. While America’s postmillennialists were imagining heaven on earth in the near future, hell on earth had broke out in far away France.
Despite the fact that this fallen world dealt postmillennialism one severe blow after another, its optimistic bubble was briefly reinflated following World War I. With the founding of President Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations, the precursor to today’s United Nations, and the gullible dubbing of World War I as “the war to end all wars,” the world was once again susceptible to the postmillennialist’s presumption of a prevailing church presiding over a paradisiacal planet. Unfortunately, this naive notion, which was articulated at the time by the credulous words of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain—“Peace in our time”—was soon trounced by the goose-stepping troops of Nazi Germany’s Third Reich.
Reduced to synonymy with liberalism’s social gospel following World War II, it appeared that the sun was setting on the day of postmillennialism as a major school of eschatology. Then, surprisingly, it made an unforeseen comeback. Today, it is once again embraced by many optimistic souls under the guises of Dominionism, Reconstructionism and the “Kingdom Now” movement, all of which are chiefly found within Charismatic circles.
The Histories of Premillennialism and Premillennial Dispensationalism
As we’ve previously pointed out, premillennialists are divided up into two camps. There are futurists and there are historicists. Within each camp there are differing schools of thought, and within these varying schools of thought there are numerous and divergent sects. To trace all of these paths down their particular historical trails would require an historical tracker as competent in research as Daniel Boone was in the wilderness, not to mention a book as bulky as the U.S. tax code. For these reasons, we’ll not be taking off down every historical pig trail of premillennialism in this section. Instead, we’ll limit ourselves to the history of the two major interpretive views of premillennialism and to the fascinating story behind premillennialism’s most popular present-day school of thought.
Premillennial historicism adheres to the belief that Christ will return prior to the millennium and in inauguration of it. It also teaches that Bible prophecy is being fulfilled throughout history; some has been fulfilled in the past, some is being fulfilled in the present, and some will be fulfilled in the future. Of all of the contemporary views of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, premillennial historicism appears to be the only one traceable back to the Apostolic Age. As we’ve hitherto highlighted, this point is of no little significance. If the commonly held view of Christ’s Second Coming among the divinely inspired authors of the New Testament, their contemporaries, and the church of the 1st century was premillennial historicism, then, this alone lends great credence to this particular interpretive view of eschatology.
Unlike premillennial historicism, the other major premillennial interpretive view of eschatology—premillennial futurism—is not traceable back to the Apostolic Age. While its belief in Christ’s premillennial return to inaugurate His millennial reign squares with that of 1st century Christians, its insistence upon all “end-time” Bible prophecy awaiting fulfillment in the future is of a much later origin. It is this later origin of this interpretive view that we now take-up, believing that by doing so we may shed some needed light upon it.
To begin with, permit me to reiterate the historical fact that it was the dawning of the Protestant Reformation that brought the church out of the long dark night of the Dark Ages. It is nearly impossible to overstate the Protestant Reformation’s impact upon our world. It not only aroused Europe from its long slumber of superstition and broke the bonds of a tyrannical papacy, but it gave birth to numerous Protestant nations, which, in turn, gave rise to our modern-day world. Neither the contemporary church, with its emphasis on the priesthood of the believer and congregational church government, nor contemporary society, with its Protestant work ethic, capitalist system and democratic forms of government, would be in existence today were it not for the paths long blazed before them by the Protestant Reformers.
Although the church emerged from the Dark Ages with its amillennialism intact, it emerged with an addendum to its amillennialism written indelibly on the Protestant psyche with the blood of millions of saints slain during the dark centuries of the Roman Church’s reign of horror. This addendum was the firm belief of the Protestant Reformers that the antichrist and “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH” (Revelations 17:5) were the perpetrators of the Dark Ages’ unspeakable crimes against Christianity; namely, the beastly papacy and the whorish church of Rome. This belief, that Catholicism’s supposed Vicar of Christ (the pope) was actually the antichrist, contributed in no small way to a mass exodus from Catholicism’s congregations and a substantial decrease in her coffers.
To counter the serious blow delivered to her by the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church launched a Counter-Reformation. In 1545, the Catholic Church convened its infamous Council of Trent. The purpose of the council was to launch a counterattack against the Protestant Reformers and Protestantism itself. Although convened in 1545, the council continued until 1563, holding eight sessions in Trent (1545-1547) and three sessions in Bologna (1547) under Pope Paul III, five sessions in Trent (1551-1552) under Pope Julius III, and a final nine sessions in Trent (1559-1563) under Pope Pius IV.
Unlike Catholicism’s former mode of combating “heretics” and their teachings—the burning of them and their books—a new mode of warfare against Catholic dissenters and papal detractors was called for at Trent; after all, the old way of eliminating all who refused to bow the knee to Rome only added fodder to the fire of Protestant claims that the pope was “the Beast” who “makes war against the saints” (Revelation 13:7). To assist the Catholic Church in its war on Protestantism, the pope recruited the aid of a relatively new order of priests and brothers known as The Society of Jesus. This order, known better today as the Jesuits, was started in 1534 by a Spanish soldier named Ignatius Loyola.
While recovering from serious wounds received in battle, Ignatius Loyola supposedly underwent a religious conversion and vowed to spend the rest of his life as “a soldier of God.” To symbolize the vow he had taken, he placed his weapons on the altar of the monastery of Montserrat, where he alleged to have received a vision of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus. Afterward, he recounted a beautiful, reoccurring serpent-like vision that repeatedly consoled him during months of meditation in a cave at nearby Manresa, Catalonia. Upon emerging from the cave at Manresa, Loyola proceeded to devote himself to the study of theology in three of Spain’s most prominent universities, the universities of Barcelonia, Alcala, and Salamance. He finally concluded his theological training with an earned Masters Degree from the College of Montaigu in Paris.
It was while studying in Paris, that Loyola and six like-minded followers founded The Society of Jesus, with each declaring their undying allegiance to the pope and taking vows of poverty and chastity. Though initially founded for the purpose of serving as missionaries to the Holy Land, Loyola and his friends eventually ended up in Rome as a sort of secret police for the Vatican. They were given official papal recognition on September 27, 1540 by Pope Paul III, with Ignatius Loyola becoming the Society’s first Superior General or “Black Pope,” as the head of the Jesuits is often referred to today.
No order within the Catholic Church has a more nefarious history of intrigue and subterfuge than The Society of Jesus. To separate the factual from the fanciful when it comes to the dark deeds and sinister associates of the Jesuits is no small task. Suffice it to say, for our purposes, that the hands of the Jesuits have been stained throughout their history with the blood of Christian martyrs and clasped from time to time with comrades no less odious than the infamous Illuminati. To prove that this exclamation is without exaggeration consider the following words of Adolf Hitler: “Above all I have learned from the Jesuits. And so did Lenin too, as far as I recall. The world has never known anything quite so splendid as the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church. There were quite a few things I simply appropriated from the Jesuits for the use of the [Nazi] Party.”
Along with fighting Protestants over the spoils of men’s souls with their customary weaponry of inquisition through torture, the Jesuits were also commissioned by the Council of Trent to combat the Protestants on theological grounds. They were charged to come up with theological arguments to counter the Protestants’ two most damaging doctrinal blows to the Mother Church; namely, the Protestants’ insistence upon justification by faith alone and their identifying of the pope as the antichrist.
To counter the Protestant and biblical doctrine of justification by faith, the Council of Trent declared that salvation was not a matter of justification alone, but also of sanctification. Whereas faith may be sufficient for justification, it was insufficient for sanctification, which, according to the majority vote of the bishops at the Council of Trent, could only be secured through the seven “sacred” sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church—(1) Baptism (2) Confirmation (3) Eucharist or Mass (4) Extreme Unction or Last Rites (5) Penance (6) Matrimony, and (7) Holy Orders. With this theological sleight of hand, the Council of Trent condemned all Protestants to Hell with more than 100 anathemas and declared Roman Catholicism to be the only way to Heaven.
Although the Council of Trent appears to have easily come up with a heretical equation to counter the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith, by simply adding Catholicism’s sacraments to faith in Christ as the summation of total salvation, the Council’s countering of the Protestants’ identification of the pope as the antichrist proved to be a much more difficult challenge. Stepping up to the task for the Council was a clever Jesuit priest and doctor of theology by the name of Francisco Ribera. Ribera postulated that all prophetic Scripture assumed to be alluding to the antichrist was not applicable in any way to past nor present history. Instead, Ribera argued that it all pointed to a time of fulfillment at the end of the age. Consequently, the pope could not be the antichrist, since the antichrist would not even appear on the prophetic stage until the playing out of prophecy’s final act at the very end of time.
In 1590, Francisco Ribera published his commentary on the Book of Revelation. His commentary was intended to provide Catholics with a counter-interpretation of Revelation. Unlike the prevailing Protestant interpretation, which identified the pope as the beast of Revelation, Ribera interpreted the beast as a sinister figure who would appear at the end of time. Far from being the pope, Ribera argued that the beast would be an infidel outside the church who would make an end-time pact with the Jewish people. When it came to the antichrist being seated in the church, as the Protestant Reformers clearly understood the Apostle Paul to have predicted in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4, Ribera countered that the “temple” referred to by the apostle in this passage was not the church at all, but a rebuilt Jewish temple at the end of time.
Following on the heels of Ribera was another Jesuit scholar, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine. In his “Polemic Lectures Concerning the Disputed Points of the Christian Belief Against the Heretics of this Time,” he argued that none of the prophetic Scriptures were applicable in any shape, form or fashion to the papacy. Furthermore, he condemned all who even hinted at such an interpretation as being guilty of the most loathsome of heresies.
Thanks to Bellarmine, Ribera’s new futurist twist on Bible prophecy quickly became the common interpretation among Catholics. This new interpretative view of Bible prophecy eventually became know among Protestants as “Jesuit Futurism.” Although it has long since lost its previous moniker, being a commonly accepted interpretation of Bible prophecy among both Protestants and Catholics today, the fact that this futurist view originated with the Jesuits during the Counter-Reformation should cause no little angst among all of its modern-day Protestant adherents.
There is certainly much more to the history of the futurist view of Bible prophecy than what we have covered in these few short paragraphs. Still, the simple point we have made in our brief discussion of this topic is the salient point vital to our present purpose. Whereas some may desire to color this history in different shades and hues, all honest researchers are left with a couple of inevitable conclusions—Francisco Ribera is the Father of Futurism and this popular modern-day interpretive view of Bible prophecy was spawned by the Catholic Church in defense of its pope against the “beastly” allegations of the Protestant Reformers!
Today’s most popular school of premillennialism—premillennial dispensationalism—has an even shorter history than the “Jesuit Futurism” from which it sprang. Its history can be traced back no further than the year 1830. It all began with a Scottish lass by the name of Margaret Macdonald.
Margaret Macdonald
In the year 1830, a charismatic revival broke out in western Scotland. In the vicinity of the revival, in particularly, in Port Glasgow, a small shipbuilding town on the south bank of the river Clyde, there lived a young lady by the name of Margaret Macdonald. Since becoming a Christian a year earlier, Margaret, who was sickly and bedridden, had devoted herself to reading and pondering the Scripture.
One day while studying the Scriptures, Margaret claimed to have received an end-time vision. According to her, the vision “burst upon [her] with a glorious light,” resulting in “many passages [being] revealed in a light in which [she] had not before seen them.” In the new light given to her on the Scripture, a light that none before her had ever possesed, Margaret began interpreting passages of Scripture in ways that no one before her had ever interpreted them.
To begin with, Margaret tied together the “taken” of Matthew 24:40—“Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.”—with the “taken” of 2 Thessalonians 2:7—“For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth [will let], until he be taken out of the way.” By tying these two “takens” together, Margaret became taken with a novel notion; namely, that the Antichrist—“man of sin…son of perdition” (2 Thessalonians 2:3)—cannot “be revealed” until Christians are taken out of the world and only the wicked are left behind in it.
Margaret’s new slant on the Scripture also led her to couple together Paul’s admonition in Ephesians 5:17-18—“Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord [is]. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.”—with Christ’s Parable of the Ten Virgins in Matthew 25:1-13. By coupling these two passages together, Margaret was able to conclude that the five wise virgins with oil-filled lamps in Christ’s parable represent Spirit-filled Christians; while the five foolish and oilless virgins in the parable represent Christians without the baptism or filling of the Holy Spirit.
To Margaret Macdonald, the oil needed in the Christian’s lamp was the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Any Christian lacking this experience, lacked “the light of God,” the light by which “we may discern that which cometh not with observation to the natural eye” (Luke 17:20). Thus, all non-charismatic Christians, those unable to “see the sign of [Christ’s] appearance,” will be left behind with the unbelievers of this world when Christ secretly returns for tongues-speaking, Spirit-filled Charismatics alone.
Search if you must, but there is no evidence that anyone in the 19 centuries of Christian history that preceded Margaret Macdonald ever taught anything like “Maggie’s” secret rapture of the church. Although it is a widespread belief in Christendom today, it was unheard of before Margaret Macdonald’s day. In addition, in its inception, “Maggie’s” novel notion was only a partial rapture of the church, particularly meant for those of her Charismatic persuasion. Surely, these facts should at least serve to give pause to all contemporary adherents of today’s popular secret rapture theory.
Understandably, today’s evangelical proponents of a secret, pretribulation rapture scream bloody murder every time someone traces this popular modern-day doctrine back to its origin. None of its present-day proponents want to give credit where credit is due, to Margaret Macdonald. And almost all of them refuse to be associated with Port Glasgow, a town that was not only at the center of the Charismatic revival in western Scotland in 1830, but also a hotbed for utterances in tongues on the revival’s central theme; namely, Margaret Macdonald’s new slant on the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
Edward Irving
In the days of Margaret Macdonald, Edward Irving was a renowned Scottish preacher. One could say that he was the “Billy Graham” of his day, attracting large crowds with his exceptional oratory abilities. Having preached on the Second Coming of Christ near Margaret’s home in 1828, Margaret’s family began a warm correspondence with the famous pastor of London’s Caledonian Chapel at Hatton Garden.
In the spring of 1830, when Margaret received her end-time vision, revealing to her the never seen before secret rapture of the church, she sent a handwritten copy of her revelation to Edward Irving, as well as to other leading clergymen of the day. Around the same time, reports began to spread of signs and wonders taking place in the Scottish revival. As a result, many traveled to the vicinity of Port Glasgow to checkout the supposed phenomena. Among those investigating the revival were members of Irving’s Presbyterian Church.
Edward Irving was not only in correspondence with the Macdonalds, but very much in sympathy with the Charismatic revival in western Scotland. As early as 1828, Irving had contributed the conspicuous absence from contemporary churches of the spiritual gifts of the Apostolic Age to a serious deficiency of faith among the Christians of his day. Thanks to such teaching, tongues and prophetic utterances became so common an occurrence in Irving’s church that it became the talk of all London. When the Trustees of the church filed a formal complaint over the disruption of their church services by unauthorized utterances, the Presbytery of London was forced into action, removing Irving from his pastorate in 1832. Adding insult to injury, Irving was defrocked in the ensuing year on charges of heresy.
Following his ouster from the Presbyterian Church, Irving founded the Catholic Apostolic Church. His leadership of this new church proved short-lived. He died one year later on December 7, 1834. He was only forty-two years old.
Although he is called by some “the father of modern Pentecostalism” and was known in his day for introducing London to the showy, spiritual gifts of Western Scotland’s Charismatic revival, Edward Irving’s greatest legacy is the publicizing of Margaret Macdonald’s novel ideas concerning Christ’s Second Coming. After receiving his handwritten copy of Margaret’s end-time revelation, Irving’s prophetic journal, The Morning Watch, published an article in September of 1830 that differentiated between the “epiphany” of Christ—Christ’s coming to secretly rapture the church—and the “parousia” of Christ—Christ’s coming to judge the world and inaugurate His millennial kingdom.
While subsequent articles appeared in Irving’s prophetic journal, some of which expanded upon Margaret Macdonald’s initial and novel end-time notions, this September 1830 article appears to be the first time that the secret rapture of the church was taught publicly and in print. What began with the vision of a young Scottish lassie was first publicized and printed by a soon to be defrocked Presbyterian minister. Following the defrocked minister’s untimely death, the torch of this new doctrine was carried by his followers, who became know as “Irvingites.”
John Nelson Darby
Another prominent minister in the days of Margaret Macdonald was John Nelson Darby. Darby started out in the ministry as an ordained Anglican priest, but became famous for helping to launch the Brethren movement from informal worship services conducted in homes.
Besides being instrumental in the founding of the Plymouth Brethren, Darby is also known as “the father of dispensationalism,” a school of biblical interpretation that insists upon interpreting all Scripture literally, but rightly divided so as to limit the application of each passage to the particular age or dispensation to which it speaks.
An example of Darby’s dispensationalism is the Israel/Church dichotomy. According to Darby, nothing that God ever said to Israel should be applied to the church and nothing that God ever said to the church should be applied to Israel. God’s plans for Israel and the church are totally different and must be kept separate from one another at all times. In addition, these separate plans can never operate concurrently upon the earth, since God only works in one dispensation at a time. Thus, if God is to ever turn back to His plan for Israel He must first take the church out of the world, bringing to an end this current dispensation—the Church Age. Only then can God fulfill His literal promises to the physical descendants of Abraham. Of course, this teaching necessitates a belief in a secret rapture of the church prior to the premillennial dispensationalist’s supposed seven-year tribulation period.
Although there is no evidence of it in his writing or preaching before 1831, Darby claimed to have formulated his new view of biblical interpretation during a lengthy convalescence that followed his being thrown by a horse in 1827. Still, it wasn’t after being thrown by a horse, but after visiting Glasgow during the Charismatic revival of 1830 that Darby began preaching and teaching premillennial dispensationalism.
That Darby visited Glasgow at the height of the Charismatic revival and heard nothing about Margaret Macdonald’s end-time revelation, which by then had become the central theme of the revival’s tongues and prophetic utterances, is inconceivable. Equally inconceivable is any suggestion that Darby was ignorant of Edward Irving’s taking of Margaret’s end-time revelation to the pulpit and to the press. Darby may be the “father of dispensationalism,” but Margaret Macdonald, Edward Irving and the “Irvingites” were already serving up a secret rapture of the church before Darby ever sat down at the table.
Today’s premillennial dispensationalists proudly trace their eschatology back to the orthodox and biblically sound Plymouth Brethren, John Nelson Darby. They refuse, however, to have their end-time views associated with a young Scottish lassie, a defrocked Presbyterian pastor and the defrocked minister’s heretical followers. Yet, the truth is, all of these were running with the premillennial dispensationalists’ pet doctrine—the secret rapture of the church— before the premillennial dispensationalists’ alleged progenitor ever got out of the starting blocks.
While he cannot be credited as the originator of the doctrine of premillennial dispensationalism’s secret rapture, John Nelson Darby can and should be credited with birthing, systematizing and proliferating premillennial dispensationalism. He and his Plymouth Brethren were preaching it in Ireland as early as 1831 and soon thereafter propagating it to other parts of the world.
Cyrus Ingerson Scofield
John Nelson Darby visited America at least five times. Although he won few converts to his new views of biblical interpretation and eschatology, he was able to win over some influential American evangelicals. One of these, John Inglis, used his magazine, Waymarks In The Wilderness, to introduce premillennial dispensationalism to North America. Another, James H. Brookes, pastor of Walnut Street Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, Missouri, organized the Niagara Bible Conference for the express purpose of disseminating premillennial dispensationalism in this country.
One of Rev. James Brookes’ parishioners, who also attended the Niagara Bible Conference, was a lawyer by the name of Cyrus Ingerson Scofield. C. I. Scofield became so enamored with premillennial dispensationalism that he devoted himself to the publishing of an annotated study Bible containing his own study notes on premillennial dispensationalism. Published in 1909, Scofield’s study Bible proved to be a literary coup for premillennial dispensationalists. Nothing in the history of this country has ever done more to legitimize premillennial dispensationalism than the Scofield Reference Bible.
Hal Lindsey
Whereas the Scofield Reference Bible may be credited for doing more than anything else to legitimize premillennial dispensationalism, it was Hal Lindsey’s 1970 bestseller, The Late Great Planet Earth, that did more than anything else to popularize premillennial dispensationalism in this country. Lindsey’s book not only sold millions of copies, but was also adapted into a motion picture narrated by Orson Wells in 1979. Unlike previous books on prophecy, which were sold only in Christian bookstores, Lindsey’s book was sold in secular bookstores right along side gothic romances, cheap westerns and books on dieting, organic gardening, and UFOs. It could even be picked up along with the latest celebrity scandal sheet in the checkout line of your local drugstore or supermarket. As a result, Lindsey’s book exposed a far wider audience to premillennial dispensationalism. It wasn’t just Christian prophecy wonks who bought and read Lindsey’s book and paid to see the movie adaptation, but scores of unbelievers as well, people who had no previous knowledge of nor interest in Bible prophecy.
Tim LaHaye
Much like Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ series of Left Behind novels have exposed millions of people to premillennial dispensationalism. Incredibly, over 40 million copies in the series have been sold to date. In 2000, the first novel in the series was made into a full-length motion picture, Left Behind: The Movie. However, due to the movie’s dismal performance at the box office, two subsequent sequels have been released straight to video and DVD, Left Behind II: Tribulation Force and Left Behind: World at War. Truly, LaHaye and Jenkins’ books have done what Lindsey’s book did before them, leant credence to and publicized the beliefs of premillennial dispensationalism.
Conclusion
