The biggest doubt I have about the prewrath position is that its not widely accepted by true believers. When I simply read what Jesus and Paul and John say the message is obvious. Basically, in the world we will have tribulation (and as James says, "to count it all joy") and in the last days we can also expect tribulation.

What baffles me is when Christians, like my beloved pastor, whole-heartedly believe in a pre-trib rapture and all the baggage that goes with it.  My pastor clearly loves the Lord and preaches the gospel of salvation every Sunday.  He is devoted to the Word, yet misses this and believes the LaHaye/Lindsey stuff.  How is it that anyone who loves Jesus can be missing this truth?

Honestly, this is a great frustration to me, as well. The answer  has to do with three things:

1) The history of the development of the rapture positions, whose disfunctional growth created a fertile ground for the pretribulation view (see below).

2) The fact that, while in seminary, pastors-to-be have lots to study, from church growth to learning Greek, so the rapture is one of a seemingly infinite number of things to learn about. It's easy to overlook the inconsistencies in one view in the deluge of other information. Then, once they graduate and get their own churches, they become involved in the day-to-day affairs of their churches and it slips away unless they are somehow directly confronted with it.

3) The consequences of changing their view in a Christendom dominated by pretribulationism that severely persecutes anyone who defects (also see below). We had one formerly pretrib pastor turned prewrather in our Internet prewrath discussion group (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/prewrathonly) for awhile who agonized over whether or not to sign a doctrinal statement at his church that included a pretrib stand on the rapture. Apparently, they had to renew their signatures every year or so and, in the interim, he'd changed his view. Signing it would have required that he lie and not signing would have meant losing his pastorate in the church. Don't know what ultimately happened there, but there have been many, including Marvin Rosenthal who coined the phrase "prewrath" with his PreWrath Rapture of thChurch, who were forced to leave prominent positions when they changed their view. These pastors, ministry leaders, and professors are concerned about their professional lives — they can (and do) lose them.

Here is a condensed version of my chapter "Where Does Pretrib Come From?" from Before God’s Wrath: The Bible's Answer to the Timing of the Rapture that should help in answering point #1:

Chapter 9:

Where Does Pretrib Come From?

Where do people get the idea that there will be a pretribulation rapture? Despite the widespread misconception that the pretribulation view was held by the early church, pretribulationism is a modern interpretation. Although there has been much speculation about the influence of the visions of a young Scottish girl named Margaret Macdonald, the development of the pretribulation rapture is generally attributed to John Darby of the Plymouth Brethren, who formalized the theory around 1830.

Prior to this time, 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, and this was seen either as a midtribulational or posttribulational event. Darby was the first to formally theorize that Jesus would return in two stages: first in spiritual form to rapture the Church, then in bodily form seven years later to judge the world. This allowed Jesus to return triumphantly at Armageddon while keeping the Church out of the 70th Week.

Classic Bible scholars, including John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, Matthew Henry, John Knox, John Hus, John Calvin, Isaac Newton, John Wycliffe, and John Bunyan, among others, did not hold to a pretribulation rapture view.

A Little History

How did Darby's unusual interpretation of the scriptures win such widespread acceptance? In order to understand this, it is necessary to look at some of the issues surrounding the biblical scholarship of the time.

The Book of Revelation was not written until about 90 A.D. Thus, in the early church, any budding end-times theology would have arisen from the gospels and epistles. It is only John's detailed description of the seal, trumpet, and bowl judgments—written more than three decades later—that allows readers to place Jesus' coming in the timeline of 70th Week events. When one considers only the gospels and epistles, a posttribulational rapture is the most reasonable interpretation, and indeed, the writings of the earliest church fathers indicate that the infant church was posttribulational. By the time Revelation began to circulate, clarifying the fine points of prophetic timing, the first century church was in the midst of dire persecution, and as John Walvoord has pointed out, such studies took a back seat to the very real tribulations of the day.

Even though the early church was posttribulational, there is little question that most believers expected Jesus to return in their lifetimes. When their brethren began to die, and in fact, many died horrific martyrs' deaths, it is not surprising they began to wonder if Jesus had already come and they had missed it, or perhaps, if He was coming at all. Even as early as the book of 1 Thessalonians, which was written around 51 A.D., Paul appears to be comforting those who thought that perhaps the Day of the Lord had come and gone (1 Thess. 4:13–1 Thess. 5:2).

By the fourth century, as the persecutions continued, Catholic theologian Augustine proposed something that many believers were starting to be ready to hear: Perhaps the Second Coming, the rapture, and the Day of the Lord were not to be taken literally after all. Perhaps the kingdom of God was not a literal kingdom, and there would be no physical, earthly millennial kingdom over which Christ would rule. Instead, Augustine proposed that the kingdom of God is spiritual, fulfilled "in the hearts of faithful men." The Millennium, he suggested, will not be a literal, future time period in which Christ will reign. Rather, the Millennium is here, now, manifest in the Body of Christ in the Church Age in which we live.

Origins of Amillennialism

Augustine was not, of course, the first to put forth this theory. Credit is given to fourth century theologian Origen, the chief proponent of the allegorical method of interpretation of his time. Despite the fact that his interpretation contradicted the clear, established teachings of the church fathers, Origen's view (which was highly influenced by Greek philosophy) flourished. Until this time, the church had been exclusively premillennial, or chialistic, believing in a literal, thousand-year reign of Christ.

Gary Vaterlaus, instructor of biblical education and research for Sola Scriptura, attributes the widespread acceptance of amillennialism to four main factors:

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Although Origen's allegorical method of interpretation ultimately led him to develop and teach such deviant doctrines as the belief that the souls of men existed in a previous state, a denial of the bodily resurrection, and a belief in universal salvation for all men (even demons, for which he was ultimately declared a heretic), his teachings had a profound influence on those who would come after him, including Augustine. And because this view—called amillennialism, or "no millennium"—answered the nagging question in believers' hearts: "Why has Christ not come for us?" fourth-century Christians were ready to believe it.

Amillennial theology carried through what has commonly come to be known as the "Dark Ages," or the decline in Europe between 500 A.D. and 1000 A.D. after the fall of the Roman Empire. During this time, the scriptures were largely spiritualized, if they were read at all. Few common people could read and write, leaving  issues of faith in the hands of the religious system.

The amillennial period was followed by a postmillennial period, which also spiritualized the Millennium, but taught that Christ would come to set up His kingdom after man had prepared the world through faithful preaching of the gospel.

Between these two lengthy periods of scholarship, a literal reading and interpretation of end-times prophecy was all but impossible. It was only with the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s that the church returned to extensive Bible study and literal reading of the scriptures. Initially, this return extended only to theological issues on doctrines such as faith, grace, and atonement, so eschatology remained where it left off—postmillennial.

Haste Makes Waste

By the time Darby developed the novel interpretation of the two-stage return of Christ in the early 1800s, the scholarly community was hungry to take the scriptures fully literally again. Since posttribulationism requires some degree of allegorization, this desire now extended to the end-times scriptures for the first time in 1500 years. Thus, despite pretribulationism's poor exegetical foundation, Darby's efforts, which returned to a premillennial framework for the scriptures, appealed to a large segment of the scholarly population. Overlooking the theory's scriptural problems, scholars seized upon it, gradually refining it to where it is today.

Its popularity among the nonscholarly community, however, arose only after the view was adopted by Charles Scofield, who promoted it in his Scofield Reference Bible in 1909.

The pretribulational view made its way into the United States in the 1880s, and with it, unfortunately, came friction and division.… The Scofield Reference Bible of 1909 and the revised edition of 1917, which included pretribulation rapturism as a major part of its prophetic teaching, more than any other force popularized the pretribulation view of the rapture. Untold multitudes became pretribulationists as a result of Scofield's notes which, because attached to his reference Bible, became highly authoritative in the minds of many. Most of the early Bible conferences, Bible colleges, and seminaries, under the influence of those early pretribulationist leaders, adopted the pretribulational position.

The initial appeal of the pretrib doctrine is not surprising. On a popular level, pretrib theology was then, as it is now, a pleasing doctrine. Its logic is simple and easy to follow. And because this interpretation results in the Church not having to go through any of the 70th Week, it stuck. In fact, despite its lack of direct scriptural support, it has grown to become a foundational doctrine for most Bible-believing churches, missions, and evangelical organizations today. Under the circumstances of its advent, this is understandable.

The tragedy arises when you consider that this teaching continues to perpetuate despite its clear scriptural error, especially considering the high literacy rate in today's society, which ought not to have let such inaccuracy go unchecked. We are not living in the Middle Ages, when the scriptures were inaccessible to the average believer. Especially in Westernized countries, most Christians have their own Bibles, if not several, in their native tongues. And yet, even when they discover discrepancies between the scriptures and the teachings of their churches, they are too often willing to accept the conclusions of others than to study the scriptures for themselves.

Equally disturbing is the level of importance to which the pretrib rapture theory has risen in Christian theological circles. In some cases, it is placed in the company of such fundamental tenets of the Christian faith as the virgin birth, the blood atonement, and the deity of Christ. It has even become part of churches' doctrinal statements. Those who admit to not holding the pretribulation position may even risk having their salvation questioned.

In the conclusion of his book The Rapture Question Answered: Plain and Simple, Robert Van Kampen has written about some of the consequences of taking prewrath as a doctrinal position:

In spite of the strong biblical argument for the prewrath position, and in spite of the consequences of what will happen to the church if the pretribulation view is wrong, scores of men in Christian leadership have told me that if they were to publicly teach the prewrath rapture position, they would lose their jobs.

Marvin Rosenthal is a perfect example of what can happen if you change your view. He was thrown out of the Jewish ministry to which he had devoted his life, even though he was personally responsible for building the Friends of Israel ministry from a handful of employees to one of the largest, conservative missions to Jews in the world today….

"…Charles Cooper, a Dallas Seminary grad, held a teaching position at Moody Bible Institute. He was extremely popular with the students, was a speaker at Moody Founders Week, at Moody's Pastors Conference, at Bible conferences that sponsored Moody weeks [and many other events]…. Like Marv Rosenthal, he became convinced of the biblical basis for the prewrath view of Christ's return…[and] was given a choice: support the pretrib position and your job is secure; [or] support the prewrath position and you must leave…. He resigned.

"These are only two examples of the stories that I hear from pastors, missionaries, teachers, even board members that have been forced to leave ministries they had given their time and resources to, faithfully, over many years!…..

…Today, many pastors…kiddingly refer to themselves as "closet prewrathers," knowing that if they went public with their convictions on this particular issue, they would pay the price and be expelled from the association, labeled, like Marv Rosenthal, as proponents of 'false teachings.'"

I am not suggesting that pretrib proponents are not godly, Spirit-filled people. I believe that many of them are. But even godly people have their blind spots, and these blind spots can serve Satan well. For Satan knows that it is better to use sweets and honey than horns and hooves. 2 Corinthians 11:14 tells us that Satan transforms himself "into an angel of light," and what a tempting light the pretrib position is to a Christian community that, in all its humanness, does not want to believe that they will have to endure the kind of hardships for which the Word of God tells us to prepare.