All the theologians, scripture scholars, bishops, saints and reformers were incapable of interpreting God's word....until....
...John Nelson Darby came along. He broke off from the Plymouth Brethren over theological disputes. Founder of the Exclusive Brethren sect, Darby invented pre-tribulation rapture theology in 1830 that was totally foreign to all of Christianity.
I'll let you in on a little secret, all rapture doctrines are fairly modern:
*The mid-tribulation rapture emerged in 1941 with the publication of the book, "The End: Rethinking the Revelation" by Norman B. Harrison.
*Prewrath was conceived in the 1970s by Robert Van Kampen. It became popularized in 1990 with Marvin Rosenthal's book "The Pre-Wrath Rapture of the Church".
*J. Barton Payne was the primary proponent of classic post-tribulationism in his 1962 work "The Imminent Appearing of Christ."
*Semi-classic post-tribulation was espoused by Alexander Reese in his book "The Approaching Advent of Christ," published in 1937.
*Futuristic post-tribulationism was popularized by George E. Ladd in his book "The Blessed Hope", published in 1956.
Ironically, the pre-trib is the oldest rapture doctrine, although it's the only one ever singled out. That's right. The early church didn't have an estbalished rapture doctrine. They certainly weren't having debates about the timing of the rapture. But The early church wasn't more enlightened than we are today. They were still figuring things out, much like we still are today.
But I'll explain why that is, and why the "newness" of the pre-trib rapture is not a problem as some suppose. The first is the issue of literacy, that is the ability to read, write, and comprehend written language. We take literacy for granted today, but it was not the universal norm for much of human history. In ancient civilizations, literacy was relegated to a small class of people such as priests, scribes, and nobility. In ancient Greece, literacy skills were at a basic level for much of the populace. It wasn’t until the invention of the Gutenberg printing press in the fifteenth century that literacy accelerated. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, laws were introduced in many countries that made literacy learning compulsory. It was only then that literacy became the norm rather than the exception that it is today.
Literacy was only part of the equation. The other problem is that the Bible wasn’t readily available and accessible to the layperson for much of Church history. Prior to the creation of the Gutenberg printing press, bibles were painstakingly copied by hand, making them rare and expensive. Only after the printing press was invented were the production and dissemination of Bibles to the masses possible.
Even after mass production of the Bible was possible, it was still not accessible to everyone. During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church exerted control over the production and dissemination of the Bible. Only the upper clergy and educated elite were allowed to read the Scriptures, as it was believed only they could understand and explain the teachings to the common people.
At that time, Latin was the preferred language for official Church documents, theological discussions, and academic settings. Consequently, translating the Bible into other languages was either discouraged or expressly prohibited. John Wycliffe produced the first English translation of the Bible, but it faced opposition from Church leaders. John Wycliffe was later posthumously condemned, and the English Church banned unauthorized translations of the Bible in 1408.
Scholar and theologian William Tyndale was another notable example. Tyndale translated the Bible into English in the early 1520s. His work would later form the basis for future English translations of the Bible, including the King James Version. However, his translation was not well received by the Catholic Church. After a year in prison, Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake in 1536.
The Council of Trent was convened by the Roman Catholic Church between 1545 and 1563 to counter the Protestant Reformation movement. Among their objectives was to reaffirm the Latin Vulgate as the authoritative version of the Bible for Catholics. Unfortunately, Latin was not widely known or understood by the common people, especially those outside the clergy, scholars, and educated elites.
Queen Mary I of England reinforced the Latin Vulgate as the authoritative version of the Bible for Catholics by discouraging translations into local vernaculars to prevent misinterpretation during her reign from 1553 to 1558. She attempted to reverse the English Reformation and eliminate Protestant versions of the Bible. Many Protestant leaders were subsequently arrested and burned at the stake for their “heresies”. Due to her ruthless reign, she earned the infamous nickname Bloody Mary.
All this is to say that accessibility, literacy, and the availability of vernacular translations of the Bible didn’t fully come to fruition until the past three to four hundred years or so. It was only then that the layperson could read the Bible for themselves and the various rapture doctrines were fleshed out. Therefore, age should not be the determining factor in whether something is true or not. If age were the ultimate test of validity, then the heresy of Gnosticism would be true since it’s nearly as old as Christianity itself.
There is another reason for the late arrival of these rapture doctrines. God doesn’t always reveal everything to us at once; sometimes it’s in increments. The Church dispensation, for example, was hidden from the Old Testament prophets. It was a mystery until it was revealed to the apostles, especially the Apostle Paul. God allows certain things to be veiled for His express purposes. When Daniel was shown a vision of future events, he didn’t understand what he was seeing:
Dan 12:4 “But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.”
Dan 12:8 Although I heard, I did not understand. Then I said, “My lord, what shall be the end of these things?”
Dan 12:9 And he said, “Go your way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.
Daniel and his generation would not have understood how one man could control the entire world, but because of modern technology, we do. Time itself is a revealing factor. We gain knowledge and understanding in proportion to the resources and education available to us. That makes us capable of understanding certain things that not even the Biblical prophets could have understood. It only makes sense then that as we get closer to the end of this age, the more God reveals to us about the rapture and end times.
In summary, the lateness of the pre-trib rapture, and the other rapture positions in general, can be summed up by the lack of literacy, availability, and prohibition of the Bible by the governing authorities. Once the layperson could read the Bible freely for themselves, the study of prophecy and eschatology really took off. They were able to gain new insights that were not possible in previous generations. That was further magnified by the increase in knowledge and divine revelation reserved for our generation. That’s not to say that we still have all the answers. If it did, we would not have so many disagreements about the end times. But in many ways, we have more insight into eschatology than even the early Church had.
