The Pre-Trib Mafia

Pastor Dewey Williams: Pre-Trib Rapture Enforcer

All my life I wanted to be a foreign missionary, but instead, I decided to start a church here in the United States. The reason I changed my mind is that I realized how the current missions system works. To raise enough support, I would need to go around getting support from various churches and somehow please them all. I knew that I was not going to be able to do that because my preaching would not be popular among a lot of independent fundamental Baptists.

One of the issues that I knew would be a deal breaker is that I do not believe in the pre-trib rapture. I believe the Bible when it says the rapture will take place immediately after the tribulation. I’ve talked to tons of people who have come to the same conclusion--including other IFB pastors and missionaries. Many of them are in the closet about this since they know that making their true position known would result in losing friends or financial support.

Case in point: Pastor Ram Angad down in Guyana recently lost virtually all his support just for associating with me, because I’m not pre-trib. They wanted him to publicly denounce me as a false teacher and say he believes in the pre-trib rapture, which he refused to do. Unfortunately, Pastor Ram did eventually switch back to his pre-trib position, but it was too late. His mission board won't take him back. Here is a pdf of the disgusting exchange between Ram Angad and his mission board director Chip Stowe, which is like an exchange between 2 devils (Chip's words are highlighted with yellow; the rest is missionary Ram Angad).

I personally would not separate with someone over the issue of the rapture just because they happen to be pre-trib. I would even attend a pre-trib church if it was the best church in the area, but many pre-trib Baptists will separate from post tribbers as if the timing of the rapture was a salvation issue or something.

The reason certain people are so vicious about this issue is because they don’t want anyone to discuss it openly. They want to use fear and intimidation to keep people from bringing up this issue because they cannot prove their position with the Bible. The tactics they resort to remind me of the mafia.

When I started my church, I was advised to wait a while before preaching that the rapture will take place after the tribulation. I decided that I would instead go on the offensive. I went ahead and preached on that subject within the first few months of our church’s existence because as an independent Baptist, I only answer to God.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the pre-trib rapture is not found in scripture, so there are a lot of us out there who are post trib. Unfortunately, most pastors and missionaries are afraid to speak up if they aren’t pre-trib, which causes the post-trib doctrine to seem uncommon among mainstream IFBs. Maybe if more of us spoke up, it wouldn’t be such a taboo subject in independent fundamental Baptist circles.

That having been said, if you go to a church where the pastor is pre-trib, you shouldn’t be rude about it. The Bible teaches that we should treat pastors with respect. Discuss it in a kind and humble way with your Bible in hand or perhaps encourage him to watch After the Tribulation and see what he thinks. If he still wants to be pre-trib after hearing those 91 verses we used in the documentary, then just agree to disagree.

If you are a pastor or missionary who is post trib, you need to come out of the closet and preach a sermon or perhaps an entire series on end times prophecy. This isn’t something to break fellowship over, but we shouldn’t be afraid to talk about it either. Let’s get a dialogue going and show these pre-tribbers that their arguments won’t hold up in an open discussion.

Click here to watch the documentary “After the Tribulation,” which has the pre-trib mafia running scared.