3. Pre-Pre-Trib
3
Pre-Pre-Trib
Pre-Pre-Trib
Views about the End throughout the History of the Church
T
hroughout history Christians have understood in various ways Jesus’ and the Bible’s teaching about the end of the age. Some have taken literally all the judgments listed in the book of Revelation, expecting these to be fulfilled in the final years before Jesus comes back. Others have argued that these judgments simply represent the kinds of judgments that God pours out throughout this present evil age until Jesus returns. Either way, we live in a world that faces judgment for how we human beings treat God and one another. And either way, the sufferings of this world are birth pangs of a better world, a world in which God will restore His wounded creation and wipe away all tears from His people’s eyes.
Likewise, throughout history, Christians have wondered about the timing of the final persecutions Jesus warned about. Some believed that they were already experiencing such sufferings; others believed that the worst was yet to come. But
for most of the Church’s history Christians expected Jesus to return for the Church and to judge the world at the same time.
Left Behind: A Novel Idea
In 1830, one thinker came up with an alternative view of the end time. This interpreter, John Nelson Darby, argued that God would keep the Church from enduring the final, worst period of suffering. Even though many Christians had suffered and been martyred for their faith through history, this last generation would somehow be different and would escape the most intense sufferings.
Darby’s personal interest was not in escaping sufferings; he was simply trying to explain how some different matters in the Bible fit together. Many of Darby’s followers today acknowledge that Christians can and will continue to suffer until those final years. Unfortunately, many other Christians have latched onto Darby’s view for the wrong sort of reason: They believe that they are the final generation and that they will escape severe persecution. Naturally, none of us relishes suffering, but we need to be ready for it if it comes.
Although the Christian hope has traditionally been Jesus’ appearing to bring about a new world, for many a central part of the hope became escaping those final, terrible years of suffering that were somehow thought to be different from other kinds of sufferings—different from suffering under Nero or Hitler or Mao or ISIS.
In this book we show how Darby’s idea is not biblical. It complicates Scripture and ignores context, sometimes dividing verses in the middle by attributing one line to one future event and another line to an entirely different event.
As stated previously, however, our interest in this book is more practical than simply challenging Darby’s idea. Our interest is
more in the way that Darby’s idea has been twisted on a popular level to expect an escape from this world. Our interest is to remind us that we followers of Jesus are here for the long haul, as witnesses for Christ to our neighbors who need God’s love and help just as we do. Christians need to have realistic expectations so that we are ready to stand firm when sufferings come, rather than complaining that we should have been exempt from them.
Viewing Views: Why Examine the History of Views?
Throughout history, Christians have held wildly different views about the future. Some of these views have made sense to many Christians; some of the other views have flourished only among radical fringes of the faith. Some views have been held by many Christians for centuries, such as premillennialism (a future thousand-year reign of Christ) and amillennialism (the same thousand years but as a symbol for the present age). Other views, such as predicting a specific, near deadline for the Lord’s return, have been immensely popular, though generally only until the coming of the predicted deadline proved them wrong.
Our brief survey of historic end-time views here will illustrate two matters.
First, God does not just bless and use people with a particular end-time view. If you were raised with a particular view and believe that it must be true because “all” godly people hold that view, think again.
Second, the pre-Tribulational view began with a faulty inference from Scripture and then collected proof texts to back it up. It is a minority view in Church history; no one articulated this view clearly until 1830, and it did not become widespread until the twentieth century. It flourished in particular denominations founded in its heyday, but was generally resisted by other equally evangelical movements (for example, Reformed
and most Wesleyan churches) that began earlier. None of these observations makes the view wrong; they simply warn us not to assume that the view is as self-evident as those who have been schooled in it sometimes assume.
Left Behind theology’s vigorous promotion on a popular level differs starkly from its treatment at a scholarly level. It was promoted first by the Scofield Reference Bible and prophecy conferences, later by Hal Lindsey’s
Late Great Planet Earth
and most recently by L
EFT
B
EHIND
novels and movies. Yet most of the major academic commentaries on Matthew, 1 and 2 Thessalonians and Revelation by Bible-honoring biblical scholars (academic works published, for example, by Eerdmans or Baker) have argued against this position or simply ignored it. This observation does not by any means disprove the position. It should, however, at least alert Christians to the recognition that views exist besides those they find in some movies or novels.
Major End-Time Views through Church History
So far as we can tell from their surviving work, the earliest Church fathers in the second century were premillennial and post-Tribulational. That is, they believed that Revelation 20 described a literal future thousand years, but they believed that they were currently in the Great Tribulation
or (in the case of the Didache or the Shepherd of Hermas)
about to go through it. For example, the late second-century bishop and Church father Irenaeus wrote of “the resurrection of the just, which takes place after the coming of Antichrist, and the destruction of all nations under his rule.”
Supporters of this post-Tribulational-but-premillennial position included writer-bishops such as Papias and Irenaeus, as well as a defender of the faith named Justin, who was eventually
martyred. (This is why he came to be called Justin Martyr.) Although Justin did observe that not all Christians shared his views about the future thousand years, he seemed unaware of any other views about the Tribulation.
Some later Church fathers, however, accused Papias and Irenaeus of “error” regarding the Millennium. Indeed, the fourth-century Church historian Eusebius called Papias a dimwit and said that premillennialists were the only sorts of heretics he knew of who could be talked out of their error! (Whatever view you hold on the Millennium, keep in mind that it appears explicitly in just one passage in one chapter of the Bible. One passage seems a slender basis for charging others with serious error!)
Many later Church fathers still expected a future Tribulation. After Constantine became a Christian emperor in 324, however, most Christians in the Roman Empire thought that their period of tribulation was over. Some Christians subsequently supposed that Christ was reigning on earth through the Roman emperor, and would do so for a literal thousand years until the final judgment. That view, of course, caused some problems in the 1300s. Yet it was promoted especially by some early Puritans centuries afterward.
A much more common version of the amillennial view today—the view that the Millennium symbolizes Christ’s present reign—is what we normally mean by amillennialism. On this view, the Millennium stretches between Jesus’ first coming and His Second Coming, and the particular number of years is not meant literally. By the late second and early third centuries, the philosophically oriented Alexandrian church leaders rejected the idea of a literal future thousand years as “fleshly.” In the fourth and fifth century, Augustine developed the idea that the Millennium symbolizes the entire present age, and most medieval thinkers followed him. Sixteenth-century Reformers
such as Luther and Calvin continued this view.
They did not believe in a future Millennium, but they did accuse the Pope of being the Antichrist (others applied that designation to Turkish invaders or to the Reformers themselves).
Subsequently some Catholic scholars spoke of a future Tribulation, to show that the Pope could not be the Antichrist. Isaac Newton (1643–1727) expected a literal future Millennium but still had no inkling of any snatching out of Christians before the Tribulation.
Meanwhile, postmillennialism had begun to flourish in many evangelical circles. This was the view that Christians would successfully establish God’s Kingdom on earth, setting up the throne for Jesus so He could return. After all, Scripture said that Christ would be seated at God’s right hand
until
He made His enemies a footstool for His feet (see Psalm 110:1; Acts 2:34–35). So instead of Christ returning before the thousand years, He would return afterward.
Jonathan Edwards, a leading voice in America’s First Great Awakening, was postmillennial. So were Charles Finney and most leaders in the Second Great Awakening that evangelized much of the early nineteenth-century United States. As evangelical revivals worked to evangelize the world and bring social change (for example, by abolishing slavery), many evangelical leaders envisioned a world that would get better and better. Both the secular idea of Manifest Destiny in the United States and what some did with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution suited the optimistic spirit of the age. The tragedies of World War I, however, shattered both liberal and evangelical optimism about the future. Today some Reformed and charismatic circles have revived postmillennialism, but it remains a decidedly minority view among Christians generally.
A few thinkers during the Middle Ages and the Reformation period were premillennial, but premillennialism made its most
splendid “second coming” in the 1800s. Dispensational (pre-Tribulational) premillennialism helped drive this resurgence, but there were also historic (post-Tribulational) premillennialists. This was true even in the Brethren movement where dispensationalism first flourished.
Yet none of the views circulating before the nineteenth century—original, historic premillennialism, amillennialism or postmillennialism—envisaged Christians being raptured before a special period of tribulation. Hundreds of Christian thinkers read and commented on prophecies in the Bible, yet the idea of a Rapture before the Tribulation does not seem to have occurred to anyone before about 1830. If it was clear in the biblical text, why did nobody notice it before it became part of a new doctrinal system? (Our opinion, of course, is that it is
not
clear in the biblical text.)
Some Christians today in pre-Tribulational circles would be shocked to meet an average nineteenth-century Christian in the United States, who would likely be postmillennial. The nineteenth-century Christian might be no less horrified to learn of some twenty-first-century Christians’ premillennial approach. History shows us that no end-time view merits trust simply because it is the dominant view in a particular time or group. We need to go back to the Bible inductively to see what it actually says.
John Nelson Darby and Pre-Tribulationalism
Around 1830 John Nelson Darby formulated traditional dispensationalism, and with it the idea of a pre-Tribulational Rapture. Some post-Tribulationalists, especially Dave MacPherson mentioned earlier, have argued that Darby’s view was influenced by Edward Irving and that Irving was influenced in turn by a vision seen by Margaret MacDonald. Others question whether even
MacDonald’s vision separated the Rapture from the Second Coming.
Pre-Tribulationalists often protest against their view originating with Margaret MacDonald’s vision, and in this instance, their protest may be correct. Having read MacDonald’s prophecy, I (Craig) believe that it sounds more post-Tribulational, and that Darby deserves more of the credit for the doctrine. (Though I do appreciate MacPherson’s larger cause.) In any case, whatever his precedents, Darby was the first teacher to circulate pre-Tribulationalism. With possibly one or two exceptions not much earlier than Darby, those who claim earlier proponents of a pre-Tribulational Rapture generally have to read the idea into those proponents the way they have to read the idea into the New Testament.
How did Darby arrive at a pre-Tribulational Rapture? Darby emphasized distinguishing God’s plan for the Church from God’s plan for Israel, and he distinguished these plans so sharply that God would deal with only one at a time. (It is no surprise that he wrote before 1948.) The Tribulation and the Millennium, he argued, dealt with Israel, and therefore the Church could not be present on earth during these periods. The Second Coming had to be divided so that part was for the Church before the Tribulation and the other part was for Israel at the end. The unified picture of the Second Coming in Scripture and throughout Church history was suddenly split into two pieces.
In effect, Darby said that the Old Testament and the gospels were for the Jews. (If one follows this approach consistently, the Lord’s Prayer and the Beatitudes, for example, were exclusively for Israel.) Because Israel “rejected the Gospel,” he said, God started the Church, not revealed in the Old Testament, and from Acts 2 onward we have the message for the Church. Except that not even all of that was for the Church. Acts, he believed,
reported a “transitional” apostolic dispensation, while God still tried fruitlessly to reach the Jews; the gifts of the Spirit were for that dispensation, and when Jerusalem fell in AD 70, and the apostles died, God was done with Israel until the Great Tribulation, when He would be done (in
earthly
terms) with the Church. (Those of us who affirm spiritual gifts should note that Darby’s system phased them out in the first century. It does not take an abundant knowledge of Church history to recognize that he was wrong about that.)
Many Bible readers opposed this new idea, including a number of Darby’s fellow brethren; a number of its early proponents recanted it after further consideration. C. I. Scofield’s reference Bible, however, eventually spread it widely in the early twentieth century. Under the influence of this study Bible, pre-Tribulationalism spread widely, promoted by prophecy conferences as a special and novel insight. World War I challenged postmillennial optimism, strengthening premillennialism’s appeal. The view dominated many mid-twentieth-century U.S. evangelical circles, which also promoted it widely on mission fields that now flourish with tens or hundreds of millions of zealous Christians.
Yet there is no record of anyone promoting a pre-Tribulational Rapture before about 1830; until that time virtually everyone, from any Christian or even semi-Christian tradition, expected that Jesus would resurrect the righteous and destroy the wicked at the same time. John Walvoord, a leading dispensational defender of pre-Tribulationalism, contended that pre-Tribulationalism cannot exist without dispensationalism,
and he saw Darby as the doctrine’s originator. Michael will address traditional dispensationalism much more fully in the next chapter.
As noted earlier, most biblical scholars have rejected pre-Tribulationalism from the start. The primary exceptions are dispensational biblical scholars, some of whom are our friends
and colleagues; but they remain in the minority. Yet the question must not be, “Who believes this idea today?” or, “What is the majority position among Bible-believing scholars?” but, “What does the Bible say?” For example, most semi-Christian religions (often called cults) are effectively post-Tribulational for the simple reason that they, like most Christians throughout history, were never taught to distinguish between the Rapture and the Second Coming. Unless one is taught to see it, one will almost certainly never see it.
Yet The Way International, a cult that denies Jesus’ deity, is pre-Tribulational. Years ago, when I (Craig) tired of debating Christ’s deity with some members of the group I had befriended, I would shift to debating their views about the Rapture. (These were obviously less important than Christ’s deity, but I figured that once they realized that any of their teachings were false, they would be more open to searching the Bible afresh on other points.) Of course, The Way is exceptional in this combination of views; its founder, Victor Paul Wierwille, drew on a range of views popular in his time, not all of them traditionally compatible.
The relevant observation here is that movements often reflect the ideas of their founders, who in turn often reflect ideas dominant at the time of their founding. Some Christians do not personally know any godly people who hold end-time views other than their own; the point of this brief survey is to show that no specific end-time view is exclusively related to godliness. Except, that is, insofar as it calls us to look for our Lord’s return to usher in a new world.
Failed Prophecy Predictions through Church History
Popular readers sometimes put too much stock in prophecy “experts.” Prophecy teachers have been setting dates for a
long time. Nearly eighteen centuries ago, Martin of Tours was certain that the Antichrist had already been born by his day. Martin died in 397, so if he was right, the Antichrist is by now rather old. The honorable third-century Church father and apologist Hippolytus gave himself more room for error, expecting the world to end in the year 500. He was not around for anyone to criticize his math when the world survived his prediction.
Although Luther believed that he was in the end time, he was dismayed by many prophecy teachers of his day. Melchior Hoffmann expected Strassburg to become the New Jerusalem, but he died in prison there ten years later. Thomas Müntzer expected the Peasants’ Revolt of 1524 to precipitate the final Judgment; it ended up precipitating only death for him and thousands of peasants. Back then, end-time speculations frequently “died hard, unfortunately quite literally.”
Thomas Helwys, one of the early Baptist leaders, concluded that Baptists were now in the final Tribulation. Why? Any Baptists today who still use the King James Version might be unhappy to learn that it was because King James was persecuting Baptists. In the 1700s, English-speaking Christians divided over the moral status of King George III. John Wesley supported him, but many Americans considered him the final Antichrist. Not surprisingly, end-time interpretations of the nineteenth-century U.S. Civil War divided along geographic lines. Many ministers in both the North and the South expected this war to establish God’s Kingdom on earth; they merely differed as to which side in the war was God’s.
Anyone who still remembers the prophetic fanfare of some popular teachers surrounding the year 2000 will not be too surprised to learn that something similar happened just before the year 1900. On the last day of 1899, Christians sponsored newspaper ads warning that Jesus was about to return.
In the twentieth century, many prophecy teachers wrongly interpreted Jesus as saying that He would return within a forty-year generation of 1948, hence by 1988. (In context, the prophecy actually predicts the destruction of the Temple within forty years. Jesus’ prophecy was fulfilled right on schedule in the year 70.) In 1988, Edgar Whisenant’s book,
88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988
, sold three million copies. A friend who worked in a Christian bookstore told me (Craig) that the owner urged her to sell as many copies of that book as possible by December 31, because in 1989 no one would buy it. The owner’s prediction proved more accurate than Whisenant’s, whose revised edition in 1989 did not sell well. As scholars have since pointed out, this sales debacle illustrates that Christians in the United States are not always deceived two years in a row by the same author.
Prophecy teaching has been a major pastime since the late 1800s, with interpretations changing regularly as newspaper headlines change. Like newspaper headlines, they sometimes fail to anticipate some major events, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union. (Like horoscopes, though, they are right sometimes.) It is one thing to say, “Current events might fit God’s plans,” or, “This fits the ways that God works in history,” and quite another to try to match them point-for-point as if biblical texts were predicting
our
generation’s newspaper headlines. So far every other generation that has used this technique of interpreting Scripture by news headlines has proved mistaken.
One may take as an example what Revelation says about the kings of the east. Because the Allied Western powers considered the Turkish Ottoman Empire a threat, many Western interpreters in the 1800s viewed the “kings of the east” in Revelation 16:12 as the Turks. (That this view could never have occurred to the seven churches of Asia Minor, located in what is now Turkey, seems to have escaped their notice.)
The close of World War I, however, led to the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, so interpreters shifted their focus to imperial Japan, which remained a threat until the end of World War II.
After World War II, the West became friends with Japan but mistrusted Communist China. Prophecy teachers were now sure they understood the kings of the east: They were related to the great “red dragon” (Revelation 12:3), which surely meant China. Even though China is to the west of the United States, it is to the east of the seven churches of Asia Minor. Many Western interpreters remained convinced that it meant China until 1972, when U.S. relations with China began to thaw.
Did Revelation ever envision the “kings of the east” as specifically the Turks, Japan and China? Or were at least two-thirds of these interpretations wrong? The only consistency in Western interpretation was to assign this group to Asia, possibly as an expression of anti-Asian ethnocentrism. (These interpreters overlooked the fact that by ancient definitions even the Holy Land was in Asia.)
But whom would the first audience of Revelation have envisioned as the kings of the east? Revelation 16:12 says that these kings would cross the river Euphrates. The Euphrates appears throughout Roman literature as the boundary between the Roman and Parthian empires, and the Parthians were the most feared enemies of Rome. The Parthian empire covered much of the region of Iran, Iraq and parts of Syria. The Parthian empire fell centuries ago, but the idea of fierce invaders can still scare sense into some complacent sinners.
When the anti-Jewish
Protocols of the Elders of Zion
circulated in the 1920s, some prophecy teachers hailed the work as confirming their views. Unfortunately for them, it turned out to be a forgery written by the Russian secret police.
In the 1980s, prophecy teacher Colin Deal warned about a computer in Belgium known as the Beast, apparently oblivious to the fact that the source for this information was a novel. (Talk about novel interpretations!) Prophecy teacher Jack Van Impe predicted that the Soviet flag would be flying over Independence Hall in Philadelphia by 1976. I joyfully lived in Philadelphia from 1996–2011, and my students who grew up there assured me that this never happened, by or since 1976. Unless President Putin has some unexpected plans beyond the Soviet Union’s former boundaries, it is probably too late to expect it in Philadelphia now.
So returning to Darby: Why did his theological system separate the Rapture from the Second Coming? Michael, who has a unique perspective as both a Hebrew scholar and a Messianic Jewish believer, offers a critique in the next chapter.