Okay, this is interesting. Because I hold to certain eschatological beliefs, I'm being told that I participate in cult that is in itself, a type of spirit of antichrist. (laughing here) Amazing, this Professor of religion from a well-known college, is saying that anyone who believes that God will snatch His faithful out of this world before a period of wrath comes is believing a heretical doctrine.

As well, this man and others are holding to the notions that a tribulation itself and a pre-tribulational rapture were not known or taught before English pastor John Nelson Darby invented them. This is more than a bit of nonsense.

The truth will get hammered by others while few defend it. Just the same, it seems that innacuracies are thrown out there right and left, seemingly without challenge. For many years, guys like this professor have freely stated that pretribulationism is bunk. Now he is calling it cultic and heretical. I feel like saying something a little stronger than, "Well, you have a right to your opinion."

Being objective is critical to proper hermeneutics. Objectivity is actually the goal of hermeneutics because otherwise, the text of Scripture is not allowed to speak for itself. Interpreting the text subjectively "colors" the word and its authority. The same is true for being objective with historical studies outside, or alongside, the Bible.

Pastor John Nelson Darby, with his dispensational view of eschatological events, was not the first person to teach a pretribulational rapture. Not even close. I've mentioned in a previous post that Ephraem the Syrian, a Byzantine poet and writer taught both a pretribulation rapture and about a tribulation period. "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." That statement was made in the 4th century A.D..

Likewise, the tribulation period, seen as a gap or "parenthesis" between the 69th and 70th weeks of years which Daniel prophesied, was taught in the Epistle of Barnabas around 110 A.D, and by Hippolytus, about 110 years later.

The guys, and lady, on this show are saying that the doctrine of a rapture and the tribulation period which follows is a disingenuous distortion of the word of God, and a psychology of fear and destruction. They say that people who believe this doctrine are picking and choosing simplistically from various Scriptures like the prophecies in Daniel 9, Matthew 24, 1st Thessalonians 4 and others to rearrange them like some giant jigsaw puzzle, shoehorning the pieces into a fit that makes the picture they want.

I can't say that hasn't been done, and I condemn such practices. The truth is though, that Old Testament and New Testament prophets, even our Lord, when they gave prophecy, often telescoped through periods of time, mentioning different events from different times in the same passage. That's just one of the reasons people see what they want to see, and one of the reasons that the Jews were looking for a conquering King when they should have been seeing the Suffering Servant.

When some Christian friends of mine in high school were talking about some of the eschatological issues addressed in a book by Hal Lindsey called, "The Late Great Planet Earth," I had no idea what they were talking about. I was a new Christian, and I was somewhat concerned about the things they were saying, so I began an investigation of my own.

To this day I've never read a Hal Lindsey book. I'm not saying someone shouldn't, it's just that I have determined most of what I believe about the end times by reading my Bible, hearing studies, and going back to the Bible to check these things out. There are lots of things about the end times that can't be nailed down, because we aren't to know them yet, but as far as the difficulty in finding the concept of a pretribulational rapture or the tribulation itself in the Bible, you don't have to be a genius. It isn't very difficult.

Even evidence outside of the Bible that Christians believed in a pretribulational rapture way before John Darby seems to get routinely dismissed out of hand by those who are opposed to the concept of a rapture. They, like this professor and other professors on the program I've been watching are still teaching that Darby founded pretribulationism. In doing so, they are refusing to see the evidence. One has to ask why? It's like those who say that the Jews returning to the Middle East, and the establishment of the Nation of Israel in 1948 fulfilled no Biblical prophecy. One wonders what they are thinking.

When someone is repeatedly presented with an avalanche of evidence and then refuses to accept the truth, I have to conclude that they are in a self-imposed deception.

If one is a Christian and one doesn't believe that a pre-tribulational rapture and a seven year period of tribulation are not something biblical, that's okay. That doctrinal position won't keep one out of heaven. Calling those who do believe in this doctrine, "antichrist" however, is more than self-superior, it's just shameful.