Dwight Moody, a shoe salesman turned celebrity preacher, had opened his influential Moody Bible Institute, a college and correspondence school, as well as a publishing house. He insisted that every sentence in the Bible was literally true, no more metaphorical than the Sears, Roebuck catalog, and he helped revive a scriptural fetishism in American Christianity. To make even the most poetic parts like Revelation understandable, he popularized Reverend Darby’s end-time schedule—along with his rapture add-on, the apocalypse escape route to a supernatural VIP waiting room. Moody called this new
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