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Here's a quick history of the "pre-tribulation". It is necessarily quick, because there really isn't that much history available.

What have God's people historically believed about the "catching away" down
through the many ages of the Church? Has it always been like today, with these two major
opposing views, drawing people into one group or another? No, absolutely, no.

A warning here before we proceed. After the Bible, which is apostolic and inspired,
there is no perfect book. There is no perfect teacher. In the years that followed the death of the apostles, many men began to write, some building as closely as they could on the revelation in existence, from the apostles and prophets, others veering off from time to time. This "veering off" has left us with a great variety of teachings published in the name of the Lord, making it easy for the promulgator of any new doctrine down to this day, to establish his cause somewhere in the chaos. An appeal to the "church fathers" is often a settlement to an otherwise shaky point. Now there were good men and good books, but as I say, many of the teachings found in those days were not grounded in God's Word.

In spite of individual problems in individual teachers, and it seems even the best of
men missed it sometimes, there were streams of thought that continued down to us, both in
our Scriptures and in the collected works of the great writers. The Deity of Christ, the Second Coming, salvation by grace through faith, it all was picked up and passed on. God had
faithful witnesses who were able to see and communicate necessary truth to the next generations.

Having said that, we ask, what about the theory of a pre-tribulation rapture historically?
In fact, it falls far short of verification. It is found only once from the fourth century
all the way to the eighteenth century, and not in any substantial body of literature until the nineteenth. This view-point is a newcomer to the world of theology.

The teachers of this doctrine believe they have Scriptural grounds for their beliefs. Scripture I must take up at another time. But the scant history of the doctrine is as follows:

Ephraem. We go first to the Persia of the Roman Empire days. It is the fourth century.
The teacher is a dedicated deacon named Ephraem who seems to have been a most holy
man, to the point where he is said to have been a hermit for the last ten years of his life. The record shows he was greatly revered by Syrian, Orthodox, and Nestorian believers, the
"denominations"

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