Up until the 5th century the predominant view of final things in the early church, as expressed in Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Justin Martyr, and Lactantius, was premillenial post-tribulation: there should be first a time of severe persecution of the church, followed by the visible bodily return of Christ, then a 1,000 year earthly reign of Christ, followed by final judgment and the new age.

There is some idea of a 'rapture' among early Christians, but it is more of the nature of sudden transformation at the Christ's return, rather than the contemporary idea. The contemporary idea of a rapture, that believers would be invisibly and suddenly taken up into heaven to avoid a period of tribulation on earth is really the product of 19th century dispensationalist theologies prevalent in America. No early writer produces a scheme similar to dispensationalism or understands rapture in those categories.