Early Church Fathers and the Millennial Reign - Church History 101 - How Did the 1st and Second Century Church Fathers view the 1,000 year reign of Christ, apostolic fathers on the rapture, the book of Revelation, preterist commentary on new testament, old testament, Christians Church, apocalypse

How Did the Early Church Fathers View the "imminent" return of Christ

July - 2025

Tom is an ordained pastor and a long-time friend of mine. ~ RA Baker

I have found myself in many recent debates on the "rapture" and I believe that it is pre-tribulation. So I went to review [the doctrinal statement of this person's denomination] and was surprised in how little is said, only that we believe in the "imminent" return of Jesus. I have always thought that Paul was the first to preach the "imminent" return. So I went to churchhistory101.com to find out. Well, I cannot find it.

Anyway, I got totally distracted reading in THE FIRST CENTURY. Fascinating! Can you help me with any documentation on the early church fathers teaching on the return of Christ and the Millennial reign.
God Bless! - Tom B.

With the terrible October 2023 attack in Israel, war in Ukraine and our near war with Iran, we are all hearing more talk about the End of the World, the Second Coming of Christ, the end of the world and the thousand year reign.

Once again, this is NOT a topic of expertise for me - BUT I do know something about how the early church thought about this topic. I spent much of the day checking my notes, reviewing my books on the history of the early Church and now I am ready to begin writing an answer to this good question.

Coleman Ford, Ph.D.:
I started out finding the website by Dr. Ford who has a Ph.D. in Church History, although his focus apparently was on Saint Augustine, who was most prolific in the first 30 years of the fourth century. Ford seems to be basing this article on the work of Hans Schwarz, Eschatology (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2000).

Ford is correct when he moves to the second century writers. The primtive church (Apostolic Fathers prior to having few, if any, NT documents in front of them) gives hardly any mention (if any) of the second coming and they certainly do not write about a 1,000 year reign on the earth. Ford admits that "it is not explicitly made clear that they refer to a future millennial reign with Christ. Millennial language, however, is present within the writings of Barnabas."

The problem is that Ford does not mention the Apostolic Fathers that have NO mention of a "thousand year" period: Clement of Rome, Didache, Ignatius of Antioch, while Polycarp mentions the 1,000 years, it is not clear and sounds similar to Barnabas. In addition, the Epistle of Barnabas is a part of a "radical Hellenistic tradition," not the norm. (Bruce, Men and Movements, p.64)

The Fragments of Papias
Our clearest mention of this period is from the fragments of Papias (which Ford failed to mention, unless I missed it). Eusebius (fourth century church historian) cites Papias and his comments on the thousand year reign:

To these belong his statement that there will be a period of some thousand years after the resurrection of the dead, and that the kingdom of Christ will be set up in material form on this very earth. I suppose he got these ideas through a misunderstanding of the apostolic accounts, not perceiving that the things said by them were spoken mystically in figures. For he appears to have been of very limited understanding, as one can see from his discourses. But it was due to him that so many of the Church Fathers after him adopted a like opinion, urging in their own support the antiquity of the man... Eccl.Hist. III.39.12-13

Eusebius echoes the thoughts of many other church leaders in the fourth century - And they had the Revelation of John in their hands unlike the earlier fathers. Eusebius' Church History was published prior to the official canonization of the 27 New Testament "books." His statements above reflect why John's Revelation was one of the last NT books to be affirmed. But Why? Because these church leaders found Revelation mysterious, full of symbolism and difficult to understand!

Clement of Alexandria
Around 195-198AD Clement of Alexandria was just about finished with his trilogy: Exhortation to the Greeks, The Instructor and Miscellanies. Clement is the first Christian leader/writer to quote from almost every single book that ended up in the NT. Clement's amazing numbers are an important data point for why early church historians think the copying and distribution of the NT documents had not been vast and wide...until this point in our history.

The numbers are staggering:

Clement has around 300 quotes from Matthew
	1,200 quotes from Pauline letters
just over	200 from Romans
and around	200 from 1 Corinthians
(these are some of the larger books of the NT)

Revelation is just about as large as Romans and 1 Corinthians,
yet Clement only quotes from The Revelation 8 times, 5 of which are from the first 6 chapters.

This gives you an idea of the way many early writers viewed the Revelation and "the non-1,000 year reign eschatological thought...was pervasive in early Christianity and is represented in such writers as Hermas [The Shepherd of Hermas]... the Epistle to Diognetus, Ascension of Isaiah, Apocalypse of Peter, Martrydom of Polycarp...Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Cyprian." [Ferguson, Everett, Church History, From Christ to Pre-Reformation, Vol.1 (2005), bold emphasis added]

This illustrates what I tell my students when I teach about the early church: the church was not monolithic. The church has always had diversity, disagreements and divisions. Every region had it's own group of bishops who met in councils to discuss how to manage the churches in their region. They mostly did not care what other regions drafted as "canon," or their "rules."

So it appears that in the primitive church (prior to having MOST NT documents in their grasp) there were some who held to the thousand year reign (even if it was not completely defined), but others did not share this view.

I would say that ALL the early church fathers believed Christ would return and establish His kingdom, but if they were questioned about details they would shrug their shoulders and say, "I'm just not sure." Many would say the 1,000 year reign is symbolic that Jesus will be the KING and His kingdom will be eternal...where it exists and what it will look like is not as important. As the NT documents became more available the diversity on this topic continued.
As usual, I welcome your thoughts, disagreement and discussion.

Al Baker, Ph.D.
CH101