Pretribulational Rapture in 17th and 18th Century England

My primary motivation for beginning the research culminating in this book came from a colleague at Colorado Christian University, Dr. Johann Kim, professor of New Testament studies. We debated the issue of Christian Zionism and Dispensationalism before a large audience in the spring of 2007, where he declared that these ideas began only 150 years ago in the mind of John Nelson Darby. Having spent decades digging through archives and data bases of pre-Victorian English published material, I had regularly encountered Apocalyptic material which seemed similar to Darby, and decided after that debate to dedicate my time to studying them. Since then, upon informing colleagues of my work, I got a response similar to what James Robertson got in early eighteenth century while writing on the book of Revelation: ...