Alexander Keith was a Church of Scotland and Free Church minister, known for his writings on biblical prophecy. Keith interpreted the bible as teaching a premillennial view of Jesus' return and many of his books relate to the place of the Jews and how they relate to Jewish and Christian prophecies in the Bible. Keith, along with Robert Murray M'Cheyne, Andrew Bonar, and Alexander Black visited Palestine on a missionary trip. Taking a faster route home than their other companions Black and Keith passed through Budapest. Keith contracted cholera and nearly died but was influential in setting up a mission to the Jews in Hungary. At the Disruption, Keith sided with the Free Church and continued to minister to a congregation at St Cyrus and to publish works on biblical prophecy.

Robert Murray M'Cheyne was a minister in the Church of Scotland from 1835 to 1843. He was born at Edinburgh on 21 May 1813, was educated at the university and at the Divinity Hall of his native city, and was assistant at Larbert and Dunipace. A mission of inquiry among the Jews throughout Europe and in Palestine, and a religious revival at his church in Dundee, made him feel that he was being called to evangelistic rather than to pastoral work, but before he could carry out his plans he died, on 25 March 1843. McCheyne, though wielding remarkable influence in his lifetime, was still more powerful afterwards, through his Memoirs and Remains, edited by Andrew Bonar, which ran into far over a hundred English editions. Some of his hymns became well known and his Bible reading plan is still in common use.