Thomas Ice’s Pre-Trib “Evidence”

Introduction

Most Christians are stunned to discover that the popular “rapture” doctrine was an invention of the Plymouth Brethren (adapted from Margaret McDonald) in the early 1800’s. Having refuted the idea that the “pre-trib” rapture is taught in the Scripture, we shall now examine the historic orthodoxy of the rapture doctrine. In an attempt to give the “Pre-trib” Rapture Doctrine some smidgen of historical significance beyond Darby and McDonald, Dr. Thomas Ice, Executive Director of the Pre-Trib Research Center, wrote an article in The Midnight Call (Jan. '06), p. 20-23, entitled "A Brief History of the Rapture." I don’t know Ice personally, and I won’t presuppose whether or not he is making honest mistakes, or if he is being purposely deceptive. Thanks to great research by people like Gary DeMar and Dave MacPherson, Ice’s “evidence” has been thoroughly refuted, as I will outline below.

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Ice’s Claim #1 - The Apostolic Fathers held to both the imminent return of Christ as well as a post-tribulational rapture theory. While these positions are self-contradictory, the fact that imminence was taught is very important, as it forms the irrefutable basis of pre-trib rapture.

Response – There is no consensus on the eschatology of the Apostolic Fathers. In fact, most of the Church Fathers held that the Olivet Discourse was completely fulfilled at the Destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 (Preterist). There are very few (if any) Apostolic references to the Book of Revelation itself. As for the Imminence Argument, this is two-fold. For the Apostolic Fathers who wrote prior to AD 70, a good case can be made that the “coming” they speak of is the same coming in Matthew 21:33-45. As for the post AD 70 Fathers who held to “the imminent return of Christ”, it is obvious now that they were wrong. What else needs to be said regarding that?

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Ice’s Claim #2 - A sermon preched by a man referred to as Pseudo-Ephraem in the fourth to sixth century AD, entitled Sermon on The Last Times, The Antchrist, and The End of the World, contains the following:

“Why therefore do we not reject every care of earthly actions and prepare ourselves for the meeting of the Lord Christ, so that he may draw us from the confusion, which overwhelms all of the world? . . . For all the saints of God are gathered, prior to the tribulation that is to come, and are taken to the Lord lest they see the confusion that is to overwhelm the world because of our sins”.

Response – Dave MacPherson outlines the deception in many of Ice’s claims, including that Pseudo-Ephraem taught a “pre-trib rapture”.

“In the before-the-tribulation sections, P-E mentions neither a descent of Christ, nor a shout, nor an angelic voice, nor a trumpet of God, nor a resurrection, nor the dead in Christ, nor a rapture, nor meeting Christ. So where does P-E place the rapture? The answer is found in his last section (10) where he writes that after "the sign of the Son of Man" when "the Lord shall appear with great power," the "angelic trumpet precedes him, which shall sound and declare: Arise, O sleeping ones, arise, meet Christ, because the hour of judgment has come.”¹

MacPherson goes on to show how pre-tribbers like Ice and Grant Jeffrey purposely revise Pseudo-Ephraem’s statements, leaving out words and phrases to purposely hide the fact that “Pseudo-Ephraem has the nasty, non-pretrib habit of blending the rapture with the final advent!”²


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Ice’s Claim #3 - It is believed that sects like the Albigenses, Lmbards, and the Waldenses were attracted to premillennialism . . . difficult to say much as the RCC (which was/is amill) destroyed their works whenever they found them.

Response – Premillennialism itself does not support the idea of a Pre-trib rapture. Premillennialism has been around for a long time in different forms, but did not include the rapture doctrine until the 1800’s.


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Ice’s Claim #4 - Brother Dolcino (1304) held to a pretribulational rapture, according to Francis Gumerlock. "[Dolcino taught that he and his followers would] be preserved unharmed from the persecution of the Antichrist."

Response – Dolcino and his followers can hardly be considered orthodox Christians. Ice refered to a work by Francis Gumerlock after a debate with Gary DeMar which stated, “the Dolcinites held to a pre-tribulation rapture theory similar to that of modern Dispensationalism”.³ But Dolcino taught much more than that. Gary Demar explains:

"If Ice wants to claim the Dolcinites as proto-dispensationalists, he can have them. Gumerlock quotes the Historia Fratris Dolcini Haeresiarchae in an end note (the English translation is Gumerlock's): "Again, [he believed, preached, and taught] that within the said three years Dolcino himself and his followers will preach the coming of the Antichrist; and that the Antichrist himself would come into this world at the end of the said three and a half years; and after he had come, Dolcino himself, and his followers would be transferred into Paradise, where Enoch and Elijah are, and they will be preserved unharmed from the persecution of Antichrist; and then Enoch and Elijah themselves would descend to earth to confront the Antichrist, then they would be killed by him; or by his servants, and thus Antichrist would reign again for many days. ‘Once Antichrist is truly dead, Dolcino himself, who would then be the holy Pope, and his preserved followers will descend to earth, and they will preach the correct faith of Christ to all, and they will convert those, who will be alive then, to the true faith of Jesus Christ.”

If Brother Dolcino’s teachings are the best evidence that Ice can come up with, he’s on shaky ground.


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Ice’s Claim #5 - Both Philip Doddridge's commentary on the NT (1738) and Gill's commentary on the NT (1748) teach the imminence of the rapture. "It is clear that these men believed that [the rapture] will precede Christ's descent to the earth and the time of judgment. The purpose was to preserve believers from the time of judgment."

Response - The commentaries of these men are both pretty good size, and Ice unfortunately didn’t provide the portion that led him to believe that “these men believed that [the rapture] will precede Christ's descent to the earth and the time of judgment.” Both Doddridge and Gill, at best, were historical premillennialists with very heavy preterist leanings. Both of their commentaries put the Olivet Discourse, including the Great Tribulation, as having seen it’s fulfillment in the Roman-Jewish war, and refer to Josephus as evidence for this fulfillment.


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Ice’s Claim #6 - James Macknight (1763) and Thomas Scott (1792) taught that the righteous will be carried to heaven, where they will be secure until the time of judgment is over.

Response - Like Gill and Doddridge, both Macknight and Scott were historical premillennialists with very heavy preterist leanings. "Milligan writes: "To me at least it seems perfectly obvious that the Apostle refers here to a day that was then very near at hand: a day that was about to come on that generation, and try the faith of many. And hence I am constrained to think with Macknight, Scott, Stuart, and others, that the reference is most likely to the day of Jerusalem's overthrow" (Commentary on Hebrews, p. 284)." (That Day" and forsaking the assembly )


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Ice’s Claim #7 - Frank Marotta, not a pre-triber, believes that Thomas Collier in 1674 makes reference to a pretib rapture. John Asgill wrote a book in 1700 discussing the possibility of translation without seeing death.

Response – Unfortunately, Ice again does not give specifics. I have been unable to locate a copy of either source, though the complete title given for Asgill’s work by Ice does not say anything about a “pre-trib” rapture.⁴


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Ice’s Claim #8 - Baptist Morgan Edwards, founder of Brown University, apparently believed in a system comparable to modern day mid-trib rapture. He published his beliefs in 1744 saying,
“The distance between the first and second resurrection will be somewhat more than a thousand years. I say, somewhat more--, because the dead saints will be raised, and the living changed at Christ's "appearing in the air" . . . ; and this will be about three years and a half before the millennium . . . they will ascend to paradise, or to some one of those many "mansions in the father's house" . . ., and disappear during the foresaid period f time. The design of ths retreat and disappearing will be to judge the risen and changed saints.”

Response – Dave MacPherson shows clear proof that Morgan Edwards was a Historical Premillennialist, believing that he was already in the Great Tribulation.

“… these promoters … [have] concealed and perverted Morgan Edwards'…own words!... If promoters had been sure of their pretrib claim, they never would have had to collusively cover up the following M.E. statements that contradict their claim: On p. 14 M.E. described the "Turkish or Ottoman empire" (which began around 1300 A.D.) as the "beast that started out of the earth" (Rev. 13's second beast). (Since Bray etc. repeatedly claim that M.E. had only a "futurist" outlook, without which M.E. couldn't have logically expected a pretrib rapture, Bray deliberately skips over the historicism in M.E.'s "Ottoman" remark - historicism being the belief that the tribulation, covering many centuries, began at some point in the distant past.)

On p. 20 M.E. wrote that the "wicked one" (II Thess. 2:8) has "hitherto assumed no higher title than 'the vicar general of Christ on earth'" and described "Antichrist" as "popery" and a "succession of persons." (Promoters emphasize M.E.'s comments about the "last" Pope and ignore M.E.'s view that "popery" had "hitherto" (for many centuries) been playing the role of II Thess. 2:8's "wicked one" while wearing a "mask" (as he put it) - a first beast that historicism could easily see during the second beast's reign!) Since historicism - and not preterism or futurism - is the only one of these three schools which often thinks "years" when reading "days" in the Bible, it isn't surprising to find such year/day historicism in M.E. On p. 19, for example, while discussing Rev. 11's two witnesses, M.E. says "there are no more than about 204 years between now and their death.”⁵

Obviously, if Morgan Edwards believed that he was already in the Tribulation period, he could not have been looking for a Pre-Trib Rapture.


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Conclusion

It is obvious that Ice’s evidence has been invented out of desperation. It is one thing to believe in a certain doctrine. It is another thing to try and rewrite the works of earlier saints to promote it. The works of early church fathers are full of commentary on eschatology, yet references to any “pre-trib rapture” are noticeably absent. After all of Thomas Ice’s best efforts, he still hasn’t provided any evidence for the teaching of the modern “rapture” doctrine prior to 1800. While he is busy doing research for this doctrine through his Pre-Trib Research Center, his time could much better be spent in search of the truth.

Footnotes:

1 Deceiving and Being Deceived By Dave MacPherson
2 Deceiving and Being Deceived By Dave MacPherson
3 Francis Gumerlock - The Day and the Hour, p.80).
4 See Endnote 10, page 23 of The Midnight Call (Jan. '06).
5 Deceiving and Being Deceived By Dave MacPherson