What happened immediately after Jesus’s life? The Christian church started. His disciples started converting people to believe in him. And what did these early Christians believe? All of our evidence suggests that they too were apocalypticists. They thought that Jesus was soon to return from heaven in judgment on the earth. Our earliest Christian author, as I’ve pointed out, was Paul. He was thoroughly entrenched in apocalyptic thinking. He was so sure that the end was coming soon that he thought he himself would be alive when judgment day arrived