The New Testament contains both language of imminent expectation and passages that anticipate delay (Matthew 24:36, 2 Thessalonians 2), and the early Church navigated this tension without fully resolving it. The Apostolic Fathers maintained the urgency of the Parousia without fixing a date; the delay of Christ's return prompted reflections — most notably in 2 Peter 3:8-9 — that interpreted the delay as God's patience with the ungodly. By the second century, the imminence of the End was real but not calculated: the Church lived as if the return could be at any moment without claiming certainty about when.
Addresses those who mock the delay of God's promises, arguing that God fulfills what he promises even if the timing is unknown — the earliest surviving response to the problem of the delayed Parousia in non-canonical Christian literature.
"These are the last times... let us fear the patience of God, lest it become our judgment" — Ignatius frames the delay not as a reason to relax but as God's forbearance that intensifies moral urgency.
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