For over two hundred years no other idea than that of the premillennial return of Christ was entertained by the primitive Church. The writings of the Church Fathers abound in evidence of the fact. But about 250 A.D., Origen, one of the fathers, conceived the idea that the words of Scripture were but the husk in which were were hid the kernel of Scripture truth. At once he began to allegorize and spiritualize Scripture, and thus founded that school of interpreters from which the Church and the Bible have suffered so much. As time went on, the prophetic portions of the Word of God became a sealed book, and ignorance, like the gloom of night, settled down upon all Christendom, and innumerable errors prowled through the midnight blackness, threatening the utter extinction of the Gospel. But amid the gloom God was not without witnesses to the truth. The Waldenses, Paulicians and other sects, believed in the premillennial return of the Lord.  

But that doctrine was not the only one that was eclipsed during the "dark ages;" the doctrine of justification by faith disappeared in the thick darkness, and star after star went out. But the gloom was not eternal. When the fullness of time was come, that "Morning Star of the Reformation," John Wycliffe arose and was followed by Luther, and Calvin and Knox and with the resurrection of the doctrine of justification by faith, the doctrine of the premillennial return of the Lord was revived. When the persecution aroused by the Reformation ceased, the time of peace and prosperity became as it always has been in the history of the Church, a time of peril. Rationalism refused to believe that the world was ripening for judgment and a new way of interpreting the prophecies appeared. Daniel Whitby, in the early part of the eighteenth century propounded the theory which is generally held at the present time by those who are not expecting the Lord's return till after the Millennium. He taught that the Millennium was not a reign of persons raised from the dead, but of the Church flourishing gloriously for a thousand years after the conversion and restoration of the Jews to their own land; and then Christ would come the second time.  

Thus, postmillennialsm, as advocated in our day is not yet two hundred years old, while premillennialsm dates back to the days of Isaiah and Daniel. (The Christian Herald and Signs of Our Times, Dec. 3, 1890, pp. 774-775).