Recent Pre-Trib Findings in the Early Church Fathers

What Did the Early Church Fathers Teach?

Many today insist that the pretribulation rapture is a new teaching invented by JN Darby in 1830. But this is a fairy tale. Many preachers and laymen from the start of the Reformation to the time of Darby taught one form or another of a pretribulation rapture. Moreover, many of the early church fathers taught a pretribulation rapture.

In this volume we examine ten pretribulation rapture passages from Ephraim the Syrian’s mostly untranslated Greek works, another nine from Eusebius’ untranslated Greek works, three rapture passages from Irenaeus’Against Heresies, one of which is already well-known, and three rapture arguments from the Didache that together make a three-strand cord which won’t be quickly broken.

The volume also walks readers through Irenaeus’ ecclesiology and eschatology, demonstrating that he held the rudiments of dispensationalism: a distinction between Israel and the church, a pretribulation rapture of the church, God dealing with Israel in the tribulation, and God gathering scattered Israel at the second coming.