An Exciting Day at Rapture Bible College

(some names have been changed to protect the guilty)

                                             by Dave MacPherson

Professor John Wallboard: Welcome to Advanced Rapture Techniques, course no. 666. If you study hard you'll get a Rapture Franchise someday. Talk about money! You'll be so successful you can even have a scandal or two and folks will still love you. Some of our star graduates are Tommy Eisegesis, Hal Lindseedy, Dwight Plentycost, Chas. Ryewheat, Chas. Stainley, Jimmy Swagger, Jack Van Empty, Edgar Whizheain't, and Jack Wiles. Does anybody already know any rapture gimmicks?

Tim (a student): I do. Pastor Stainley recently showed how fast the "twinkling of an eye" is by blinking his eye and making everyone laugh. Then, with sleight of mouth, he said the rapture will happen that fast. No one even noticed (heh, heh) that this passage doesn't say how fast the catching up is. But I knew he only wanted to compare the rapture with the final advent. Actually, Matt. 24:31's "gather" (in a posttrib setting) could be just as fast. But if we admit this, we lose a good pretrib argument, right?

Prof. Wallboard: Excellent, Tim. Now here's a technique on the "day of the Lord" I've used. Everyone ties together the rapture and the start of this "day." Since we're pretrib we naturally stretch forward this "day" and tie it to our rapture----what Darby and Scofield never dared to do. Since Acts 2:20 puts the (posttrib) sun/moon darkening before this "day," our prophecy charts would be more honest if they showed this darkening near the tribulation's start. But it would hurt us, so we just ignore Acts 2:20 and no one (hee, hee) ever seems to notice! Does anyone know how pretrib began?

Tim: I do. Our books claim that around 1830 John Darby discovered the church/Israel "dichotomy" which led him to pretrib. But my research has uncovered some long-covered-up facts. Darby brought the "new" (his term) pretrib view to the U.S. during the 1860's and 1870's. He seemed to view Southerners as ignorant and never once visited what had been the Confederate States. However, he later inspired outsiders and inside "Judases" to pretribize the South, taking advantage of the Civil War's chaos and destruction of Southern libraries and churches. Today many Southerners are finding out that posttrib was the South's ONLY rapture view during the 1600's, 1700's, and early 1800's prior to the Great Southern Betrayal!

     Professor Wallboard, the most complete documentation on pretrib's bizarre, short-lived history is Dave MacPherson's The Rapture Plot (300 pgs., index, bibliog., appendices), available at armageddonbooks.com. If MacPherson's name is typed in on Internet search engines such as Yahoo and Google, quite often the first entry is: "Dave MacPherson's the Rapture plot: weighed and found wanting." Well, the world's worst scales must have been used! This entry is based on only five and a half pages (focusing on the same Plot book) in Frank Marotta's 28-page booklet on Morgan Edwards, a booklet in which words are sloppily added, subtracted, and changed in quotes, not to mention deliberate falsification of evidence, all of which proves there's something Marotta in more than just the state of Denmark! And everyone knows that if money is paid, an entry can be listed in the first slot on search engines----proof that pretrib tries to succeed by buying as well as by lying!

     (Tim walks to the podium, pushes the professor away, and keeps on talking)

     Something has begun to bother me. Our techniques are actually lies----

Prof. Wallboard: But, Tim----

Tim: ----and if our view is wrong, we're gambling with millions of lives!

Prof. Wallboard: TIM!

Tim: Don't stop me, Professor. I've checked Darby's writings. He didn't see any "dichotomy" until LONG AFTER the Irvingites began publicly teaching pretrib in 1830. In fact, Darby didn't clearly teach pretrib himself until 1839! You also know that Scofield was a jailed forger even AFTER his conversion in 1879 and that his wife divorced him in 1883 after he deserted her and his daughters! Pretrib is a colossal hoax! I'm leaving this class and this school! And I won't be surprised if God uses financial collapses and other disasters to wake up pretrib deceivers and deceivees!

     (Tim walks out and all of the other students follow him)