A book written in the 1970s by Dave MacPherson attributes the origin of pretribulation rapture to a 15 year old Scottish girl named Margaret MacDonald c. 1830. MacPherson has released different versions over the decades, including The Rapture Plot, The Incredible Cover-Up, and The Great Rapture Hoax.
His premise is that Margaret MacDonald, in her short life, had a dream where she saw Christ and he revealed a vision to her. This was part of a series of supernatural visions in Scotland between 1826 to 1829. Some thought these were honest displays of the Holy Spirit, while others, including the Plymouth Brethren, labelled them as demonic. Near this time, around 1830, Margaret received this dream and wrote down everything. It would later be published in 1840 in the Memoirs of James and George Macdonald, Margaret’s brothers (Heroes, Heroines, and History: The Rapture).
The 1826-1829 supernatural occurrences included speaking in tongues and miraculous healings. One of those healings, reported by James Campbell, was of his sister Margaret MacDonald and then of Mary Campbell. James and George then manifested their ability to not only speak but also interpret tongues, sparking a series of events. The brothers had originally run a shipping business in the Port Glasgow and five siblings lived together when they found an evangelical sort of religion around 1828. Mary had fallen ill and it was coming out of this stupor, after being prayed upon by James, that she began having visions (James and George Macdonald – Port Glasgow (1830)).
Mary’s visions speak of liberty, distress of nations, darkness and then revelation.
Scholars have hotly debated the origin story of the rapture, largely crediting it to John Nelson Darby, the Plymouth Brethren Church founder. While Darby was originally born in London in 1800 and was briefly a priest in the Church of Ireland, he would work with others to form a non-denominational group called the Brethren.
MacPherson’s assertions were not new, they were actually first raised by Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, a Quaker and Biblical scholar. Tregelles had originally been in communion with the Brethren, and later became Presbyterian. Tregelles did not directly reference MacDonald, but did suggest that Darby’s rapture was demonic in origin. While Darby denied this, most modern scholars recognize his dispensationalism was a departure from the Bible.
So, there is a ton of research into the rapture, its implications, who invented it, its relationship to the Bible, etc broadly available with some listed below if this sparks your interest. I think what’s more interesting than who gets the credit for rapture visions is how, toward the end of the Regency era, we see a break away from a more hierarchal access to religion to a more egalitarian approach through the vehicles of prophecy, tongues, (The Tongues Revival 1830) and spectacle. This tracks with many other aspects of Regency life, with shifts from a feudal and agricultural society to an industrial society thick with middle class, and middle class values. As the middle class are gaining a foothold in many positions of power, it is consistent that within religion there would also be efforts to democratize access to speaking with higher powers. The Macdonalds are examples of the beginnings of Holy Rollers, an off-shoot of Wesleyian Methodism, a revival movement of the Church of England that began in the 18th century with John Wesley’s own evangelical conversion and focus on Biblical literacy rather than liturgy.
John Wesley
Wesley would be influential in the abolitionist movement, in the inclusion of women as preachers or religious leaders, and some strains of religious tolerance.
Marotta-DaveMacPhersonsTheRapturePlot.pdf
Church, C. A. Was Margaret Macdonald (1830) the Source of the Pretribulation Rapture?.
Ice, T. D. (1990). Why the Doctrine of the Pretribulational Rapture did not begin with Margaret Macdonald.
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