PAUL WILKINSON: SERIAL REVISIONIST BY DAVE MACPHERSON

     Here's a hint or two:

     Prov. 14:5 says "A faithful witness will not lie: but a false witness will utter lies." II Tim. 3:13 predicts: "But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived."

     And now some facts about Dr. Paul Wilkinson who, unlike his American counterpart Thomas Ice, possesses an honorable doctorate from an accredited school, the University of Manchester.

     My wife and I recall meeting the late great encyclopedia contributor Dr. F. F. Bruce and being invited to have tea with him in his office there. This occurred before I had written my first book, and Bruce was then excited over the long forgotten pretrib rapture history that we had already uncovered in libraries throughout England and Scotland.

     Accidental omission when pursuing historical facts is one thing (and I've been guilty of this a few times). But deliberate concealment is something else - and not merely happenstance when it's a sustained pattern and others are aware of it and point it out to the offending person.

     Wilkinson authored "For Zion's Sake: Christian Zionism and the Role of John Nelson Darby" published by Paternoster Press in 2007. He included an appendix on "Margaret MacDonald's Utterance" (p. 263).

     His idolizing of Darby may have been his main motive for stopping his quotation of Margaret's 117-line pretrib revelation account (1830) at line 58 just before her statement of "the one taken and the other left" BEFORE she writes "Now will THE WICKED [Antichrist] be revealed" - what I have long viewed as her "main point."
     Wilkinson had to have been aware that others (Hal Lindsey etc.) have used her phrases in the same way - phrases briefly expressing the essence or "kernel" of the 187-year-old pretrib rapture view (a pretrib rapture before Antichrist's appearance). And since he'd rather credit Darby with pretrib origination, or at least the "revival" of it in the 1830s, he naturally yielded to temptation and quickly took the wind out of her Port Glasgow sails!
     Wilkinson must have also remembered that his friend and fellow revisionist "Dr" Thomas Ice, when supposedly quoting Margaret in an unbiased and uncensored way, stopped quoting her at line 55 and resumed quoting her in line 72! (Thomas Ice, "Why the Doctrine of the Pretribulational Rapture Did Not Begin With Margaret McDonald, Bibliotheca Sacra, 1990)
     Margaret's "revelation" (which is actually only her interpretation of Scripture) has two parts in what I call her "main point": (1) the rapture ("one taken" etc.) which happens before (2) the Antichrist ("THE WICKED") is revealed.
     Some revisionist pretribs omit the first part; others omit the second part. "Dr" Ice played it safe and omitted both parts of her "main point" in his Dallas Sem. journal article (above) so that he could brazenly declare that she did NOT teach a pretrib rapture!
     Not long after Joe Schimmel's blockbuster DVD "Left Behind or Led Astray?" came out, Wilkinson, imitating Ice, responded with his "Left Behind or Led Astray? - Exposed." Again he stopped quoting the Scottish lass at line 45!
     At about the same time Treena Gisborn (of "Wolves in Sheep's Clothing" blog fame) penned "Left Behind or Led Astray: Paul Wilkinson's Vitriolic Outburst at the Berean Call Conference 2015!!!" - a must-read for all who decry today's increasing revisionism by dishonest pretrib traffickers!
     I also added my thoughts in a net piece titled "Margaret Macdonald's Main Point."
     The revisionism continued in 2016 with a Pretrib Research Center video titled "Response to Left Behind or Led Astray?" starring Ice as well as Wilkinson. This time I spotted Wilkinson stopping at line 58 while quoting Margaret - his devious way of changing her from pretrib to posttrib. In fact, at the end while summarizing Margaret's main (pretrib) point, Ice said with a smirk "Can anybody find a pretrib rapture in that statement?" And Darby idolizer Wilkinson added: "This is posttrib. This is a posttrib rapture." (!)
     "Dr" Ice (whose "Ph.D" was lifted from an unaccredited seminary that was fined by the state of Texas for issuing illegal degrees!) also had the effrontery to declare that Irving and his followers never taught either pretrib or imminence! My book "The Rapture Plot" has a chapter with many quotes from the Irvingite journal "The Morning Watch" expressing any-moment imminence as well as clear pretrib statements (while Darby was still publicly defending posttrib historicism until his first clear pretrib teaching which didn't begin until 1839!).
     In Sep. 1830 "The Morning Watch" saw "Philadelphia" raptured before "the great tribulation." In 1832 John Tudor stated that "some of these elect ones shall...be left in the great tribulation...after the translation of the saints." In 1832 another writer spoke of "the translation of the living...of which we may daily expect the accomplishment."
     When surfing the net it isn't hard to find those who have interpreted "the one taken and the other left" the way Margaret did when she was expressing pretrib. The word "left" as in the "Left Behind" books etc. is the same as the "left" in her main point and we know that those bestselling books see a pretrib rapture followed by Hollywoodized scenes of a future great tribulation.
     John Walvoord's "The Rapture Question" (p. 110) shows that Robert Govett's partial rapturism was similar to Margaret's; Walvoord wrote: "The one left, according to Govett, is left to go through the tribulation."
     An interesting net piece titled "A Warning to Those Who Think They Are Saved" was a sermon preached by the well-known Dr. R. L. Hymers Jr. at the Fundamentalist Baptist Tabernacle in Los Angeles. He quoted Margaret's main point as found in Matt. 24:40-41 and stated: "I have become convinced that many people who believe they are converted are actually lost. I believe that they will be left behind when the rapture occurs...left behind to face the horrors...left behind on the earth to be tormented by the Devil."
     David J. Stewart, a well-known guest on TBN who's associated with Jesus-is-savior.com, sees a pretrib rapture in "the one shall be taken, and the other left" (Luke 17:35, 36) in his article "Left Behind at the Rapture" (2005, updated 2012).
     Wilkinson, by the way, cited only my 1975 book "The Incredible Cover-up" (instead of my 1995 book "The Rapture Plot" which is more valuable than my other books combined) when supposedly analyzing her in a fair way - and he analyzed her by deliberately omitting all of her main point so that he and Ice could lie together and tell the world that the pretrib originator was really teaching a posttrib rapture!
     For more on Margaret and Irving, Google "X-Raying Margaret," "Margaret Macdonald's Rapture Chart," "Pretrib Was New in the 1830s," "Edward Irving vs. John Darby," and "Pretrib Rapture Diehards."

     Right now I will yield to temptation and quote Jeremiah 17:11 which says, in part, that "he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool."