The modern futurist concept came from a Jesuit Priest named Francisco Ribera, who wrote a five hundred page document on the Apocalypse in 1590. Among other things, this work taught that the antichrist would come at sometime in the future for a literal 3 ½ year period right before the Second Advent (Froom 1948, 2:486-90). This was primarily to protect the Pope and push off the Reformer’s view that he was the Antichrist and suggest that it was not yet revealed, but sometime later in the future.
In 1791, a Jesuit named Manuel de Lacunza published a work under the pseudonym, Juan Josafat Ben Ezra (to come off as a Rabbi). This work outlined the Rapture of the Church, the appearance of the antichrist, the premillennial Second Advent of Christ, and then the millennial reign of Christ on earth. (Froom 1946, 3:304-5, 309).
By 1826 Rev. Edward Irving translated Lacunza’s The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty into English, established the “Society for the Investigation of Prophecy” and began preaching on premillennial eschatology (Flegg 1992:40-50).
A meeting of clergy was held by the Honorable Henry Drummond to his Albury Park estate for a week long discussion of prophetic truth. In 1829, Drummond summarized the conclusions of all three conferences into six points:
- the Church “dispensation” or age will end in destruction, much the same as the Jewish dispensation ended;
- the Jews will be restored to Palestine during this time of judgment;
- this judgment to come will fall primarily upon Christendom;
- when the judgment is done, the Millennium will begin
- the Second Advent of Christ will occur before the Millennium; and
- the 1,260 years of Daniel 7 and Revelation 13 ought to be measured from the reign of Justinian to the French Revolution (the vials of wrath, mentioned in Revelation 16, were then being poured out and the Second Advent was imminent). (e.g., Morning Watch, London, 1829-33, Christian Herald, Dublin, 1830-35, Investigator, London, 1831-36) – (Sandeen 1970:21-4).
Around the same time in 1830, John Nelson (J. N.) Darby and Benjamin Wills Newton formed an independent group (the Plymouth Brethren). This group maintained a focus on apostolic Christianity and premillennialism. Another conference was held for clergy in 1831. The main topics were the interpretation of the 1,260 days (years), the corrupt state of Christendom, the imminent Return of Christ, and ways to identify the antichrist.
During the following year’s conference, a potential split in premillennial doctrine was identified between the Historicists, who believed that most of the events described by Daniel and John in Revelation were being fulfilled in European history, and Futurists, who believed none of these events had occurred yet, but would occur at the end of the dispensation of the Church, just prior to the Second Advent. The Futurists were also called Dispensationalists and included J. N. Darby and most of the Plymouth Brethren (Sandeen 1970:29-37).
Darby fully introduced his “dispensational” ideas; the secret Rapture of the Church and a parenthesis or gap between Daniel’s sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks (Daniel 9:24-27) – (Hebert 2004b:8-11).
Source:
This had been taken by notes from Oral Roberts website, credited ©Copyright David Hebert, 2009