Page 146 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

General Posttribulational Arguments
lationists. He may be able to demonstrate that they were not
traditional posttribulationists, but this does not prove that
they were pretribulationists.
MacPherson was especially anxious to prove that Mar­
garet MacDonald was the source of the new doctrine and
quoted Norton, who is an ardent posttribulationist, to this
effect. Margaret MacDonald was supposed to have had a
vision of the Lord’s coming and to have heard the trumpet of
God and heavenly hosts singing.16 Norton also gave the de­
tails concerning a second experience of Margaret MacDonald,
and in this connection he quoted one of her sisters, who de­
scribed MacDonald’s experience of healing and asserted that
there was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on her brother,
James. In all of this material, however, one searches in vain
searches in vain
for any clear pretribulational teaching.
It is quite amazing, in reading posttribulational litera­
ture, to find how many worthy scholars have quoted the origin
of pretribulationism as coming from MacDonald and Irving
without any research supporting it, and these include scholars
such as Ladd, Reese, and Payne. Now that research has
demonstrated by the work of MacPherson himself that they
were not actually pretribulational, it illustrates how far a con­
tention can go without support.
In contrast to the assertion that Irving was a pre-
tribulationist, Huebner has demonstrated that what Irving
actually believed was that the Rapture would occur at the end
of the Tribulation, after the seventh seal, after the seventh
trumpet, and after the seventh bowl in the Book of Revelation,
which practically all posttribulationists recognize brings one
to the end of the Tribulation. According to Huebner, Irving
published a statement in The Morning IVatch in December 1831
as follows: “That the seventh seal had been opened, the sev­
enth trumpet sounded, the seventh vial commended: but it is
only to this last-mentioned portion of prophecy that we shall
at present direct our attention. We have, blessed be God, lived
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