Was Derek pre-, mid-, or post-Trib — and did he believe the term rapture to be correct?
Derek Prince said:
“A lot of people, when I preach on prophecy, always come up and say, ‘Pre-tribulation, mid-tribulation or post-tribulation? '. I say, ‘I don’t know.’ I’m really not concerned for them. And furthermore, I think in the light of time it may prove that those questions are meaningless. See, in Deuteronomy 29:29, Moses said: ‘The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children that we may do them.’ “God has got the secret things and that’s not our business. We’ve got to deal with the things that are revealed and obey them. I think the exact order of events when Jesus returns is one of God’s secrets. I’ve known many dedicated, sincere Christians almost cross swords because they had different concepts. I don’t think any of them know. I don’t believe I know. I think I have one advange—I know I don’t know. But that doesn’t worry me. My aim is to obey what is revealed. Actually, I think in a way it’s irreverent to try to pry God’s secrets from Him. In my observation about people who interpret prophecy, those who are so busy with that issue usually miss the real, practical issues of prohecy.” — quoted from 4369 “The Last Four of Revelation’s Seven Churches”
“A lot of clever people have been telling us that there’s no such word as rapture in the New Testament. I find that rather naive because the New Testament was not written in English. You don’t find any English words in the New Testament. It’s a question of what translation is used. The word we’re talking about, the Greek word written in English letters, is harpazo. And it means “to snatch, to grab, to pull up.” There’s no English word formed from that verb. But, there’s a Latin verb that’s used to translate it which is rapido, which means exactly the same as harpazo. And the noun or verb formed from it is rapture. So you see that, in actual fact, it’s a perfectly accurate way to describe what Paul is talking about. I think there’s a certain prejudice in some quarters against the rapture because some people can’t believe that things like that will really happen. But I believe it.
“Some birds are called raptors. Do you know what a raptor is? It’s a bird that swoops down over its prey, picks it up with its claws or its beak, and carries it off. So this is absolutely consistent. To say that rapture is the wrong word, honestly, is to display ignorance.” (Then Derek goes on to give Scripture references where this same word is used in the New Testament.) — quoted from 4272 “The Climax of Life's Destiny”.
