“Turning to Augustine, Wendy Zoba notes, Augustine teaches that history “would be marked by the ever-increasing influence of the church in overturning evil in the world before the Lord’s return” (Zoba, “Future Tense” Christianity Today [October 2, 1995]: 20). This would eventually issue forth in a “future rest of the saints on earth” (Augustine, Sermon 259:2) “when the Church will be purged of all the wicked elements now mixed among its members and Christ will rule peacefully in its midst.” (Cited in Brian E. Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology [Cambridge: University Press, 1991], 133). This early incipient postmillennialism contains the most basic element of the later developed system: a confident hope in gospel victory in history prior to Christ’s return.
We may also reference Augustine’s comments on Psalm 2. Regarding the Lord laughing at the nations (Ps 2:4) he writes: “it is to be understood of that power which he giveth to His saints, that they seeing things to come, namely, that the Name and rule of Christ is to pervade posterity and possess all nations.” At v. 7 he writes: “‘Ask of Me,’ may be referred to all this temporal dispensation, which has been instituted for mankind, namely, that the ‘nations’ should be joined to the Name of Christ, and so be redeemed from death, and possessed by God. ‘I shall give Thee the nations for Thine inheritance,’ which so possess them for their salvation, and to bear unto Thee spiritual fruit.” (Augustine in The Post-Nicene Fathers, 8:3)”
