The movement of Plymouth Brethren had its beginning in Ireland and England in the 1820s, Plymouth being a main center of activity. Their most prominent early leader was John Nelson Darby (1800-82), who taught that Christ might return at any moment and in a "secret rapture" would take away the members of the true church to dwell in heaven.
It is estimated that their membership in the United States, where the sect has been active since the 1860s, is about 98,000.
Conrad Wright
Bibliography:
Beattie, David J., Brethren: The Story of a
Great Recovery Movement (1942); Coad, F. R., A History of
the Brethren Movement (1968); Ironside, Henry A., A
Historical Sketch of the Brethren Movement, rev. ed.
(1985); Rowdon, Harold H., The Origins of the Brethren: 1825-1850 (1967).
The concept of Rapture was established from Paul's words in one of his Letters to the Thessalonians, at I Thess. 4:15-17, but then some aspects of that text seem to have gotten expanded and interpreted into becoming the Rapture. My personal observation is that these are NOT words from Jesus at all, and they were written in a postal Letter written around twenty years after Jesus' Death, and was apparently the very first Letter written by Paul at the very beginning of Paul's founding of Christian communities. I further note that while Jesus Lived, Paul was then Saul, an intense adversary of Christians. As a result of these two matters, I personally wonder at how precise Paul's comments might be regarding his actual knowledge of details of something as unique as the Rapture, which Paul then believed was about to occur during his own lifetime. Therefore, I recognize that many modern Churches strongly present the Rapture as a concrete belief, and that aids them in building deep Faith in some Christians, but I have many personal reservations regarding any confidence in the accuracy of such claims about the Rapture.
Many researchers feel that Margaret MacDonald was a troubled child and that she discovered great popularity once she started presenting her unusual behaviors and claims, and that gave her cause to continue to emphasize that story for the rest of her life. The fact that the famous and charismatic Darby seemed to adopt much of her claims then was therefore the basis of the modern Rapture concept.
There are other scholars who have varying views on how and where the concept of the Rapture developed, but none are prior to the year 1830, in Scotland or Ireland.
Rapture of the Church is a phrase used by premillennialists to refer to the church being united with Christ at his second coming (from the Lat. rapio, "caught up"). The main scriptural passage upon which the teaching is based is I Thess. 4:15-17: "For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord."
The major divisions of interpretation of Paul's words center on the relationship of the time of the rapture to the tribulation period which marks the end of the age. Pretribulationists teach that the church will be removed before this seven-year period and the revelation of the antichrist. A second group, the midtribulationists, contend that the church will be raptured during the tribulation after the antichrist's rise to power but before the severe judgments that prepare the way for Christ's return to establish his rule on earth. Another approach to the problem is that of the posttribulationists, who believe that the church will continue to exist in the world throughout the entire tribulation and be removed at the end of the period when Christ returns in power.
| BELIEVE Religious Information Source web-site |
| BELIEVE Religious Information Source - By Alphabet Our List of 2,300 Religious Subjects |
Darby's ideas had a wide influence in Britain and the United States. Many evangelicals became pretribulationists through the preaching of the interdenominational evangelists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Scofield Reference Bible and the leading Bible institutes and graduate schools of theology such as Dallas Theological Seminary, Talbot Seminary, and Grace Theological Seminary also contributed to the popularity of this view. During the troubled times of the 1960s there was a revival of the pretribulational view on a popular level through the books of Hal Lindsey and the ministries of preachers and Bible teachers who use the electronic media.
If the influence of Darby is obvious in the work of his successors, it is a more difficult task to determine how he arrived at an understanding of the secret pretribulation rapture. Samuel P. Tregelles, like Darby a member of the Plymouth Brethren movement, charged that the view originated during a charismatic service conducted by Edward Irving in 1832. Other scholars maintain that the new understanding of the rapture was the product of a prophetic vision given to a young Scottish girl, Margaret MacDonald, in 1830. She claimed special insight into the second coming and began to share her views with others. Her ecstatic conduct and apocalyptic teaching led to a charismatic renewal in Scotland. Impressed by the accounts of a new Pentecost, Darby visited the scene of the revival. According to his own testimony in later years he met Margaret MacDonald, but rejected her claims of a new outpouring of the Spirit. Despite his opposition to MacDonald's general approach some writers believe that he accepted her view of the rapture and worked it into his own system.
Other scholars feel that one must accept Darby's own explanation of how he arrived at his eschatological view. He based it upon an understanding that the church and Israel are distinct entities in Scripture. When the church is withdrawn from the world, then the prophetic events involving Israel can be fulfilled. Antichrist will rise to power by promising peace on earth and will make an agreement to protect the restored state of Israel. However, the Jews will be betrayed by their new benefactor, who will suddenly suspend all traditional religious ceremonies and demand that they worship him. Those who do not cooperate will be persecuted. This final holocaust against God's chosen people will lead them to accept Christ as their savior. Plagues will ravage the earth during this time of tribulation, and finally the battle of Armageddon will result in the visible, personal, victorious return to earth of Christ and his saints. The Lord will then bind Satan for a thousand years and rule the world with his followers for a millennium. According to pretribulation premillennialists all the prophecies which were supposed to be fulfilled when Christ came the first time will come to pass at his second coming. The Jewish rejection of Christ in the first century forced the postponement of the kingdom until the second coming. The view that was taken of the church and its place in prophecy is crucial to the acceptance of the pretribulational rapture and the system it supports.
Another argument given in favor of the pretribulation rapture is that the restraining influence of the Holy Spirit must be removed before the antichrist can be revealed (II Thess. 2:6-8). Because the Spirit is particularly associated with the church, it follows that the church must be absent from the scene when the Spirit is gone. Among the other reasons that seem to support pretribulationism is the imminence of the rapture. If it can occur at any time, then no tribulation signs such as the revelation of the antichrist, the battle of Armageddon, or the abomination in the temple precede the "blessed event."
Midtribulationists claim that the rapture is to take place after the fulfillment of certain predicted signs and the preliminary phase of the tribulation as described in Matt. 24:10-27. The event will not be secret but will be accompanied by an impressive display including a great shout and the blast of the trumpet (I Thess. 4:16; Rev. 11:15; 14:2). This dramatic sign will attract the attention of unsaved people, and when they realize that the Christians have disappeared they will come to Christ in such large numbers that a major revival will take place (Rev. 7:9, 14).
Many of the arguments suggested by those who advocate the posttribulation view are stated in opposition to the pretribulation position, which has been the most widely held interpretation among twentieth century American premillenialists. Included in these critisms are suggestions that the imminent return of Christ does not require a pretribulation rapture. Posttribulatioinists also point to the difficulty of deciding which passages of Scripture apply to Israel and which are relevant to the church. They also contend that there is a notable lack of explicit teaching about the rapture in the NT.
Advocates of the posttribulation position differ among themselves on the application of the prophetic Scriptures and the details about the return of Christ. John Walvoord has detected four schools of interpretation among their number. The first of these, classic posttribulationism, is represented by the work of J. Barton Payne, who taught that the church has always been in tribulation and therefore the great tribulation has largely been fulfilled. The second main division of posttribulationists is the semiclassic position found in the work of Alexander Reese. Among the variety of views held by these individuals the most common is that the entire course of church history is an era of tribulation, but in addition there is to be a future period of great tribulation. A third category of posttribulational interpretation is called futurist and is ably presented in the books of George E. Ladd. He accepts a future period of three and a half or seven years of tribulation between the present era and the second coming of Christ. He was led to this conclusion by a literal interpretation of Rev. 8-18. A staunch premillennialist, he believes that the pretribulation rapture was an addition to Scripture and as such obscured the truly important event, the actual appearance of Christ to inaugurate his reign. A fourth view is that of Robert H. Gundry, which Walvoord calls the dispensational posttribulational interpretation. Gundry combines in a novel manner the pretribulational arguments and an acceptance of the posttribulation rapture.
R G Clouse
Elwell Evangelical Dictionary
Bibliography
O. T. Allis, Prophecy and the Church; R. Anderson, The
Coming Prince; E. S. English, Re-Thinking the Rapture; R. H. Gundry,
The Church and the Tribulation; G. E. Ladd, The Blessed Hope; D.
MacPherson, The Incredible Cover-Up; P. Mauro, The Seventy Weeks and
the Great Tribulation; J.B. Payne, The Imminent Appearing of Christ;
J.D. Pentecost, Things to Come; A. Reese, The Approaching Advent of
Christ; J.F. Strombeck, First the Rapture; J.F. Walvoord, The Rapture
Question; L.J. Wood, Is the Rapture Next?
Tribulation is trouble or affiction of any kind (Deut. 4:30; Matt. 13:21; 2 Cor. 7:4). In Rom. 2:9 "tribulation and anguish" are the penal sufferings that shall overtake the wicked. In Matt. 24:21, 29, the word denotes the calamities that were to attend the destruction of Jerusalem.
(Easton Illustrated Dictionary)
The sufferings of Christ provide the model for the believer's experience (I Pet. 2:21-25), and in some sense they participate thus in the sufferings of Christ (Col. 1:24). Tribulations are viewed by Scripture as entirely within the will of God, serving to promote moral purity and godly character (Rom. 5:3-4). As such, they must be endured with faith in the goodness and justice of God (see James 1:2-4, where "trials" or "temptations" labels what appears to be the same experience), thus serving as a test of the believer's faith and leading to greater stability and maturity.
Jesus promised tribulation as the inevitable consequence of his followers' presence in the evil kosmos (John 16:33), something they could expect as a way of life. The Apostle Paul echoes this viewpoint when he warns that godly believers will certainly suffer persecution (II Tim. 3:12-13). Jesus nevertheless encouraged his followers through his overcoming of the world to seek their victory through the application of his victory.
This period of time will be initiated by the "abomination of desolation" (Matt. 24:15) predicted in Dan. 9:27, a desecration of the "holy place" by one whom many scholars believe is the same as the "man of lawlessness" of II Thess. 2:3, 4. Jesus gives specific instructions to inhabitants of Judea for their escape and warns that the intensity of its calamities would almost decimate all life (Matt. 24:15-22).
Since Jesus made this prophecy, major wars, catastrophes, and cosmic phenomena have stimulated belief in the presence of the great tribulation. Such a tendency is typified by Hesychius of Jerusalem in some correspondence with Augustine. Augustine disagreed, preferring to interpret such things instead as characteristics of history as a whole with no particular eschatological significance. In modern times some premillennialists have speculated on the trend of current events as possible precursors of the great tribulation, some even attempting to identify the antichrist with such candidates as Kaiser Wilhelm II and Mussolini.
Adherents of the major millennial views place the great tribulation at different points in relation to the millennium. Both postmillennialists and amillennialists regard it as a brief, indefinite period of time at the end of the millennium, usually identifying it with the revolt of Gog and Magog of Rev. 20:8-9. Postmillennialists view history as moving toward the Christianization of the world by the church and a future millennium of undetermined length on earth culminating in the great tribulation and final return of Christ. In contrast, amillennialists consider the millennium to be a purely spiritual reality from the first advent to the second, a period lasting already two thousand years and to culminate in the great tribulation, a somewhat less optimistic view of history and the progress of the gospel witness.
To premillennialists the millennium is a future, literal thousand years on earth, and the great tribulation a chaotic period toward which history is even now moving, a decline, i.e., to be terminated by the return of Christ before the millennium. One group, which describes itself as "historic" premillennialists, understands the great tribulation to be a brief but undetermined period of trouble. Another group, dispensational premillennialists, connects it with the seventieth week of Dan. 9:27, a period of seven years whose latter half pertains strictly to the great tribulation.
Within the premillennial movement another issue, the time of the rapture of the church, has given rise to three views. Pretribulationists (rapture prior to the seventieth week) and midtribulationists (rapture at the middle of the seventieth week) perceive the great tribulation as characterized by the wrath of God upon an unbelieving world from which the church is necessarily exempt (I Thess. 5:9).
Posttribulationists believe that the great tribulation is merely an intensification of the kind of tribulation the church has suffered throughout history, through which the church logically must pass. A more recent, novel view in the posttribulation camp seeks to maintain the imminence of the rapture despite the fact that notable tribulational events would necessarily intervene. In order to do so, the events of the great tribulation would be "potential" but uncertain in their fulfillment. Jesus could come at any moment, and one could look back into recent history to see events that fulfilled the great tribulation.
W H Baker
(Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)
Bibliography
R. Anderson, The Coming Prince; L. Boettner, The
Millennium; M. J. Erickson, Contemporary Options in Eschatology; R. N.
Gundry, The Church and the Tribulation; S. N. Gundry, "Hermeneutics or
Zeitgeist as the Determining Factor in the History of Eschatology,"
JETS 20:45-55; A. A. Hoekema, The Bible and the Future; J. E. Hartley,
TWOT, II, 778-79; R. Schippers, NIDNTT, II, 807-9; H. Schlier, TDNT,
III, 140-48; T. Weber, Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming; D.
Wilson, Armageddon Now! The Premillenarian Response to Russia and
Israel Since 1917; J. Walvoord, The Rapture Question.
This page - -
- - is at
This subject presentation was last updated on - -
Send an e-mail question or comment to us: E-mail
The main BELIEVE web-page (and the index to subjects) is at: BELIEVE Religious Information Source - By Alphabet http://mb-soft.com/believe/indexaz.html