George Pember Quote from 1876

Hi all, short post today but Gary shared this last night and I thought it would be a great addition to this site. This quote is from a Bible scolar in 1876! Those that deny the solid evidence that Revelation 12 relates directly to the rapture of the church need to take a good hard look in the mirror and at the teachings from these brillaint scholars from years past.

"But of far more intense interest to those who love the Lord Jesus, and long for His appearing, is that which is signified as taking place just previously to the expulsion of the Devil and his angels from heaven (Rev. xii. 1-5). For without going into details, which we have considered elsewhere, we may mention our conclusion that the birth and rapture of the man child refer to the completion of the mystic Christ — of which the personal Christ is the Head and His Church the body — as manifested by the sudden translation of all waiting saints, whether dead or alive, to meet their Lord in the air.
It thus appears that this long-expected event will precede Satan’s banishment from heaven, and, therefore, also it’s results…and the revelation of the Man of Sin. Like Enoch, the Church of Christ will be called away before earth is for a time abandoned to the Nephilim, before the fearful woes of the end." - George Pember

Here is more on George Pember from wikipedia, I found it quite interesting. Pember's conversion to Christianity led him to participate in the Brethren, and from within that movement he developed his career as an author and teacher of biblical and theological themes. The Brethren emerged in the 1820s as an independent movement that protested about the ecclesiastical divisions of Protestant churches. Prominent leaders within the Brethren such as Anthony Norris Groves, George Müller and John Nelson Darby were persuaded that there were biblical teachings that were overlooked or not consistently taught by the Protestant churches such as practising adult baptism only (hence rejecting infant baptism), restricting the observance of the Lord's Supper (partaking of the emblems of bread and wine representing Jesus Christ's atoning sacrifice) to baptised members, and biblical prophecies about the imminent return of Christ to the world. As the Brethren placed great emphasis on understanding biblical prophecy they believed that current events could be signs or signals that Christ's second coming would occur very soon. As the Brethren upheld strong convictions about living in the end-times, participant members engaged in what they saw as the urgent task of preaching the gospel to persuade other people to become followers of Christ. The approach that the Brethren developed in understanding biblical prophecy is technically known as Dispensationalism.