George Mueller: Opponent of the Pre-Trib Rapture

George Mueller was a wonderful man of God. He was an evangelist and Director of the Ashley Down orphanage in Bristol, England. He cared for over 10,000 orphans in his life. He also established 117 schools which offered Christian education to over 120,000 children, many of them being orphans. And, of course, there were the Bible and tract distribution societies, etc.

He was also a founding member of the Plymouth Brethren movement. As such, he was well acquainted with John Darby.

And, George Mueller was an early opponent of Darby's pre-tribulation Rapture.

When Mueller read the Bible in Revelation 20:4-5, it said that the FIRST resurrection would occur after the Tribulation period, just prior to the thousand year reign of Christ:

"And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection."

But Darby's pre-tribulation Rapture had a resurrection of the saints happening before this one!

Mueller asked, "Can there be a resurrection before the first one?"

Also, when Mueller read 1 Corinthians 15:51-52, he saw that the Rapture occurred at the last trump. The last trump mentioned in the Bible is found after the Tribulation!

But Darby taught that the last trump of the Bible would occur after the last trump of the Rapture!

Mueller asked, "Can there be a trump after the last one?"

I Corinthians 15:51-52, "Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, ⁵²In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed."

Matthew 24:29-31, "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other."

The pre-tribulation Rapture predicates a last trump before the last trump! It postulates a resurrection of the saints before the first resurrection! It contends for a Second Coming before the Second Coming!

“The Scripture declares plainly that the Lord Jesus will not come until

the apostacy shall have taken place,

and the man of sin … shall have been revealed…”
George Mueller

(Thank you, George. I couldn't have said it better myself!)

The History of a Heresy, Part 6: The Pre-Trib Rapture Comes to America

John Darby (1800-1882) was a member of the Church of England. Later, because of a perceived laxity in the church, he departed from Anglicanism to join the emerging Bible home study group movement known as the “Brethren Movement.” He was founder of the group known as the Plymouth Brethren.

Darby attended the Powerscourt prophecy conferences at Powerscourt Castle in Dublin, Ireland in 1830.

Pastor Irving, mentioned in a previous post, spoke at these conferences on the “Secret Coming Rapture.” It was here that Darby was most likely introduced to Irving’s ideas on the pre-Tribulation Rapture.

Irving died in 1834, and it was left to Darby to synthesize the various points of the pre-tribulation doctrine to bring it to its final form.

The doctrine of the pre-tribulation Rapture took a period of many years to finalize—between 1838 and 1845. It did not find easy acceptance, caused divisions and bred confusion during the years that Darby worked on it. Years later (1859-1874), Darby would take the message to America where it was readily accepted.

The early Niagara Bible Conferences annually met from 1883 to 1897 under the early pre-tribulationist Darby.

Here it should be noted once again that George Mueller was an early opponent of the pre-tribulation Rapture. Mueller was a man who had read through the Bible more than 200 times while on his knees. He had over 100,000 recorded answers to prayer. He started orphanages, missionary sending societies, tract and Bible printing ministries, and he pastored the same church for over sixty years.

Let us hear what this great man of God had to say…

“Can there be any resurrection before the first one

and can there be another trump after the last one?”

George Mueller

(We'll look at George Mueller's quote again in the next post.)

The History of a Heresy, Part 1: The Establishment of Imminency

There are few sacred cows that are as beloved as the pre-trib Rapture. And I understand that what I'm writing here today is not taught in most churches today. But here we go anyway:

The development of the pre-tribulation Rapture is generally attributed to John Darby of the Plymouth Brethren, who formalized his theory around 1830. He was the first to formally theorize that Jesus would return in two stages: first, in a spiritual form to rapture the Church, and then in bodily form seven years later to judge the world. Up until Darby, the return of Christ was seen as a singular event -- Jesus would return to earth ONCE, to rapture his Church, to redeem lost Israel, and to judge the wicked and rebellious world.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Let’s remember that the book of Revelation was not written until 90 AD. Until that time, the early Church formulated its view of the end times based on the teachings of Jesus (the Olivet Discourse, etc.), and of Paul. This led to the early belief that the Rapture occurred at the Revelation.

But time passed, and after many years of persecution, many believers began to wonder if Jesus were coming back at all. By the fourth century, as persecutions continued, the Catholic theologian Augustine proposed something that the Church was ready to accept:

Perhaps the Second Coming, the Rapture, and the Day of the Lord were not to be taken literally after all.

Augustine proposed that perhaps the kingdom of God was not a literal kingdom, and perhaps there would be no physical, earthly millennial kingdom over which Christ would rule. Instead, perhaps the kingdom of God was spiritual, fulfilled in the hearts of faithful men. Perhaps the Millennium was already here, now, manifested as the Body of Christ in the Church Age in which we live. He taught that the sufferings of persecution were the (spiritualized) Tribulation and that the (spiritualized) Antichrist was behind these persecutions.

This is known as the allegorical method of interpretation. It spiritualizes the text. It avoids the common sense understanding of a text in favor of whatever the reader wishes to be there.

This teaching of Augustine’s was commonly held throughout the Dark Ages (AD 500-1000). During this time, the Scriptures were hardly read at all. When they were, they were spiritualized after the method of Origen and Augustine. Then during the Reformation in the 1500’s, the Church returned to extensive Bible study and a literal reading of the Scriptures. Initially, this return extended only to theological issues pertaining to doctrines such as faith, grace, and the atonement; eschatology remained where it had been left off—allegorized.

By the 1800’s, the scholarly community was ready to take all of the Scriptures literally again. Using the literal method, they rediscovered the literal reign of Christ during the Millennium, and the literal Tribulation period just prior to it. These scholars also discovered that the Antichrist had NOT as yet been revealed, and that the Tribulation had NOT as yet started.

To summarize: Up until to the 1800’s, the persecuted Church had correctly believed that the Rapture/Revelation occurred after the Antichrist was revealed and after the Tribulation. But they had also come to believe incorrectly that the Antichrist had been revealed already.

Therefore they reached the wrong conclusion that Christ could come at any moment.

This is known today as the imminent return of Christ.