The Second Coming, the Antichrist and the Millennium: An Orthodox Reading

Every Sunday the Orthodox Church confesses that Christ "shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead," and that his "kingdom shall have no end."¹ Much that is said about the end of the world does not fit under those two sentences. Will believers be taken away secretly before a time of trouble? Will a man called the Antichrist arise? Is there a thousand-year reign on earth?

This article sets out what the Church confesses, answers the pre-tribulation rapture and reports the early chiliasts honestly. For the symbols of the last book of the Bible, see How to Read the Book of Revelation; for the system behind the rapture, What Is Dispensationalism?; for the wider faith, Why Orthodoxy.

In brief

Christ ascended, and "this same Jesus ... shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11). He comes once more, openly, to raise the dead and judge. Before that day the Antichrist of the Fathers is revealed and then destroyed by the Lord's coming (2 Thessalonians 2:3-8). The Church has never taught a secret removal of believers, and no council has defined an earthly thousand-year kingdom.

Thesis: The Orthodox reading is one return of Christ, one general resurrection and one judgment on the last day. The Antichrist is a real man who comes first. The thousand years of Revelation 20 are the Church's present life in Christ's victory over Satan. And no one names the date.

What the Creed says, and why "no end" is in it

The Creed of Nicaea (325) ended its second article with "And he shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead. And [we believe] in the Holy Ghost."² The Creed of Constantinople (381) reads "And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead. Whose kingdom shall have no end." The clause was not new in 381. Schaff's edition of the Acts notes that it "had already, so far as the meaning is concerned, been added to the Nicene Creed, years before, in correction of the heresy of Marcellus of Ancyra," and the first canon of 381 anathematizes "the Marcellians."³

Cyril of Jerusalem, lecturing on the creed of his own Church, had already explained the clause. He calls the teaching it refutes "another head of the dragon": a certain one "has dared to affirm, that after the end of the world Christ shall reign no longer." Cyril answers with Gabriel's words to Mary: "of His kingdom there shall be no end" (Luke 1:33). He withholds the name, but his Benedictine editors identify Marcellus, deposed at Constantinople in 336, and find in his fragments "the heresy concerning the end of Christ's kingdom."⁴ St Gregory the Theologian meets the same objection, drawn from 1 Corinthians 15:24-28. "Until" does not close a reign: "Until is not always exclusive of that which comes after, but asserts up to that time, without denying what comes after it."⁵ The Second Coming unveils Christ's kingdom; it does not interrupt it.

One coming, one last day

The New Testament speaks of Christ's return as one event on one day. "The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout ... and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air" (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17). Paul places this "at his coming" (1 Corinthians 15:23) and "at the last trump" (1 Corinthians 15:51-52); the Lord says, "I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:54).

Fr Thomas Hopko notes that 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 is "the Epistle reading of the Orthodox funeral service," and that "the exact time of the end is not foretold, not even by Jesus, so that men would always be prepared by constant vigil and good works."⁶

The rapture and the dispensational timetable

What it teaches

Dispensationalism, the system behind the Left Behind novels, divides history into ages and keeps a strong distinction between the Church and Israel. Dallas Theological Seminary's doctrinal statement, Article XVIII, teaches that "the next great event in the fulfillment of prophecy will be the coming of the Lord in the air to receive to Himself into heaven both His own who are alive and remain until His coming and also all who have fallen asleep in Jesus." Article XIX adds that "the translation of the church will be followed by the fulfillment of Israel's seventieth week, during which the church, the body of Christ, will be in heaven."⁷ That is the pre-tribulation rapture: the Church is removed first, a final "week" of Daniel follows, and Christ then returns in power.

Where it came from

Michael Vlach's essay for The Gospel Coalition links the system "with the teachings of the Anglo-Irish theologian and Plymouth Brethren minister, John Nelson Darby (1800-82)," and says that "Darby also popularized the idea that the church would be raptured or snatched to heaven just prior to the seventieth-week of Daniel."⁸ The word "rapture" comes from the Latin Vulgate of 1 Thessalonians 4:17, "simul rapiemur cum illis in nubibus," translating the Greek harpagēsometha ("we shall be caught up together with them").¹ Defenders such as Thomas Ice reply that others taught it before Darby. They cite a sermon attributed to Ephrem the Syrian (written, Ice says, between 374 and 627) and an essay by the Baptist Morgan Edwards, written in 1744 and published in 1788; critics such as Robert Gundry dispute the Ephrem reading.⁹ Either way, the Creed and the Fathers do not contain it.

The Orthodox answer

1. One last day. The Lord puts the resurrection of believers "at the last day" (John 6:54), and Paul joins "the last trump" to the raising of the dead and the change of the living. An interval of years between the gathering of the elect and the last day is not in the text.
2. Rest at the revealing. Paul tells suffering Thessalonians they will have "rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels" (2 Thessalonians 1:7). Relief comes at the one revelation, not at an earlier secret removal.
3. One coming, two outcomes. "The one shall be taken, and the other left" (Matthew 24:40-41) happens at "the coming of the Son of man" (Matthew 24:39), the coming the Lord compares with the flood. However "taken" is read, the passage describes one sudden, public coming, not a secret removal years before it.
4. The Fathers prepare the faithful for the Antichrist. Cyril tells his catechumens: "The Church now charges you before the Living God; she declares to you the things concerning Antichrist before they arrive."⁴

The secret rapture is an error, but many who love Scripture were handed it as the plain sense of the text and deserve the older reading, offered with courtesy. See also dispensational and covenant readings compared and Daniel 9 and the Seventy Weeks.

{{strong: The pre-tribulation rapture, as a system, is not found in the Fathers or the Creeds, and the Church's texts on the last day point to one return.}}

The Antichrist

John uses the word: "as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists" (1 John 2:18), and defines its spirit as denying that Christ has come in the flesh (1 John 4:3). Paul speaks of one figure, "that man of sin ... the son of perdition," who "as God sitteth in the temple of God" and whom "the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming" (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4, 8).

The Fathers read these texts together: a spirit of antichrist works in every age, and a final person concentrates it. St John of Damascus: "Every one, therefore, who confesses not that the Son of God came in the flesh and is perfect God and became perfect man, after being God, is Antichrist. But in a peculiar and special sense he who comes at the consummation of the age is called Antichrist." The devil "does not become man in the way that the Lord was made man. God forbid! But he becomes man as the offspring of fornication and receives all the energy of Satan."¹⁰ The Antichrist is a man, a counterfeit of the incarnation.

Cyril of Jerusalem gives the fullest early picture. The Antichrist "is to come when the times of the Roman empire shall have been fulfilled," "at first indeed he will put on a show of mildness," he is to reign "three years and a half only," and he will be destroyed "by the glorious second advent from heaven of the only-begotten Son of God."⁴ Irenaeus, earlier still, says that "he will reign for three years and six months, and sit in the temple at Jerusalem; and then the Lord will come from heaven in the clouds, in the glory of the Father, sending this man and those who follow him into the lake of fire."¹¹ What is agreed: a real person, a deception that imitates Christ, a short reign and destruction at the Lord's coming. The Church is told to watch against him, not to expect to miss him.

The Fathers did not agree on details, and the Church has not defined them. On the "restraining" power of 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7 Chrysostom says: "Some indeed say, the grace of the Spirit, but others the Roman empire, to whom I most of all accede."¹² John's Enoch and Elijah as the Antichrist's opponents are his tradition, not the Creed. No Father names the man. After listing candidate names for 666, Irenaeus says: "It is therefore more certain, and less hazardous, to await the fulfilment of the prophecy, than to be making surmises."¹¹ Naming a living politician as the Antichrist disobeys that counsel.

{{strong: The Fathers teach that the Antichrist is a real person who comes before the Second Coming and is destroyed by it, while differing on the details of his rule.}}

The thousand years

In Revelation 20 an angel binds Satan "a thousand years" so "that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled." John sees those who "lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection" (Revelation 20:2-5). Premillennialists read a future earthly kingdom after Christ returns, but the book says it was "signified" by an angel (Revelation 1:1) and speaks in signs throughout.

The early chiliasts, told plainly

Papias, according to Eusebius, taught "that there will be a period of some thousand years after the resurrection of the dead, and that the kingdom of Christ will be set up in material form on this very earth." Eusebius thought Papias took apostolic words literally "not perceiving that the things said by them were spoken mystically in figures," and notes that "so many of the Church Fathers after him adopted a like opinion."¹³ Justin Martyr writes: "I and others, who are right-minded Christians on all points, are assured that there will be a resurrection of the dead, and a thousand years in Jerusalem." He admits that "many who belong to the pure and pious faith, and are true Christians, think otherwise."¹⁴ St Irenaeus defends an earthly kingdom, "the times of the kingdom, that is, the rest, the hallowed seventh day," and says that those who "allegorize" such prophecies "shall not be found consistent with themselves."¹¹ The Church honors Irenaeus as a saint for the rule of faith he defended; his thousand-year kingdom was his own opinion.

Why the Church did not follow them

The Catholic Encyclopedia says millenarianism "had been upheld by several ecclesiastical theologians," but "neither in the post-Apostolic period nor in the course of the second century, does it appear as a universal doctrine of the Church or as a part of the Apostolic tradition," and "the primitive Apostolic symbol mentions indeed the resurrection of the body and the return of Christ to judge the living and the dead, but it says not a word of the millennium."¹⁵

The third century confirms it. Dionysius of Alexandria opposed a bishop, Nepos, who "taught that the promises to the holy men in the Divine Scriptures should be understood in a more Jewish manner, and that there would be a certain millennium of bodily luxury upon this earth." Dionysius loved Nepos "for his faith and industry and diligence in the Scriptures," but "the truth should be loved and honored most of all."¹³ In the fourth century St Basil complained that Apollinarius "has written about the resurrection, from a mythical, or rather Jewish, point of view."¹⁶ A few Greek writers kept the idea, Methodius of Olympus and Apollinarius among them, but after Apollinarius, the same encyclopedia notes, it "found no outspoken champion among the theologians of the Greek Church."¹⁵

The reading the Church kept

St Augustine gives the clearest early account of Revelation 20 without chiliasm. He admits he once held the older view: "this opinion would not be objectionable, if it were believed that the joys of the saints in that Sabbath shall be spiritual ... for I myself, too, once held this opinion." Christ said no one can spoil a strong man's house "except he first bind the strong man" (Matthew 12:29), and the angel with the chain is that binding: Satan is "bridled and restrained his power so that he could not seduce and gain possession of those who were to be freed." The first resurrection is the rising of the soul from sin by grace, "the first resurrection which now is."¹⁷ Paul speaks this way: "Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him" (Colossians 2:12).

The Greek East received the same reading through Andrew of Caesarea, whose commentary of 611 is, in his translator's words, "the most important Greek patristic commentary" on Revelation. Andrew writes that "by the number one thousand years by no means is it reasonable to understand so many (years)," and concludes: "The one thousand years, therefore, is the time from the year of the Incarnation of the Lord until the coming of the Antichrist." He reports the chiliast view, that the risen saints "will enjoy delight and honor for one thousand years" on this earth, and answers: "It is unnecessary to note that the Church has accepted none of these." He also judged, his translator notes, that the end was not near.¹⁸

The Church's reading, then: Christ has bound the strong man by His cross, descent into Hades and Resurrection. The reign of the saints with Him is the life of the Church, where the baptized have passed from death to life. The thousand years are the time between His first coming and His last, and at the end comes the short release of the deceiver and then the Lord. No scheme for mapping the numbers is dogma, but the Church's faith has no earthly thousand-year kingdom between the Second Coming and the age to come.

{{strong: Early Christian writers were divided on a literal thousand years, but an earthly millennium was never part of the Church's creed, and the Greek Church's standard commentary says the Church accepted no such view.}}

The strongest objections

"Papias, Justin and Irenaeus were closer to the apostles, so they carry more weight." They are early and honored. But Justin says other orthodox Christians disagreed, and Eusebius thought Papias misread figures. The Church tests a teaching by the whole witness of the Fathers and the rule of faith, and on that test the earthly kingdom is a personal opinion. What she kept from Irenaeus is the return in glory and the judgment. See Can the Church Fathers Disagree?

"A symbolic Revelation 20 ignores the plain meaning." The plain meaning of an apocalypse is the meaning of its signs; a beast with ten horns is not zoology. Nor is Christ's reign limited to a thousand years anywhere in the New Testament: He "must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet," and the last enemy is death (1 Corinthians 15:25-26).

No dates

When the disciples asked about the kingdom, the Lord answered: "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power" (Acts 1:7). Of the day itself: "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only" (Matthew 24:36). Cyril, who describes the Antichrist in such detail, still says: "Whether they will happen in your time we know not, or whether they will happen after you we know not."⁴ Failed predictions are old, as the Watch Tower dates show. The Lord's answer is "Watch therefore" (Matthew 24:42): confession, the Mysteries, prayer and mercy, not a chart. See Heaven, Hell and the Final Judgment and Why Christians Believe in the Bodily Resurrection.

What we can say confidently

• The Church confesses one return of Christ "with glory to judge both the quick and the dead" and a kingdom that "shall have no end"; the clause stands in the Creed against the claim that Christ's reign would cease.
• The New Testament places the resurrection of believers at "the last day" and "the last trump" and promises rest to the persecuted at the revealing of the Lord; it does not teach a separate secret rapture.
• The pre-tribulation rapture as a system was popularized by Darby in the nineteenth century; the Creed and the Fathers do not contain it.
• Cyril, John of Damascus and Irenaeus teach that the Antichrist is a real man who comes before the Lord, deceives, reigns briefly and is destroyed by the Second Coming.
• Some early Fathers expected a literal thousand-year kingdom; others disagreed, and after the fourth century no Greek theologian championed it.
• The Lord forbids date-setting (Matthew 24:36; Acts 1:7).

What remains disputed

• What the "restrainer" of 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7 is: Chrysostom favored the Roman empire, others the grace of the Spirit.
• Whether the "temple of God" is a rebuilt Jewish temple, as Cyril and John of Damascus read it, or something else.
• Where the thousand years begin within the Church's reading: Andrew counts from the Incarnation, and Augustine offers more than one reckoning.
• Whether the sermon attributed to Ephrem and Morgan Edwards's essay really teach a pre-tribulation rapture: Ice says they do; Gundry disputes the Ephrem reading.

Conclusion

The Orthodox Church does not need a timetable to hope. In the anaphora of the Divine Liturgy she remembers "the second coming in glory,"¹⁹ and in the Creed she confesses that the dead will rise and His kingdom has no end. She tells her people to flee the Deceiver, to watch, to keep the Mysteries and not to guess the day. When the Lord comes it will be "as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west" (Matthew 24:27), visible to all. For the confessions gathered, continue to Why Orthodoxy.

Notes

1. Scripture is quoted from the King James Version (1769 text), checked against the KJV text served by this site's Bible reader (https://honestapologist.com/api/bible/connections/texts?v=kjv); words the KJV prints in italics are given without brackets. The Vulgate of 1 Thessalonians 4:17 ("simul rapiemur cum illis in nubibus") and the Greek (harpagēsometha) are from the same reader (v=vulgate and v=sblgnt).
2. Council of Nicaea (325), Creed, trans. Henry R. Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3801.htm.
3. First Council of Constantinople (381), Creed and Canon 1, trans. Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3808.htm; Schaff's note on the clause at https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.ix.iii.html.
4. St Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 15 (sections 9, 12, 16 and 27), trans. Edwin Hamilton Gifford, NPNF2 vol. 7, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310115.htm. The Benedictine editors' note identifying Marcellus (on section 27, with his deposition at Constantinople in 336) is printed in the same NPNF volume: https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf207.ii.xix.html. The place name in "lately sprung up in ..." is missing from both online texts.
5. St Gregory of Nazianzus, Fourth Theological Oration (Oration 30) 4, NPNF2 vol. 7, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310230.htm.
6. Fr Thomas Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, vol. 1, "The Symbol of Faith: Judgment," Orthodox Church in America, https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/doctrine-scripture/the-symbol-of-faith/judgment.
7. Dallas Theological Seminary, Doctrinal Statement, Articles XVIII and XIX, https://www.dts.edu/about/doctrinal-statement/ (read 2026-11-08).
8. Michael J. Vlach, "Dispensational Theology," The Gospel Coalition, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/dispensational-theology/.
9. Thomas Ice, "Yet, Another Pre-Darby Rapture Statement," Pre-Trib Research Center, https://pre-trib.org/dr-thomas-ice/popup/text/print/415 (Pseudo-Ephraem, dated by Ice 374-627; Morgan Edwards, written 1744, published 1788; Gundry's critique in First the Antichrist, 1997, is cited there). A defender of the doctrine, cited for what defenders claim.
10. St John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 4.26, trans. S. D. F. Salmond, NPNF2 vol. 9, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/33044.htm.
11. St Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.30 and 5.35, trans. Alexander Roberts and W. H. Rambaut, ANF vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103530.htm and https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103535.htm.
12. St John Chrysostom, Homilies on Second Thessalonians, Homily 4, NPNF1 vol. 13, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/23054.htm.
13. Eusebius of Caesarea, Church History 3.39 (on Papias) and 7.24 (on Nepos and Dionysius), trans. A. C. McGiffert, NPNF2 vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250103.htm and https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250107.htm.
14. St Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 80-81, ANF vol. 1, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/01286.htm.
15. Johann Peter Kirsch, "Millennium and Millenarianism," The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 10 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1911), https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10307a.htm.
16. St Basil the Great, Letter 263 (to the Western bishops), section 4, NPNF2 vol. 8, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3202263.htm.
17. St Augustine, The City of God 20.6-7, trans. Marcus Dods, NPNF1 vol. 2, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120120.htm.
18. Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on the Apocalypse, chapters 60 (on Revelation 20:1-3) and 63 (on 20:7-8), trans. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, Andrew of Caesarea and the Apocalypse in the Ancient Church of the East: Studies and Translation (PhD dissertation, Université Laval, 2008), part 2; the date 611, the "most important" description and the section "The End is Not Near" are in part 1. https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11794/19560. Her translation is also published in the Catholic University of America Press series The Fathers of the Church.
19. Anaphora of the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, English text of the Metropolitan Cantor Institute (Byzantine Catholic Archeparchy of Pittsburgh), https://mci.archpitt.org/liturgy/Divine_Liturgy_Anaphora_Chrysostom.html. English renderings of the anamnesis differ slightly between jurisdictions.

Bibliography

Scripture

• The Holy Bible, King James Version (1769 text).

Fathers, councils and Orthodox sources

• Cyril of Jerusalem. Catechetical Lectures. Trans. E. H. Gifford. NPNF2 vol. 7.
• Gregory of Nazianzus. Orations. NPNF2 vol. 7.
• Basil of Caesarea. Letters. NPNF2 vol. 8.
• John of Damascus. An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. NPNF2 vol. 9.
• John Chrysostom. Homilies on Second Thessalonians. NPNF1 vol. 13.
• Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies. ANF vol. 1.
• Justin Martyr. Dialogue with Trypho. ANF vol. 1.
• Eusebius of Caesarea. Church History. NPNF2 vol. 1.
• Augustine of Hippo. The City of God. NPNF1 vol. 2.
• Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381). NPNF2 vol. 14.
• Andrew of Caesarea. Commentary on the Apocalypse. Trans. E. S. Constantinou. Université Laval, 2008.
• Hopko, Thomas. The Orthodox Faith, vol. 1. Orthodox Church in America.
• Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, anaphora. Metropolitan Cantor Institute.

Reference works and other traditions

• Kirsch, J. P. "Millennium and Millenarianism." The Catholic Encyclopedia vol. 10, 1911.
• Dallas Theological Seminary. Doctrinal Statement.
• Vlach, Michael J. "Dispensational Theology." The Gospel Coalition.
• Ice, Thomas. "Yet, Another Pre-Darby Rapture Statement." Pre-Trib Research Center.