I was referring specifically to the surge in missionary activity, with the formation of Missions such as the China Inland Mission, TEAM, Sudan Interior Mission.
J. Hudson Taylor of CIM, and Frederick Fransen of TEAM (then known as the Scandinavian Alliance Mission), and a group of young men of the day were all affected by the idea that at "any moment" Christ could come and they felt the urgency to evangelize as much of the world as possible.
Those who didn't promote missions began their careers as Evangelists, Dwight Moody among them, although he may have been a little late, or reluctant coming to embrace it fully, or ambivalent about Pre- or Post-.
Still at work, so I might be a little disjointed in reply.
It is interesting to look at the history of John Darby himself. He was a passionate follower of Christ, and had won more Irish Catholics to Jesus in his lifetime than the entire missionary effort of the Church of England over the past 300 years (since the Reformation). He returned to London to "raise support"(some things never change, do they?) and rejoice in the goodness of God in blessing his efforts. You can imagine his shock and dismay when he read of several ads taken out which said -in effect- that if you wanted to see the Irish brought into submission to the crown, then you should support the work of John Darby who was doing such great work in bringing them into submission to Christ, and the Anglican Church. William Magee, the archbishop of Dublin, shortly ruled that all the converts of Darby had to swear allegience to King George as the king of Ireland. Of course, this effectively destroyed any future ministry for him. He left the ministry of the Anglican Church and was a bitter, dissappointed, disillusioned man. He especially was disenchanted with any linkage between the church and state (as one would imagine). I think his radical disjunction between the theocratic OT and the NT grew from how greviously he was sinned against by the state church.
If God could not use crooked sticks to draw straight lines, where would we all be?