Pretrib quotes before the 1800s?

Benjamin Keach, writing in Expositions of the Parables in the Bible (1671), on page 643, takes a pre-trib pre-mil position.

 

Can you type out the quote or is it too long?

Ken

 

I don't see anything in the quotes by Tertullian and Ambrose that could be definitively called "pretrib premill". Any of the eschatological schools could read their ideas into them. All eschatological schools teach that there is a "rapture". It is the timing of it and what happens after it that differentiates them.

Amill but galloping toward postmill,

Ken
Were it not for grace...

 

It is the consenses of opinion that Tertullian was a Chiliast. That does not make him either pre-trib or dispensational, but it does make him pre-mil.

 

There was a lot of Chiliasm during the first three centuries of the church. But they were not of the Darbyite type of pretrib, premill variety of the past 30 years.

Of course the first few centuries of the church also produced the papacy, so I'm not sure anything past the first century would be a reliable gauge of what was taught while the apostles were alive. But, even better, we have the Bible from the Holy Spirit. It's just that on certain subjects that are bathed in symbolism Christians don't agree on what He meant when the Bible was written.

Ken

 

Actually, I don't believe you will find a full "Darby" position in the early church because it took a "Darby" to propound it.

All we can do is find parts and pieces as I attempted.

However, I lost my interest in this subject because it took so long to sift through all the early church writings concerning the Second Comming.

BTW, I'm not a Darby-ite myself although I would comsider myself a chiliast with Christ returning before it starts.

In a nutshell and for what its worth, I see the "tribulation" coming upon the entire world with the Church hidden and protected from the wrath of God (as Israel and the Passover) while yet present in the earth.

HankD

 

Generally I believe Christ comes ending the tribulation and that we (the church) protected from the wrath of God will meet Him at His coming in the air to go to the Mt of olives to witness the final put down of His enemies. Then comes the millenium.

This is by way of preference not of conviction.

HankD

 

I can't remember but didn't dispensational teaching have it's roots in a theory developed by a Roman Catholic priest, (I want to say Rivera or something like that) picked up by Issac Watts and then to Darby? Not sure but pretty sure any help?

 

See my post third from the bottom of the first page of this thread.

Ken

 

See the article in the most recent issue of BibSac. It deals with this topic.

 

"And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power." (Mk. 9:1)

Wow! There are some 2,000+ year old people walking the earth as we speak!

 

BibSca is Bibliotheca Sacra, the theological journal of Dallas Theological Seminary. The recent issues are probably not online though you should be able to view it at a good library.

As for the 2000 year old people walking around, Glen missed the next chapter when those standing there did see the kingdom of God in its glory, so much that they wanted to stay right there and not come back. Christ told them they had to come back though. That is the most normal explanation of that passage considering all things. However, it does not deal with pretrib quotes before the 1800s and thus is not in the purview of this thread.

 

The reason there is a shortage of pretrib quotes before the 1800s is because:

1. THEY DO NOT EXIST.
2. If they exist, they were quotes from Catholic writers (ahhh, what a connection!).
3. Quotes after 1830 trace their source to a Margaret MacDonald who spoke in a trance while being demon-possessed (yikes, another occultic connection!).

If I said it a million times, I'm gonna say it again, there was no doctrine of a pretrib rapture from the time of Christ to the early 1800s.

Old MacDonald (and the demon inside her) originated it. If only pretribbers would examine the doctrine's historicity with an open mind...and an open heart.