By: Dave MacPherson (emphasis added)
FIRST, LET’S EXPLAIN “rapture” and then “index.”
Many Christian Right members in America believe in an imminent “rapture” (a coming of Christ that reportedly happens SEVEN YEARS BEFORE the famous Second Coming to earth).
The “great tribulation” in the Bible is said to occur during those seven years. Therefore the rapture is viewed as a “pre-tribulation” event and reportedly gives believers the hope of being taken to Heaven, without dying, and thus escaping the traumatic seven-year period on earth.
The “Index” (as in Todd Strandberg’s “Rapture Index”) lists 45 “precursors” which are earthly events reportedly acting as signposts pointing to the rapture and showing how close it is. Here’s the mad theology: the Rapture Index’s pre-rapture “precursors” include even “The Antichrist” and “The Mark of the Beast” which, in Todd’s view, occur AFTER the rapture! What’s more, all of his “precursors” are on earth AFTER the point in time for a “pretribulation” rapture, are actually fulfilled DURING Todd’s seven-year tribulation period, and in fact point to ONLY the (posttribulation) Second Coming to earth and not to any sort of “pretribulation” coming of Christ—a concept that NO organized church and NO official theology ever taught before 1830!
Todd even believes in pretribulationism’s “signless” rapture— which adjective is believable if Tricky Todd can convince us that “precursors” can never be “signs”!
See Google and type in “Deceiving and Being Deceived” (one of my earliest internet articles) to see why the claims for Pseudo-Ephraem and Morgan Edwards (as “pre-1830 pretrib teachers”) are totally groundless. Also Google “Open Letter to Todd Strandberg,” “Famous Rapture Watchers,” “Thomas Ice (Bloopers),” “Walvoord Melts Ice,” “Edward Irving is Unnerving,” “Pretrib Rapture Diehards,” “Wily Jeffrey,” “Pretrib Rapture – Hidden Facts,” “Pretrib Rapture Secrecy,” “Pretrib Hypocrisy,” “Appendix F: Thou Shalt Not Steal,” “Thieves’ Marketing,” “Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty” and “Scholars Weigh My Research.”
Be sure to obtain my bestselling nonfiction book “The Rapture Plot” if you would like to see 300 pages of the most detailed and most accurate history of the 180-year-old pretrib rapture view.