Three Doors to The Secret Rapture
When we remember that the Secret Rapture theory was virtually unheard of and untaught until around 1830, it is essential to examine its origins first.
Such a teaching was unknown to the early Church Fathers e.g. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, who were convinced that the Christian Church would pass through great tribulation at the hands of the anti-Messiah system before the return of the Messiah.
Furthermore the Rapture theory was not taught by the great stalwarts of the Reformed Faith – Huss, Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin, Knox, Cranmer or even by the Wesley brothers in the 18th Century.
Whence came this teaching therefore and where did this novel idea arise?
A Chilean Jesuit priest, Emmanuel Lacunza wrote a book entitled ‘The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty’, and in its pages taught the novel notion that Messiah returns not once, but twice, and at the ‘first stage’ of His return He ‘raptures’ His Church so they can escape the reign of the ‘future anti-Messiah’. In order to avoid any taint of Romanism, Lacunza published his book under the assumed name of Rabbi Ben Ezra, a supposedly converted Jew.
Lacunza’s book found its way to the library of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and there in 1826 Dr Maitland, the Archbishop’s librarian came upon it and read it and soon after began to issue a series of pamphlets giving the Jesuit, Futurist view of prophecy. The idea soon found acceptance in the Anglo-Catholic Ritualist movement in the National Church of England, and soon it tainted the very heart of Protestantism.
The Secret Rapture doctrine was given a second door of entrance at this time by the ministry of one, Edward Irving, founder of the so-called ‘Catholic Apostolic Church’. It was in Irving’s London church, in 1830, that a young girl named Margaret McDonald gave an ecstatic prophecy in which she claimed there would be a special secret coming of the Messiah to ‘rapture’ those awaiting His return. From then until his death in 1834 Irving devoted his considerable talent as a preacher to spreading the theory of the ‘secret rapture’.
However, it was necessary for Jesuitry to have a third door of entrance to the Reforrned fold and this they gained via a sincere Christian, J. N. Darby, generally regarded as the founder of the ‘Brethren’. As an Anglican curate Darby attended a number of mysteriously organised meetings on Bible Prophecy at Powerscourt in Ireland, and at these gatherings he learned about the ‘secret rapture’. He carried the teaching into the Brethren and hence into the heart of Evangelicalism.
With a new veneer of being scriptural the teaching spread and was later popularised in the notes of the Schofield Reference Bible.
P.s this is probably why there has been an overall tendency to retreat and wait for ‘rapture escape’ instead of facing the problems plaguing our world and overcoming them by being the salt and light we are called to be by The Lord Jesus Christ.
Being the salt and light of the earth is not dominion, that’s when Christ Returns.
https://youtu.be/Rw3VTz34VVU
