Many have questioned the role of John Nelson Darby in the beginning of pre-trib-dispensationalism. Dr. Thomas Ice {
http://www.raptureready.com/featured/ice/ttcol.html} is a current dispensational scholar who has much to say about Darby.
JOHN NELSON DARBY AND THE RAPTURE {
http://www.pre-trib.org/data/pdf/Ice-JohnNelsonDarbyandth.pdf}
by Thomas Ice
Supporters of pretribulationism generally believe that John Nelson Darby (1800– 1882) revived this lost New Testament teaching through intense Bible study during convalescence from a riding accident in December 1827 and January 1828. Evangelical opponents of pretribulationism often put forth theories that cast Darby in a bad light. For example, some say Darby got it from Edward Irving (1792–1834), while others say it originated from the prophetic utterance of a fifteen-year old Scottish lassie Margaret Macdonald (1815–1840). Both sources are understood to be tainted since Irving was considered exocentric and heretical and Macdonald’s prophetic utterance is thought to be demonic. What is the evidence that Darby developed his view from his own personal study?
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A PROVIDENTIAL ACCIDENT
At this time, Darby was experiencing a disappointment from a failed spiritual and physical austerity phase in his life, the reality of an Erastian31 church that he believed was in ruins and differed little from the unbelieving world, and his search for an assurance of salvation in his conscience. “Darby’s Christian understanding and experience were about to change radically,” notes Brethren historian Tim Grass. As one who began his ministry as a high churchman, Darby was on the verge of becoming an evangelical dissenter when he experienced a riding accident. Darby describes it as follows:
"As soon as I was ordained, I went amongst the poor Irish mountaineers, in a wild and uncultivated district, where I remained two years and three months, working as best I could. I felt, however, that the style of work was not in agreement with what I read in the Bible concerning the church and Christianity; nor did it correspond with the effects of the action of the Spirit of God. These considerations pressed upon me from a scriptural and practical point of view; while seeking assiduously to fulfil the duties of the ministry confided to me, working day and night amongst the people, who were almost as wild as the mountains they inhabited. An accident happened which laid me aside for a time; my horse was frightened and had thrown me against a door-post."
This period of Darby’s life is known among Darby scholars as “The Convalescence” during which he experienced “The Deliverance.” After the accident, Darby was taken to the home of Susannah Pennefather (1785–1862), his older sister, in Dublin in order to recover. Darby’s convalescence was a time when “the questions in his mind began to resolve themselves.” He wrote: “I was troubled in the same way when a clergyman, but never had the smallest shadow of it since.” He declared: “I judge it as Satan: but going from cabin to cabin to speak of Christ, and with souls, these thoughts sprang up, and if I sought to quote a text to myself it seemed a shadow and not real. I ought never to have been there, but do not think that this was the cause, but simply that I was not set free according to Romans viii. As I have said, I have never had it at all since.”
The three or more months Darby spent recuperating from his accident were undoubtedly the most formative period in his life and remarked upon it. In one account he states:
I am daily more struck with the connection of the great principles on which my mind was exercised by and with God, when I found salvation and peace, and the questions agitated and agitating the world at the present day: the absolute, divine authority and certainty of the Word, as a divine link between us and God, if everything (church and world) went; personal assurance of salvation in a new condition by being in Christ; the church as His body; Christ coming to receive us to Himself; and collaterally with that, the setting up of a new earthly dispensation, from Isaiah xxxii. (more particularly the end); all this was when laid aside at E. P.'s in 1827; the house character of the assembly on earth (not the fact of the presence of the Spirit) was subsequently. It was a vague fact which received form in my mind long after, that there must be a wholly new order of things, if God was to have His way, and the craving of the heart after it I had felt long before; but the church and redemption I did not know till the time I have spoken of; but eight years before, universal sorrow and sin pressed upon my spirit. I did not think to say so much of myself; but it is all well. The truth remains the truth, and it is on that we have to go; but the Lord's dealings with the soul, connected with the use of truth, have to be noted.
Further identification of the date and what Darby believed happened to him spiritually during that time is seen in another statement by Darby in a letter in which he wrote, “I believe at my deliverance from bondage in 1827–8, God opened up certain truths needed for the church.”38 What did Darby claim he realized during his convalescence during December 1827 and January 1828? He enumerates five things.
First, Darby says that he realized “the absolute, divine authority and certainty of the Word, as a divine link between us and God,”39 which caused “the scriptures to gain complete ascendancy over me.”40 Darby confirms an evangelical view of the inspiration and authority of Scripture.
Second, he states: “I came to understand that I was united to Christ in heaven, and that consequently, my place before God was represented by His own.” Again he wrote, “personal assurance of salvation in a new condition by being in Christ; the church as His body.”
Third, Darby understood more fully his present standing with Christ in heaven. Such a heavenly standing becomes the basis for much of Darby’s theology that sees the believer already positioned with Christ in heaven. “I was in Christ, accepted in the Beloved, and sitting in heavenly places in Him. This led me directly to the apprehension of what the true church of God was, those that were united to Christ in heaven.”43
Fourth, he says that he realized that he should daily expect the Lord’s return. “At the same time, I saw that the Christian, having his place in Christ in heaven, has nothing to wait for save the coming of the Saviour, in order to be set, in fact, in the glory which is already his portion ‘in Christ.’” Further he says, “I saw in that word the coming of Christ to take the church to Himself in glory.” Darby speaks of “being in Christ; the church as His body; Christ coming to receive us to Himself; . . . all this was when laid aside at E. P.'s in 1827.” Again Darby says of his convalescence discovery: “The coming of he Lord was the other truth which was brought to my mind from the word, as that which, if sitting in heavenly places in Christ, was alone to be waited for, that I might sit in heavenly places with Him.”
Such a cluster of beliefs that were formulated at this time provides the rationale for a pretribulational rapture. Darby had seen the importance of an imminent return of Christ for His bride.
Fifth, Darby saw a change in dispensation. This could mean that it was at this time that shifted in his eschatology from postmillennialism to premillennialism. “Christ coming to receive us to Himself; and collaterally with that, the setting up of a new earthly dispensation, from Isaiah xxxii. (more particularly the end); all this was when laid aside at E. P.'s in 1827.” He writes of his studies in Isaiah: “Isaiah xxxii. brought me to the earthly consequences of the same truth, though other passages might seem perhaps more striking to me now; but I saw an evident change of dispensation in that chapter, when the Spirit would be poured out on the Jewish nation, and a king reign in righteousness.”
