Keith asked," What was the early Christians understanding of the end times, the return of Christ, and how did this understanding develop through the subsequent centuries?" Okay, I'm going to answer this very briefly. I've actually never done a message on this subject. I'm not sure. I have done one on what they believed on the millennial rule, the Millennium and the Rapture that would answer the part about this, about the coming of Christ, what they believed about the rapture.
I also have several messages I've done about dispensationalism where I would go into more detail. Tonight, I'm just going to briefly answer the question. They certainly didn't have any of the things you hear today that all of these people who think they have the end times all mapped out, and they know everything that's going to happen, and this is where we are in the middle of the end times, and, you know, this many years left, and this and that, and who the beast is, and what 666 means, and all of that.
The early Christians didn't know any of those things. That is, these are just people's pious imaginations today. What you generally find is they repeat what's right there in the Scriptures in the New Testament about the end, what Jesus said about His return, what Paul says, and Peter and some of the other writers. I think it's fair to say that probably most of the pre-Nicene Christians assumed that the end would be coming soon, but not necessarily in their lifetime.
They didn't think," Oh, yeah, we're just ten years away from it," or something like that. And some of them, from their writings, it looks like they're assuming it's several centuries away. So, you would have different feelings among them where they were in the scheme of time. And so, no one was laying down things," Well, this is it, and this prophecy is being fulfilled," and all that, concerning the end times, what we think of end time prophecies.
They talk about the prophecies being fulfilled in Christ and being fulfilled in the Gentiles coming in to God's kingdom. Now, how it developed through the centuries, I'm not even qualified to answer that. I've never studied through the Middle Ages. I can't tell you this. The one thing I have studied is in just about every century, people have been convinced that the end was very close. I don't mean that the whole church felt that way, because I've just told you they didn't in the early centuries.
But there were some Christians who always thought, yep, it's a decade away, a few years away, something like that. All through the Middle Ages, like when the Black Plague came and a lot of other things, then people started thinking," Oh, the end must be right around the corner." It's good for us to be alert and be looking for the end and expecting Christ's return.
I'm not ridiculing that, but I'm also saying, let's be real careful when we're making prophecies and predictions, because people have been doing that for nearly 2,000 years now, and they've been wrong every time. And so Putting a lot of stock in that is certainly not the course of wisdom. Instead, let's concentrate on walking with Christ and spreading the good news of His kingdom, and helping people to see what Christ is like by their being able to observe our lives.
And then whenever Christ returns, we're going to be in the right place, doing the right thing.
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