The first Christians expected Jesus to return within their lifetimes. This was not a fringe belief. It was the mainstream position of the early church for decades after the ascension. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians as though some of them would still be alive when it happened. The Didache — one of the earliest Christian documents outside the New Testament — instructs its readers to "watch" and "be ready," using language that assumes the end is near.
They were wrong about the timing. But they were not wrong about the posture.
What the earliest sources say
The Didache, written probably around AD 70-100, ends with an extended warning about the last days. It describes a time of deception, of false prophets, of a world-deceiver who performs signs. And then it says: "Then shall the creation of men come into the fire of trial, and many shall be made to stumble and shall perish; but those who endure in their faith shall be saved."
The letter of Clement to the Corinthians, written around AD 96, urges believers to expect the coming of the Lord quickly. "How speedily and suddenly shall his will be accomplished," Clement writes, calling believers to readiness and repentance.
The early creeds — the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed — all include the affirmation that Christ "will come again to judge the living and the dead." This was not a negotiable point. It was bedrock.
What they did with the belief
Here is what is remarkable about the early church's expectation of an imminent return: it did not make them passive. They did not sit on hillsides and wait. They built. They planted churches. They wrote letters — enormous, careful, detailed letters to communities across the Mediterranean. They established structures for leadership, for care of the poor, for the resolution of disputes.
They expected Jesus to return any day, and they acted as though their work mattered anyway. The two impulses did not contradict each other. The expectation of the end sharpened their sense of purpose rather than diminishing it.
Paul is the clearest example. He believed the return was imminent, and he also planned missionary journeys years in advance. He wrote letters intended to be read and re-read long after he was gone — what he wrote to Timothy, knowing he might die, is one of the most personal farewells in scripture. He instructed Timothy and Titus on how to organise churches that would outlast them both. His expectation of the end did not prevent him from preparing for the future.
The letters they left
It is worth noting that the entire New Testament is, in one sense, a collection of letters left behind. Paul, Peter, James, John — they wrote to people they might never see again, about things that mattered most, with the awareness that their time was uncertain. The letters of the early martyrs — Ignatius, Polycarp — continued this tradition after the apostles. These letters were not afterthoughts. They were essential acts of faith, written with the same urgency that drives a believer today to put their words on paper before time runs out.
The early church lived in the tension between "any day now" and "there is still work to do." They resolved it not by choosing one over the other, but by doing both — living with urgency without living in fear. They preached, they served, they built — and they wrote.
Write your letter — the early church did, and their words endured.