The Lie - Where It Came From



“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually
  come to   believe it.”    -The Nazi, Joseph Goebbels

 It came from Dave MacPherson who aggressively attacked the pretribulation rapture by attributing its origin to Margaret Macdonald, whom MacPherson considered to be occult influenced. He claimed J.N. Darby derived the pretribulation rapture from her and this was done secretly, lest the true origin of the rapture be discovered. This was the beginning of the MacDonald lie.

David MacPherson
  • David MacPherson began the whole controversy with his claims which have so little supporting evidence that one wonders how he could write his book with a straight face. Pretribulationalists should be indebted to MacPherson for exposing the facts, namely, that there is no proof that MacDonald or Irving originated the pretribulation Rapture teaching.
  • Max S. Weremchuk wrote a major biography on Darby entitled, “John Nelson Darby: A Biography. “ In it he says, "Having read MacPherson's book I find it impossible to make a just comparison between what Miss MacDonald 'prophesied' and what Darby taught. It appears that the wish was the father of the idea.”
John Nelson Darby, wrote of the Pre-trib Rapture in January of 1827
  • His denomination was the Plymouth Brethren
  • Darby had already written out his pretribulation Rapture views in January 1827, 3 years prior to the 1830 MacDonald prophecy.
  • Darby’s belief came from Scripture, not from a girl’s prophecy.
    He did not get his eschatological views from men, but rather from the doctrine of the church as the body of Christ. His views were gradually formed and theologically and Biblically based rather than derived from any Pentecostal group or MacDonald prophecy.
  • Darby went to the meetings being held where MacDonald gave her word, and he concluded that what was going on there was “demonic.” He would not have borrowed an idea from a source that he clearly thought was demonic.“
  • Darby's understanding of the pre-trib Rapture was the product of the development of his personal interactive thought with the text of Scripture as he, his friends, and dispensationalists have long contended.
  • Darby's earliest published essay on Biblical prophecy was in 1829. In his earliest of essays, he expounds upon the Rapture as the Church's hope, not the Church’s purification during the Tribulation.
  • Darby’s conclusion concerning the pre-trib Rapture came when he saw clearly the distinction between Israel and the Church, two separate dispensations.
Margaret MacDonald was post-trib
  • MacDonald’s vision was in 1830, 3 years after Darby’s conclusions about the Rapture
  • MacDonald was a member of the charismatic movement of 1830. John Darby went to investigate and dismissed her “vision” as "demonic." If Darby thought MacDonald to be under an "evil spell," why on earth would he use her writings to form some new doctrine?
  • MacDonald’s statements show her to hold a POST-trib position. She said of the Tribulation:
    "…being the fiery trial which is to try us …for the purging and purifying of the real members of the body of Jesus." She looked for the Church being purged by the Antichrist. This is not pre-trib belief. Pre-trib doctrine shows the Church being removed BEFORE THE COMING of the Antichrist.
Roy A. Huebner, Brethren writer
Huebner wrote that Darby first began to believe in the pre-trib Rapture and develop his dispensational thinking while convalescing from a riding accident during December 1826 and January 1827. Huebner wrote of Darby's pre-trib and dispensational thoughts:
  • He saw from Isaiah 32 that there was a different dispensation coming …that Israel and the Church were distinct.
  • During his convalescence, Darby learned that he ”ought daily to expect his Lord's return."
  • He also saw a gap of time between the Rapture and the second coming
  • Darby himself said in 1857 that he first started understanding things relating to the pre-trib Rapture "thirty years ago," so that would be January 1827.
  • Darby had already understood those truths upon which the pre-tribulation Rapture hinges. He claimed that the doctrine virtually jumped out of the pages of Scripture once he accepted and consistently maintained the distinction between Israel and the church.
  • Huebner considers MacPherson's charges as "using slander that J. N. Darby took the pretribulation Rapture from those very opposing, demon-inspired utterances.”
John Bray
Bray was an anti-Rapture believer, but he said that Margaret MacDonald was teaching a single coming of our Lord Jesus. This contradicts the Rapture doctrine which teaches a two-staged event: first, Christ comes for His Church and second, seven years later his return to earth. So Margaret MacDonald was post-trib, NOT pre-trib.

There are not a lot of writings from the early church period on the subject of the Rapture. And why should there be? They were not to live in those days. The earliest writings from which we have learned about these things are found in the Bible’s Book of Daniel. After receiving the revelation, Daniel was told:
“Go your way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.”

Ephraem the Syrian, 373 AD ---1,454 years before Darby
"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."

 John Gill (1748)
Dr. John Gill was one of the most brilliant scholars of his day. This Calvinist Baptist theologian wrote a full commentary set on the Bible in 1748. In this commentary he made a statement in his notes on 1 Thessalonians 4 that supported a time difference between the Rapture of the saints and the coming of Christ to earth. He said:
"....here Christ will stop and will be visible to all, and as easily discerned by all, good and bad, as the body of the sun at noon-day; as yet He will not descend on earth, because it is not fit to receive Him; but when that and its works are burnt up, and it is purged and purified by fire, and become a new earth, He'll descend upon it, and dwell with his saints in it: and this suggests another reason why He'll stay in the air, and His saints shall meet Him there, and whom He'll take up with Him into the third heaven, till the general conflagration and burning of the world is over, and to preserve them from it...."

Joseph Mede (1586-1638)
"I will add 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 than to wait his coming to earth....What if it be, 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 preserved from the Deluge by being lift up above the waters in the Ark; so should the saints at the Conflagration be lift up in the clouds unto their Ark, Christ, to be preserved there from the deluge of fire, wherein the wicked shall be consumed?" ("The
Works of Joseph Mede," 1672, London edition, Book IV, p.776)

 Irenaeus (130 A.D. – 202 AD)
“And therefore, when in the end the Church shall be suddenly caught up from this, it is said, “There shall be tribulation such as has not been since the beginning, neither shall be.”

 Cyprian (200 AD – 258 AD
Do you not give God thanks, do you not congratulate yourself, that by an early departure you are taken away, and delivered from the shipwrecks and disasters that are imminent? Let us greet the day which assigns each of us to his own home, which snatches us hence, and sets us free from the snares of the world and restores us to paradise and the kingdom.”