The earliest extrabiblical source we have, the Epistle of Barnabas, was written anonymously around the year 100. Although it is certainly not canonical, it stands as an incredibly early documentation of the early Church’s beliefs. The apostle John was very possibly alive when it was penned. We will refer to Barnabas as the epistle’s author, even though his identity is disputed.

The Epistle of Barnabas exhibits the common early Church view that the last week of Daniel was ending as the Church was being born. Barnabas writes, “For it is written, ‘And it shall come to pass, when the week is completed, the temple of God shall be built in glory in the name of the Lord.’ I find … that a temple does exist. Having received the forgiveness of sins … in our habitation God dwells in us.… This is the spiritual temple built for the Lord” (EOB, 16:6).

It is interesting that Barnabas uses this expression “the week.” The reference to Daniel’s week does not mention Daniel! Yet scholars agree that this is definitely a reference to Daniel’s final seven seasons. Can we infer that the prophecy of Daniel’s seventy weeks was so well known and expounded in the early Church that it needed no further explanation? I believe we can. Daniel’s prophecy was not avoided by the early Church, as it is today.

In this passage, Barnabas links Daniel’s vision of seventy weeks with the prophecy of Haggai 2:7–9. Barnabas states that the purpose of Daniel’s seventieth week was the building of a “spiritual temple,” the Church. Barnabas obviously believed that Daniel’s seventieth week encompassed Christ’s first advent. This was when the “spiritual temple” was initially being established. Yet writing in about 100 A.D., he clearly believed that the seventieth week was already completed before he was writing.

It is interesting that Barnabas never justifies his use of Daniel this way. He simply slides it into his argument without a second thought. This implies that in the very early Church, it was widely accepted that Daniel’s seventieth week contained the events surrounding the incarnation and establishment of the Church and ended within the first century.

So, less than a century after the Passion, it seems that the widespread belief of the Church was that the seventieth week of Daniel was completed. It is certain that Barnabas placed the end of the seventieth week no later than 70 A.D., and his mention of the building of the Church (which was able to grow unimpeded after 70 A.D.) makes it probable that Barnabas saw 67 to 70 A.D. as the specific terminus ad quem of Daniel’s seventy weeks. He assumes his readers will agree that the events of “the week” led to the building of the Church.

Barnabas was by no means alone. Within a century of Barnabas, Clement became bishop of Alexandria until his death in 215 A.D. He clearly taught that the bestowal of the six blessings necessitated the end of biblical Judaism within the seventy weeks (9:24). He referred to the Temple’s destruction in the language of Daniel’s weeks. He wrote, “Vespasian rose to the supreme power and destroyed Jerusalem, and desolated the holy place” (STO, XXI, 142–143).

Origen (185–254 A.D.) was a student of Clement of Alexandria. It seems quite certain that he agreed with his teacher that the terminus ad quem of the seventieth week was the destruction of the Temple. “The weeks of years up to the time of Christ the leader that Daniel the prophet predicted were fulfilled” (TPR, IV:1:5).

Tertullian wrote the treatise Against the Jews in 203 A.D. He, too, held that the seventieth week had been fulfilled in 70 A.D.: “Vespasian vanquished the Jews … and so by the date of his storming Jerusalem, the Jews had completed the seventy weeks foretold by Daniel” (AAJ, VII; CID).

Athanasius was bishop of Alexandria from 326 to 373. He clearly taught that the seventieth week culminated in 70 A.D.: “Jerusalem is to stand till His coming, and thenceforth, prophet and vision cease in Israel. This is why Jerusalem stood till then … that there they might be exercised in the types as a preparation for the reality … but from that time forth all prophecy is sealed and the city and Temple taken” (INC, XXXIX:3–XV:8).

Athanasius reflects the view of the entire early Church: once the Messiah had come, the role of the Temple in Jerusalem had been superseded. “Things to be done which belonged to Jerusalem which is beneath … were fulfilled, and those which belonged to shadows had passed away” (FEL, IV:3–4). Biblical Judaism ended in 70 A.D.

Eusebius, known as the father of Church history, was the bishop of Caesarea from 313 to 340. He understood the seventieth week to have been completed before 70 A.D. In fact, he must have found that belief so universal in his day that he felt compelled to construct a rather unusual framework for the Ascension to accommodate it (EH, VIII).

Irenaeus was a contemporary of Clement of Alexandria. He and his pupil Hippolytus are the only two writers from this early in the Church who believed in a still-future fulfillment of Daniel’s seventieth week. The priest Hippolytus probably reflected the views of his teacher Irenaeus, so we will not draw sharp distinctions between their thoughts. They both placed the seventieth week at the end of the gospel era and so are the first to postulate a gap between the sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks (AG, V). Both predicted a specific date for the second coming that has come and gone.

Their belief in a future seventieth week was never widely accepted. St. Jerome went a step further in his criticism of their system. He specifically pointed out that the numbers of years in their system did not coincide with the historical events they purported to cover. This was certainly a problem (CID).

Later, Apollinaris expected the end of Daniel’s weeks to be still future. Like Hippolytus, he predicted a specific date for Christ’s return. Apollinaris taught that the seventy weeks were a 490-year period between Christ’s first and second comings. Counting from the birth of Christ, he expected the second coming in 483 A.D. (ISW).

It is widely accepted that Apollinaris was mistaken in his prophecy. About half a century after Apollinaris, Jerome wrote, “If by any chance those of future generations should not see these predictions of his fulfilled at the time he set, then they will be forced to seek for some other solution and to convict the teacher himself of erroneous interpretation” (CID).

The fact that they were in such a minority should tell us something. The lack of any sizable number of futurists among the early Church writers is definitely a serious blow to rapturists. As a point of history, the views of Irenaeus did give seed to premillennialism. But this concept was strongly and universally denounced by the other leaders of the Church. The early Church understood the presumptuous-parenthesis theory (see Chapter 5 of this book) that rapturists employ in this vision, but they resoundingly rejected it.

The most prevalent understanding of the early Church leaves no room in Daniel for a future seven-year Great Tribulation, which means Daniel’s time line of future events leaves no room for the rapturist system.