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Although not using the term "rapture", the idea was more fully developed by Edward Irving (1792–1834). In ? (first volume published in 1706) Henry, M. (1994). Matthew Henry's commentary on the whole Bible : Complete and unabridged in one volume. Peabody: Hendrickson. Matthew Henry used the term in his commentary of 1 Thessalonians 4.[26][Full citation needed] Irving directed his attention to the study of prophecy and eventually accepted the one-man Antichrist idea of James Henthorn Todd, Samuel Roffey Maitland, Robert Bellarmine, and Francisco Ribera, yet he went a step further. Irving began to teach the idea of a two-phase return of Christ, the first phase being a secret rapture prior to the rise of the Antichrist. According to Irving, “There are three gatherings: – First, of the first-fruits of the harvest, the wise virgins who follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth; next, the abundant harvest gathered afterwards by God; and lastly, the assembling of the wicked for punishment.”[27]

John Nelson Darby first proposed and popularized the pre-tribulation rapture in 1827.[28] This view was accepted among many other Plymouth Brethren movements in England. Darby and other prominent Brethren were part of the Brethren Movement which impacted American Christianity, especially with movements and teachings associated with Christian eschatology and fundamentalism, primarily through their writings. Influences included the Bible Conference Movement, starting in 1878 with the Niagara Bible Conference. These conferences, which were initially inclusive of historicist and futurist premillennialism, led to an increasing acceptance of futurist premillennial views and the pre-tribulation rapture especially among Presbyterian, Baptist and Congregational members.[29] Popular books also contributed to acceptance of the pre-tribulation rapture, including William Eugene Blackstone's book Jesus is Coming published in 1878[30] and which sold more than 1.3 million copies and the Scofield Reference Bible, published in 1909 and 1919 and revised in 1967.[Full citation needed]

The early original Christian church,[31] as well as the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox churches,[32] the Anglican Communion and many Protestant Calvinist denominations, have no tradition of a preliminary return of Christ and reject the doctrine. The Orthodox Church, for example, rejects it because the Protestant doctrine of the rapture depends on a millennial interpretation of prophetic scriptures, rather than an amillennial or postmillennial fashion.[33]
 
Some proponents of a preliminary rapture believe the doctrine millennialism originated with Alexandrian scholars such as Clement and Origen[34] and later became Catholic dogma through Augustine.[35] Thus[citation needed] the church until then held to premillennial views, which see an impending apocalypse from which the church will be rescued after being raptured by the Lord. This is even extrapolated by some[which?] to mean that the early church espoused pre-tribulationism.[citation needed]
Some[who?] pre-tribulation proponents maintain that the earliest known extra-Biblical reference to the pre-tribulation rapture is from a 7th-century tract known as the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Ephraem the Syrian, which says, "For all the saints and Elect of God are gathered, prior to the tribulation that is to come, and are taken to the Lord lest they see the confusion that is to overwhelm the world because of our sins."[36]"[37] However, the interpretation of this writing as supporting a pre-tribulation rapture is debated.[38][39]

The rise in belief in the pre-tribulation rapture is often wrongly attributed to a 15-year old Scottish-Irish girl named Margaret McDonald (a follower of Edward Irving), who in 1830 had a vision of the end times which describes a post-tribulation view of the rapture that was first published in 1840. It was published again in 1861, but two important passages demonstrating a post-tribulation view were removed to encourage confusion concerning the timing of the rapture. The two removed segments were, "This is the fiery trial which is to try us. - It will be for the purging and purifying of the real members of the body of Jesus" and "The trial of the Church is from Antichrist. It is by being filled with the Spirit that we shall be kept".[40]
In 1957, John Walvoord, a theologian at Dallas Theological Seminary, authored a book, The Rapture Question,[Full citation needed] that gave theological support to the pre-tribulation rapture; this book eventually sold over 65,000 copies. In 1958, J. Dwight Pentecost authored another book supporting the pre-tribulation rapture, Things to Come: A Study in Biblical Eschatology[Full citation needed], which sold 215,000 copies. which has reportedly sold between 15 million and 35 million copies, and the movie A Thief in the Night, which based its title on the scriptural reference 1

Thessalonians 5:2.[41] Lindsey proclaimed that the rapture was imminent, based on world conditions at the time. The Cold War figured prominently in his predictions of impending Armageddon. Other aspects of 1970s global politics were seen as having been predicted in the Bible. Lindsey suggested, for example, that the seven-headed beast with ten horns, cited in the Book of Revelation, was the European Economic Community, a forebear of the European Union, which between 1981 and 1986 had ten member states; it now has 27 member states.
In 1995, the doctrine of the pre-tribulation rapture was further popularized by Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series of books, which sold tens of millions of copies and were made into several movies.
The doctrine of the rapture continues to be an important component of American evangelical Christian eschatology
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