教会歴史: パート 6 – 教会の将来とキリストの再臨
注： この作品は、デイビッド・ポーソンの十一部構成の教会史シリーズの最後の二つの講義を文字通り統合したものです。『未来の教会』（42.1分、本人のカタログでは第10部）と『イエスの帰還』（74.9分、第11部、最終部）です。パート4と5とは異なり、個別の講義をまとめることを選んだわけではありません。この二つはもともと最後の一組でした。最初の講義は教会の将来を…
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注： この作品は、デイビッド・ポーソンの十一部構成の教会史シリーズの最後の二つの講義を文字通り統合したものです。『未来の教会』（42.1分、本人のカタログでは第10部）と『イエスの帰還』（74.9分、第11部、最終部）です。パート4と5とは異なり、個別の講義をまとめることを選んだわけではありません。この二つはもともと最後の一組でした。最初の講義は教会の将来を三つの段階（近い将来、中期、永遠）で描き、「携挙」と「艱難」の順序という最も敏感な点で止まり、「多少の痛いところを突くことになる」と述べます。二番目の説教は、おそらく数週間後、ギルフォードのミルミード・バプテスト教会で同じ日曜夜のシリーズとして語られ、その点を最後まで論じます。
これはポーソン自身が最も議論の多い作品だと位置づけている講義でもあります。彼は具体的な神学的立場、すなわち 教会はキリストが再臨する前に艱難を経験すると述べ、事前に別個の「秘密の携挙」はなく、多くの誠実なキリスト者が同意しないことも明言します。私はその立場を歴史的事実ではなくポーソンの見解として示し、必要な箇所では、カトリック、東方正教会、福音主義内部の今日の見方がどう異なるかを加えました。
始める前に：一つの説教、二つの問い
パート5は1968年に終わり、二つの世界大戦と世界を形作った三つの主義の間に置かれています。ポーソンのシリーズを締めくくる二つの講義では、次の当然の疑問が生じます。それで何？ 最初の問いは、教会がどこへ向かっているのかを尋ねます。二番目は、キリストがどのように再臨され、教会はそれをどのように待つべきかを尋ねます。
第一部：教会の未来
ポーソンは、教会は「半分空いている」のか、それとも「半分いっぱい」なのかという、深刻で皮肉な問いで始めます。彼は、悪いニュースであふれる世界でも人々が「良い知らせ」を求めている証拠として、新約聖書版『現代人のための良い知らせ』（ロバート・ブラッチャー訳、アメリカ聖書協会）を指摘し、「少し前に刊行され、950万部が売れ、1日13,000部のペースで売れている」と述べます。
彼は説教全体の基礎として三つの聖句を読みます。パウロのテサロニケの信徒への手紙一（ラッパが鳴り、キリストにある死者が最初によみがえる）、ヨハネの黙示録（大艱難から出て来た無数の群衆）、そしてヨハネの黙示録の千年王国と新しい創造の箇所章（千年王国、新しい天と新しい地）です。次に彼は使徒言行録のガマリエルの言葉を引用します。「この計画やこの事業が人間によるものであれば、失敗するでしょう。しかし、それが神によるものであれば、彼らを打ち倒すことはできないでしょう。」 これが彼が話全体を組み立てる聖句です。未来を強制しようとしているのではなく、それがすでにどちらの方向に進んでいるかを見ようとしているだけです。
I. 直近の未来: 彼の予測と実際に起こったこと
ポーソン氏は自分の予測を信念と行動に分けて考えています。行動に関して、彼は四つの具体的な予測を示しています。
まず、歴史上、教会が目に見えて一つの組織に統一されることは決してないでしょう。 彼はそれを期待しておらず、そんなことが起こるとは信じていません。
第二に、教会は制度的でなく、聖職者的でもなくなるでしょう。 「将来のキリスト教は、建物も聖職者もいないかもしれない非公式のキリスト教になるでしょう…しかし、家庭内、職場内、その他あらゆる種類の方法で、どこにでも自発的に現れるかもしれません。」
第三に、教会の指導者は北半球から南半球に移ります。 「伝統的に福音の送り手であり、キリスト教を与えてきた教会は、受け手となる必要があるでしょう。そして、これは彼らを大いに謙虚にするでしょう。」 彼はそれを、前の月曜夜の集会で流された録音で説明しています。パラグアイのキリスト者たちは「私たちの立派な建物も、私たちの経済的資源もない」のに、「私たちが切望する生命と活力」を持っていました。
ポーソン氏は、以前に用いた三つのグループの枠組み（カトリック、リベラル、福音派）に戻り、中間ブロック（聖公会、長老派、メソジスト、会衆派）が「今後20年間でさらに緊密になるだろう。カナダと南インドではすでに実現し、パキスタンでもそうなろうとしているように」と信念をもって予測します。聖公会とメソジストは「一緒に話し合っている」。彼は、マルコム・マゲリッジが教会の団結を「立ち上がるために互いにしがみつかなければならなかった酔っぱらいの集団」に例えたことを引用し、匿名のエール大学教会史教授の言葉も紹介します。
キリスト教徒人口の中心は移動している
1910–2050年、世界のキリスト教徒はどこに住んでいるか
灰色＝グローバル・ノース（ヨーロッパ＋北米）に住む世界のキリスト教徒の割合。金色＝グローバル・サウス（アフリカ、アジア、ラテンアメリカ）。ここでいう地域は社会地理的な区分であり、半球を指すものではない。2020年以降の破線は2050年までの例示的な推計であり、観測された時系列ではない。1970年には、グローバル・ノースがなお過半数（59%）を占めていた。
出典・作成：Center for the Study of Global Christianity, World Christian Database（図示した各点と2050年の終点）；Pew Research Center, The Future of World Religions（2015）（地域区分の背景）。2050年の終点は、Pewによる新たな観測更新ではない。
実現した合同もあれば、実現しなかったものもある
教会合同運動、1925–1972年
1925年6月10日
カナダ合同教会：メソジスト＋会衆派＋長老派の約70%がトロントで合同
1947年9月27日
南インド教会がマドラスで発足：宗教改革以来初めて、監督制と非監督制の系統をまたぐ合同
1969年7月8日
聖公会–メソジスト合同案、カンタベリー／ヨークの教会会議で否決：賛成69%、必要数75%
1970年11月1日
パキスタン教会が発足：聖公会、メソジスト、長老派（スコットランド教会）、ルター派の諸教団が合同
1972年5月
新しい総会で、聖公会–メソジスト合同案が二度目の否決
パウソンが説教していた時、パキスタンはなお合同を「求めている」段階だった（まだ実現していなかった）。彼は、自国の聖公会–メソジスト合同案が一度ならず二度も失敗するとは予想していなかった。
カトリックと福音派について。 ポーソンは、「この分野はカトリックと福音派に委ねられるだろう」、この2つのブロックが西洋の宗教を再形成する一方、カトリック教徒は「自分たちの方法を適応させれば、南ヨーロッパでは地盤を失うが、北ヨーロッパでは地盤を得るだろう」と予測している。同氏は、福音派は「さらに団結し、同時にさらに分裂するだろう」と予想している。
私は、教会の指導者が北半球から南半球に移ろうとしていると信じています。そして伝統的に福音の送り手であった教会も、受け取り手となる必要があるだろう。そしてこれは彼らを大いに謙虚にするでしょう。
すべての国に届くことを目指す。 ポーソンは、マタイによる福音書によれば、「現代のマスコミュニケーションの手段を用いて」すべての国に福音を宣べ伝えること（全員を改宗させるのではなく、全員が聞けるようにするだけ）は、「少なくとも2000年までには完了するだろう」と楽観的に語ります。彼は、ウィクリフ聖書翻訳者たちが、ときには13人ほどしかいない部族のもとへ行き、そのために神の言葉の一部を翻訳していると紹介しました。
霊的衰退と迫害について。 ポーソンは「大いなる衰退」と「多くのキリスト者の愛が冷める」ことを予告します。同時代の多くの人々が諦めているなか、数十年後も同じ働きを続けている、野外説教をする青年ベイトマン氏の写真を示しました。そして迫害は「ますます増大」し、教会はこれからの困難な日々に今から備える必要があると述べました。
II. 中間の未来：艱難、携挙、千年王国（枠組みであって、まだ立場ではない）
ポーソンは、「世界史上の次の大きな出来事」を、第三次世界大戦や人類初の月面着陸ではなく、「私たちの主イエス・キリストが、釘跡のある手足を持つ肉体として、目に見えるかたちでこの世に戻って来ること」だと捉えます。彼は三つの専門用語を挙げます。艱難（Tribulation）、携挙（Rapture）、千年王国（Millennium）です。そして、キリストが文字どおり肉体をもってご自分の民のために戻って来るという、中央の「携挙」そのものについては、キリスト者は同意していると言います。意見が分かれるのは両端、つまり艱難と千年王国をどう理解するかです。
千年王国について、彼は三つの解釈を手短に示します。実際の期間ではなく「純粋に象徴的な数字」と見る人もいます。教会そのものがその千年を「到来させ」、キリストはその終わりに来ると信じる人もいます。そしてポーソン自身は、他の人々とともに、それは「言葉どおりの意味を持つ」と信じます。すなわち、キリストが地上で目に見えるかたちで千年間治め、その後、御国を父なる神に返すということです。つまり彼は、キリストが千年王国の前に戻るとする千年期前再臨説の立場です。
次に、最初の講義の最も鮮明な一節が来ます。彼は、「昨年ウェンブリーで」行われたビリー・グラハム運動の閉会集会を思い出し、何万人もの人々がスタンドで賛美の歌を歌っていました。そして考えます。もしそれがすでに大規模な集会のように感じられたなら、あらゆる時代を生きたすべてのキリスト者との雲の上の集会は、どれほど大きくなるでしょうか。「地上に十分な大きさのスタジアムはない。だからイエスは空中で会えるようにしてくださったのだ」と。彼は、その日についてのイエス自身の厳しい警告をルカによる福音書から引用します。「一つの台所に二人の女性がいて、一人は連れて行かれ、もう一人は残されるでしょう。同じ寝床に二人がいても、一人は連れて行かれ、もう一人は残されるでしょう。」 一世代のキリスト者は決して死ぬことがなく、「ある集団のキリスト者の葬儀は行われないでしょう」と彼は言います。それから祖父の墓石について話します。そこには*「なんという出会いだ！」*という三つの言葉だけが刻まれており、近くで墓石を読む他の訪問者を困惑させるのです。
それから彼は、緊張が最高潮に達したところで立ち止まります。「ここで、いくつかの地雷を踏んでみます。」 彼は、携挙と患難の間の順序について三つの立場を示します。つまり、教会が患難時代の前に携挙される（最も一般的）、患難の途中に携挙される（少数派）、または患難の後、キリストが戻るのと同時に携挙される（彼自身の立場）という三つです。続く説教で完全な議論を述べると約束します。
Ⅲ．永遠の未来：想像を絶するもの
ポーソンは最初の講義を、その最も短く最も控えめなセクションである永遠の未来で締めくくります。彼はパウロのコリントの信徒への手紙一を引用します。「目が見たことも、耳が聞いたことも、人の心に思い浮かんだこともないものを、神はご自分を愛する人々のために備えてくださった。」 彼は、キリストとの現在の関係を婚約に、永遠の未来を結婚、つまり「本物」に例えています。
そして彼はパンフレットThe True ChurchからのリバプールのJ.C.ライル司教の言葉を引用して締めくくります: 「男性は、自分たちがこの教会やあの教会に入会し、聖体拝領者になるか、特定の形態を経て、すべてが自分の魂に正しくなければならないと空想します。それは全くの妄想です...あなたは熱心な英国国教会員、長老派教会、または会衆派信者かもしれません。バプテスト、メソジスト、プリマスブラザーであっても、真の教会に属していません。」
2番目の講義は、最初の講義のほぼ2倍の長さで、ポーソンがこの論争に深く踏み込む場面です。彼は二つの願いから始めます。あら探しをせず、キリスト者同士を分断する問題に広い心で臨んでほしいという願いです。彼は、この話題がミルミードで行われていた二つの並行した説教シリーズ（日曜朝のゼカリヤ書と日曜夕方のテサロニケ人への手紙）から生じ、ゼカリヤ書の学びの後に同じ質問が繰り返されたのだと明確に述べています。彼が説明していた出来事を目撃できるキリスト者は、まだ生きているだろうか。
第二部：キリストの再臨
I. 2 つの見解、1 つの確定した事実ではない
ポーソンは最初から問題を明確に提示します。聖書を信じるキリスト者なら誰でも、キリストの到来（新約聖書で300回以上言及されている）と反キリストの到来という二つの将来の出来事があることには同意しています。意見の相違は純粋に、これら二つの出来事が時間的にどのような順序で起こるかです。
彼は 2 つのシステムを紹介します。
伝統的な見解は、「教会の歴史の最初の17世紀…ちょうど1800くらいまで」保持されていたという。反キリストは絶対的な崇拝を要求する全体主義的独裁政権を支配し、その後キリストが反キリストを滅ぼし王国を設立するために再臨します。彼はこの見解を教父、宗教改革者（教皇を反キリストと認定したのは「間違いを犯した」と彼は言うが）、ピューリタン、そしてウェスリーのせいだとしている。
ディスペンセーション主義の見解は「1825年頃から」現れ、今日でも広く支持されています。キリストはまず聖徒たちを迎えるために来られ（秘密の携挙によって、世界から教会を取り去る）、次に反キリストが教会の不在中に7年間支配し、その後キリストが聖徒たちとともに来られます。反キリストを滅ぼし、地上に王国を設立するのです。彼はこれを「いつでも」という見方と呼びます。最初に何かが起こる必要はなく、キリストが今夜来られる可能性があると教えるからです。
二つの体系に入る前に、ポーソンは「反キリスト」という言葉自体について立ち止まります。彼によれば、ギリシャ語の接頭辞アンチは「今日私たちが使うような『反対』ではなく、『代わりに』を意味する」といいます。彼の解釈では、反キリストとはキリストに公然と反対する人物ではなく、キリストのなりすまし、すなわち代替者です。彼は同じ解釈を用いて、サタンがかつて荒野でイエスに「反キリストの地位」を提示した理由を説明します。
同じ二つの出来事を並べる二つの方法
反キリストとキリストの再臨：どちらが先か
伝統的な見方（最初の約1,800年間：教父、宗教改革者、ピューリタン、ウェスレー、パウソン）
教会は全過程を通して存在する：先行する秘密の「携挙」はない。
ディスペンセーション主義の見方（約1830年以降：ダービー、スコフィールド、現代アメリカ福音派の大半）
七年を隔てた二段階。
パウソンは自分を伝統的な系統に置く。それが古いからではなく、新約聖書の本文そのものにディスペンセーション主義の見方を見いだせないと述べるからである。ただし、今日のペンテコステ派および独立系福音派の大半がこの見方を取っていることは認めている。
II. ディスペンセーション的見解が実際にどこから来たのか
ポーソンは、かなりコンパクトな起源物語を語ります。「それは、J.N.ダービーという男から始まりました……最初は英国国教会の牧師でした……1825年、ダブリンで始まりました……1830年頃、プリマスで始まりました。」彼はまた、この考えは「19世紀まで現れなかった」が、その後「エドワード・アーヴィングとJ.N.ダービーという二人の人物に現れた」と述べます。
十九世紀をかけて形づくられた教説（そして新しかった）
患難前携挙説の起源、1825–1909年
1825年8月
ダービーがアイルランド聖公会（アングリカン）の執事に按手される。ウィックローのカラリー教区。
1827–1828年の冬
小さな集まり（ダービー、クローニン、ベレット、グローヴズなど）がダブリンで私的にパンを裂く集会を始める。ブレザレン運動の実質的な出発点である。
1830
15歳のマーガレット・マクドナルドが、スコットランドのポート・グラスゴーで、エドワード・アーヴィングのサークル内にあって幻を見た。
1830–1838
パワースコート会議（アイルランド）：ここでダービーの未来主義・ディスペンセーション主義の体系が徐々に形を取る。
1831年12月
イングランドのプリマスで最初のブレザレン集会
1833
エドワード・アーヴィングがスコットランド教会から罷免され、カトリック使徒教会を創設する。
1909
スコフィールド注解付き聖書が出版される（オックスフォード大学出版局）。アメリカの福音派全体にディスペンセーション主義を広めた。
アーヴィングとマクドナルドがその考えを実際にダービーへ「伝えた」のかどうかは、未解決の学術的論争として残っている（下の琥珀色の注記を参照）。
この教義はダービーから同胞運動に伝わり、その後、アメリカの牧師C.I.スコフィールドを経て広まりました。ポーソンはスコフィールドを「会衆派の牧師で、D.L.ムーディに牧師職へ招かれた」と描写していますが、これは二つの牧師職を一つにした説明です。スコフィールドはまずダラスで牧会し、後にムーディの教会の牧師になりました。彼はこの教義をスコフィールド参照聖書の注に記し、その聖書は1909年に出版されました。そこからアメリカの福音主義全体、特に後のペンテコステ派の諸集団へ広がったのです。
彼はまた、ダービーに反対した同胞の人物として、学者S.P.トレゲレス、G.H.ラング、そして何よりブリストル孤児院の創設者ジョージ・ミュラーの名を挙げます。
Ⅲ．理論のテスト: 語彙と「夜の泥棒のように」
ポーソンは、歴史（「新たに現れた」ということは自動的に間違いを意味するわけではない。宗教改革は何世紀にもわたって忘れられていた真理も取り戻した）や心理学（突然の歓喜という考えは感情的に強力だが、「私たちが説いていることは真実でなければならない。それが心理的に効果があるからではない」）によって教義を検証することを拒否している。彼が受け入れるのは一つの質問だけです。聖書には何と書いてありますか。
彼は語彙から始めます。キリストの「来臨」には parousia (王室訪問)、epiphaneia (出現)、apokalypsis (お披露目) という 3 つのギリシャ語が使われており、「聖徒たちのために来る」と「世に現れる」の間のディスペンセーションの分割が正しければ、それぞれが正しいと主張している。単語は片側にのみ表示される必要があります。しかし、節ごとに見てみると、3 つすべてが両方の側に現れています。
同じ出来事に用いられる三つの語
キリストの「来臨」を表す三つのギリシャ語
| 語 | 意味 | 教会について用いられる | 世界について用いられる |
|---|---|---|---|
| παρουσία（parousia） | 「来臨」（通常は王の訪問） | テサロニケの信徒への手紙一の主の来臨の箇所 | テサロニケの信徒への手紙二の主の来臨の箇所 |
| ἐπιφάνεια（epiphaneia） | 「現れ」 | テモテへの手紙一の現れの箇所 | テモテへの手紙二の現れの箇所 と テモテへの手紙二の現れの時の冠の箇所 |
| ἀποκάλυψις（apokalypsis） | 「啓示」（カーテンを引き開けること） | コリントの信徒への手紙一の現れの箇所 | テサロニケの信徒への手紙二の現れの箇所 |
この三つの語が本当に「秘密の携挙」と「公の現れ」を分けているなら、それぞれは一方の列にしか現れないはずである。ところが三つとも両方に現れる。同じ語が、両方の場面に用いられている。
彼は他の表現も検討します。「夜の泥棒のように」（常に「備えのない者」に適用され、用心深い信者には決して適用されません）、「近づいている」（彼は二つのギリシャ語を区別しています。一つは出来事が介入する可能性のある近い将来、もう一つは「いつでも」を指します。パウロは二番目の語をパウロのテサロニケの信徒への手紙二で一度だけ使い、それを正確に用いることで、再臨の差し迫った時期を肯定するのではなく除外しています）、そして「見守る」（空を見つめるのではなく、いちじくの木の教訓のように、展開する兆候を識別すること）です。
IV. 新約聖書の主な主張
これは説教の中で最も長いセクションです。ポーソンは福音書、書簡、黙示録を順番に調べ、新約聖書の主な主張は次のとおりだと主張します。信者には多くの警告が与えられるが、不信者には何も与えられない。これは、秘密携挙の教義が意味するもの（世界が十分な兆候を得る一方、信者は警告なしに姿を消す）とは反対です。彼は実際的な議論から始めます。すべてのクリスチャンが突然失踪すれば、それが「気づかれない」ことはほとんどあり得ません。彼は「今日、世界で8億5千万人ものクリスチャンが信仰を告白している」と引用します。
福音書。マタイによる福音書は、彼が最も頼りにする章です。イエスは、戦争、背教、エルサレムの回復、反キリストの出現、そして艱難について、群衆やユダヤ人ではなく弟子たちに警告し、それからこう言います。「その時の艱難の直後に…彼は自分の御使いたちを遣わすでしょう」。この段落は艱難で始まり、再臨で終わります。その間に隙間はありません。
彼はまた、歴史にも言及しています。ほとんどの書簡は西暦70年より前、つまりイエスご自身が予言していたエルサレム包囲以前に書かれたものです。エウセビオスが記録した伝承によると、キリスト教徒たちは包囲戦の前にエルサレムからヨルダン川を渡ってペラの町に避難しました。*「150万人のユダヤ人が殺されたが、キリスト教徒は一人も殺されなかった」*のは、彼らが警告を聞いて逃げたからだというのです。
黙示録。 ポーソンは、「聖徒」または「神の民」が艱難時代を通じて地上に存在すると記述する二十を超える節を挙げています。教会が存在しない隙間はありません。彼は特に、ハルマゲドンの戦いの説明の途中にあるヨハネの黙示録に頼ります。「見よ、わたしは盗人のように来る。目を覚ましている者は幸いである。」 聖徒たちが艱難の前にすでに携挙されていたなら、なぜ「目を覚ましていなさい。夜の盗人に不意を突かれるようなことがないように」という、いつもキリスト者に向けられる警告が、ハルマゲドンの真っ只中に現れるのでしょうか。
実際的な結論として、彼は新約聖書には携挙よりも苦しみについての教えが「100倍」あると述べます。彼自身の司牧的任務は、群れを苦しみに備えさせることであり、苦しみから逃れられると約束することではありません。
V. 牧会的な結論：苦しみから逃れるのではなく、苦しみに備えること
ポーソンは、将来の迫害への警告を具体的に示すため、当時の話題を二つ取り上げます。彼は「今日の中国では黙示録がキリスト者に最も読まれている本である」と述べ、偶然であるかのように「中華人民共和国には666人の代表が政府に座っている」と付け加えます。彼はまた、極端な都市化予測にも触れます。「都市計画の専門家たちによれば、2074年までに世界人口の98％が一つの都市に住むことになるそうです……農村に残るのはわずか2％です」。
ポーソンは、「キーワード、重要な聖句」と呼ぶ聖句を中心に実際的な要点を組み立てています。ルカによる福音書の「逃げる力があるように祈ってください」です。彼は、「立ち向かう」という言葉は、退く場所がなくなって追い返された瞬間に使われる厳しい言葉だと強調し、教会は脱出する力と、そうでない場合に耐える強さの両方のために祈る必要があると述べます。彼はまた、聖書の中で死なずにこの世から連れ出された二人、エノクとエリヤを、キリスト教徒の最後の世代への「前触れ」として回想します。ただし、それは艱難時代を通して生きる人々にのみ適用され、事前に艱難時代をスキップできる保証ではないと注意します。
彼は個人的な話をします。ある人が彼に、今、小さなプレッシャーやちょっとした社会的嘲笑の下に立っていれば、より大きな危機が来たときに備えて猶予が与えられるだろうと言いました。今小さなことに立ち向かわないと、後で大きなことに立ち向かなくなるでしょう。彼は、都市から遠く離れた自給自足の農場に移住し、問題が起こったときに都市中心部を離れなければならない可能性に備えて、殉教を求めるのではなく、イエスがマタイによる福音書 で教えたとおり、そしてまさにルカによる福音書 が祈ったとおりに、賢明に家族を守るために、都市から遠く離れた自給自足の農場に移住した知り合いのクリスチャンについて言及しました。
彼は、読者が彼に反対することを知っていた著者が書いた、彼が読んだ本の序文からの引用で締めくくっています。「あなたが納得していないとしましょう。同じ救い主に頼っている私たち…同じ悪魔に襲われ、同じ世界に憎まれ、同じ地獄から救われ、同じ栄光に運命づけられている私たちが、この二次的なものについては異なる考えを持っているため、心や奉仕の点で分裂することを許すべきでしょうか…神様、それは禁止ですよ。」
ポーソンが教えてくれないこと: カトリック、東方正教会、福音主義の今日の風景
パート5でまったく言及されていない説教に第二バチカン公会議を追加したのと同じように、この回でも、1967年の英国バプテスト会衆に説教していたポーソンには持ち込む理由がなかった、より広い視野を補う必要があります。
カトリックには、独立した「携挙」の概念がありません。カトリック教会のカテキズム（§668-682）およびLumen Gentium48は、分割されていない単一の再臨を教えています。キリストはすでに現在、教会を統治しており（始まっているがまだ不完全な王国）、教会は反キリストの下で一つの最後の試練（§675-676）を通過します。その試練は、一つのパルーシア、一つの一般復活、一つの最後の審判（§678-682）によって直ちに解決され、別個の初期の「携挙」イベントの余地はありません。聖務省の1944年布告はさらに、「千年主義を緩和する」（目に見えるキリストの裁き前の地上統治）ことを「安全に教えることはできない」と裁定し、カトリックの終末論を千年期（アウグスティヌス主義）の陣営に置きました。
東方正教会も同様に、ニカイア信条に従って一つの目に見える普遍的な再臨を肯定し、携挙を19世紀の西洋プロテスタントの新機軸として断固拒否します。ただし、ポーソン流の順序づけられた艱難時代・携挙・千年王国の体系を構築したことはありません。ヨハネの黙示録（カイサリアのアンデレ、7世紀）についての正教会の主流の釈義は千年期を象徴的に捉え、西方のアウグスティヌスに匹敵します。タイムラインの代わりに、正教会の主な終末論的レンズは、theosis（神化）、「八日目」、そして被造物の宇宙的変容です。終わりを来るべき出来事の表ではなく、教会と被造物がすでに秘跡的に、最も具体的には聖体にあずかっているものとして扱います。
今日の福音主義自体の状況も、ポーソンの三つの陣営の枠組みほど単純ではありません。ピュー研究所の2022年調査によると、アメリカの福音派のわずか44％が千年期前再臨の立場（ディスペンセーション主義と歴史的前千年期説の組み合わせ）を保持しており、45％は時期が分からないと率直に答えています。ディスペンセーション主義は依然として大衆文化を支配していますが（『Left Behind』の小説は6,500万〜8,000万部売れました）、1970〜90年代のピーク以来、学術・制度レベルでは著しく衰退しており、スコフィールド自身の教育機関であるダラス神学校でも同様です。学者ジョージ・エルドン・ラッドと結びついたポーソン自身の患難後携挙の見解は、ディスペンセーション主義が大衆に浸透した一方で、なお尊敬される学術的伝統として残っています。
今日の状況
アメリカの福音派は時期をどう考えているか、2022年
同じ分母・調査対象の福音派
調査対象の福音派の44%。ディスペンセーション主義の患難前携挙と自動的に同じではない。
同じ福音派グループ、同じ調査質問で45%。
後千年王国説
米国の成人全体の3%。分母が異なるため、背景情報としてのみ示す。
44%と45%は福音派を対象にした同じ調査枠を共有する。一方、3%は米国の成人全体を対象とするため、92%に足してはならない。分割レイアウトは分母の違いを見えるようにし、100%の構成であるかのような誤解を避けている。
出典：Pew Research Center、2022年。イエスの再臨の状況についての質問で、3%は米国の成人全体における数値。
シリーズを終了する
無一文で無力な漁師たちのグループから、世界がどう終わるかについて今も熱い議論まで、このシリーズは六つのパートで構成されています。これはポーソンがパート1で描き始めたものと同じ物語です。教会は最初の三つの戦いに、軍隊も資金も影響力のある人々もなしで勝利しました。彼の最終講義は、教会が通常想像する勝利、つまり一つの組織に団結し、広く受け入れられ、苦しみから逃れる勝利を約束するものではありません。彼が約束するのは別のことです。教会が南半球の兄弟姉妹たちの前で謙虚さを学び、苦しみから逃げるのではなく苦しみに備えること、そして希望的観測ではなく未来についての確信に満ちた希望を抱くことです。
彼が最も正確に予測したことは、教会はより団結し、より分裂するだろうということであった。 重心は南に移動するだろう、それはまさに、彼がそれを説いたときに最も確信が持てなかったものであり、今後20年間についての彼自身の「単なる推測」と並べて提出されたものであることが判明した。そして、彼が最も確信していた、患難と帰還の間の順序については、この説教から58年経った今でも、他の多くの誠実なクリスチャンが彼に同意していない点である。
Note: This piece merges the last two lectures, literally, in David Pawson's eleven-part History of the Church series: The Church in the Future (42.1 minutes, Part 10 in his own catalogue) and The Return of Jesus (74.9 minutes, Part 11, the final one). Unlike Parts 4 and 5, this isn't me choosing to fold together separate lectures: these two were already the closing pair. The first sketches the Church's future at three levels (near, intermediate, and eternal) and stops right at the most sensitive point, the order between the "rapture" and the "tribulation", saying "I'm going to tread on a few corns." The second, preached perhaps only weeks later in the same Sunday-evening series at Millmead Baptist Church, Guildford, is where he treads on that corn fully.
This is also the installment Pawson himself flags as the most contentious. He lays out a specific theological position: the Church will go through the tribulation before Christ returns, with no separate prior "secret rapture", and says plainly that many sincere Christians disagree. I've kept that position framed as Pawson's view, not settled historical fact, and added, where it matters, how Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Evangelicalism's own internal landscape see this differently today.
Before we start: one sermon, two questions
Part 5 closed in 1968, between two world wars and the three isms that shaped the 20th century. The two lectures closing out Pawson's series raise the natural next question: then what? The first asks where the Church is headed. The second asks how Christ will return, and how the Church should wait for it.
PHẦN MỘT: TƯƠNG LAI HỘI THÁNH
Pawson opens with a question at once serious and wry: is the Church "half empty" or "half full"? He points to the New Testament edition Good News for Modern Men (translated by Robert Bratcher, American Bible Society), "produced just over a year ago… nine and a half million copies have been sold… selling at the rate of 13,000 a day", as evidence people still crave "good news" in a world overflowing with bad news.
Kit's note
Good News for Modern Man (the Today's English Version New Testament) was actually released by the American Bible Society in September 1966, as two independent sources confirm. "Just over a year ago" puts this sermon at the earliest around late 1967. I couldn't find any source confirming Pawson's "nine and a half million copies, 13,000 a day" figures. What is documented is 5.5 million copies in the first year (by roughly September 1967), and over 30 million cumulative copies within the first five years (by roughly 1971), making it the best-selling paperback of all time by May 1971. Pawson's numbers should be treated as his own stated figures, not independently verified fact.
He also recalls "the final rally of the Billy Graham crusade last year in Wembley… 120,000 Christians." The Greater London Crusade actually ran 1 June – 2 July 1966 at Earl's Court, with the closing service moved to Wembley Stadium on 2 July (not 22 May). Christianity Today's contemporary report states plainly: "some 86,000 got into Wembley"; the Billy Graham organization's own retrospective sources round this up to "95,000" or "over 94,000" inside plus about 8,000 who couldn't get in and stood outside. Even the most generous total comes to roughly 102,000–103,000, still a quarter to a third short of Pawson's 120,000.
Combining the clues, including the GNMM floor (earliest ~Oct 1967), Wembley "last year" (satisfied by any point in 1967), and the immediately preceding lecture in the series ("1900–1968") being independently dated to 1967, the best-supported estimate is late 1967, comfortably inside Pawson's pastorate at Gold Hill Baptist Church (1961–1968, per Wikipedia) before his move to Millmead, Guildford.
Source: bible-researcher.com/tev.html; thewayofimprovement.blog (25 May 2016); Christianity Today, "London Crusade Produces Historic Climax" (July 1966); billygrahamlibrary.org; Wikipedia, "David Pawson."
He reads three scripture passages as the foundation for the whole sermon: Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians (the trumpet sounding, the dead in Christ rising first), Revelation (the innumerable multitude out of the great tribulation), and the millennium-and-new-creation section in Revelation (the millennium, the new heaven and new earth). Then he quotes Gamaliel from Acts: "If this plan or this undertaking is of men, it will fail. But if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them." That's the verse he builds the whole talk on: not trying to force the future to happen, just trying to see which way it's already moving.
I. The immediate future: what he predicted, and what actually happened
Pawson splits his forecast into belief and behavior. On behavior, he gives four specific predictions.
One, the Church will never be visibly united in one organization in history. He doesn't expect it and doesn't believe it could happen.
Two, the Church will become less institutional and less clerical. "Future Christianity will be the informal Christianity that may not have buildings and may not have clergymen… but may spring up everywhere spontaneously within homes, within places of work, in all sorts of other ways."
Three, church leadership will pass from the northern hemisphere to the southern. "The churches that have been traditionally the senders of the gospel and the givers of Christianity will need to become the receivers. And this will humble them greatly." He illustrates it with a recording played at the previous Monday-night meeting: Paraguayan Christians, "without any of our posh buildings, without any of our financial resources," but with "a life and a vigor that we covet."
Four, on belief, he returns to a three-group framework he'd used earlier (Catholic, Liberal, Evangelical) and predicts the middle bloc (Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, Congregational) will "draw much closer together over the next 20 years… as they have already done in Canada and South India, and are already seeking to do in Pakistan," while in England, Anglicans and Methodists "are talking together." He quotes Malcolm Muggeridge comparing church unity to "a group of drunk men who had to hold on to each other to stand up," and an unnamed Yale church history professor: "we're not quite sure what we believe, but let's unbelieve together."
The Christian Population's Center Is Moving
Where the world's Christians live, 1910–2050
Grey = the share of the world's Christians living in the Global North (Europe + Northern America). Gold = the Global South (Africa, Asia, Latin America); these are socio-geographic regions, not hemispheres. The dashed segment after 2020 is an illustrative projection to 2050, not an observed series. In 1970, the Global North still held a majority (59%).
Sources/compilation: Center for the Study of Global Christianity, World Christian Database (the plotted points and 2050 endpoint); Pew Research Center, The Future of World Religions (2015) for the regional framing. The 2050 endpoint is not a new observed Pew update.
Kit's note
This is the single most impressive prediction in the whole talk, and it predates most of the literature usually credited with popularizing the idea. The qualitative observation, "younger churches" in Africa, Asia, and Latin America outpacing an aging Western church, had circulated since the mid-1950s (Donald McGavran's Church Growth movement from 1955; John V. Taylor, The Growth of the Church in Buganda, 1958). But the confident "leadership shifting north to south" framing Pawson uses predates the book usually credited as the opening shot of this argument, Walbert Buhlmann's The Coming of the Third Church (Italian 1974, English 1976), by roughly six to nine years, and predates David Barrett's full statistical treatment in the World Christian Encyclopedia (1982) by more than a decade and a half.
On the hard numbers: per the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (Gordon-Conwell) and Pew Research, in 1910 roughly 80% to 93% of the world's Christians lived in the Global North (Europe and Northern America). By 1970 itself, around the time Pawson preached this, the Global North still held a clear majority: 58.7% against the Global South's 41.3%. The actual crossover (Global South passing 50%) is generally dated to the 1980s. In other words, Pawson wasn't describing something that had happened, he was forecasting something still roughly a decade and a half away. Today the Global South holds 67% to 69% of the world's Christians, with sub-Saharan Africa alone the single largest Christian region (about 31%).
On the Paraguay example: I couldn't identify a specific source Pawson is referring to. The two closest fits for his description, the Anglican South American Missionary Society's work among the Enxet people of the Chaco from 1889, or the Paraguayan Mennonite Chaco colonies, offer no direct link to this sermon. Treat this as illustration, not a confirmed event.
Source: gordonconwell.edu/blog/the-100-year-shift-of-christianity-to-the-south; Pew Research, "Global Christianity" (2011) and 2025 update; lausanne.org/global-analysis/highlights-of-christianity-in-its-global-context-1970-2020.
Some Unions Happened, One Didn't
Church union movements, 1925–1972
June 10, 1925
United Church of Canada: Methodists + Congregationalists + ~70% of Presbyterians merge in Toronto
September 27, 1947
Church of South India inaugurated in Madras: the first union to cross the episcopal/non-episcopal line since the Reformation
July 8, 1969
Anglican–Methodist unity scheme fails at Convocations of Canterbury/York: 69% in favour, 75% required
November 1, 1970
Church of Pakistan inaugurated: Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian (Church of Scotland), and Lutheran bodies unite
May 1972
Anglican–Methodist unity scheme fails a second time in the new General Synod
Pawson was preaching while Pakistan was still "seeking" union (it hadn't happened yet). He did not foresee that the Anglican–Methodist union scheme in his own country would fail, not once but twice.
Kit's note
Pawson's three examples all check out. The United Church of Canada formed 10 June 1925 in Toronto, uniting the Methodist Church, the Congregational Union of Canada, and about 70% of the Presbyterian Church in Canada (784 of 4,512 Presbyterian congregations chose to stay out), usually considered the world's first union across major historic denominational lines. The Church of South India was inaugurated 27 September 1947 in Madras, after 28 years of negotiation, uniting the episcopal Anglican tradition with non-episcopal traditions: the first such union since the Reformation, and controversial with some Anglo-Catholics for exactly that reason. The Church of Pakistan genuinely did form, on 1 November 1970. Pawson's "seeking to do" phrasing suggests this sermon was recorded not long before that date, not decades earlier as one might assume.
What he didn't foresee: the Anglican-Methodist union scheme back home in England, which he describes as promisingly "talking together", failed twice: at the Convocations of Canterbury and York on 8 July 1969 (69% in favour, 75% required, even though the Methodist Conference approved it the same day with 77.4%), then again at the new General Synod in May 1972. Worth correcting a commonly repeated online claim: several summaries attribute both failures partly to disagreement over women's ordination. This is anachronistic, since British Methodism didn't ordain its first women presbyters until 2 July 1974, after both votes. The real sticking point was disagreement over the proposed "Service of Reconciliation" for uniting the two ministries.
The Muggeridge quote and the unnamed Yale professor: I could not trace either to a source after extensive searching; nothing in any Muggeridge book, interview, or quotation archive, and no trace of a Yale professor who said that line. Both should be treated as pulpit-circuit anecdotes, not verifiable quotations.
Source: united-church.ca; britannica.com "Church of South India," "Church of Pakistan"; christianitytoday.com/1969/08/where-defeat-is-mandate; methodist.org.uk (50th anniversary of women's ordination).
On Catholics and evangelicals. Pawson predicts "the field will be left to the Catholics and the evangelicals", the two blocs that will reshape Western religion, while Catholics "will lose ground in southern Europe, but gain ground in northern Europe, if they adapt their methods." He predicts evangelicals "will become at once more united and more divided."
I believe that the leadership of the church is going to pass from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere. And the churches that have been traditionally the senders of the gospel will need to become the receivers. And this will humble them greatly.
Kit's note
The first half, Catholics losing ground in southern Europe, is strongly confirmed, if anything understated: in Spain, Sunday Mass attendance fell from 68% (1973) to roughly 11% to 17% today; in Italy, from 36.4% (2001) to 18.8% (2022); in Portugal, only 49% of 18-34-year-olds still self-identify Catholic against 80% of the population overall. The second half, gaining ground in northern Europe via adaptation, holds only in small, patchy pockets: real growth exists in Scandinavia, but it's driven mostly by Catholic immigration (Polish, Filipino, African, Latin American) rather than the institutional Church's "adaptation" winning native Northern Europeans, while larger Northern European Catholic populations (Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, the UK) have seen sharp declines, especially Germany's Kirchenaustritt wave tied to the abuse scandal.
But what Pawson didn't foresee matters more: his Catholic-vs-evangelical binary misses the force that actually reshaped Western religion from 1970 onward, the rise of the religiously unaffiliated ("nones"). In the US, Pew's 2023-24 survey finds 29% of adults unaffiliated (up from 16% in 2007), a bigger group than Catholics and rivaling all of Protestantism. He correctly named the two most resilient Christian streams, but didn't foresee that the "third force" would be no religion at all.
The "evangelicals more united and more divided" prediction, meanwhile, is the single most accurate one in the passage: cross-denominational Pentecostal/charismatic identity grew from 58 million (1970) to 635–644 million people (2020), roughly an 11x increase (a genuine unifying thread), while at the same time the United Methodist Church underwent the largest US denominational schism since the Civil War (about 7,659 congregations, a quarter of the total, splitting off 2019–2023 to form the Global Methodist Church), and the Southern Baptist Convention has seen 18 straight years of membership decline.
Source: harvard.edu/gazette (Vatican II and Mass-attendance data, 2025); pewresearch.org/religion/2013/02/13/the-global-catholic-population; pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/religious-landscape-study-executive-summary; gordonconwell.edu/center-for-global-christianity; christianitytoday.com/2023/12 (UMC schism).
On reaching every nation. Pawson is optimistic that "with modern methods of mass communication," preaching the gospel to every nation per Matthew’s Gospel (not converting everyone, just making sure everyone hears) "will be completed, at least by the year 2000." He cites Wycliffe Bible Translators, "going sometimes to a tribe of 13 people" to translate part of God's word for them.
Kit's note
Pawson's "done by 2000" forecast wasn't just personal optimism: it shared its deadline with a real, organized evangelical movement: the AD2000 & Beyond Movement (grown out of Lausanne II, Manila 1989, watchword "a church for every people and the gospel for every person by the year 2000"), which spawned Joshua Project 2000 to track roughly 1,700 "unreached people groups." The movement's own internal June 2000 report, from its own leader, Luis Bush, found the goal was not met: over 1,100 people groups still lacked even a minimal indigenous believing fellowship, 265 had no mission initiative at all, and roughly 7,400 smaller groups still lacked a viable church.
A quarter century past Pawson's deadline, Joshua Project now counts roughly 7,188 "unreached people groups" (3.42 billion people) and about 3,218 "frontier" groups (under 0.1% Christian, nearly 1.9 billion people) with almost no gospel access at all. Wycliffe still had 544 languages (about 36.8 million people) with no translation work even begun as of its August 2025 report, and even Wycliffe's own current internal target ("Vision 2025") is only to start a translation for every remaining language, not finish one.
The "13-person tribe" detail: I couldn't locate a specific documented case; it may be Pawson's own illustration, though it's consistent with Wycliffe/SIL's genuine policy of translating for even the smallest language communities (roughly 1 in 12 of the world's languages has fewer than 100 speakers).
Source: Robert T. Coote, "'AD 2000' and the '10/40 Window': A Preliminary Assessment," International Bulletin of Missionary Research (Oct 2000); joshuaproject.net/about/details; wycliffe.net/2025/08/25/2025-scripture-access-statistics.
On spiritual decline and persecution. He predicts "a great falling away" and that "the love of many Christians will grow cold", illustrated with a photograph of a member of his own congregation, Mr. Bateman, as a young man preaching in the open air, still doing the same thing decades later while many of his contemporaries had given it up. And he says persecution will "increase and increase," and the Church needs to prepare now for difficult days ahead.
II. The intermediate future: tribulation, rapture, and millennium (a frame, not yet a position)
Pawson turns to "the next great event in world history", not World War III, not the first man on the moon, but "the return of our Lord Jesus Christ to this world, in physical, visible form… a body that has nail prints in hands and feet." He introduces three technical terms, in the order he lists them: Tribulation, Rapture, and Millennium, and says Christians agree on the middle one: the Rapture itself, Christ literally, bodily returning for his people. The disagreement sits at the two ends: how to understand the Tribulation, and how to understand the Millennium.
On the Millennium, he sketches three readings quickly: some see it as "a purely symbolic figure," not an actual span of time; others believe the Church itself will "usher in" that thousand years, with Christ only arriving at its close; and he, with others, believes it "means what it says", a real thousand years in which Christ reigns visibly on earth before handing the kingdom back to the Father. In other words, Pawson himself is a premillennialist, holding that Christ returns before the millennium, not after it.
Then comes the most vivid passage in the first lecture: he recalls the closing rally of the Billy Graham crusade "last year at Wembley", with tens of thousands of people singing praise in the stands, and wonders: if that already felt like a huge gathering, how large will the meeting in the clouds be, with every Christian who has ever lived across every era: "there wouldn't be a stadium big enough on earth, so Jesus has arranged to meet in the air." He quotes Jesus's own starkest warning about that day, from Luke 17: "there will be two women in one kitchen and one will go and the other will be left. There will be two people in the same bed and husband and wife will be left alone." One generation of Christians, he says, will never die at all, "there will be no funerals for one group of Christians." Then he tells of his grandfather's gravestone, which reads only two words: "What a meeting!", a line that puzzles other visitors reading tombstones nearby.
Then he stops, right at the point of maximum tension: "Here I'm going to tread on a few corns." He sketches three positions on the order between the Rapture and the Tribulation: the Church raptured before the tribulation (the most popular), midway through it (a minority), or after it, at the same moment Christ returns (his own position), and promises to lay out the full argument in the sermon that follows.
III. The eternal future: the unimaginable
Pawson closes the first lecture with its shortest, most modest section: the eternal future. He quotes Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: "What eye has not seen, what ear has not heard, what has never entered into the heart of man to conceive, God has prepared for them that love him." He compares the present relationship with Christ to an engagement, and the eternal future to a marriage, "the real thing."
Then he closes with a quote from Bishop J.C. Ryle of Liverpool, from the pamphlet The True Church: "Men fancy if they join this church or that church, and become communicants, or go through certain forms, that all must be right with their souls. It is an utter delusion… you may be a staunch Anglican, or Presbyterian, or Congregationalist, or Baptist, or Methodist, or Plymouth Brother, and yet not belong to the true Church."
PHẦN HAI: SỰ TRỞ LẠI CỦA ĐẤNG CHRIST
The second lecture, nearly twice the length of the first, is where Pawson treads on the corn in full. He opens with a double request: don't come looking for fault, and come with an open mind on an issue that divides Christians from one another. He says plainly the topic arose from two parallel sermon series running at Millmead (Zechariah on Sunday mornings, Thessalonians on Sunday evenings) and from a question that kept recurring after the Zechariah studies: would any Christians still be alive to witness the events he'd been describing?
I. Two views, not one settled fact
Pawson lays out the problem clearly from the start: every Bible-believing Christian agrees there are two future events, the coming of Christ (mentioned over 300 times in the New Testament) and the coming of Antichrist. The disagreement is purely about how these two events are ordered in time.
He presents two systems:
The traditional view, which he says held "for the first 17 centuries of church history… right up to about 1800": Antichrist comes first, Christ comes second, full stop. Antichrist rules through a totalitarian dictatorship demanding absolute worship, then Christ returns to destroy him and establish the kingdom. He attributes this view to the church fathers, the Reformers (though he says they "made a mistake" identifying the Pope as Antichrist), the Puritans, and Wesley.
The dispensational view, appearing "from about 1825" and still widely dominant today: Christ comes for his saints first (a secret rapture, removing the Church from the world), then Antichrist reigns for seven years while the Church is absent, then Christ comes with his saints to destroy Antichrist and establish the kingdom on earth. He calls this the "any-moment" view because it teaches Christ could come tonight, with nothing needing to happen first.
Before getting into the two systems, Pawson pauses on the word "Antichrist" itself: he says the Greek prefix anti "does not mean against, as we use it today. It means instead of, it means substitute." Antichrist, in his reading, is someone impersonating Christ, not someone openly opposing him, and he uses this same reading to explain why Satan once offered Jesus "the post of Antichrist" in the wilderness.
Kit's note
This is a checkable linguistic claim, and it's only partly right. The Greek prefix anti carries two main senses in Koine Greek: the more common one, and the dominant sense in the actual usage of antichristos itself, is "against, opposed to", exactly the everyday reading Pawson is trying to overturn. But anti genuinely does carry a "substitute for, in place of" sense in some other New Testament compounds, e.g. antilytron ("a ransom in place of," Paul’s first letter to Timothy) or antimisthia ("a corresponding recompense"). The "Antichrist = an impersonator of Christ, a substitute for him" reading isn't Pawson inventing something from nothing: it has support from some scholars (e.g. Kenneth Wuest) and fits comfortably with Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians, where "the man of lawlessness" sits in God's temple claiming to be God. But saying the prefix "does not mean against" overstates it: standard Greek lexicons (BDAG) list "against/opposed to" as the primary sense of anti in this context, with "substitute" as a secondary sense, not the only or the dominant one.
Source: BDAG (A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament); Kenneth Wuest, Word Studies in the Greek New Testament.
Two Ways to Order the Same Two Events
Antichrist and Christ's return: which order?
The traditional view (the first ~1,800 years: the Fathers, the Reformers, the Puritans, Wesley, and Pawson)
The Church is present the whole way through: no prior secret "rapture."
The dispensational view (from ~1830: Darby, Scofield, most of modern American evangelicalism)
Two stages, separated by seven years.
Pawson places himself in the traditional line: not because it's older, but because he says he cannot find the dispensational view in the New Testament text itself, though he acknowledges it's the view held by most Pentecostal and independent evangelicals today.
Kit's note
This is one of the more solidly verified passages in the whole talk. The earliest post-apostolic fathers, Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho), Irenaeus (Against Heresies, Book V), and Tertullian, all teach exactly the sequence Pawson describes: Antichrist reigns, then Christ visibly appears to destroy him, then the millennium begins. No patristic text mentions a secret rapture prior to Antichrist's appearing.
The Reformers identifying the Pope with Antichrist wasn't a fringe view, it was mainstream confessional doctrine for Reformed and Puritan Protestantism. The original 1646 text of Westminster Confession 25.6 reads: "There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ. Nor can the Pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof; but is that Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition." This clause was only removed in later (mostly American, 19th-20th century) revisions. Luther wrote similarly in the Smalcald Articles (1537): "the Pope is the very Antichrist."
Wesley needs a small footnote: he did hold the historicist (Bengel-following) reading identifying the Pope as Antichrist, with no secret-rapture concept, but he was a postmillennialist, believing that after Antichrist's fall there would be a long golden age of gospel advance before Christ's return, not that Christ returns immediately after Antichrist falls, as Pawson's simple two-step framework implies.
Source: christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/historic-premillennialism; opc.org/documents/WCF_orig.html (1646 text); thebookofconcord.org (Smalcald Articles); wesleyscholar.com/john-wesleys-order-of-eschatological-events.
II. Where the dispensational view actually came from
Pawson tells a fairly compact origin story: "it started with a man called J.N. Darby… an Anglican curate at first… 1825, beginnings in Dublin… 1830 or thereabouts, beginnings in Plymouth." He also says the idea "never appeared until the 19th century," then "appeared in two people, Edward Irving… and J.N. Darby."
A Doctrine Nineteen Centuries in the Making (Then New)
The origins of the pretribulation rapture doctrine, 1825–1909
August 1825
Darby ordained deacon in the Church of Ireland (Anglican), parish of Calary, Wicklow
Winter 1827–28
A small group (Darby, Cronin, Bellett, Groves…) begins breaking bread privately in Dublin: the real start of the Brethren
1830
Margaret Macdonald, aged 15, has a vision at Port Glasgow, Scotland, within Edward Irving's circle
1830–1838
The Powerscourt Conferences (Ireland): where Darby's futurist/dispensational system gradually takes shape
December 1831
First Brethren meeting at Plymouth, England
1833
Edward Irving deposed by the Church of Scotland; founds the Catholic Apostolic Church
1909
The Scofield Reference Bible is published (Oxford University Press): spreading dispensationalism across American evangelicalism
Whether Irving and Macdonald actually "transmitted" the idea to Darby remains an unresolved scholarly dispute (see the amber note below).
Kit's note
Darby really was ordained deacon in the Church of Ireland (the Anglican province in Ireland, the established state church at the time) in August 1825, and served the isolated rural parish of Calary, County Wicklow, not Dublin. "Anglican" is an accurate shorthand; "Church of Ireland" is the precise denominational name.
But "1825, beginnings in Dublin" compresses two separate events into one: 1825 is when Darby was ordained and posted to Wicklow, while the first informal Dublin bread-breaking gatherings (Darby with Edward Cronin, John Gifford Bellett, Anthony Norris Groves…) only began in winter 1827-28, after a riding accident left Darby convalescing. "1830 or thereabouts, beginnings in Plymouth" is close but slightly early: the first Brethren meeting at Plymouth was held in December 1831.
Source: Sweetnam & Gribben, "J.N. Darby and the Irish Origins of Dispensationalism," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 52/3 (2009); Dictionary of Irish Biography.
Kit's note
This is where Pawson simplifies a genuinely tangled history. Pairing Irving and Darby as two people independently arriving at the same secret-rapture doctrine isn't quite accurate. Close study of Irving's own teaching (C.G. Flegg, 'Gathered Under Apostles', Oxford, 1992) shows Irving taught the "translation" of the saints as part of the same Second Advent event, a brief interval within it, not a secret removal years before a future seven-year tribulation. Irving was also a historicist (prophecy fulfilled progressively through church history), while Darby was a futurist (most prophecy still awaiting future fulfillment): different interpretive systems, not one idea independently held by two men.
The more widely known story Pawson may be gesturing at without naming: that the secret-rapture doctrine originated in the 1830 vision of Margaret Macdonald, a 15-year-old in Port Glasgow, Scotland, within Irving's circle, then passed to Darby (who may have "covered up" its origin). This is journalist Dave MacPherson's thesis, argued across several books from 1973 to 1994. Most historians, both sympathetic to and critical of dispensationalism, reject direct dependence: F.F. Bruce called it "unlikely"; R.A. Huebner and Thomas Ice point out Darby's own pretrib-leaning writings predate 1830; and a close reading of Macdonald's own published vision text (1840) reads as describing being tried through the tribulation, i.e. posttribulational, not pretribulational, the ambiguity only appearing in an 1861 reprint that dropped a few lines. But this isn't fully settled either: a King's College London PhD thesis (Mark Patterson, 2001) seriously argues Irving really did play a pioneering role. In short: a real, not-fully-resolved scholarly dispute, not a simple case of two men independently having the same idea.
Source: C. Graham Flegg, 'Gathered Under Apostles' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Thomas Ice, "Edward Irving and the Rapture," pre-trib.org; Sweetnam & Gribben, JETS 52/3 (2009); Timothy C.F. Stunt, "Influences in the Early Development of J.N. Darby," in Prisoners of Hope? (Paternoster, 2004).
From Darby, the doctrine passed into the Brethren movement, then through an American minister, C.I. Scofield (described by Pawson as "a congregational minister… called to his pastorate by D.L. Moody"), who wrote it into the notes of the Scofield Reference Bible, published 1909, from where it spread across American evangelicalism, especially through later Pentecostal groups.
He also names Brethren figures who disagreed with Darby: the scholar S.P. Tregelles, "G.H. Leng," and above all George Müller, founder of the Bristol orphan houses.
Kit's note
Scofield was ordained Congregationalist in 1883 and took up his own pastorate at a small Dallas church (now Scofield Memorial Church), not at Moody's calling. The Moody connection predates that (he assisted Moody's 1879 St. Louis campaign) and postdates it: only in 1895 did he actually leave Dallas to become pastor at Moody's own church, Trinitarian Congregational Church in East Northfield, Massachusetts. Pawson has merged two separate pastorates into one.
The Scofield Reference Bible was published in 1909 (Oxford University Press, as Pawson says), sold over 2 million copies by the end of WWII, and became known as "the Bible of fundamentalism" for its outsized influence on how a generation of American evangelicals read prophecy.
One thing Pawson doesn't mention: Scofield's pre-conversion past is documented in the public/court record and rough: forced to resign as US District Attorney for Kansas in 1873 amid bribery allegations; arrested for forgery in 1878; deserted his first wife and two young daughters c. 1877-1881 (divorce finalized 8 Dec 1883); then remarried only about three months later, 11 March 1884, close enough that some critics call it "near-bigamy," though there's no evidence of two concurrent legal marriages. Worth flagging: the most detailed and harshest version of this story traces largely to one critical biography, Joseph M. Canfield's The Incredible Scofield and His Book (1988), regarded by Scofield's defenders as biased and overstating the severity. The core events (resignation, forgery, divorce, fast remarriage) are grounded in the public record, but the framing of them as a "dark past" is contested, not an uncontroversial consensus.
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._I._Scofield; library.dts.edu/Pages/TL/Special/scofield.shtml; tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/scofield-cyrus-ingerson; Joseph M. Canfield, The Incredible Scofield and His Book (1988).
Kit's note
S.P. Tregelles (1813-1875), the eminent Greek New Testament textual scholar, of a stature comparable to Tischendorf, really did publicly dissent from Darby's secret-rapture doctrine. In The Hope of Christ's Second Coming (1864) he argued the doctrine had no basis in Scripture or the church fathers, and traced its origin to an emotional "utterance" in Edward Irving's congregation.
"G.H. Leng" is almost certainly a mis-transcription of G.H. Lang (George Henry Lang, 1874-1958), a well-known Brethren author on resurrection and rapture. Worth noting: Lang was born decades after Darby's own lifetime (Darby died 1882), so his "dissent" is a later intra-Brethren tradition, not a face-to-face contemporary debate with Darby the way Tregelles's or Müller's was.
George Müller (1805-1898), founder of the Bristol orphan houses through the Scriptural Knowledge Institution (1834), held a futurist premillennial system largely parallel to Darby's, but clearly rejected the rapture happening before the tribulation, leaning posttribulational: he's described as "very suspicious" of the new doctrine spreading in Brethren literature.
Source: christianobserver.net (series on Darby and the pretribulation rapture); en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._Lang; theopedia.com/george-muller.
III. Testing the theory: vocabulary, and "like a thief in the night"
Pawson refuses to test the doctrine by history ("newly appeared" doesn't automatically mean wrong: the Reformation also recovered truths forgotten for centuries) or by psychology (the idea of a sudden rapture is emotionally powerful, but "what we preach must be the truth, not because it's psychologically effective"). He accepts only one question: what does the Bible say?
He starts with vocabulary. Three Greek words are used for Christ's "coming": parousia (a royal visit), epiphaneia (an appearing), and apokalypsis (an unveiling), and argues that if the dispensational split between "coming for the saints" and "appearing to the world" were right, each word should only show up on one side. But going verse by verse, all three show up on both sides.
The Same Three Words, Used of the Same Event
Three Greek words for Christ's "coming"
| Word | Meaning | Used of the church | Used of the world |
|---|---|---|---|
| παρουσία (parousia) | "Coming" (usually a royal visit) | the coming-of-the-Lord passage in First Thessalonians | the coming-of-the-Lord passage in Second Thessalonians |
| ἐπιφάνεια (epiphaneia) | "Appearing" | the appearing passage in First Timothy | the appearing passage in Second Timothy and the crown-at-his-appearing passage in Second Timothy |
| ἀποκάλυψις (apokalypsis) | "Unveiling" (pulling back a curtain) | the unveiling passage in First Corinthians | the unveiling passage in Second Thessalonians |
If these three words really separated a "secret rapture" from a "public appearing," each should only show up in one column. Instead all three appear in both: the same word, used for both settings.
Kit's note
Checking each verse: epiphaneia at the appearing passage in First Timothy and the appearing passage in Second Timothy and the crown-at-his-appearing passage in Second Timothy is correct. Apokalypsis at the unveiling passage in First Corinthians and the unveiling passage in Second Thessalonians is correct. For parousia: the coming-of-the-Lord passage in Second Thessalonians is right, but the word actually occurs at the coming-of-the-Lord passage in First Thessalonians, not at the location Pawson names, though the whole passage the whole caught-up passage in First Thessalonians (the correct "caught up" passage) is what he's referring to, so this is a minor verse-number slip, not a content error.
Pawson's central thesis, that these three words aren't technical terms splitting two stages, matches mainstream NT scholarship: George Eldon Ladd's The Blessed Hope (1956) and Robert Gundry's The Church and the Tribulation (1973) both conclude no two-stage coming can be deduced from NT word usage; BDAG classifies parousia as the general term for the whole return, not a label for a secret sub-phase.
But one fairness note is worth adding: this was the standard dispensationalist argument before roughly 1945. By the time Pawson preached this, dispensationalism's own leading theologian, John Walvoord, had already conceded exactly this lexical point himself, writing that parousia has "no technical meaning… limiting its use to either one" side, but is used "in a general… sense… descriptive of both the rapture and the glorious return." Walvoord defended the pretribulation rapture on other grounds (imminence, distinct audiences, the "restrainer" of Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians), no longer relying on the lexical split. So Pawson is accurately refuting dispensationalism's older, more popular argument, not necessarily its most sophisticated, contemporary form.
Source: George Eldon Ladd, The Blessed Hope (Eerdmans, 1956); Robert Gundry, The Church and the Tribulation (Zondervan, 1973); walvoord.com/article/68 (Walvoord's review of Ladd).
He works through other phrases: "as a thief in the night" (always applied to the unprepared, never to the watchful believer), "at hand" (he distinguishes two Greek words: one for the foreseeable future with events possibly intervening, one for "any moment"; Paul uses the second only once, in Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians, and uses it precisely to rule out imminence, not affirm it), and "watch" (not staring at the sky, but discerning unfolding signs, like the lesson of the fig tree).
IV. The New Testament's main thrust
This is the longest section of the sermon: Pawson works through the Gospels, the Epistles, and Revelation in turn to argue the New Testament's main thrust is "believers get much warning, unbelievers get none", the opposite of what the secret-rapture doctrine implies (believers vanish without warning, while the world gets ample signs). He opens with a practical argument: the sudden disappearance of every Christian could hardly go "unnoticed": he cites "850 million professing Christians in the world today."
Kit's note
If this sermon dates to late 1967 as argued at the top of this piece, Pawson's figure runs meaningfully below modern scholarly reconstructions for the same period. The World Christian Encyclopedia (Barrett), the same source used to build the chart in Part 5, estimates Christians at about 33.7% of world population in 1970, against a world population of roughly 3.7 billion, or about 1.25 billion people, not 850 million: a gap of roughly 30%, in the same direction as Pawson's general pattern of understating global Christianity's scale (see Part 5). Either way, his core point, that whether the true figure is 850 million or 1.25 billion, a mass disappearance on that scale would be impossible to miss, holds regardless of the exact number.
Source: World Christian Encyclopedia (Barrett), as cited in Part 5 of this series.
The Gospels. Matthew’s Gospel is the chapter he leans on most: Jesus warns the disciples, not the crowds, not the Jews, about wars, apostasy, Jerusalem restored, the appearance of Antichrist, and the tribulation, then says: "Immediately after the tribulation of those days… he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call and they will gather the elect." The paragraph begins with the tribulation and ends with the rapture, with no gap between them.
He also draws on history: most of the epistles were written before AD 70, before the siege of Jerusalem, an event Jesus himself had predicted. Per the tradition recorded by Eusebius, the Christians fled Jerusalem for the town of Pella across the Jordan before the siege, and "one and a half million Jews were killed but no Christians were," because they had heeded the warning and fled.
Kit's note
The "flight to Pella" tradition is real, but only attested in 4th-century sources: Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 3.5.3 (written c. AD 312-324) and Epiphanius, Panarion 29-30 (late 4th century), more than 240 years after the event. There's no first-century evidence at all: not in the New Testament, not in Josephus's Jewish War (written c. AD 75-79, covering the siege in exhaustive detail but never mentioning a Christian evacuation). Historians have debated the tradition's reliability since S.G.F. Brandon's 1951 challenge (arguing the flight was implausible given Roman control of escape routes); other historians (Craig Koester, 1989; Jonathan Bourgel, 2010) argue it does preserve a genuine historical memory, though none of them endorses the strong version Pawson gives, that all Christians were safe.
On the "one and a half million" figure: no ancient or modern source gives this number. Josephus himself (Jewish War 6.9.3, paragraph 420), presumably Pawson's loose source, records the siege death toll at roughly 1,100,000 (plus about 97,000 taken captive), and states plainly most of the dead were Passover pilgrims from across Judea trapped in the city, not only Jerusalem residents. Modern historians (such as Menahem Stern) already treat Josephus's own 1.1 million as a substantial exaggeration: Jerusalem's walled-city population is estimated at roughly 60,000-70,000, and even swollen by wartime refugees and pilgrims, falls far short of a million. So Pawson's figure isn't just one and a half times Josephus's own (already-inflated) number: the claim that "no Christians" died is also his own inference, not a verifiable historical statistic; no ancient source counts Christian survivors.
Source: Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 3.5.3; Craig R. Koester, "The Origin and Significance of the Flight to Pella Tradition," Catholic Biblical Quarterly 51.1 (1989); Josephus, Jewish War 6.9.3 (paragraph 420); Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE), summarizing Menahem Stern's assessment.
The Book of Revelation. Pawson lists over twenty verses where "the saints" or "God's people" are described as present on earth throughout the tribulation: no gap in which the Church is absent. He leans especially on Revelation, right in the middle of the description of the battle of Armageddon: "Behold, I am coming like a thief. Blessed is he who is awake." If the saints had already been raptured before the tribulation, why does the warning to "stay awake, don't be caught like a thief in the night" (always addressed to Christians) show up right in the middle of Armageddon?
Then the practical conclusion: he says there is "a hundred times more" teaching on suffering than on the rapture in the New Testament, and his own pastoral task is to prepare the flock for suffering, not to promise they'll escape it.
V. A pastoral conclusion: preparing for suffering, not escaping it
Pawson offers two topical details to illustrate the warning about future persecution. He says "in China today the book of Revelation is the most read book by Christians," adding, as if a coincidence, that "the Chinese People's Republic has 666 representatives sitting in government." He also recalls an extreme urbanization forecast: "by 2074, the planners tell us that 98% of the world's population will be living in one city… only 2% will be left in the country."
Kit's note
No session of China's National People's Congress has ever had exactly 666 members. The 3rd NPC, the nominal session spanning the Cultural Revolution (1964-1975), had 3,040 delegates; the 2nd (1959-1964) had 1,235; the 4th (1975-1978) had 2,864; and since 1982 the law has capped the NPC at no more than 3,000 delegates. The "666" figure matches no documented record: this reads almost certainly as pulpit-style "Revelation numerology," not a historical fact. On Revelation being China's "most-read book": no scholarly, denominational, or Bible-society source quantifies reading habits this way, emotionally plausible (apocalyptic literature often resonates strongly with the persecuted), but unverifiable as a statistic.
What's real and more worth noting: the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) genuinely was the harshest persecution period for Chinese Christianity in the modern era: churches closed, Bibles burned, clergy imprisoned and tortured, public worship banned outright. Yet underground house-church Christianity survived, and later grew explosively, well documented in Tony Lambert's The Resurrection of the Chinese Church (1991): believers met in coal-mine tunnels and mountain caves, hid hymnbooks inside covers of Mao's Little Red Book, and growth was driven substantially by lay "Bible women" who had memorized Scripture.
On "98% in one city by 2074": this isn't a UN or World Bank projection, but a garbled echo of a real but non-consensus 1962 forecast by Greek urban planner Constantinos Doxiadis, inventor of the "Ecumenopolis" concept (a hypothetical single planet-spanning city). He extrapolated then-current growth rates to predict world population reaching 50 billion by 2100, 98% urban, covering about 48 million sq km along growth corridors: a strand of 1960s "megastructuralist" urban futurism (alongside Jean Gottmann's 1961 "Megalopolis" and Herman Kahn/Anthony Wiener's 1967 "The Year 2000"), never mainstream demographic consensus even at the time. The reality: global urbanization was about 57.7% in 2024 (World Bank), with the UN projecting roughly 68% by 2050 (nowhere near 98%), while world population is projected to peak around 10-10.3 billion, not the 50 billion Doxiadis assumed.
Source: npcobserver.com (NPC seat allocation); Tony Lambert, The Resurrection of the Chinese Church (1991); en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecumenopolis; World Bank, urban population 2024; UN, World Urbanization Prospects (2018, 2025 update).
Pawson frames the whole practical takeaway around a verse he calls outright "a key word, key verse": Luke’s Gospel, "Pray that you may have strength… to escape." He stresses that "stand" is a tough word, used for the moment you're beaten back with nowhere left to retreat, and says the Church needs to pray for both: strength to escape when escape is possible, and strength to stand when it isn't. He also recalls Enoch and Elijah, the only two people in Scripture taken out of the world without dying, as a "foretaste" for the final generation of Christians, but is careful to say that only applies to those who live through the tribulation, not a guarantee of skipping it beforehand.
He tells a personal story: someone once told him that if you stand under small pressures now, a little social ridicule, you'll receive grace for the bigger crisis when it comes; if you don't stand in small things now, you won't stand in the big ones later. He mentions Christians he knows who have moved to self-sufficient farms far from cities, preparing for the possibility of needing to leave urban centers when trouble comes: not courting martyrdom, but wisely protecting their families exactly as Jesus instructed in Matthew’s Gospel, and exactly as Luke’s Gospel prays for.
He closes with a quotation from the preface of a book he'd read, written by an author who knew readers would disagree with him: "Suppose you are not convinced. Shall we who are relying on the same redeemer… assaulted by the same devil, hated by the same world, delivered from the same hell and destined to the same glory, shall we who have so much in common allow ourselves to be divided in heart or service because we are of different minds on this secondary matter? God forbid."
What Pawson doesn't tell you: Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and evangelicalism's own landscape today
Just as Part 5 added the Second Vatican Council to a sermon that never mentioned it at all, this installment needs a wider lens that Pawson, preaching to an English Baptist congregation in 1967, had no reason to bring in.
Catholicism has no separate "rapture" concept. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§668-682) and Lumen Gentium 48 teach a single, undivided Second Coming: Christ already reigns through the Church now (an inaugurated-but-incomplete Kingdom), the Church passes through one final trial under Antichrist (§675-676), and that trial is resolved immediately by one Parousia, one general resurrection, one Last Judgment (§678-682), with no room for a separate earlier "rapture" event. A 1944 decree of the Holy Office further ruled that even "mitigated millenarianism" (a visible pre-judgment earthly reign of Christ) "cannot be taught safely," placing Catholic eschatology in the amillennial (Augustinian) camp, structurally different from both Pawson's and dispensationalism's shared premillennial framework.
Eastern Orthodoxy likewise affirms one visible, universal Second Coming (per the Nicene Creed), and firmly rejects the rapture as a 19th-century Western Protestant novelty, but has never built a Pawson-style sequenced tribulation/rapture/millennium system. Mainstream Orthodox exegesis of Revelation (Andrew of Caesarea, 7th century) is amillennial/symbolic, paralleling Augustine in the West. In place of a timeline, Orthodoxy's dominant eschatological lens is theosis (deification), the "eighth day," and the cosmic transfiguration of creation: treating the End as something the Church and creation are already sacramentally entering, most concretely in the Eucharist, rather than a chart of coming events.
Evangelicalism's own landscape today is also not as simple as Pawson's two-camp framework. A 2022 Pew survey found only 44% of American evangelicals hold any premillennial position at all (dispensational or historic combined), while 45% say outright they don't know the timing. Dispensationalism still dominates popular culture (the Left Behind novels sold 65-80 million copies) but has declined markedly at the scholarly/institutional level since its 1970s-90s peak, even at Dallas Theological Seminary itself, Scofield's own institutional home. Pawson's own posttribulational view, associated with scholar George Eldon Ladd, remains a respected academic tradition, even though it never achieved dispensationalism's mass popular reach.
The Picture Today
What American evangelicals think about the timing, 2022
Same denominator · surveyed evangelicals
44% of surveyed evangelicals; not automatically the same as dispensational pretribulation.
45% of the same evangelical group and the same survey question.
Postmillennial
3% of all U.S. adults — a different denominator, shown only as context.
The 44% and 45% figures share the evangelical survey frame; the 3% figure is for U.S. adults overall, so they must not be added to 92%. The split layout makes the denominator difference visible instead of implying a 100% composition.
Source: Pew Research Center, 2022 — questions about the circumstances of Jesus' return; the 3% figure is among all U.S. adults.
Closing the series
Six parts, from a group of penniless, powerless fishermen to a debate that's still hot about how the world will end: the same thread Pawson drew back in Part 1. The Church won its first three battles without an army, without money, without influential people. His final lecture doesn't promise the Church will win the way people usually imagine winning, united in one organization, broadly embraced, spared from suffering. He promises something else: a Church learning humility before its southern brothers and sisters, preparing for suffering instead of fleeing it, and holding a hope that isn't wishful thinking but absolute certainty about the future.
The thing he predicted most accurately, that the Church would become both more united and more divided, and that its center of gravity would shift south, turns out to be exactly what he was least certain about when he preached it, filed alongside his own "just speculation" about the next twenty years. And the thing he was most certain about, the order between the tribulation and the return, is still the thing many other sincere Christians disagree with him on, fifty-eight years after this sermon.