PRETRIB RAPTURE SCHOLAR WANNABES BY DAVE MACPHERSON

     To become a PH.D (Pretrib History Distorter) or a D.D. (Doctrinal Deviant), do the following:

     (1) MISSPELL THE LAST NAMES OF MANUEL LACUNZA, MARGARET MACDONALD, C. I. SCOFIELD, HAL LINDSEY, GRANT JEFFREY, TIM LAHAYE ETC.

     (2) STATE THAT MARGARET MACDONALD WAS A PLYMOUTH BRETHREN MEMBER, OR THAT JOHN DARBY WAS HER PASTOR.

     Wrong and wrong.

     (3) OR GUESS THAT MARGARET WAS AN IRVINGITE, OR THAT EDWARD IRVING WAS HER PASTOR.

     Wrong and wrong again.
 
     (4) ASSUME THAT MARGARET MACDONALD ORIGINATED "DISPENSATIONALISM."

     This "straw man" assumption by Jack Kinsella ("Is Dispensationalism a Recent Doctrine?," 8/11/11) is totally missing from all genuine scholarship, and Jack can't find her even mentioning that long word!

     (5) CLAIM THAT MARGARET'S PRIVATELY CIRCULATED 1830 RAPTURE "REVELATION" TAUGHT ONLY THE POSTTRIB VIEW.

     Longtime No. 1 pretrib rapture leader John Walvoord's "Rapture Question" proves (p. 105f) that Margaret's view (that only PART of the Church gets raptured) has long been a widely held form of the PREtrib view - and Charles Ryrie's 1981 "rapture" book and other pretrib works have purposely ignored Walvoord!

     Margaret's 1830 "revelation" saw "the one taken [before Antichrist's revealing] and the other left." The PART of the Church left on earth after the rapture was viewed by her collectively as "the Church" - the same wording used in the same way by later partial rapturists! (Google "X-Raying Margaret," "Margaret Macdonald's Rapture Chart," and "Margaret Macdonald's Main Point.")

     (6) REPEAT THE FALSEHOOD THAT JOHN DARBY WAS DISPENSATIONALISM'S "FATHER."

     Darby wasn't original on any crucial aspect of that system including the "church/Israel dichotomy," the church being absent from a future "Jewish" tribulation, the "Jewish" book of Matthew, the "literal method," the "Gentile parenthesis," the "ruin of the church," and especially the "pretribulation rapture." Margaret was the first to "discover" pretrib in the Bible and she shared her novel interpretation only privately with others (spring of 1830). Rev. Edward Irving and his followers, who credited Margaret, were the first to publicly teach it (September of 1830) in the Irvingite journal "The Morning Watch." Darby didn't clearly express pretrib until 1839 - and when he did he plagiarized the exact same Rev. 12 "man child caught up" argument Irving had publicly used eight years earlier!

     (7) TRY NOT TO REPRODUCE MARGARET'S 117-LINE PRETRIB RAPTURE "REVELATION."

     But if you do, copy it like Thomas Ice who in 1989 copied it so quickly he somehow omitted a total of 49 words from different sentences - the same 49 words that Tim LaHaye left behind in his 1992 book "No Fear of the Storm"! LaHaye (pp. 168, 207) also came up with two different titles for Lacunza's famous old book - neither one correct! (Google "Thomas Ice (Bloopers)," "America's Pretrib Rapture Traffickers" (which reveals that Ice's "Ph.D" was issued by a school that was fined by the state of Texas for illegally issuing degrees!), "Walvoord Melts Ice," and "LaHaye's Temperament."

     (8) DON'T LET YOURSELF QUOTE ACTS 2:34-35, ACTS 3:21, OR II THESS. 1:7-8.

     Why? They prove that Christ can't leave heaven ahead of time for a pretrib rapture!

     (9) READ PRETRIB INTO AS MANY PRE-1830 WRITERS AS POSSIBLE.

     Such writers used only double meaning or unclear phrases like "escape," "taken away," "before the general conflagration," "before Armageddon" etc. - but many of your readers will believe you if you assert that the ancient writers were really teaching pretrib!

     Even Walvoord couldn't find ANYONE before the time of Darby (whom Walvoord labeled as an "early pretribulationist"!) who taught pretrib, so Walvoord had to settle for only what seemed to be "imminence" (in three of the earliest church documents) which seemingly could fit into the pretrib scheme - and Walvoord even censored portions of the ancient statements which, when quoted completely, revealed the posttrib view! Is it possible that John Bray, Thomas Ice, Grant Jeffrey and some others can locate - or manufacture - evidence of pretrib before 1830 that even Walvoord couldn't find?! (To see exposures of those claiming to find pretrib before 1830, Google my internet article entitled "Deceiving and Being Deceived.")

     (10) IGNORE ARTICLES ON GOOGLE AND YAHOO LIKE "PRETRIB RAPTURE - HIDDEN FACTS," "PRETRIB RAPTURE DIEHARDS," AND "PRETRIB RAPTURE SECRECY."

     If you ignore this advice, at least take some tranquilizers first!

     (11) PLAGIARIZING IS EASIER THAN RESEARCHING. BUT TRY TO DISGUISE YOUR THIEVERY!

     If you think that stealing isn't a way of life for pretrib promoters (from Darby to LaHaye), you've never Googled "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty," "Appendix F: Thou Shalt Not Steal," or "Thieves' Marketing."

     (12) IF ALL ELSE FAILS, CLAIM THAT REV. 3:10 PROVES PRETRIB.

     Avoid Googling "Famous Rapture Watchers" which reveals how the greatest New Testament Greek scholars of all time interpreted it.

     Finally, I invite you to obtain my 300-page, highly endorsed book "The Rapture Plot." What you've read so far in this paper is less than one percent of the mountains of documentation on pretrib rapture history in this book of mine. A good number of my web articles can be found on "Wolves in Sheep's Clothing," an excellent UK blog hosted by accomplished researcher and writer Treena Gisborn.