JD: You know one of the things David that came up in the BBC broadcast was something that we hear all the time and that is that dispensationalism and the pre-tribulational Rapture of the church is a new idea that Darby came up with less than 200 years ago. How do you respond to that charge that this is a new doctrine and should not be taken so seriously?
DJ: I do run up against it all the time and I answer it using an illustration related to a course I teach on understanding Roman Catholicism. You know the reformation was really kicked off by Martin Luther in 1517 with his 95 thesis or statements that were written to protest against the Pope at the time. And even though many others have been saying many of the same things concerning the Gospel for the previous 200 years prior to that he really was the catalyst. And you know the Counter Reformation was a push back against reformers like Luther, Zwingli, Husk, Calvin and others and came as a result of the Council of Trent.
Now one of the arguments against the reformers was
essentially the same one we hear all the time and that this was a new doctrine
but it had never been taught before and therefore it must not be right. So the
question is whether or not it’s even a legitimate argument at all. The fact is
the reformers didn’t come up with something new but rather they recovered the
Gospel of salvation by grace through faith apart from works and apart from the
sacraments of the Catholic Church.
The reformers recovered would have been lost by the church
for nearly 1,500 years. So at the Council of Trent the movement to recover the Biblical
Gospel was less than 30-40 years old. But that doesn’t mean it was wrong just
because it was claimed to be new. The same is true of dispensationalism in the
pre-tribulational Rapture of the church. These aren’t new doctrines. These are
doctrines that were taught by Jesus and the apostles. Pre-tribulational
dispensationalism isn’t a new doctrine. I would call it a recovered doctrine.
JD: David James explaining that the Rapture is not a new
Biblical doctrine but a recovered doctrine.
We report this information because it is setting the stage
for Bible prophecy to be fulfilled.
The Biblical doctrine of the Rapture of the church was first
introduced by the apostle Paul and that was done some 2,000 years ago. The
Rapture taking place before the Tribulation period could happen at any moment. The
apostle Paul wrote how it happens in I Thessalonians 4:13-18. And the apostle
John gives us the information that it happens before the Tribulation as he
wrote there in Revelation 4:1.
This my dear friend is the blessed hope foretold in Titus
2:13.
