The three main millennial views each have ancient roots and significant subsequent development. Premillennialism (chiliasm) was the dominant second-century view, held by Papias, Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, before Augustine's amillennial reading displaced it in the West. Amillennialism — reading the millennium as the present church age — became standard Catholic and mainstream Protestant teaching, endorsed by Luther, Calvin, and the major Reformation confessions. Postmillennialism — the expectation that the gospel will gradually Christianize the world before Christ returns — was developed significantly in the seventeenth century and became influential in nineteenth-century Protestant optimism before the World Wars deflated it.
Description of the millennial kingdom's extraordinary material abundance — the earliest statement of chiliasm, preserved by Irenaeus and Eusebius, showing that literal premillennialism reached back to the apostolic generation itself (Papias claimed to have heard John the Elder).
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