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Religion See other Religion Articles Title: Tracing the Rapture Heresy "have you read the the Left Behind series by Jerry B. Jenkins? what do you think of it? " I consider the "Left Behind" series of fictional novels to be nothing more than religious pornography, created to satisfy the purient malevolence of its audience. The absolute worst use of Biblical prophecy, is to create some monsterous revenge fantacy where an audience is allowed to gleefully imagine how all of their enemies will soon be tortured and destroyed. And these sick novels allow its audience to savor every pathologically lurid detail. Such books are not only false theologically, but they are extremely sinful and destructive in that they encourage a hateful and vengeful attitude towards others, rather than encouraging Christian tolerance and a love of your neighbor. They are based upon the idea that fundamentalist Christians won't have to go through the tribulation - only those who disagree with them will. They are the ugly fruit of an ugly herecy that entered into the church about 150 years ago. From my book: American Fundamentalists are like no other Christian sect in history. This is because of their very distinctive and novel teachings about the rapture. Few people realize that the pre-tribulation or “Secret Rapture” theory taught by American fundamentalists, was a concept virtually unheard of and untaught until around 1830. Such a heretical teaching was unknown to the early Church Fathers e.g. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, St. Augustine, all of whom were convinced that the church would necessarily have to suffer and pass through great tribulation at the hands of the Antichrist before the return of Jesus. In fact, they saw this as being necessary to the perfection of the church, in the same way that steel is made stronger by passing through the fire. Nor was the Secret Rapture theory ever taught by the great stalwarts of the Reformation – by Huss, Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin, Knox, Cranmer or even by the Wesley brothers in the 18th Century – none of them believed it. It was only relatively recently in Christian history, in the last 150 years or so, that American Fundamentalists picked up and adapted a startling and very important new theory that had somehow eluded every Christian who had ever read the Bible for almost 2,000 years. So where did it come from? We’d better start at the very beginning. The notion of a secret rapture was first proposed by a Chilean Jesuit priest from Spain, a certain Emmanuel Lacunza, who in 1812 wrote a book entitled 'The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty'. In writing his book, he came upon the novel notion that Christ will return not once, as Christians had believed for 1800 years, but twice. At the 'first stage' of His return, according to this new scenario, Jesus secretly 'raptures' His Church so they can escape the reign of the 'future Antichrist'. (this also marked the invention of what is also known as the’ futurist’ view of Revelation - the idea that everything spelled out in Revelation, including the bloody reign of the Antichrist, all this must happen sometime in the future, AFTER the church is already ruptured, and so of course it cannot be happening now. There is no use for Christians to be wasting their energy fighting against the Antichrist, as the church had been doing for 1800 years, since real Christians aren’t even going to be around for his reign.) Then at the second stage of Christ’s return, he returns once again at the very end of the tribulation period in order to vanquish the Antichrist at the battle of Armageddon, and then usher in a 1,000-year millennium of peace and Godly rule. Lacunza, a Catholic Priest, published his book under the assumed name of Rabbi Ben Ezra, a converted Jew, in order to avoid exposure. That’s because the Catholic Church never taught the notion of a secret rapture, and still doesn’t. The church hierarchy in Rome promptly placed his heretical book on the Index of Forbidden Books in 1824, where it remains today. From there the story takes a few more obscure and yet very interesting twists and turns. In the early 19th century there was a very popular and prophetic Scottish clergyman named Edward Irving, whom some considered an eloquent quack. He was eventually removed from the pulpit in 1932, and deprived of his status as a clergyman by the Church of Scotland at an ecclesiastical trial in 1833, all for implying Jesus Christ was a sinner, which is no small sin for a Preacher, popular or not. But just before all that happened, in 1827 he translated Lacunza’s book into English. Irving and just about everybody else knew by then that it had actually been written by a Catholic Jesuit Priest, which for Protestants at the time was about the same as saying it was dictated by the devil. So instead of admitting that he’d gotten the idea out of the Jesuit book he’d translated, he claimed that he had heard what he believed to be a voice from heaven commanding him to preach the Secret Rapture of the Saints. Thereafter he began holding Bible conferences throughout England and Scotland, emphasizing the coming of Jesus to rapture His Church. It was a few years later in March, 1830, that a 15-year-old Scottish girl named Miss Margaret MacDonald had an ecstatic vision, by some accounts while sitting at one of Reverend Irving’s prophetic services. She prophesied in unmistakable detail all about this secret pre-tribulation rapture, and afterwards dutifully mailed off her vision to various leaders of the church. (At the same time that Margaret revealed her rapture revelation to the world, she also included a startling prediction as to the identity of the Antichrist, who turned out to be the19th century socialist Robert Owen.) The upshot was that afterwards it became widely publicized that this new idea concerning the secret rapture had come directly from the Holy Spirit, as told first-hand to Miss Margaret MacDonald, and the actual origination was obscured. At about the same time, a former lawyer and ambitious young Anglican curate from Ireland named John Nelson Darby, (who had already become somewhat famous for his aversion to bathing), had just resigned his post to start his own sect called The Brethren. Like modern American fundamentalists, Darby believed that mainline churches had grown too regulated in their style and too liberal in their biblical interpretation. John F. Walvoord, president emeritus of Dallas Theological Seminary, is quite correct in saying that "Much of the Truth promulgated by fundamental Christians to-day had its rebirth in the movement known as the 'Plymouth Brethren.'" When Darby first heard about MacDonald’s revelation, he was formulating his own rather complicated and unlikely Biblical innovation called dispensationalism. This was a surprisingly convoluted heresy that only a lawyer could dream up. Very briefly put, this was the novel view that God is very much a respecter of persons, and that He deals with human beings very differently according to who you are, your religion and where you are in history. There is a certain dispensation for the Jews, and God has one particular way of dealing with them. Then there is the dispensation for the Christian church, which is an entirely different matter. There are seven other basic dispensations that cover different periods in history as time after time God’s plans for humanity continually fall apart and fail, creating the need for God to keep thinking up new ones, much as Thomas Edison went through thousands of failed experiments before inventing a workable light bulb. (though you’d think they’d know that an omnipotent God who knows the future could have started out with the plan or ‘dispensation’ that actually worked instead of continually making matters worse with a lot of dry runs that didn’t. But then that would be thinking things through honestly and rationally, and we’re dealing with an Irish lawyer.) According to Darby’s dispensationalist scenario, we are now at that point in history where the ‘dispensation of grace’ has failed also, because the Christian church has miserably failed in its mission and is now apostate (except, of course, for the fundamentalists – they’re OK). In a similar way, according to this theory, the earlier ‘dispensation of the law of Moses’ had ultimately failed, which necessitated the birth of Jesus. But now Jesus must return because the church has failed as well, and unlike Christians who for 1800 years mistakenly believed that the church was helping to build a better world, according to the gloomy dispensationalist/fundamentalist viewpoint, the world has only become much worse than ever. So why bother? It only proves once and for all that there is no use even trying to make thee world any better without the physical presence of Christ on earth, whose return, fundamentalists believe, is so close anyway, that making any worldly reforms at this late hour is all but pointless. Beginning with Darby’s followers, Fundamentalists have believed for over 150 years that the second coming was imminent, primarily because the world has gotten just that hopeless. Darby was attending a number of mysteriously organized meetings on Bible Prophecy at Powerscourt in Ireland. While at these gatherings he learned about the 'secret rapture' as told by Margaret MacDonald. In 1830, he visited Scotland and personally investigated Macdonald's claim: Lucky for him, the secret rapture fit in with his own dispensationalist speculations like a hand in a glove. Why? Because if Christ returned before the apocalypse to rapture the church, that could mark the official end of the dispensation of the Christian church on earth, and get the prophetic clock ticking again so he could begin dealing with the Jews, with whom He’s had some unfinished business ever since they crucified Jesus. Directly after the rapture of the fundamentalists, all of the prophecies in Revelation concerning the Antichrist could be fulfilled. Then in the final act, Jesus would come to earth a third time to vanquish the Antichrist at the very end of the apocalypse horror. So Darby, being a lawyer who knew a good loophole when he saw one, included the secret rapture into the dispensationalist mix, and carried this brand new orthodoxy into the heart of Protestant Evangelicalism. In this way a book written by a Jesuit Priest posing as a converted Jew, and then translated into English by a heretical Scottish Clergyman, was spiritually laundered through the prophetic ramblings of a high-strung Scottish teenager by a fundamentalist Irish lawyer. Under Darby’s new scheme, dealing with the Antichrist and the apocalypse was not anything that fundamentalist Christians would have to worry about – (even if they did inadvertently vote him into office). It’s only the un-repentant sinners (Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roman Catholics, mainline denominational Christians, atheists etc) who are still left on the planet after the ‘real’ Christians instantly vanish in the rapture - they’re the ones who will have to worry about what comes next. This could also be called the “What, me worry?”, or the “sock it to YOU! ” view of the Battle of Armageddon. From 1862 to 1877, Darby lived and traveled throughout the United States and Canada, spreading the fundamentalist doctrine. A student of Darby at that time was another lawyer, Cyrus I. Scofield (1843-1921). Scofield had fought for the Confederacy and defended the institution of black slavery. After the Civil War he became United States Attorney for the district of Kansas and the Indian Territory after taking an oath and falsely swearing that he’d “never voluntarily borne arms against the United States”. As a US Attorney, he was promptly accused of corruption in soliciting bribes from the railroads, and forced to resign after serving only six months in office. At that point he deserted his family and fled the state to avoid prosecution. Then that he found God. This is the way a Kansas Newspaper described his conversion, after word reached the local newspaper, the Topeka "Daily Capital": "Cyrus I. Scofield, formerly of Kansas, late lawyer, politician and shyster generally, has come to the surface again. The last personal knowledge that Kansans have had of this peer among scalawags, was when about four years ago, after a series of forgeries and confidence games he left the state and a destitute family and took refuge in Canada . . . nothing being heard of him until within the past two years when he turned up in St. Louis, where he had a wealthy widowed sister living who had generally come to the front and squared up Cyrus' little follies and foibles by paying good round sums of money."24 Scofield, aided and abetted by his rich sister and other wealthy backers, had fallen in with the dispensationalist gang. He eventually published a widely distributed Bible Reference Notes in 1909 based upon Darby’s theology, that eventually became the theological bedrock of American fundamentalism, and the very last word in sound Biblical doctrine. Among his financial backers were: Lyman Stewart, president of the Union Oil Co. of California; Francis E. Fitch, a member of the Plymouth Brethren and the head of a printing company which printed the New York Stock Exchange lists; Alwyn Ball, Jr., a real estate broker and member of the large New York real estate firm of Southack and Ball; John B. Buss, a St. Louis businessman; and John T. Pirie, owner and New York representative of Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co., the large Chicago department store. As an aside, it is important to note that the preaching of this new heresy could never have come about without the extensive assistance of wealthy men who from the beginning helped to finance the dissemination of this new gospel. There always seemed to be wealthy benefactors nearby who were more than happy to hear this particular good news preached. We can speculate whether this was so because it ultimately had the effect of excusing Christians from engaging in their traditional role as defenders of the poor and downtrodden, or because it offered them that one thing that even they couldn’t buy – a sure, quick ticket heaven without any detour into pain, sickness and death. Perhaps these wealthy businessmen were just being conned by one of the best. At any rate, the sponsors included men like eccentric banker Henry Drummond, who was involved from the very beginning, making his resources available first to Irving’s church in London, and then continuing to support the fundamentalist “Brethren” movement under Darby. The Scofield Reference Bible itself was published with unusually generous funding from wealthy businessmen in the United States. That is not to say that all these wealthy men were involved in some complicated plot to destroy social progress and deceive gullible Christians. But what is important to recognize is that a teaching which assumed the futility of Christian works in the area social justice, is one that basically got the church off the back of the rich, and allowed them to continue to exploit the poor as much as they were already inclined to do. The place and timing of this revolutionary new gospel was in the midst of the Industrial Revolution in England, when lassies- faire capitalism ran unfettered, and the gap between rich and poor had grown astonishingly large. In America, it was during the age of the robber barons, when the wealthy and powerful ruled the country like kings. So where was the church? Because of their pessimistic view of the world, and of the other mainline churches, (many of which were still trying to make the world better), fundamentalists have never seen much point in doing anything about helping the poor, establishing social justice, or defending the persecuted, especially since Christ was just about to return to rapture the church and do the job Himself. Their attitude, in the words of fundamentalist author Tom Sine “everything is determined to get worse and worse,” and “the best we can do is get a few people in the salvation boat before Jesus comes back.” To this day this has always been the fundamentalist credo, especially when it comes to things like government programs for the poor. More recently, no man has done more to promote the pre-tribulation rapture theory than Hal Lindsey in his books: The Late Great Planet Earth, and There’s a New World Coming. Premillenial Dispensationalism, a more technical name for the new rapture theory, has come to dominate American Evangelical Fundamentalism, especially through the influence of Dallas Theological Seminary and the Moody Bible Institute. Leading exponents include Charles Ryrie, Lewis Sperry Chafer, Dwight Pentecost, John Walvoord, Eric Sauer, Hal Lindsey and Mike Price. But in recent years, the "Left Behind" series of fictional novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, has done the most to popularize and profit from a herecy that was invented by a fallen Jesuit priest almost two hundred years ago.
Poster Comment: Much of Christianity has become embarrasing.
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#3. To: YertleTurtle (#0)
Its actually older than that. Dispensationalism was invented and abandoned during the Reformation as a way to keep the money -uh- the people in the Catholic Church. Old heresies have a tendency to keep coming back again and again and....
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