....the Rapture originates separately with two different people in the early 19th Century: a teenage girl living in Scotland, and a London-born preacher.
Margaret McDonald, a fifteen-year-old girl living in Scotland, experienced a "vision" of the end of the world in 1820. In McDonald's vision, the chosen few are saved from a "purifying" fire. This is not exactly the disappearance in the middle of the day that popular culture views as the Rapture, but an early prototype. Several contemporary religious leaders deemed her visions demonic. She was probably lucky she wasn't living during the Spanish Inquisition...they had a tendency to burn first and ask questions later.
Meanwhile, a London-born evangelist by the name of John Darby and members of his flock, the Irish-born "Plymouth Brethren", popularized and spread the idea of Judeo-Christians being removed from the Earth, prior to some unknown major disaster. Darby traveled to North America on several occasions during the mid-19th Century, teaching his theory of the Rapture. On one of these trips, Darby met with James Brookes, a prominent preacher and writer in Missouri — and, most importantly, the mentor of Cyrus Ingerson Scofield.
Scofield, influenced by Darby's teachings via his mentor, published the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909. The Scofield Reference Bible went on to become one of the best selling religious texts of the early 20th Century, one that continues to sell extremely well in the United Kingdom.
Folks who believe in the Rapture don't like to be asked where it's discussed in the Bible, because they simply can't tell you. Then they get angry and want to tell you you're going to left behind!! 
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