For years, critics of premillennialism have argued
 that John Nelson Darby was the source for the
 doctrine of the rapture and dispensationalism.
 Building upon years of research in seventeenthcentury
 and eighteenth-century English theological
 writings, William Watson argues that
 dispensationalism and the ideas associated with it
 were long part of British theological discourse.
 Drawing upon hundreds of early printed English
 books and years of archival study in primary sources
 and British libraries, Watson demonstrates that
 Darby's thought was neither aberrant nor original. To
 the contrary, he was following a long line of British
 clergy who anticipated the restoration of Jews to a
 national homeland and the imminent return of Jesus
 Christ.