"WHAT COULD CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS (1451–1506) have to do with a study
of millennialism?
When we think of the great explorer, we remember him
for anything 
but eschatology.
His Spanish royal sponsors, Ferdinand and
Isabella, were indeed stirred by the prospect of wealth beyond their
dreams. So was Columbus. But all three had something else on their
minds.
Ferdinand and Isabella combined political ambition with
spiritual desire, nurturing the hope of a final crusade to liberate
Jerusalem. Deterred by a lack of funds, they were attracted by
Columbus’s proposal that finding a shorter route to the fabled wealth of
the East would give them up front financing against the infidel—and
prepare for Christ’s coming at Jerusalem.
Columbus had another
reason to undertake this journey. 
He held a millennialist faith derived
from an assiduous study of Scripture and a familiarity with the
eschatology of Joachim of Fiore.
---If there were a shortcut to the East by
sea, missionaries could be sent there faster.
Thus Christians could
meet the provision for world evangelization before the Lord could
return. Like John the Baptist at the first coming, he had helped prepare
the way for the second.
"God made me the messenger of the New Heaven
and the New Earth,” he wrote.
predictions of the end and the return of Christ, this volume showed how Columbus believed his explorations had served a divine plan. He quoted ancient writers like Augustine and Stoic philosopher Seneca to show how the discovery of the Western islands had been the foretold prelude to God’s final victory. He drew on Old Testament references to islands as support for his conviction that his voyages had been part of God’s strategy.
Like
others, Columbus believed the world would come to its terminus 7,000
years after the creation. The world was thought to be 5,343 years, 318
days old when Jesus was born. Since then, another 
1501 years had gone
by, leaving only 155. By that reckoning, the end would be the year 1656.
Clearly there was no time for the believers to waste. Jesus had
promised that all prophecies would be fulfilled before the end, and his
followers should dedicate themselves to accomplishing their part in that
fulfillment.
One requirement of the Lord’s return was preaching
the gospel “in all the world.” (Matt. 24:14). Such a task was now possible because
Columbus had shown Christians how they could finally reach the entire
globe. Another was recovering the Holy Land for Christ, so that all the
world’s peoples could be gathered at Zion to witness the Lord’s return."
ChristianHistoryInstitute