On Dog Whistle Raptures & Other Trivia

Months ago I was asked to help admin a pretrib prophecy forum. Being an admin was never on my short bucket list of things to do, and it hasn't always been fun. I must hand it to the others for their composure through tiresomely predictable diatribes from well-intended, concerned folk. These are often so formulaic that one might think these people were handed the same work sheets to go out and conquer with.

I wish I had a dollar for every Margaret MacDonald-vision-rapture claim we've had. Don't use it unless you've actually read something other than MacPherson or can provide a pretrib quote from MacDonald. That insinuation is pure gossip and sloppy criticism at best.

When you engage these people, they often come back with the sanctimonious: "My motive is to warn pretribulationists that they're vulnerable because of this false teaching....."

A few days after my blogging on this topic, we got that one again. We ask these people how they are specifically better prepared than a pretribber, but rarely get cogent replies. I know one vocal posttribulationist who finally responded that his geographical location was on the other-side-of-the-world of the future conflagration, which he believes is confined to the Middle East. Apparently he's content to avoid the future "purification" of the church in that area and he's comfortable where he is.

On that note, both pretribbers and non-pretribbers may consider the following books: John MacArthur has a great one called Slave. See also Edwin Yamauchi's article Slaves of God. MacArthur also penned The Power of Suffering, Hard to Believe and, of course, The Gospel According to Jesus. Dale Johnsen wrote What To Do Until Christ Comes. I also enjoyed Alistair Begg's The Hand of God.

Anyway, I've recently come across two instances where pretrib has been referred to as a Dog Whistle Rapture. One blogger quotes Riddlebarger's book on amillennialism where he refers to it as a "cosmic dog whistle" (page 143).

Perhaps amils allegorize so much Scripture that they've become super-sensitive and self-conscious of this condition. And so they feel inclined to accuse dispies of inconsistency because they don't really believe in multi-headed dragons running around terrorizing a future world. This gives them an excuse to justify allegorizing stuff like the resurrection in Rev 20:4. After all, you can't have dead saints regenerated after a real physical resurrection. That's plain silly. And we just know there's no 1000 year millennium. So that resurrection must be symbolic. Case closed.

I know, I know, the Dog Whistle thingy makes up for the long-chain taunts dispies have fired at the amil version of Satan's er...imprisonment. Sorry, guys, we'll quietly ignore the fact that Riddlebarger squeezes the entire Church Age into the last half of Daniel's 70th week, if he allows that Scripture doesn't preclude Christ's return for His church before the tribulation.

Then there's the premil non-pretribber who also used the Dog Whistle allusion. He may have been reading Riddlebarger's notes. I suspect he's also taken a glance at MacPherson's gossip column because he's referred to pretrib as "Strange Trib". He thinks it's an irony that pretribulationist John MacArthur is a cessationist when he's adopted: "the very view that, it is argued, finds its origins in the utterances of charismatic-visionary Margaret MacDonald or possibly the charismatic Edward Irving (early 19th century)."

I've already expressed my feelings regarding these unsubstantiated taunts. Irving and MacDonald were arguably historicists, and the latter envisioned a church under trial from the Antichrist.

My premil Dog Whistle friend has published his first book and I commend it to anyone who wants to know more about his late 20th century view. I laud its overall irenic tone which contrasts to his blog's polemics. It avoids the bitterness I detected in Rosenthal's book, and it shuns the smugness and annoyingly repetitive axioms in Van Kampen's work. It will delight devoted prewrathers; however it doesn't address problems others have noted about the system.

He doesn't fess up to those multiple comings of Christ in his own system. I'm not sure if all these comings involve the same "shout" and "trumpet" but he uses all the Parousia-Rapture texts to assert that there's a Single Parousia. Yet he consoles his readers by telling them that - after the tribulation - they will be in heaven...standing before the throne and before the Lamb (p 98). If the Lamb (Christ) is in heaven after the rapture, then He has to return to the earth again in, at least, one more er...different yet same coming. It certainly can't be a Dog Whistle coming - right?

On page 173 we're told Jesus' Parousia won't be an instantaneous event; that it will be a "multi-phase, complex whole in which God will fulfill His divine purposes..." That statement is designed to accommodate a system which teaches multiple comings. It also seeks to resolve a contradiction regarding 2 Thess 2:8 where Christ does not destroy the Antichrist at His initial appearing.

All this seems inconsistent given the dog whistle rapture jibe.

As an aside I found it interesting that he draws a connection between Matt 24:31 and the resurrection in Dan 12:2 as one proof that the former is the rapture (p 91). Posttribbers would nod their heads in assent. Missing from the discussion are the OT texts speaking of Israel's gathering.

Another problem is that Daniel's resurrection is implied to be at the end of the 1,335 days (Dan 12:13). There's a whole other study which could be done just on that. If you identify the church with Daniel's people (or those texts) then - to be consistent - you should also note the duration and purpose of this period (Jer 30:7; Dan 7:25, 12:6-7; Hos 5:15; Matt 23:37-39). Yet his entire system hinges on the premise that this purification period (p 54) is cut short for the church (pp 59, 60, 91).

I may review various other points of the book in future blogs.