CATHOLICS DID NOT INVENT THE RAPTURE BY DAVE MACPHERSON

     Many assert that the "rapture" promoted by evangelicals was first taught, at least seminally, by some Jesuit Catholic priest of the past. They usually name either Francisco Ribera of the 16th century or Manuel Lacunza of the 18th century. First, let's look at Ribera.
     To see what is claimed, Google "Francisco Ribera taught a rapture 45 days before the end of Antichrist's future reign." (Oddly, many claimants are anti-Catholic and merely use Ribera in order to "find" much earlier support for their rapture which actually isn't found in any official Christian theology or organized church before 1830!)
     After seeing this claim repeated endlessly without even one sentence from Ribera offered as proof, I decided to go over every page in Ribera's 640-page commentary on the book of Revelation published in Latin in 1593.
     After laboriously searching for the Latin equivalent of "45 days" ("quadraginta quinque dies"), "rapture" ("raptu," "raptio," "rapiemur," etc.) and other related expressions, I couldn't find anything in Ribera's work even remotely resembling a prior rapture!
     While Ribera can be claimed as the pretrib rapture originator, more pretrib defenders seem to pinpoint Manuel Lacunza and point to his lengthy work "The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty," a work that was translated from Spanish to English under the direction of Edward Irving who, by the way, did not obtain his pretrib view from Lacunza, as has been claimed.
     (The late Southern Baptist evangelist John Bray claimed to find pretrib teaching in Lacunza before he changed his mind and later on gave that "honor" to a Baptist named Morgan Edwards! For the real skinny on Edwards, Google "Morgan Edwards' Rapture View.")
      Does Lacunza teach a rapture 45 days before the coming to earth, as Bray claims? Let's look at Vol. I.
     On p. 83 Lacunza refers to the book of Revelation and says that "the nineteenth chapter speaks of the coming of the Lord in glory and majesty, which Christians with one consent do wait for."
     On pp. 99-100 after quoting I Thess. 4:13-18  Lacunza quotes Matt. 24:30 and then writes: "If you compare this text with that of St. Paul, you shall find no other difference than this, that those who are to arise on the coming of the Lord, the apostle nameth those who are dead in Christ, who sleep in Jesus; and the Lord nameth them his elect."
     Lacunza (p. 113) quotes I Thess. 4 and Matt. 24 in this manner: "...He shall descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we who are alive, &c and it appears to me, that you will find St. Paul and the Gospel speaking one and the same thing: He shall send his angels and they shall gather his elect from the four winds; who can be no other than those very ones who are in Christ, who sleep in Jesus."
     Lacunza's monumental work, which helped to revive futurism, was distributed widely in manuscript form as early as 1791 - so widely, in fact, that Pope Leo XII later placed it on the official list of prohibited books. (Lacunza says in his first volume, p. 220, the "our priesthood" will eventually become the two-horned beast of Rev. 13!)
     If Lacunza's book contains a pretrib coming, why was such doctrine unknown before 1830? It wasn't that John Darby and Edward Irving were unaware of Lacunza's work, for both discussed it in their pre-1830 writings. And it wasn't that Darby and Irving were opposed to novel ideas, for both began to embrace pretribulationism after it emerged in early 1830!
     Are you curious about the real beginnings of this evangelical belief (a.k.a. the "pre-tribulation rapture") merchandised by Darby, Scofield, Lindsey, Falwell, LaHaye, Ice, Van Impe, Hagee and many others?
     Google "Famous Rapture Watchers," "Pretrib Rapture Diehards," and "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty," for starters.
     I will end this by saying it's a distinct honor to have these and other articles of mine on this excellent and much needed blog hosted by my friend and Bible expert Treena Gisborn!