WHAT PRETRIBS FEAST ON! BY DAVE MACPHERSON

     September of 2018 has come and gone.

     But it has increased my faith in pretrib rapture date-setters - faith that they will lose no time in date-revising what they have predicted in recent weeks, all of which have fizzled in front of their faces, followed by nary a word from any of them admitting they have been wrong!

     (If you'd like to see what rapture date-setters feast on, Google "Jewish Feasts Symbolize Christ's Return.")

     Since much of their recent guesswork has been focused on Leviticus 23's Jewish feasts, let's look at the history of such interpretation.

     We now know that although many have earnestly expected and longed for the Lord 's return since Christ left the earth, only since 1830 is there documentation of what is known as the "any-moment pretribulation rapture" which began with Margaret Macdonald of Scotland, was soon adopted by Rev. Edward Irving of London and his followers, then later on by John Darby and his Plymouth Brethren.

     (Darby idolizers like R. A Huebner, Thomas Ice, and Paul Wilkinson have either ignored or deliberately twisted the innovative Irvingites, the very first ones to publicly air the new pretrib rapture view after visiting Margaret, the pretrib originator, in her Port Glasgow home in mid-1830. Doubters are invited to Google "X-Raying Margaret," "Margaret Macdonald's Rapture Chart," and "Margaret Macdonald's Main Point.")

     Even before 1830 Irving and his followers had been seriously engaged in trying to decipher the order of end-time events - and much of this was based on the same Jewish feasts we've heard so much about in recent days via videos and articles on the internet.

     Following is a portion of the incredible Irvingite development (which was years ahead of Darby's development) which is extensively covered in my book "The Rapture Plot."

     In March,1829 in Irving's journal "The Morning Watch" (hereafter: TMW), John Tudor, the editor, introduced what he called the "times and seasons" theme. He wrote that "there is scarcely a prophecy in which some reference to agriculture does not occur...." Connected with this "are the great festivals of the Jewish year....Christ's death, resurrection, and ascension, are likened to...Passover, First-fruits, and Day of Atonement. The only remaining solemnity in the Jewish year is the Feast of Tabernacles...when 'he shall appear the second time' (Heb. ix. 28)...."

     A few months later in Sep. 1829 Tudor referred to several Revelation chapters and wrote that "we only waited for some general principle...which, I verily believe, we have now received, in the system of Times and Seasons....I take to myself no other merit than that of endeavouring to apply this important discovery....A little further examination shews that a certain classification is observed:--that the seasons of the year, namely, first-fruits, harvest, and vintage are kept together in one series, as xiv.; that the allusions to the tabernacle or temple are kept distinct from the seasons, as xi. xii. xiii; and that it is in this tabernacle series only that dates are given....During this time series of 1260 days, the church is represented as in the wilderness...."

     In Dec. of 1829 Tudor emphasized that the countless multitude of Rev. 7:9 is "gathered" at the "Feast of Tabernacles" ("15th Tisri") while the "sealed ones are gathered when Christ comes from without the veil (Heb. ix. 28)" at the prior "Day of Atonement" ("10th Tisri").

     Considering all of the above, it's easy to see why many in Margaret's day were "harvest"-minded. As early as 1826 many had been praying for the "latter rain" (Zech. 10:1) - the end-time outpouring of the Spirit (Acts 2:17) that would produce the final "harvest." In Margaret's first "revelation," which preceded her famous (pretrib) one, she mentioned "a great ingathering" in the future - a possible reference to the feast of in-gathering (Feast of Tabernacles).

     Her pretrib "revelation" didn't single out any Jewish feast. But she expressed the "first fruits" idea without using the term. She said that "only those that are alive in him" - identified as "those...filled with the Spirit" - "will be caught up to meet him in the air."

     Unlike Darby who saw a distinction between the "heavenly" church and "earthly" Jews, she saw (in the partial rapture form of her pretrib view) a distinction between "heavenly" Christians and "earthly" Christians; the "worthy" part of the church would be "firstfruited" before the rest of the church would be left behind and merely "harvested."

     I have shown in my books and articles that Irving and his followers taught all of the chief aspects of dispensationalism long before Darby did. In 1832 Darby was still a historicist and not yet a futurist; in an 1832 paper which reviewed some writings by futurist William Burgh, Darby was concerned "that Mr. Burgh's views divert the attention of Christians from the present antichristian principles...to some supposed or future actings of a personal Antichrist...."

     In 1834 we find Darby (and the Jews) waiting for the SAME day: the day Christ comes forth, the day when Christ "will not tarry" (Heb. 10:37)!

     In "The Christian Witness" (Apr., 1837) Darby's article saw the Christian church "going in with Him to the marriage, to wit, with Jerusalem and the Jews"!

     Not until 1839 in his "Notes on the Revelation" can we find Darby expressing the pretrib view; his pretrib basis then (and for many more years) rested on the symbol of the "man child" that is "caught up" in Rev. 12:5 - but he was only plagiarizing Irving who had used the same symbol for the same purpose in his journal "The Morning Watch" (Edward Irving, "Interpretation of the Old-Testament Prophecies quoted in the New," June, 1831, p. 301)!

     Concerning the Jewish feasts, Darby is almost totally silent on them. In the "Letters of J.N.D." which includes in several volumes his letters from 1832 to 1882 (a total of 1557 pages) there is only one listing in his Scripture Index to Leviticus 23 which leads to a brief paragraph on pp. 399-400 on "firstfruits" that he applied only to "Jews on earth" in the Old Testament as symbolical of "Christ risen" and "perfect to be offered to God."

     In it Darby said nothing about a rapture or the second coming and this brief reference to Lev. 23 is dated 1868 - several decades AFTER the incredible, informative, and innovative Irvingites who said they had been inspired initially by a certain young Scottish lassie!

     Allow me to wrap up by quoting, as a summary, a bit of my "Rapture Plot" book"

     "But I've saved, for this moment, an even more exciting suggestion someone made while these Irvingites were having a "field day" with the harvest/feasts of Leviticus 23; in June of 1831 the unknown writer based the prior rapture on the feast of "First-fruits"! He said the first resurrection covered the firstfruits and a slightly later harvest.

     "So within a few years the Irvingites shifted their rapture from feast No. 6...to feast No. 5 to feast No. 4 and even to feast No. 3! But how could the "firstfruits" (No. 3) be caught up before they were "waved" (No. 4) and before the trumpet sounds (No. 5, I Thess. 4:16)?"

     Well, present day dispensationalists have had the same disagreement.

     C. I. Scofield (1917) based his pretrib rapture on the feast of the firstfruits, No. 3.

     Although John Walvoord sees a sharp distinction between the church and Old Testament saints, and says that there is nothing in the Old Testament suggestive of a pretrib rapture, his 1966 book based a pretrib aspect of the first resurrection on feast No. 3.

     Hal Lindsey's 1983 book has a pretrib rapture chart based on the same feasts. Even though he doesn't reveal which feast is the significant one, his pretrib rapture lies between feast No. 3 and feast No. 7.

     Another pretrib rapture date-setter, Edgar Whisenant, said in 1988 that the rapture would happen in 1988. His rapture was based on feast No. 5.

     Whether or not Christ returns on some Jewish feast day or holy day isn't important to me. What really matters to me is that pretrib was never a part of Christian theology or any organized church before 1830.

     Maybe Christians should feast more on clear passages of scripture and less on unclear passages while wearing pretrib dispensational spectacles.

     That is, if they don't wish to make spectacles of themselves!

     POSTSCRIPT: I have more evidence that pretrib is losing its grip. Readers of this blog will recall my article last Jan. titled "Moody Leaders Suddenly 'Raptured.' " Well, later on (July 5th) leading pretrib teacher Dr. Erwin Lutzer, while preaching at the famous Moody Church in Chicago, discussed the differences between pretrib and posttrib. He then gave this (post-July Fourth) "bombshell":

     "Here at the Moody Church we have decided not to draw a line in the sand about these two views. We have pretribulationists among us...but also there are posttribulationists and many of them love the Lord and many of them are very fine scholars, and so you can be a pretrib or you can be a posttrib here at the Moody Church." (You can add your own exclamation points here.)