CHRIS QUINTANA: PRETRIB DISINGENUOUS TRANSLATIONS FROM ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS

Did John Darby Invent the Pre Tribulation Rapture?

The pre‑tribulation camp’s selective handling of ancient manuscripts is academically indefensible. Accurate translation and authorial intent are essential safeguards for believers, precisely because misreadings create doctrinal vulnerabilities. (1 John 4:1). The pretribulation rapture is a serious interpretive error, and unless it is clearly refuted, it will continue to cultivate a false expectation that leaves many unprepared for what the biblical text actually describes.

Pseudo Ephraem

Pseudo‑Ephraem does not teach a pretribulation rapture; his writings describe the righteous escaping the tribulation through death, not a supernatural removal of the Church before the tribulation. 

The passages cited by the Pre‑Trib Research Center and other pre‑trib advocates are drawn from two later homiletic works: the Latin Sermon on the Last Times, the Antichrist, and the End of the World and the Greek Sermon on Repentance and Judgment and the Separation of Soul and Body.1 These are the sources routinely invoked in attempts to anchor pretribulationism in antiquity. You will not find any pretrib interpreter quoting from Syriac Pseudo-Ephraem which is the original text. The Syriac Pseudo‑Ephraem is 7th‑century, and the Latin version reflects a late‑6th‑ to early‑7th‑century composition preserved in later manuscripts. A commonly extracted line (below) is presented by Quintana as decisive evidence, despite its removal from the broader apocalyptic context in which it appears. 

The translation quoted by Chris Quintana, (supplied by Lee Brainard) is from the Latin Pseudo-Ephraem: "For all the saints and elect of God are gathered, prior to the tribulation that is to come, and are taken to the Lord lest they see the confusion that is to overwhelm the world because of our sins."

Syraic Pseudo-Ephraem: "Pronouncing the good fortune of the deceased Who had avoided the calamity: 'Blessed are you for you were borne away (to the grave) And hence you escaped from the afflictions!

An Excerpt from Syriac Pseudo Ephraem

Pronouncing the good fortune of the deceased Who had avoided the calamity: 'Blessed are you for you were borne away (to the grave) And hence you escaped from the afflictions! But as for us, woe is us! For when we die, Vultures will serve as escort for us!' And if the days of that time were not shortened, The elect would never survive The calamities and afflictions. For Our Lord revealed (and) disclosed to us In his Gospel when He said: 'Those days will be shortened For the sake of the elect and the saints.' And when he has harassed the whole of creation, (When) the Son of Destruction (has bent it) to his will, Enoch and Elijah will be sent That they might persuade the Evil One. With a gentle question The saints will come before him, In order to expose the Son of Destruction Before the assemblies surrounding him: 'If you are indeed God, Tell us what we ask of you: Where is the place that you have hidden The elders Elijah and Enoch?' The Evil One will respond and say To the saints at that time: 'When I wish (it), they are in the height(s), Or again should I choose, they are within the sea; For I have authority over habitations, Since there is no other god apart from me And I can make anything On earth (and) also in heaven!' They will answer The Son of Destruction as follows: 'If you are truly God, Call out to the deceased so that they will rise! For it is written within the books Of the prophets and the apostles That when the Messiah reveals Himself, He will resurrect the dead from the graves. If you cannot show us this (sign), Then the One who was crucified is greater than you! For he roused and resurrected those who were dead, And was exalted in great splendor.' Then the Evil One will become enraged With the saints at that time; He will draw his terrible sword And sever the necks of the righteous ones.2

Apokalypsis anastaseōs

Nathanael Holmes’s Apokalypsis anastaseōs (1653) is a separate, later Protestant apocalyptic treatise, while the “Apocalypse of Anastasia” is an earlier Eastern Orthodox visionary text — they share the word “Anastasia” but are unrelated in origin and purpose. 

Apokalypsis anastaseōs page 494-5

"after this our gathering together* 8.293 unto Christ at his comming (so the Apostle calls this rapture, 2 Thess. 2.1.) wee shall from hence∣forth never lose his presence, but alwayes enjoy it, partly on earth, during his reigne of the thousand yeers, and partly in heaven, when we shall bee translated thither. For it cannot be concluded, because the Text saith, the Saints after their rapture on high, should thence∣forth be ever with the Lord; Therefore they shall from thence∣forth be in heaven; for no heaven is here mentioned. If they must needs be with Christ there, where they are to meet him; it would rather follow, they should be ever with him in the aire, then in heaven, which I suppose none will admit. And otherwise the Text will afford no more for heaven, then it will for earth; nay the words [he shall bring them with him] make most for the latter. 4 I will adde this more, namely, what may be conceived to be the cause of this rapture of the Saints on high to meet the Lord in the clouds, rather then to wait his comming to the earth. What if it bee, that they may be preserved during the conflagration of the earth, and the works thereof, 2 Pet. 3.10. That as Noah, and his family were pre∣served from the deluge, by being lift up above the waters in the Ark, so should the Saints at the conflagration bee lift up in the clouds unto their Ark, Christ, to be preserved there from the Deluge of fire, wherein the wicked shall be consumed? There is a tradition of the Jews sounding this way, which they ascribe unto Elias, a Jewish Doctor, whose is that Tradition of the duration of the world, and well knowne among Divines, Duo millia Inane, duo mil∣lia Lex, duo millia dies Messiae, viz. Sex mille annos duraturus est mun∣dus. He lived under the second Temple, about the first times of the Greek Monarchy; so that it is no devise of any later Rabbies, but a Tradition anciently received amongst them whilst they were yet the Church of God. I will transcribe it, because it hath something remarkable concerning the thousand yeers. It sounds thus: Traditio domus Eliae. Justi quos resuscitabit Deus, non redigentur iterum in pulverem. (He means of the first and particular resurrection, before the general, which the Jews acknowledge and talke much of. See Wisdome Chapt. 3. ab initio ad finem, verse 8.) Si quaeras Mille annis ist is, quibus Deus Sanctus Benedictus renova∣turus est mundum suum (de quibus dicitur, Et exaltabitur Dominus solus in die illo, Es. 2.11.) quid just is futurum sit; sciendum quod Deus bene∣dictus dabit illis alas quasi aquilarum, ut volent super facie aquarum: unde dicitur (Psal. 46.3.) Propterea non timebimus cum* 8.294 mutabitur terra. At forte (inquies) erit ipsis dolori seu afflictioni. Sed occurrit illud (Esa. 40.31.) Exspectantibus Dominum innovabunt vires, efferen∣tur alâ instar aquilarum. The Hebrew words are in Gemara Sanhe∣drin, &c. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 The Tradition of the house of Eliah. The just whom God shall raise (viz. in the first resurrection) shall not returne to dust. But if you aske, what shall happen to the just in those thousand yeeres, wherein the holy and blessed God shall renew this World (whereof it is said, Esa. 2.11. And the Lord alone shall be ex∣alted in that day) you must know, that God shall give them the wings as it were of Eagles, to flye upon the face of the waters; for it is said (Psal. 46.3.) Therefore shall wee not feare, when the earth shall bee changed. But you will say, Perhaps it will be to them a paine and trouble; but we are otherwise taught by that in Esa. 40.31. They that wait upon the Lord, shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as Eagles, &c.]"3  

In the earliest usage, a conflagration was a large, destructive fire — sometimes a city-wide blaze, a wildfire, or a catastrophic fire event. The most relevant verses associated with conflagration are Genesis 19:28; Joshua 6:4, 8:20, 11:13; Judges 18:27; 1 Samuel 30:1; 1 Kings 9:16; 2 Chronicles 36:19; Job 1:16.

Watson's Biblical and Theological Dictionary: "Conflagration>  a general burning of a city, or other considerable place. But the word is more ordinarily restrained to that grand period, or catastrophe of our world, wherein the face of nature is expected to be changed by a deluge of fire, as it was anciently by that of water. The ancient Chaldeans, Pythagoreans, Platonists, Epicureans, Stoics, Celts, and Etrurians, appear to have had a notion of the conflagration; though whence they should derive it, unless from the sacred books, it is difficult to conceive; except, perhaps, from the Phenicians, who themselves had it from the Jews. The Celts, whose opinions resembled those of the eastern nations, held, that after the burning of the world, a new period of existence would commence."4

Chris Quintana understands "tribulation" and “conflagration” to be synonyms. However, this is clearly not the case. Conflagration refers to fire, a term consistently associated with orgē (wrath) and not thlipsis (tribulation). This reflects the standard pretrib fallacy that the entire 70th week of Daniel is 'the tribulation', even though the tribulation proper lasts 3.5 years and is followed by the Day of the Lord — the period of divine wrath. (cf. Matthew 24:29-31; Revelation 6:12-17).*  

Despite repeated denials and misplaced counter‑accusations, the historical record is clear: the doctrine of the pretribulation rapture originates in the 19th century with John Nelson Darby and has no attestation in earlier Christian teaching.

Quintana’s derisive response is unfortunate. Pretribulation teachers will answer to God for misleading the church.

*WOLVES IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING: FALSE PROPHETS AND BIBLE TEACHERS IN THE LAST DAYS: THE SEVEN YEAR TRIBULATION FALLACY

1. Mr. Pseudo Ephraem - The Pre-Trib Research Center
2. John C. Reeves | Pseudo-Ephrem (Syriac)
3. Apokalypsis anastaseåos The resurrection revealed, or, The dawnings of the day-star about to rise and radiate a visible incomparable glory far beyond any since the creation upon the universal church on earth for a thousand yeers yet to come, before the ultimate day of the general judgement to the raising of the Jewes, and ruine of all antichristian and secular powers, that do not love the members of Christ, submit to his laws and advance his interest in this design : digested into seven bookes with a synopsis of the whole treatise and two tables, 1 of scriptures, 2 of things, opened in this treatise / by Dr. Nathanael Homes. | Early English Books Online 2 | University of Michigan Library Digital Collections
4. Conflagration - Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary -

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