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John Nelson Darby

John Nelson Darby (1800–1882), an Anglo-Irish clergyman who left the Church of Ireland and became a leading figure among the Plymouth Brethren. He developed dispensationalism, a form of Premillennialism that divides history into ages and teaches a rapture of the church before the tribulation. Through his travels and later the Scofield Reference Bible (1909), it spread widely among American evangelicals.