St. Victorinus

Victorinus (died A.D. 304), Bishop of Petau, who wrote an early commentary on the book of Revelation, gives an explanation of Revelation 6:14 which includes his belief that "the Church shall be taken away" sometime in the future when the passage is fulfilled. Again, regarding Revelation 15:1, he says, "these shall be in the last time, when the Church shall have gone out of the midst." Here he speaks of something that will have happened previously, apparently looking back to his statement in Revelation 6:14. This could reflect elements of pretribulationism. It seems even more likely in light of the fact that Victorinus was said by the anti-Chiliast Jerome to have been a known premillennialist; yet his commentary was clearly amended in the passage regarding Revelation 20 to read as if he were Augustinian (i.e., amillennial). An American editor of Victorinus has concluded:

This confirms the corruption of the manuscripts. Indeed, if the Victorinus mentioned by Jerome be the same as our author, the mention of Genseric proves the subsequent interpolation of his works .... It is evident that the fragment which is here preserved .... is full of the corrections of some pious disciple of St. Augustine who lived much later.'

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Millennialist or so-called Premillennialist writers were Apollinaris, Commodianus, Hippolytus, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Lactantius, Methodius (who saw the millennium as a day of judgment), Montanus, Nepos, pseudo-Barnabas, Tertullian and Victorinus. The theory of the delayed 70th week relating Daniel 9:25 to Christ was first introduced by Hippolytus.

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