Who popularized the pre-tribulational premillennial return of Christ?
John Darby, an Englishman in the mid-1800s, became the tremendous proponent of the pre-tribulation and pre-millennial coming of Christ. He followed earlier millennialistic recovery, including Joseph Meade's writings about Israel's return and a thousand-year reign, but Darby is identified in the context as the major proponent.
Les explains that from the Reformation, nothing was taught concerning the end time. About the middle 1800s, a man named Joseph Meade, whose lifetime was 1586 to 1638, began writing about the nation of Israel going back to the land and a thousand-year reign on earth. He wasn't paid much attention to, but from Meade on more and more men recovered Millennialistic teaching. Then in the middle 1800s, beginning with an English gentleman named John Darby—who many feel wrote one of the best Bible translations ever—Darby became the tremendous proponent of the pre-tribulation and pre-millennial coming of Christ. Since Darby, there have been literally thousands of tremendous theologians, and with everything happening on the earth, the whole prophetic plan coming together makes these things easier to embrace than saying God is all through with the Jew.