Who Will Face the Tribulation? by Tim LaHaye

Author:Tim LaHaye
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers

Part Three

ANSWERING THE ATTACKS ON THE PRE-TRIB RAPTURE VIEW

Chapter Twelve

Target Number One

All attacks on the teaching of the Rapture before the Tribulation come down to one man.

John Darby is the individual most attackers credit with first promoting this prophetic view. Some, as we have seen, accuse him of getting it from the vision of a Scottish girl. The more vicious say it was demon-inspired or that he received the teaching from a defrocked minister named Irving, or even a renegade Jesuit Catholic named Lacunza.

Whatever the charges and assertions, John Darby figures to be a central figure in any study of the pre-Tribulation rapture. There is little question that he did more than any other man to organize and popularize the view both in the United States and Great Britain. Born in 1800 and single all his life, he dedicated his boundless energies to advancing the cause of Christ through soul-winning, preaching, Bible teaching, church building, conference teaching, and publishing. He was a compulsive writer of letters, tracts, booklets, articles, and books (some 52 volumes),1 many of which are preserved in libraries throughout the Western world.

Though slight and unimpressive of stature, Darby was a powerful personality. He was brilliant, tireless in his missionary zeal to teach the Bible, and very strong willed. As such he may have been intolerant of those who refused to agree with him. He seemed to exercise amazing patience with earnest seekers after truth, but he was not always as temperate with those who refused to consider his position seriously.

We are forced to gain our impression of Darby from those who knew him personally. Dr. James Brookes, an outstanding Presbyterian pastor of his day, considered him “one of the greatest Bible teachers of his generation.”2 C.I. Scofield and D.L. Moody became American disciples of Darby’s teachings. (Although Moody promoted the pre-Trib position as much as anyone through his own ministry, his Northfield Bible Conferences and the Bible Institute that bears his name, he had a falling out with Darby over another doctrine, that of extreme Calvinism, which contrasted with Moody’s emphasis upon free will.3) Most of the early fundamentalists and founders of the late nineteenth-century missionary movements, colleges, and Bible institutes accepted and taught John Darby’s concepts, creating many second-generation disciples.

Darby did not invent the pre-Tribulation rapture, the separation of Israel and the church, dispensationalism, types and symbols, and other distinctives which have made him the most quoted prophecy teacher since the apostle Paul. Many Bible scholars had mentioned one or more of these concepts before Darby. He did, however, pull them together into a cohesive body of thought.

Darby adapted some of his Rapture concepts from those before him who separated the Rapture and the second advent as two distinct events. He then established a specific time period between them and bolstered his ideas with Scripture. By traveling far and wide, he was able to popularize his views, which were accepted by the Bible-believing church not because of the power of his persuasion but because his convictions were based on Scripture.

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