The Earliest Church Fathers Were Premillennial
Without question, premillennialism was the earliest and most widely held view of the earliest centuries of the church. The dean of church historians, Philip Schaff has said, "The most striking point in the eschatology of the ante-Nicene Age [A.D. 100-325] is the prominent chiliasm, or millenarianism, . . . a widely current opinion of distinguished teachers, such as Barnabas, Papia, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Methodius, and Lactantius."2 German historian Adolph Harnack has said, "First in point of time came the faith in the nearness of Christ's second advent and the establishing of His reign of glory on the earth. Indeed it appears so early that it might be questioned as an essential part of the Christian religion. . . . it must be admitted that this expectation was a prominent feature in the earliest proclamation of the gospel, and materially contributed to its success. If the primitive churches had been under the necessity of framing a 'Confession of Faith,' it would certainly have embraced those pictures by means of which the near future was distinctly realized."3
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