CONTEMPT FOR “MILLENNIALISM”

Many people today have become lukewarm “Christians,” more interested in the here and now than in the fulfillment of the Christian hope. One reason is that Christendom’s churches have distorted that hope. They speak with contempt of sincere Christians who place their hope in the millennium or 1,000-year reign of Christ. For example, the very highly respected and voluminous French Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique defines “millennialism” as follows: “False belief professed by those who were awaiting a temporal reign of the Messiah, the length of which was sometimes considered by them to be a thousand years. . . . Since the fifth century, millennialism has no longer been spoken of, or very rarely, by a few cranky sects.”

Yet, while speaking contemptuously of those who believe in the 1,000-year reign of the Messiah, this authoritative Catholic work admits that millennialism was spoken of before the fifth century. In other words, the millennial hope was lost sight of during the fifth century. Why? Does history confirm what the Bible itself reveals, namely, that the early Christians believed in the 1,000-year reign of Christ? And if so, how were millions of Catholics and Protestants robbed of the millennial hope? Let us see what reputable reference works and history books reveal in answer to these questions.

APOSTASY DISTORTS THE CHRISTIAN HOPE

In the previous article we have seen that through the apostasy that took place in the latter centuries before the Common Era the Jews replaced their hope in the resurrection with the pagan belief in the inherent immortality of the soul and transformed their original Messianic hope into a political hope. Similarly, the apostasy that was foretold to occur among Christians (Acts 20:29, 30; 2 Thess. 2:3; 1 John 2:18, 19) brought about a distortion of the millennial hope.

Jewish scholar Hugh J. Schonfield states: “Christian shifting away from the hope of the terrestrial Kingdom of God did not prevail until the second century.” “Despite pleas for constancy, loyalty and endurance, many more Christians were disillusioned and either left the Church or followed those teachers who offered less earth-bound interpretations of the nature of Christianity.”

Concerning this “shifting away” from the hope of paradise restored on earth by means of the heavenly Messianic kingdom or government, The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology states (Vol. 2, under “Paradise”): “In the further course of church history many extra-biblical motifs, pictures and ideas were absorbed into the conception of paradise. . . . The speculations in the church concerning paradise and the conceptions of popular piety are also linked with the fact that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul came in to take the place of NT [New Testament] eschatology with its hope of the resurrection of the dead and the new creation (Rev. 21 f.), so that the soul receives judgment after death and attains to paradise now thought of as other-worldly.”​—Italics ours.

Thus, with the infiltration of the Greek doctrine of the immortality of the soul apostate Christians transferred paradise from earth to heaven and abandoned the original millennial hope. Confirming this, The Encyclopædia Britannica (1977) admits: “The influence of Greek thought upon Christian theology undermined the millenarian world view.”

NEOPLATONISM REPLACES THE MILLENNIAL HOPE

The millennial hope was, therefore, a victim of the apostasy. Its enemies stopped at nothing to combat it. Listing the adversaries of millennialism, the Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique says of Roman priest Caius (end of second century, beginning of third) that “in order to conquer millennialism he unequivocally denied the authenticity of the Apocalypse [Revelation] and of the Gospel of St. John.” This same authoritative Catholic reference work also reveals that “Saint” Dionysius, third-century bishop of Alexandria, wrote a treatise against millennialism, and, “in order to prevent those who adhered to this opinion from basing their belief on the Apocalypse of Saint John, did not hesitate to deny its authenticity.”

We further learn in that 15-volume Catholic dictionary that third-century “Church Father” Origen condemned those who believed in the earthly blessings of the millennium because they “interpret the Scriptures like the Jews.” Why else was Origen so opposed to millennialism? The Catholic Encyclopedia informs us: “In view of the Neo-Platonism on which his doctrines were founded . . . , he [Origen] could not side with the millenarians.” Sharing Plato’s belief in the inherent immortality of the soul, Origen was obliged to transfer the earthly blessings of the 1,000-year Messianic reign to the spiritual sphere.

AUGUSTINE DECIDES THAT “THERE WILL BE NO MILLENNIUM”

But the man who gave the coup de grace to the millennial hope for Catholics and even Protestants was doubtless “Saint” Augustine, described by The Encyclopædia Britannica as “the greatest thinker of Christian antiquity” and “the crucible in which the religion of the New Testament was most completely fused with the Platonic tradition of Greek philosophy.” Augustine came out energetically against the original hope of paradise restored on earth during the 1,000-year reign of Christ. To quote The Catholic Encyclopedia: “St. Augustine finally held to the conviction that there will be no millennium. . . . the great Doctor . . . gives us an allegorical explanation of Chap. 20 of the Apocalypse. The first resurrection, of which this chapter treats, he tells us, refers to the spiritual rebirth in baptism; the sabbath of one thousand years after the six thousand years of history, is the whole of eternal life . . . This explanation of the illustrious Doctor was adopted by succeeding Western theologians, and millenarianism in its earlier shape no longer received support.”

Not only have Catholics thus been robbed of the original, Scriptural millennial hope, but so have Protestants. The 1977 Britannica Macropædia reveals: “Augustine’s allegorical millennialism became the official doctrine of the church, and apocalypticism [expectation of the ultimate destruction of evil and triumph of good] went underground. . . . The Protestant Reformers of the Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican traditions were not apocalypticists but remained firmly attached to the views of Augustine.”

Catholic and Protestant theologians mistakenly apply to all the righteous the heavenly hope held out in the Bible to a limited number of Christians called to rule with Christ as kings, priests and judges. (Rev. 20:4-6; Luke 22:28-30) These theologians offer their “faithful” a vague hope of “eternal felicity” in heaven. God’s purpose to have his will “done in earth, as it is in heaven” is totally absent from their expectations. (Matt. 6:10, Authorized Version)

1. (a) How does Christendom speak of the millennial hope? (b) Why are Jehovah’s Witnesses not disturbed by this?

THE Roman Catholic Church and, indeed, most of the large, well-established Protestant religions never mention the millennial hope to churchgoers. They speak disdainfully of that hope as “millennialism,” and of those who share it as “millenarians.”