Who used the word rapture to indicate the removal of God's chosen from the earth?

A:

The Word Rapture was used in 1830, when John Nelson Darby, a nineteenth-century evangelist and the founder of the Plymouth Brethren, created the story of the Rapture and the Tribulation to follow. Barbara R. Rossing (The Rapture Exposed) says that according to one critic, the Rapture has its origins with a young girl's vision. Fifteen-year-old Margaret MacDonald attended a healing service, where she was said to have seen a vision of a two-stage return of Jesus Christ. The story of her vision was adopted and amplified by Darby.

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The belief that Jesus will come again was not new, and Christians have always taught that Jesus will return to earth and that believers should live in anticipation of his second coming. Darby's new teaching was that Christ would return twice, first in secret to "Rapture" his church out of the world and up to heaven, then a second time after seven years of global tribulation for non-believers, to establish a Jerusalem-based kingdom on earth.

John Nelson Darby has sunk into obscurity, apart from his followers in the Plymouth Brethren, but millions of Christians have come to know and believe in his Rapture scenario.

The Word rapture is from the Latin Word rapio, meaning caught up. This Word was used in Latin translations of The Bible to express Paul's teaching that believers living at the time of Christ's return would be caught up to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thess. 4:17). It has taken on a different meaning and is now being used to describe a secret coming of Jesus prior to the great tribulation.