Randy Weaver - Important figure in the American patriot movement, Weaver was the man entrapped by government officials on a trumped up gun charge. A white separatist that believes he has the right to live in a community of his own choosing without the threat of Latin, Black, and Asian gangs to help "enhance" his families' existence, Weaver chose to live in a remote rural mountain cabin in Ruby Ridge Idaho with his wife Vicky and their children. Vicky had been writing letters critical of government intrusion to newspapers, and it is clear certain tyrants wanted them both silenced. A paid government agent asked Randy to saw off a shotgun on his behalf. The shortened weapon was used to issue warrants to have Randy arrested, because apparently the right to bear arms doesn't include shotguns with short barrels. When they came to his remote mountain cabin to arrest Randy, the brave federal agents shot the family dog that belonged to Randy's son -- who was out in the woods with a 22. The pre-teen boy fired back, and the courageous government agents shot him in the back as he ran in fear.

The courageous federal thugs then brought in sharpshooter Lon Horiuchi, who apparently wasn't so sharp as he was supposedly aiming at Randy, and shot and killed Vicky and the infant she was holding instead. The state of Idaho sought to prosecute Horiuchi and the murderers, but the federal government shielded the the former and promoted the latter. Almost immediately thereafter, they found 17 more Christian children that needed killing in Waco, Texas and some of the Ruby Ridge murderers were sent there to continue doing the government's bidding. Weaver and his daughter survived, sued the government, and received a significant settlement. One of the worst episode in the escalating history of government misbehaviour, the killers in government are still unindicted. A lengthy treatment of the account is found in the book The Federal Siege At Ruby Ridge which was written by eyewitness Sara Weaver. The book is in the Christian Media catalog with details online.

Rapture - The doctrine that Christ will return to remove the "church" before the tribulation. First articulated in an occultic writing known as The Apocalypse Of Adam in the Gnostic documents recovered at Nag Hammadi (pre-Christian era), the Saviour figure in this work was Seth. While it is theoretically possible the pre-tribulational heresy was planted in Thessalonica in the first century, and was the error the Apostle Paul sought to correct with his second letter, it was unheard of in scripture and the Christian church until it was first anticipated in an early work in the 17th century by an American pastor named Robert Baxter.

Shortly after Baxter, Spanish Jesuit Immanuel Lacunza hinted at the separation of the return of Christ into two stages as well, but the 15 year old Scottish girl named Margaret MacDonald enunciated a partial rapturism in 1830. It then caught on with a strange British sect run by Edward Irving called the Irvingites. Irish pastor John Darby got it from Irving, and after refining it into what is now called dispensationalism (articulating the unscriptural concepts of separate "dispensations" of God's grace to two separate entities, the church and Israel), he brought it to America in the late 1800's where it spread like wildfire.

Overwhelming documentary evidence exists of a cover-up of the source of the doctrine by early proponents that were embarrassed by the association with MacDonald's "rapture cult" which was, among other things, practicing levitation and other spiritually unsavory practices. Indeed, MacDonald first uttered the concept while in a trance. These revisionists sought to tie the origin to the more respectable John Darby, and have actually been caught changing the dates of Darby's personal correspondence to show he taught the "rapture" before his exposure to MacDonald's work. Those efforts have now been exposed.

Once entrenched in American theological institutions, a new generation of pre-trib oriented American religious leaders carefully suppressed criticism of pre-trib's origins, ousted the post-tribulationists that were previously dominant, and seized control of key prophetic associations including periodicals and prophecy conferences. The British exportation of pre-trib was complete with the Oxford Press publication of the Scofield Reference Bible in 1917 -- a work that thoroughly indoctrinated the next generation of Bible readers into the new system.

The pre-tribulation rapture doctrine is thoroughly heretical, and its present manifestation provides the theological justification for the American militaristic posture around the world in general, and in the Middle East in particular. After conquering the church, the rapture cult has become the mainstream foundational premise that is now being refined into the Jewish supremacism destined to empower the Antichrist. In short, this doctrine can send you to the lake of fire.

See the ProFile book The Rapture Cult and its sequel Lying In Laodicea. See also The Three R's: Rapture, Revisionism, Robbery for an examination of the misbehaviour of cult leaders (a tree is known by its fruit). The most detailed and methodical history of the doctrine is found in The Rapture Plot. Two of the better books (now out of print) that can be found in used bookstores are The Church And The Tribulation and First The Antichrist by Dr. Robert Gundry (books that tell the truth of this doctrine don't sell very well, thus they commonly go out of print).