References to the prophetic texts of the Bible pervaded the visionary statements of the American Revolution. Yet, in the heat of political turmoil, few Americans concerned themselves with the sustained exegesis of Scripture. Probably the most important reinterpretation of biblical prophecy published in the 1770's was Jonathan Edwards's History of the Work of Redemption, originally written two decades before. Charles Chauncy's liberal reworking of eschatology in accord with his belief in universal salvation, conceived before the Revolution but published anonymously in London in 1784, probably reached only a limited number of American readers. Only one full-length published exposition of prophecy bore the imprint of revolutionary millennial thought, the Connecticut evangelical Congregationalist Thomas Bray's Dissertation upon the Sixth Vial of 1780.

Numerous patriot sermons, as well as political orations, pamphlets, and newspaper articles, drew specific parallels between biblical prophecies and current events, but American revolutionary millennialism of the 1770's and 1780's generally did not take the form of new biblical scholarship. Rather, revolutionary millennialism infused what were primarily political arguments, and, although the millennial theory of this period was by no means uniform or unchanging, its development occurred more within political than within theological debate. Despite the fact that key biblical passages were brought to bear in numerous ways in the printed millennial literature, the meaning of Scripture was usually not itself a major subject of inquiry.