A large segment of White American evangelicalism in the late twentieth century espoused apocalyptic and millenarian beliefs that informed evangelicals’ witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Millenarian evangelicals, pessimistic about the human ability to improve society, emphasized eschatological discontinuity by proclaiming a premillennial and pretribulational return of Christ. This thesis employs a historical method by identifying antecedent religious influences within Protestantism that impacted the later development of millenarianism within the evangelical tradition. Exploring European and American history between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries identifies these antecedent religious influences as apocalypticism, Puritanism, revivalism, dispensationalism, and fundamentalism. This thesis addresses the important ways these various antecedents influenced evangelical eschatological interpretations in late twentieth-century America.
Keywords: millenarianism, evangelicalism, apocalypticism, Puritanism, revivalism, dispensationalism, fundamentalism, eschatology, discontinuity.