“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” Mark Twain
From Beforeitsnews.com;
"1 Timothy 4:1 Now the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will depart from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons, 2 through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared.
Jessie Penn-Lewis wrote, “The reason for the fall will be a giving heed to deceiving spirits, i.e., the nature of their working being not known evil, but deception, which is a covered working. The essence of deception is that the operation is looked upon as sincere and pure. The nature of the deception will be in doctrines of demons, i.e., the deception will be in a doctrinal sphere. The way of deception will be that the “doctrines” are delivered with ‘hypocrisy,’ i.e. spoken as if true.”1
What if you were taught a deceptive and false doctrine, repeatedly, all of your life by your Pastor in your Church? What if he believed it with all of his heart, not being “evil” but rather, deceived? If Pre-Trib is a false doctrine, and I personally believe that it is, millions and millions of God fearing, born again, Christians are living in deception. What is worse, that deception has opened them up to the Great Deception that is coming.
I have, in many other articles and places, attempted to show why I believe that the doctrine of a Pre Tribulation Rapture cannot be proven in Scripture. For the sake of this article, I will not repeat those arguments here. Let us assume, for the sake of these few paragraphs, that it is not Biblical. If you sincerely believe that it is, humor me and play along for the moment.
Prior to 1830, no church taught about a Pre-trib Rapture in their creed, catechism or statement of faith. You cannot find any example of such a teaching published by any denomination or church prior to that date. A few isolated references that could be construed to support a Pre-trib Rapture may be found among the writings of the Church Fathers but none of them ever developed such a doctrine.
There are conflicting stories as to where he got the idea but the first person to ever develop the idea of a Pre-trib Rapture as a Church Doctrine was John Darby. If you are interested in his story, Google his name and read several different accounts of his life. His biographers tend to twist the story one way or the other, depending on their acceptance or rejection of the Pre-trib Doctrine.
One of his earliest converts to this doctrine was Dwight L. Moody. Moody Bible Institute was the first purveyor of this doctrine in the United States. The doctrine… the idea that Jesus could come at any minute, was an Evangelist’s dream. This idea literally scarred the Hell out of sinners and sent them running to the altars, begging for forgiveness. The new doctrine flooded the churches with new converts… Right of wrong, Pastors saw the results sitting in the pews and in the money in the plate. It was a winner from the start.
Christians loved this new teaching because, like all of us, the idea of being beheaded for the sake of the Gospel was not a pleasant thought. Who needs tribulation? If someone who sounds like they know what they are saying tells me that I do not have to worry about the Tribulation, I want to believe them… this is personal! This man is telling me that I will not have to suffer… I want to believe that! If he pulls a large number of passages out of the Bible and tells me that, taken together, they prove his doctrine, why would I challenge him? He is telling me something that I desperately want to believe.
The very heart of deception that targets Christians and the Church is that it sounds real, it sounds Biblical, it has the outward appearance of righteousness, goodness and holiness… this isn’t sin, this is God!!!
This kind of deception is always something that appeals to our flesh. It is something we want. Let me give a few examples:
- NAME IT CLAIM IT (God wants you rich)
- YOUR BEST LIFE NOW (God wants you happy)
- HYPER-GRACE (God will let you live in sin and go to Heaven too)
- THE NAME (Here is a secret that will make God Happy)
- LEGALISM (If you follow these rules, you will be holier than anyone else)
- LAW (if you follow the Torah, you can keep the Salvation Jesus gave you)
- PRE-TRIB RAPTURE (You don’t have to suffer)
Numbers one through three feed the flesh while sounding godly. The heresy is that they teach a human centric Gospel. The Bible teaches that everything is for the Glory of God. These preachers teach that God exists to make you happy. Scripture teaches that you exist to glorify God.
Four through six teach that there are things that you must do in order to become righteous and earn the blessings of God. These feed the part of man that rejects charity. This feeds our need to earn everything. We are repulsed by the idea that we are hopeless sinners and that God reached out through Jesus Christ and made us holy and righteous. All we have to do is believe? Surely there must be something that I can do to make me holy and righteous… People ensnared in these heresies feel more righteous and more holy than anyone else in the world… Unfortunately for them, the Bible says that the Blood of Christ washes us and nothing that we can do can improve on what God has already done.
Having been saved, we obey God out of love and gratefulness. Those who have no desire to repent of sin and live a holy life have never been saved. Those who obey in a frustrated attempt to earn the favor of God, have never been saved.
Number seven makes us feel special. All those who have rejected Christ are going to suffer but God would never let his Children suffer. It gives us a great sense of relief, it calms our fear of suffering and it is a lie.
Heaven will be Heaven! “In this world” as Jesus said, “You will have tribulation.”
“Plures efficimur, quoties metumur a vobis; semen est sanguis christianorum.” (We multiply whenever we are mown down by you; the blood of Christians is seed.) This quote is often reworded, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” (Tertullian, Apologeticus, 50, s. 13.)
Nowhere does history or Scripture teach that God protects his people from suffering. Jesus could have prevented the beheading of John the Baptist but He chose not to do so. The Old Testament is filled with stories of the suffering of God’s people. In the New Testament we read of suffering, stoning and beheading. Early Church History is full of unbelievable suffering. Eleven of the twelve Apostles were martyred for their faith. Modern History is full of the suffering and death of believers. Sources estimate that more than one hundred thousand Christians have died for their faith in the last twelve months alone and millions have been displaced. There is no Scriptural or historical precedent for the supernatural salvation of the Church from the pain of the Tribulation.
IF YOU DID NOT ALREADY BELIEVE IN THE PRE-TRIB RAPTURE, reading the passages quoted as “proof” of a Pre-trib Rapture would never lead you to believe any such thing. Not one verse, in all of Scripture, guarantees a Pre-trib Rapture. The most sincere and well-studied believer in the Pretribulation Rapture, cannot give you such a verse. When someone who desperately wants to believe in a Pre-trib Rapture, reads the affirmations by the doctrine’s purveyors and then reads those verses (along with detailed notes explaining how the verse supports the doctrine) one can believe. When one begins to study those Scriptures without the helpful notes, he finds that, in fact, those verses say no such thing.
Why does the doctrine continue?
1.NO ONE WANTS TO SUFFER
2.IT IS A GREAT EVANGELICAL TOOL
3.PREACHERS FIND IT HARD TO SAY THE WORDS, “I WAS WRONG.”
4.“IT’S EASIER TO FOOL PEOPLE THAN TO CONVINCE THEM THAT THEY HAVE BEEN FOOLED.”
What is the danger inherent in the doctrine?
1.CHRISTIANS ARE COMPLACIENT
2.CHRISTIANS ARE NOT WATCHING
3.SIGNS ARE MISSED AND MISINTERPRETED
4.“IT CAN’T BE THE MARK, THE RAPTURE HASN’T HAPPENED!”
Deceptive doctrine, taught by hypocritical spirits always combines scripture, partial truth and something that feeds the flesh, disguised in religious language. It never appears to be sin. On the contrary, it is sold as a Blessing from God!"
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