history of the doctrine of the rapture

Hi, Psalm:

Here's the earliest source I could find on Google:

I Thes. 4:[16] For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

[17] Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

(Sorry, I couldn't resist, LOL! )

 

If you're referring to a rapture ofthe church, then She-Eagle is correct. There has been a doctrine of the rapture of the church from the earliest days.

But let's put a caveat here. There are two distinct doctrines of the rapture. One is the historic one, the one that can be traced back to the Bible, and it is called Historic Premillenialsim. It is the doctrine of a post-trib rapture.

The pretrib rapture doctrine has its roots much, much later. The early 1800s seems to be the time at which the "Darbyist", or the "Dispensational" scheme.

 

These might help. I put the words rapture doctrine history into the Google search engine ( www.google.com ) and here are some of the most helpful pages I found:

http://www.thekkel.com/rapture.html

http://www.according2prophecy.org/ancient.html

http://www.nccg.org/nccm/history-rapture.html

http://www.endtimeinfo.net/rapture/

http://www.according2prophecy.org/pretribr.html

http://www.rusearching.com/leftbehind/leftrapturehistory.htm

http://notdeceived.net/pretrib_origins.shtml

 

Thanks for the links Heeln. Good to see you back. Hope you are recovering well.

BTW another link to consider:

Last Trumpet

 

Do you mean history of the pretrib rapture? There are no references before about 1830. Edward Irving's ideas were expanded and spread mostly by John Darby in the 1800's, and given an extra boost by the Scofield study Bible in the early 1900's.

 

Matthew 12:32 (nKJV):

Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.

Are you going to critique me if i
give a name (not used prior to 1800)
to this age? Are you going to critique
me if i give a name to the next age
(one not used prior to 1800)?

 

Come to think of it,
consider INDEPENDENT FUNDAMENTAL BAPTIST.
The Baptist doctrine dates from the 1700s,
the Fundamental doctrine dates from the 1920s,
the Independent doctrine dates from the 1500s.

Is it the name of the doctrine, and from
whense it derives as important as the
doctrine and the Bible from which it derives?

I've been defending the pretribulation premillinnial
futurist Doctrine for 18 years on the internet.
Well, actually the present form of the internet
didn't exist two years ago, or ten years ago.
I've been on my computer interacting with others
for 18 years, frequently defending the pretribulation
rapture.

The efforts to rewite the history of
the pretribualtion doctrine on the
internet didn't reach my attention until
what seems like a couple of years ago.
Anyway, I'm content to prove the pretribulation
rapture from the Holy Bible.

 

Ps104_33, might I suggest you read the first couple of links that I posted, at least?

 

An article in a recent issue of BibSac does give historic evidence for the pre trib rapture. The bottom line reckons with the history of doctrinal development. It happened in every doctrine. Eschatology was the last to be systematized. Don't let the charges of recency throw you.

 

Amen, Sister Helen -- Preach it!

 

Amen, Pastor Larry -- Preach it

 

Case closed as far as I am concerned.

Was it ever open as far as you are concerned?

 

A study of the word "epiphaneia" (Strong's #2015) is one of the main reasons I no longer accept the pretrib view. A few others are the study of "thief", "saints", and the parallels of 1 Cor 15:52 and 1 Thess 4:16-17 with Matt 24:29-31. The historical reasons are just the icing on the cake. I find it a little amusing that the "clear and obvious" doctrine of pretrib was missed for 1800 years. Once you take off your bias (it took me several months to discover and shed my own biases), you see there's nothing clear or obvious about it.

 

My husband and I were talking about this thread. What is interesting is that neither of us had read anything about the argument when each of us, quite apart from each other and a number of years ago, found that a pre-tribulation rapture, followed by the tribulation and then the millennial kingdom were what the Bible seemed to clearly indicate.

So for at least two of us, it was simply something that was in the Bible, regardless of anyone else's thoughts or writings or history.