The pre-tribulation rapture doctrine is commonly associated with the nineteenth-century theology of John Nelson Darby and the rise of dispensationalism. As a result, it is frequently treated either as a relatively late theological innovation or as a direct recovery of apostolic teaching. Both interpretations, however, obscure the longer intellectual development of Protestant eschatology between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. This paper proposes a continuity-based interpretation, arguing that while the Puritan Revolution did not produce the pre-tribulation rapture doctrine in a systematic form, it played a significant role in shaping the theological and interpretive environment that later made such a doctrine conceivable. Revolutionary Puritan premillennialism politicized eschatological expectation, interpreting historical events as signs of imminent divine intervention. Following the failure of this political eschatology, particularly after the Restoration of 1660, eschatological thought underwent a process of displacement and internalization. In late Puritan and early American contexts, this shift produced an increasing emphasis on the preservation of individual believers from divine judgment, expressed through early rapture-like motifs. These assumptions, though unsystematic, formed a conceptual bridge to the more rigorous formulations of the nineteenth century. The pre-tribulation rapture is thus best understood not as an abrupt theological anomaly, but as the distant intellectual heir of Puritan revolutionary premillennialism transformed through historical defeat, migration, and doctrinal adaptation.
Yuji Marutani (Tue,) studied this question.