Robert Van Kampen

Robert D. Van Kampen (1938–1999) was a businessman and member of various organizational boards in the business world and Christian ministry.

Van Kampen's business career took him into the investment banking world, and he became one of the wealthiest men in the United States after founding the investment banking firm Van Kampen Merritt in 1974. In the 1990s, Van Kampen developed what is known today in fundamentalist Christian eschatology as the “"Pre-Wrath” rapture position, authoring three books on the subject.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Van Kampen was educated at Wheaton Academy in West Chicago and Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, graduating in 1960.

In 1968 at age 30, Van Kampen left a secure sales job at a prominent Chicago-based municipal bond firm where he was known as '"The Charger". After affiliations with two other firms, in 1974, at a company in which he owned the majority interest, he led that firm's initiative to sponsor unit investment trusts paying federally tax-exempt interest. His firm was a pioneer in promoting insured unit investment trusts. After New York City’s near-default in 1975, investors flocked to Van Kampen’s insured trusts. In 1982, the company broke records in the industry by introducing a $125 million Insured Municipal Income Trust (IMIT), soon followed by an even larger $128.5 IMIT. By 1983, the company then known as Van Kampen Merritt, Inc. had sold nearly $7 billion of trusts and was the nation’s third-largest firm in that arena. In 1984, Van Kampen sold the firm to Xerox Corporation for about $200 million.

As a strict Christian fundamentalist, Van Kampen was known for applying biblical principles to the running of his business, and there was a strict code of personal conduct among his many employees. Divorce was frowned upon and the drinking of hard liquor discouraged.

Van Kampen's published work primarily focused upon development of the "pre-wrath rapture" position within fundamentalist Christian eschatology. His three published books were:

...
Wikipedia