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The "Millennial Reign" of Christ
"the SOULS of those that were BEHEADED.. which had not worshipped THE BEAST.. neither had received HIS MARK.. lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years."
General Statements Regarding Chialism/Millennarianism
Alexander Brown
"Let us not forget that once in the Church's history it was the common
belief that John's 1000 years were gone. Dorner bears witness that the Church
up to Constantine understood by Antichrist chiefly the heathen state, and to
some extent unbelieving Judaism (System iv.,390). Victorinus, a bishop
inartyred in 303, reckoned the 1000 years from the birth of Christ.
"Augustine wrote his magnum opus 'the City of God' with a sort of dim perception of the identity of the Christian Church with the new Jerusalem. Indeed we know that the 1000 years were held to be running by the generations previous to that date, and so intense was their faith that the universal Church was in a ferment of excitement about and shortly after 1000 A.D. in expectation of the outbreak of Satanic influence. Wickliff, the reformer, believed that Satan bad been unbound at the end of the 1000 years, and was intensely active in his day. That this period in Clitirch history is past, or now runs its course, has been the belief of a roll of eminent men too long to be chronicled on our page-of Augustine, Luther, Bossuet, Cocceius, Grotius, Hammond, Hengstenberg, Keil, Moses Stuart, Philippi, Maurice." (Alexander Brown, Great Day of the Lord, p. 216.)
John Calvin
(1536)
"But a little later there followed the chiliasts, who limited the reign of
Christ to a thousand years. Now their fiction is too childish either to need or
to be worth a refutation. And the Apocalypse, from which they undoubtedly drew
a pretext for their error does not support them. For the number "one
thousand" (Rev. 20:4) does not apply to the eternal blessedness of the
church but only to the various disturbances that awaited the church, while
still toiling on earth.
"For when we apply to it the measure of our own understanding, what can
we conceive that is not gross and earthly? So it happens that like beasts our
senses attract us to what appeals to our flesh, and we grasp at what is at
hand. So we see that the Chialists (i.e. those who believed that Christ would
reign on earth for a thousand years) fell into a like error. Jesus intended to
banish from the disciples' minds a false impression regarding the earthly
kingdom: for that, as He points out in a few words, consists of the preaching
of the Gospel. They have no cause therefore to dream of wealth, luxury, power
in the world or any other earthly thing when they hear that Christ is reigning
when He subdues the world to Himself by the preaching of the Gospel. It follows
from this that His reign is spiritual and not after the pattern of this
world."
- Comm. on Acts 1:8 (Torrance, VI, 32).
Robert G. Clouse
"the Council of Ephesus in 431, belief in the millennium was
condemned as superstitious." (Clouse, The Meaning of the Millennium,
p. 9.)
Epiphanes (315-403)
"There is indeed a millennium mentioned by St.John; but the
most, and those pious men, look upon those words as true indeed, but to be
taken in a spiritual sense." (Heresies, 77:26.)
Eusebius (325)
"This same historian (Papias) also gives other accounts, which he says he
adds as received by him from unwritten tradition, likewise certain strange
parables of our Lord, and of His doctrine and some other matters rather too
fabulous. In these he says there would be a certain millennium after the
resurrection, and that there would be a corporeal reign of Christ on this very
earth; which things he appears to have imagined, as if they were authorized by
the apostolic narrations, not understanding correctly those matters which they
propounded mystically in their representations. For he was very limited in his
comprehension, as is evident from his discourses; yet he was the cause why most
of the ecclesiastical writers, urging the antiquity of man, were carried away
by a similar opinion; as, for instance, Irenaeus, or any other that adopted
such sentiments. (Book III, Ch. 39)
John N.D. Kelly (1978)
"..in the apostolic age, as the New
Testament documents reveal, the Church was pervaded with an intense conviction
that hope to which Israel had looked forward yearningly had at last been
fulfilled. ..history had reached its climax and the reign of God, as so many of
our Lord's parables imply, had been effectively inaugurated." (Early
Christian Doctrines. Revised Edition, 1978. pp. 459-461)
"About the middle of the second century Christian eschatology enters upon a new, rather more mature phase. ..Justin teaches on the basis of Old Testament prophecy that, in addition to His coming in lowliness at His incarnation, Christ will come again in glory .. new emphases and fresh lines of thought begin to appear, partly for apologetic motives and partly as the result of growing speculation. The clash with Judaism and paganism made it imperative to set out the bases of the revealed dogmas more thoroughly. ..millenarianism, or the theory that the returned Christ would reign on earth for a thousand years, came to find increasing support among Christian teachers." (Early Christian Doctrines. Revised Edition, 1978. pp. 465)
"[Justin Martyr's] argument is that, while numerous contexts no doubt predict His coming in humiliation, there are others (e.g. Is. 53:8-12; Ezek. 7f; Dan. 7:9-28; Zech. 12:10-12; Ps. 72:1-20; 110:1-7) which clearly presuppose His coming in majesty and power. The former coming was enacted at the incarnation, but the latter still lies in the future. It will take place, he suggests, at Jerusalem, where Christ will be recognized by the Jews who dishonored Him as the sacrifice which avails for all penitent sinners, and where He will eat and drink with His disciples; and He will reign there a thousand years. This millenarians, or "chialistic," doctrine was widely popular at this time. ..[But] he confesses that he knows pious, pure-minded Christians who do not share this belief.." (pp. 464-466)
Justin Martyr (150)
CHAP. XI.--WHAT KINGDOM CHRISTIANS LOOK
FOR.
"And when you hear that we look for a kingdom, you suppose, without making
any inquiry, that we speak of a human kingdom; whereas we speak of that which
is with God, as appears also from the confession of their faith made by those
who are charged with being Christians, though they know that death is the
punishment awarded to him who so confesses. For if we looked for a human
kingdom, we should also deny our Christ, that we might not be slain; and we
should strive to escape detection, that we might obtain what we expect. But since
our thoughts are not fixed on the present, we are not concerned when men cut us
off; since also death is a debt which must at all events be paid." (First
Apology of Justin Martyr, ch. 11)
"Chiliasm found no favor with the best of the Apostolic Fathers... the support from the Apologists too, is extreamly meager, only one from among their number can with reasonable fairness be claimed, (Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, v. 25 - 36 ).
J.A.W. Neander (1837)
" Among the Jews the representation was growing that the messiah would
reign 1000 years upon the earth. Such products of Jewish imagination passed
over into Christianity. " (History of Christian Dogmas, Vol. I,
pg. 248)
"Amazingly meager indeed, are the direct and explicit statments which can by any show of reasonablness be claimed as evidence for Chiliasm. To imagine that we can distil from these rare fragments the orthodox faith of the early church is a huge assumption, and even more perpostrous is it to claim that these barren, feeble utterances represent Chiliasm in its modern premillenial manifestation. " (Ibid. pgs. 52 - 53)
William H. Rutgers
"That chiliasm roots in this particularistic Judiaistic Apocalyptic mold
cannot be gainsayed."
(Premillenialism in America, pg. 47)
Philip Schaff (1877)
"Though millenialism was supressed by the early church, it was
nevertheless from time to time revived by heretical sects." (Schaff's
History, pg. 299 )
C.H. Spurgeon (1865)
"Those who wish to see the arguments upon the unpopular side of the great
question at issue, will find them here; this is probably one of the ablest of
the accessible treatises from that point of view. We cannot agree with Mr.
Young, neither can we refute him. It might tax the ingenuity of the ablest
prophetical writers to solve all the difficulties here started, and perhaps it
would be unprofitable to attempt the task. . . (review of Short Arguments
about the Millennium; or plain proofs for plain Christians that the coming of
Christ will not be pre-millennial; that his reign will not be personal, B.
C. Young. In The Sword and Trowel 1:470 (October 1867).
? Waddington
"This obscure doctrine was probabally known to but very few except the
fathers of the church, and is very sparingly mentioned by them during the first
centuries; and there is reason to believe that it scarcely attained much
notoriety, even among the learned Christians, until it was made a matter of
controversy by Origen, and then rejected by the greater majority. In fact, we
find Origen himself saying that it was confined to those of the simpler sort.
" (Waddington's History, pg. 56)
Statements Regarding the "Temporal Adverb" of I Corinthians 15:26:
"..afterward they that are Christ's at his coming. Then (eita) cometh the end.."
W.D. Davies (1948)
"('the end' in v. 24) "is a technical phrase denoting the final
consummation immediately or at any rate with only a very short interval"
(after the parousia). (Paul and Rabbinic Judaism, p. 295).
Max King (1987)
"We need to give further attention to the meaning of "the
end" and its connection with Christ's parousia. Much has been written
about an interval of time between Christ's parousia (v.23) amd "the
end" (v.24) as implied in the temporal adverb "then" (eita).
For those who see Christ's Messianic reign as occurring between His parousia
and the end, a thousand-year interval is squeezed out of this temporal
adverb." (The Cross and Parousia of Christ, p. 493)
Statements Regarding the Nature of this Transition Period
See Also: 40 Years and that Generation
H.J. Schoeps (1966)
(on the traditional views concerning the length of the intermediate Messianic
kingdom) "fix a very short interval for the interim period, namely, forty
years (R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus; Bar in Sanh. 99a; R. Aqiba: Midr. Teh. on Ps
90:15; Tanch. Eqeb 7b, Pes. Rabb. 4a). The two Tannaites, commenting on Ps
95:7, derive this time indication from the Messianically understood v.10 (forty
years I loathed that generation) and from Deut. 8:2 by a parallelization with
the forty years in the desert." (Paul, p. 100)
Lohse, TDNT
"The idea of the millennium which the
divine works out here is to be understood against the backdrop of the Jewish
apoc. traditions that he adopts and uses. In the expectation of an intermediate
Messianic kingdom which shall precede the end and the coming of the reign of
God, Eth. En. 91:12f; 93:1-14; Sib., 3, 652-660; 4 Esr. 7:28f; S. Bar. 29:3; 30:1-5;
40:3, two forms of eschatological hope are combined. Acc. to the older view the
Messiah will be the end-time king restoring the Davidic monarchy and raising it
to new heights. In apoc., however, a very different concept of the future age
of salvation develops. On this view God's envoy will appear from heaven, the
dead will rise again at his coming, and all men must come before his
judgment-seat. Later an attempt was made to fuse the older national concept
with the universal eschatology by putting the reign of the Messiah-King before
the end of the world and the beginning of the new aeon. The earthly Messianic
age will be for a limited term and it will be followed by a last assault of the
powers of chaos prior to the commencement of the future world." (TDNT,
Vol. IX, page 470)
B.W. Johnson (1891)
And [I saw] the souls of them that were
beheaded for the witness of Jesus. Of the martyrs.
Note that it is the "souls" that he observes. These are they "who
came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years". Is this a
literal resurrection from the grave? I answer decidedly in the negative. (1)
The apostle does not say one word about the resurrection of the
"bodies" of the martyrs, nor does he say that he saw the martyrs
themselves. He is particular to say that he saw the "souls" or
"spirits" of the martyrs living and reigning with Christ. (2) They
had been put to death in the body, and their souls were unseen upon the earth,
but there is no intimation in Scripture that their souls had ever ceased to
exist. They were alive with Christ, but now they live in some sense different
from that existence which they had before. It cannot mean that their souls came
to life, for they had never ceased to have existence. (3) What, then, does the
affirmation mean? That as Christ reigns upon the earth during the millennial
period by his truth, so the spirit of the martyrs is revived and lives in the
Church. The souls of the martyrs live because the Church is composed of those
who love Christ better than goods or liberty or life. This glorious reign of
Christ pervades the earth because the souls of the martyrs are resurrected and
live in all who name the name of Christ, and who are filled with the spirit of
ancient martyrs. (4) If any should think such an interpretation of symbolical
language far fetched, let him compare Scripture. This explanation is not forced
nor the interpretation of the language unusual. It was predicted by the
prophets that Elijah must come again before the Messiah. He did come in spirit
and power, not in person, but as the stern, fearless, upright reformer of the
wilderness of Jordan.
B.F. Westcott (1889)
"Jewish teachers distinguished a
'present age' (this age) from 'that age' (the age to come). Between 'the
present age' of imperfection and conflict and trial and 'the age to come' of
the perfect reign of God they placed 'the days of the Messiah,' which they
sometimes reckoned in the former, sometimes in the latter, and sometimes
distinct from both. They were, however, commonly agreed that the passage from
one age to the other would be through a period of intense sorrow and anguish,
'the travail-pains' of the new birth (Mt. 24:8). The apostolic writers, fully
conscious of the spiritual crisis through which they were passing speak of
their own time as the 'last days' (Acts 2:17; James 5:3; comp. 2 Tim. 3:1); the
'last hour' (1 Jno. 2:18); the 'end of the times' (1 Peter 1:20; 2 Pet. 3:3);
'the last time' (Jude 18)."
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