In the Western Church Chiliasm prevailed until the time of Augustine. It seems to have provoked very little discussion or controversy. Hippolytus, 235 A.D., carries on the Chiliastic tradition of Irenaeus but with a certain degree of assured futurity about the Second Advent not found in the earlier writers. This pushing of the Second Advent into the future is a marked feature of Western Chiliasm. By a weird use of 'types' Hippolytus proves with entire conclusiveness to himself that the Second Advent is to occur in the year 500 A.D.[20] The overthrow of Rome has a prominent part in his elaborate description of the last times but he veils his statements with a certain amount of transparent discretion.[21] He has in all other essential respects the same ideas as Irenaeus but expressed in a less naïve form. He is a transition figure. His Second Advent is far enough off to allow some considerable latitude for the building up of the ecclesiastical hierarchy which was the business of Rome and he emphasizes the point that the "gospel must first be preached to all nations." John the Baptist reappears as the precursor of Christ. Commodianus, a North African bishop, 240 A.D., represents the generation after Hippolytus. His two poems present rather different versions of Chiliasm. The first is a simple and rather pleasing version.[22] The only notable variation it contains is that the risen saints in the Millennial Kingdom are to be served by the nobles of the conquered anti-Christ. The second poem is an apologetic against Jews and Gentiles. "The author expects the end of the world will come with the seventh persecution. The Goths will conquer Rome and redeem the Christians; but then Nero will appear again as the heathen anti-Christ, reconquer Rome and rage against the Christians three years and a half. He will in turn be conquered by the Jewish and real anti-Christ from the East, who, after the defeat of Nero and the burning of Rome, will return to Judea, perform false miracles and be worshipped by the Jews. At last Christ appears with the lost tribes, as his army, who had lived beyond Persia in happy simplicity and virtue. Under astounding phenomena of nature he will conquer anti-Christ and his host, convert all nations and take possession of the holy city of Jerusalem."[23] This double anti-Christ is perhaps the most notable variation. This idea reappears later, as does the Nero return which would seem to have been current belief.