I’m slowly compiling research, and hopefully putting a book together! One element that I’ve been researching is what the pre-Nicene fathers specifically state about the end times. I’ve found some really interesting trends, and, to my knowledge, have put together some things that no one else has compiled. If someone else has already done a comparison like this, then I’d love to see it because it’s a lot quicker to build on other people’s work!

Anyway, here’s the summary below of what I’ve found. If anyone wants the more thorough overview, and then also the really, really in-depth comparison, just comment and I’ll do a separate post.

There is among scholars a consensus that many of the early church fathers held to a form of millenarianism often called chiliasm (or in modern circles, ‘historic premillennialism’). From what documentation we possess, it appears that this was a common view until somewhat later, in which it became a minority view, and then even later it became a frowned-upon view because it was associated with a certain heretic.

From my own modest overview, I think we can see a trickling off of chiliastic statements, replaced primarily with statements that correspond most closely with a form of today’s post-millennialism. That is, a majority of statements in the later fathers correspond most closely with the view that prior to Christ’s return, apostasy will be upended, antichrist overthrown, and a time of peace will spread.

There is perhaps also at least one reference that corresponds with a form of today’s a-millenialism, seen in Victorinus when he says, “Those years wherein Satan is bound are in the first advent of Christ, even to the end of the age; and they are called a thousand, according to that mode of speaking, wherein a part is signified by the whole, just as is that passage, ‘the word which He commanded for a thousand generations,’ although they are not a thousand.”
Additionally, I can find in none of the fathers, whether early or late, any suggestion of a view of the “rapture” of the Church prior to the return of Christ.

The only possible hint of a ‘rapture’ like view is that of Victorinus when he says, “‘And the heaven withdrew as a scroll that is rolled up.’ For the heaven to be rolled away, that is, that the Church shall be taken away.” But on the following page he goes on to say that this means, “the good will be removed, seeking to avoid the persecution” which I interpret to mean that the Church will seek to avoid persecution, and go into hiding (as it were) during the heightening of tribulation.