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Professor James W. Fowler of Emory University, author of a number of works on faith development, concludes that what children learn in Sunday school has considerable impact later in life. He argues that children “acquire images and associated emotions” from stories that they learn from people that they love and admire, Chapter 2: The Promised Land and Armageddon Theology 33 up to age five and even more so between ages five and ten. 5 Sunday schools, of course, focus a great deal of time on children between the ages of five and ten.

62 Ashley was an ardent believer in and supporter of this movement. The idea was to facilitate the return of the Jews and convert them in order to speed the Second Coming. To promote this idea, the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews was founded in 1808, and by midcentury, it had seventy-eight missionaries in thirty-two branch offices from London to Jerusalem. 63 Ashley’s place in history, however, stems largely from his efforts to persuade the British foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston, to establish a British consulate in Jerusalem as part of an overall plan to facilitate the return of the Jews.

55 Martin Luther (1483–1546) was not a strict millennialist, but he was more literal than Augustine in his understanding of the Bible. 57 There were many others, but none of their predictions were as detailed as those that emerged in the nineteenth century. The version of dispensational premillennialism that we know today originated in Great Britain in the 1830s with John Nelson Darby (1800–1882) and a group that he led, the Plymouth Brethren. Darby was born in London to well-educated upper-middle-class parents.