Thus, prophecy has been and will be fulfilled during the current church age. Therefore, idealists think that prophetic passages mainly teach great ideas or truths about God to be applied regardless of timing. Because, the timing of the rapture relates to when the tribulation will occur in history. Preterism declares that the tribulation has already taken place. Historicism says that the tribulation started in the fourth century with events surrounding Constantine's Christianization of the Roman Empire and continues until the second coming.
Idealism denies that there is a timing of events.
Thus, only futurism, which sees the tribulation as a yet future event could even allow for a rapture before the beginning of that seven-year period. But to be a pretribulationist, one must be a futurist. While not as consistently developed as modern futurism, the early church would have to be classified as inconsistent futurists, more than any of the other three possibilities. With a few exceptions, the early church believed that events of the tribulation, millennium, and second coming were to take place in the future. As anti-millennial views began to arise in the third century, and the Christianization of the Roman Empire through Constantine spread in the fourth century, futurism began to be displaced.