Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about what the early Christians believed about the millennium and about the rapture. We'll be talking about what they believed about the return of Christ, about the resurrection of the dead. Will the dead be resurrected and then go straight to heaven, or will they stay here on earth for a thousand years to reign as kings here on the earth? Will the last judgment occur right immediately after the resurrection, or will it be at the end of a millennium?
Now, today there would be a variety of views on this subject among professing Christians, and we're going to see that in the time of the early church, that is, from the period, say, about 100 to 300, there were two distinct views on this subject. And I think one reason why there has not been a uniform belief on the millennium is that it all turns on interpreting one small passage of scripture. That's Revelation 20, verses 1 through 6. Let me just read that to you.
There we read, "Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who was the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. And he cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal on him so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while.
And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgments were committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. But the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished." This is the first resurrection.
Now, on most subjects, such as what did the early Christians believe about salvation or life after death or trinity or just about any subject, baptism, there are quite a few scripture passages that we have to look at. But when we talk about the millennium, this is it. One passage. Now, based on this passage, there are some other prophecies from the Old Testament and some maybe references in the New Testament that we can glean out.
But this is the only passage that talks specifically about a thousand years and when it would occur. Now, two of the terms that we are familiar with today are millennium, and you may not be familiar with the term chiliasm. It's used very often in theological works, and they both refer to this thousand years. The millennium comes directly from Latin, mille, meaning a thousand, and annum, years. A thousand years, that's where we get the word millennium. Chiliasm comes from the Greek for a thousand years.
So the terms could be used interchangeably, although what I've generally seen is that millennium or millennialism is usually used in a good way by people, for example, evangelicals and others who would believe in a literal thousand years. In contrast, chiliasm is usually used in a pejorative sense, that is, derogatorily. Today, I think in general, at least among the main bodies of Christendom, there are three large camps on the subject of the millennium.
Among evangelicals, I think the vast majority would be premillennialists, and that is, they believe there will be a literal 1,000-year reign here on the earth. But first, the church will be raptured. And so born-again Christians will be gone. They won't be part of this, but the rest of mankind will be left here on the earth, and Israel will be restored as God's people and kind of be returning to the Old Testament, in a sense, back to the Mosaic law and all of that.
And this is very closely tied in or is part of dispensationalism or scofieldism. And like I say, among evangelicals, that's definitely the predominant view. Now, a view I come across less today, but it would be common in the more liberal camps, would be the amillennialists. They would believe there is no literal 1,000-year reign. When Christ returns, it will be time for the last judgment.
So they would believe that Revelation 20 either refers to conditions in heaven; it's purely allegorical, or that it's referring to Christ's present reign among his followers, and it's being used in a spiritual sense there, and the thousand years is not literal. Okay, so that's the amillennialist view. The third category are the post-millennialists, and they're sort of between the two camps of premillennialism and amillennialism.
They see the kingdom of God being ushered here on the earth, but they believe that it will come about gradually as more people are converted to Christ and that we have a hand, we Christians, in bringing it about. They believe that the church will have greater influence on society and mankind will become more peaceful and godly. And they would feel the thousand years is not necessarily literally 1,000 years.
Now, that would have been a very common view a few centuries ago, particularly among Calvinists, such as the Puritans, and you will still see this view in Calvinistic camps today, but it's not as popular as it was a few centuries ago. So which camp did the early Christians fall into? Well, there were actually two camps, even as far back as the second or at least the third century. I think the main camp of the early Christians, certainly in the second century, could be described as millennialism.
And I use that word rather than premillennialism because today, when you use the word premillennial, it, I think, always refers to what I would refer to as scofieldism. All of this prophecy about Israel and the rapture and all of that, and that is not a view of any of the early Christians.
So they were not premillennialists in the modern sense of the term, but they did believe that there was a coming millennium of a thousand years, that it had not yet come and that it wasn't a spiritual thing, that it was a literal thing. But their concept of it was very different from the picture that is painted today. The picture that's painted today by premillennialists, if I have this correctly, is when Christ returns, the church will be immediately raptured.
And some would say this is before the start of the great tribulation. Others say it's during it, and others would say, "No, it's after the great tribulation." The Christians go through the tribulation, but then they're raptured at the end of it, and they go on to heaven, and everyone else is in heaven already under modern Christian theology.
Now, to understand what the early Christians believed, it would be a tremendous help if you've already heard the message on what they believed about life after death because this ties into that. But in case you haven't heard that message, basically what they believed was that all of the dead, the good and the bad, wait in Hades. And Hades is not the modern concept of hell. It was a place, a temporary abode of the dead, the dead souls, that is.
And the righteous in Hades live in paradise or Abraham's bosom, and the wicked are in the lower regions of Hades. And again, I will refer you to the message that I've previously made on that subject. So where the millennium comes in, the early Christians believed that during the great tribulation, I think we could say they were probably mid-tribulation, although certainly not dogmatic, the church on the earth at that time are raptured.
They're delivered in the middle of the great tribulation, and that the dead Christians, that the faith, not just the Christians, but the faithful, the righteous of old, along with the Christians, would be raised from the dead.
Now, they're not real specific as to what happens to the rest of the people on the earth, but it sounds to me from reading their writings, at least how I'm grasping it, is that at the return of Christ, well, there's all this chaos and killing on the earth, and that he brings all of these earthly governments to an end and establishes his kingdom. Now, I'm not sure if that means he destroys all of the wicked at that time. It may well mean that, or if they're allowed to be on earth during the thousand-year reign.
But it sounds to me that they believe that all of the wicked would be done away with, so that during this thousand years, the only ones on the earth are the righteous, either those who were raptured right at the end or Christians who had already died or faithful Jews, Gentiles, patriarchs of old, all who were true worshipers of God. And that they would compose the nations. It says there in Revelation 20, verse 3, that Satan was cast into the abyss so he couldn't mislead the nations anymore.
Well, these nations would be the great multitude of people. Revelation describes them as a great crowd that no man could number. The nations would refer to these, that there will be government and organization during that time period, but the rulers will be the righteous under the direction of Jesus Christ. And then during this time, the earth will return to its original mandate.
We get back to the Garden of Eden, that the earth will produce in much greater abundance than it does today with a lot less toil, and there won't be any death or sickness. Well, the only sin would be, if there is any, would be ones committed by the righteous, but I don't think that's even envisioned, that we would be here on the earth during a time of complete righteousness. Wickedness would not prevail at all.
Then at the end of the thousand years, Satan is let loose and tries to tempt mankind again, those who are there. Now, also at the end of the thousand years, the rest of the dead are resurrected according to Revelation. And again, it's not real clear exactly the timetable here, if Satan is let loose right before the general resurrection or right after it, but somewhere very shortly after he's let loose, then we have the time of judgment for the dead.
And then it would be at that point that the righteous would go on to heaven, and I guess it would be a final testing done by Satan before they finally go to heaven. Again, no early Christian would have been dogmatic on any one of those particular points, and nobody has spelled it out in such great detail that I can tell you with absolute certainty this is what they were thinking.
And that's why I've hesitated a little bit as I'm explaining this or saying, "Or it seems to me," because they were simply not dogmatic about the subject. And I find it very laughable that the multitude of books that are written today by all of these people, usually graduates of Dallas Theological Seminary, who have every little detail mapped out, and it's going to be exactly like this and exactly like that, and this is what's going to happen. And the early Christians didn't believe any of that.
And I'm certainly broad enough-minded to say, "Hey, maybe the early Christians had it wrong, and today's prophets or believers have it right." I think that's possible, but I think it's highly unlikely, number one. And number two, if they were meek enough to say, "Look, we don't really know exactly how all of this fits in," I think we should have that same humility. And I think it's very laughable to write books like it's all mapped out because all we have is this passage in Revelation.
We don't have a lot of other passages that give us collateral support so that we can say, "Okay, we've got the testimony of two, three, or four scriptural witnesses." And so what today's premillennialists do, they grab a verse way over here in, say, Daniel, and then they grab another one over here from Zephaniah or Zechariah or some other passage, maybe Isaiah, and then they grab something from Revelation and from this part of Revelation, then over here from that part, and they build this hodgepodge, which is fine
if they were saying, "Boy, this is just a speculation, and who knows what it would be." But no, I mean, they act like it's some kind of detailed roadmap that God has set out in the scriptures, and he hasn't.
Now, some of the verses, in addition to Revelation 20 that the early Christians relied upon, were Isaiah, for example, Isaiah 11, verses 6 through 9, where we read, "The wolf also will dwell with the lamb. The leopard will lie down with the young goat, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child will lead them. The cow and the bear will graze.
Their young ones will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox." Now, the early Christians did believe there was a figurative or allegorical fulfillment of that prophecy in the church, that you had people who were formerly vicious coming together with people who were meek and all dwelling together because they had beat their swords into their plowshares and their spears into their pruning hooks, another prophecy from both Isaiah and Micah, and that people of different races who had formerly hated
each other or people of different nationalities all came together and were brothers in Christ.
And I do think that is a fulfillment of this prophecy, but many of the early Christians believed there would be a second literal fulfillment of it, and this would take place during the millennium described in Revelation. They also relied on Matthew 5, verse 5, "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." And they said, "Well, obviously the meek aren't inheriting the earth today, and it doesn't say they're going to inherit heaven.
It says the earth." And so the meek would have a time when they would reign here on the earth. Now, obviously, that's not the only interpretation you could give Matthew 5, verse 5, but it's obviously a reasonable one.
And then you have Matthew 26, verse 29, where Jesus says, "But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now until the day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." And many of the early Christians understood that literally, during the millennium, that Jesus would be here on the earth and they would drink wine. Others said, "No, you're looking at this too carnally. That's a spiritual fulfillment in heaven." So, as I've said, you've got two different views.
The majority view, it looks like in the second century, in fact, the vast majority seem to have held to this view of millennialism. Others, I think we could describe as amillennialists. They saw the fulfillment of Christ's reign during and in the church, and then a greater fulfillment in heaven where these things would be fulfilled, but it would all be in heaven in a spirit sense, not in a physical carnal sense.
But unlike Christians during some of the last few centuries, the early Christians didn't fight and quarrel about this. They didn't break up into numerous sects based on this. They didn't start new denominations based on their view of the millennialism. They lived together in peace and unity, even though they had differing views on the subject. Well, I think I've talked enough about what they believe. Let me now read to you some passages from their work so you can hear it straight from the horse's mouth.
The first one is from Papias. You probably, if you've listened to a number of my messages, you've probably never heard me quote from Papias before because his writings have been lost. Hopefully, they will be recovered someday. They may be out there buried somewhere in the desert somewhere in the Middle East or maybe in a clay jar in a monastery somewhere that has been overlooked for centuries. Who knows?
But I think it will be a valuable find for Christianity when his works are discovered because he lived very close to the time of the apostles. In fact, according to Irenaeus, Papias heard John preach, and of course, John wrote the book of Revelation. And definitely, Papias, the little bit that we have, we have a fragment of his writings because Eusebius and Irenaeus both quote from Papias, and so we have those quotations, and they've preserved at least that part of Papias for us.
And in the little bit of fragments we have, Papias mentions that he wanted to not only read the works written by the apostles but to talk with people who heard the apostles preach so he could get the insights from people who had actually had the opportunity to ask questions to John or Paul or that sort of thing. And anyway, Papias definitely believed in a literal millennium, and he talked in quite detail about some of the things that would happen there.
For example, he writes, "The days will come in which vines, having 10,000 branches, will grow. In each branch, there will be 10,000 twigs, and in each shoot, there will be 10,000 clusters. Each cluster will have 10,000 grapes, and every grape will give 25 metres of wine when pressed. In like manner, a grain of wheat will produce 10,000 ears." And Irenaeus preserved for us that quote. Well, that's certainly speculation on the part of Papias.
The scriptures say nothing about that, but at least we can see that he definitely believed in a literal millennium. And Eusebius mentions this too. He says, "Among these things, Papias says that there will be a millennium after the resurrection from the dead when the personal reign of Christ will be established on this earth." Now, Eusebius did not believe in a literal millennium, so his quoting Papias is quite reliable.
Normally, if you quote somebody, particularly an early witness, for a position that's contrary to yours, I think we can feel pretty safe that Papias actually believed this because Eusebius would have had no reason to make it up. It weakens Eusebius's own position.
Justin Martyr writes, "There was a certain man with us whose name was John, one of the apostles of Christ, who prophesied by a revelation that was made to him that those who believed in our Christ would dwell a thousand years in Jerusalem." So here we have reference of a restored Jerusalem, and that is again based on passages in Revelation. And he says it would be those who believed in our Christ would dwell a thousand years.
He makes no mention of unbelievers being around in the millennium, and he makes no mention of fleshly Jews who did not believe in Christ being around. Now, Justin Martyr was from Palestine, but he moved to Rome where he served as an evangelist. And he wrote this: one of his works was an apologetic work to Jews, explaining Christianity to the Jews. And he says this: it's written as a dialogue, and maybe it records an actual dialogue that he had with a Jew.
The Jew says this: "Do you really admit that this place, Jerusalem, is to be rebuilt? Do you expect your people to be gathered together and made joyful with Christ, the patriarchs and the prophets, both the men of our nation and other proselytes who joined them before your Christ came?" And Justin replies, "I admitted to you formerly that I and many others are of this opinion and believe that such will take place. Of this, you assuredly are aware.
On the other hand, I indicated to you that many who belong to the pure and pious faith and are true Christians think otherwise." That statement stuck with me the first time I read it, which was about 17 years ago.
Being raised in a sect that was extremely dogmatic and attending a fundamentalist church that was likewise dogmatic, it was so refreshing to hear a Bible-believing Christian, a man who died as a martyr for Christ, to be so generous towards his fellow believers who had a different view than him on the subject of the millennium. Instead of calling them heretics or others who are in error, say this.
He says, "Others who are true and pious Christians, they believe otherwise." He doesn't even say that his position is the majority view, although if he's meaning the view of a literal millennium, it's certainly the majority view of the writers that we have from the second century. In fact, I haven't found a single writer from the second century who says there won't be a millennium. I have not seen an amillennialist view from any second-century writer.
Now, I'm not sure if he's saying that there are true Christians who don't believe in a millennium at all, which is how I originally took this, but others have pointed out to me, "Well, maybe, David, maybe what he's saying is that there are other Christians who don't believe that Jerusalem will be literally rebuilt and that these people will reside in Jerusalem. Maybe everybody believed in a millennium in his day." And that's possible. Like I say, we don't have any witnesses to a different view.
Let's go to another writer, Theophilus, who lived in the Mid East and wrote, "Therefore, when man will have made his way back to his natural condition and no longer does evil, the animals will also be restored to their original gentleness." So he believed in some sort of literal millennium. I guess you could quote Theophilus for either the post-millennial view that mankind will gradually grow well or for the millennialist view that this will be after Christ's return.
Let me give you some of the citations of these passages if you'd like to do a little digging on your own. The one from Irenaeus where he quotes Papias is volume one, pages 153 and 154. Justin Martyr's quotes are in volume one, page 239 and 240, and Theophilus is in volume two, page 101. These are from the Ante-Nicene Fathers. And Justin, I think you're probably aware, he wrote about the year 150 or 160. Theophilus wrote about the year 180.
All right, let me reach you now from Irenaeus, who also wrote about the year 180. And he was living in Gaul at his friends, but he was from the Mid East. I mentioned these ones from the Mid East because that is where the apostles had their primary ministry, was in the Mid East. The apostle did travel to other lands, and the gospel got taken all over the Mediterranean world, but it began in the Mid East.
And the apostle John, who lived the longest of all of the apostles, his ministry was, I think, exclusively to the Mid East, and he settled down in the area around Ephesus in what was called Asia Minor by the Romans.
And so the fact that the people from the Mid East, the writers from the Mid East, all seem to believe in this literal millennium, I think is significant because the Greeks were very prone to allegorize things, and it may be that it's from the Greek thinkers that the view that this couldn't be literal came in. But I don't know that. That's a possibility anyway.
But now, reading from Irenaeus, he says this: "It is fitting for the righteous to be the first to receive the promise of the inheritance that God promised to the fathers. It is fitting for them to reign in it when they rise again to behold God in this creation that will have been renovated." All right? So again, he only mentions the righteous. He doesn't have any reference that there will be worldly godless nations on the earth at that time, only nations of believers.
He says, "It is fitting that the judgment should take place afterwards," that's at the end of the thousand years, "for it is in that very same creation in which they toiled or were afflicted, being tested in every way by suffering, they will receive the reward of their suffering.
It is fitting therefore that the creation itself, being restored to its pristine condition, should be under the dominion of the righteous without restraint." So he's saying since the battle that we have fought, the spiritual battle we have fought, was fought here on the earth, it'd be so fitting that our initial reward is here on the earth, that we went through sorrows here on the earth, not all believers, certainly, but very many of them, both in the Old Testament times and in the New Testament and the early
church period, that they would get to enjoy righteous living here on the earth and that the earth would return to the very purpose that God originally had for it, that the curse that God put on the ground after Adam and Eve's fall would be removed.
Now, again, he's not dogmatic saying it has to be this way. He's just saying it's fitting, and it does seem to be what Revelation is saying there. I think Revelation is pretty clear on its timetable that the first resurrection takes place. These are the righteous, and it's not until after the thousand years that then the rest of the dead are brought to life, and then the judgment follows that. Irenaeus writes this again: "Now God made promise of the earth to Abraham and his seed.
Yet neither Abraham nor his seed, that is, those who are justified by faith, presently receive any inheritance in it. Therefore, they will receive it at the resurrection of the just, for God is true and faithful.
For this reason," he said, "blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." And then again, from Irenaeus, he says, quoting Jesus, "I will not drink henceforth of the fruit of this vine until that day when I will drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." And Irenaeus says, "Therefore, Christ will himself renew the inheritance of the earth, for he cannot by any means be understood as drinking of the fruit of the vine when settled down with his disciples above in a heavenly place." Those quotes you can
find in volume one, page 561 and 562 of the early Christian writings.
I think Irenaeus probably has the lengthiest passages about the millennium, but he certainly isn't the only one who talked about it or taught concerning it. And we're going to see in a minute that he indicates that this is what Polycarp believed. Now, Polycarp was the man who had discipled Irenaeus when he was young, and Polycarp was a personal disciple of the apostle John. In fact, he was ordained as an overseer or bishop either by John or by other of the apostles.
And so if Polycarp believed in a literal millennium, there's certainly a good possibility that John believed in a literal millennium, John who received this revelation. Now, of course, at the same time, I think it's quite possible that John maybe had a private view on this, but God did not reveal to him the fulfillment of this, whether it was literal or spiritual. And so even though Revelation is inspired, John's conjecture as to what Revelation means would not have been necessarily inspired.
All right, let me read to you some more then from Irenaeus. He says, "The predicted blessing, therefore, belongs unquestionably to the times of the kingdom when the righteous will bear rule after the rising from the dead. It is also the time when the creation will bear fruit with an abundance of all kinds of food, having been renovated and set free. And all of the animals will feed on the vegetation of the earth.
They will become peaceful and harmonious among each other, and they will be in perfect subjection to man. And these things are borne witness to in the fourth book of the writings of Papias, the hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp." And that's in volume one, pages 562 and 563. Well, let me read to you one more quote from Irenaeus. It's in volume one, page 563. It says, "Isaiah says the wolf also will feed with the lamb, and the leopard will take his rest with the kid.
I am quite aware that some persons attempt to apply these words to the situation of savage men, both of different nations and various habits who come to believe. For when they have believed, they act in harmony with the righteous. And this is presently true with regard to some men coming from various nations to the harmony of the faith.
Nevertheless, in the resurrection of the just," talking about this prophecy, "it applies to those animals mentioned, and it is right that when the creation is restored, all the animals should obey and be subject to man and revert to the food originally given by God." So Irenaeus's picture of this, which apparently was the same view of Papias and Polycarp, and I would say of Justin Martyr and the other ones we've read, is again, Christ returns.
At his return, the faithful are raptured, and the dead are resurrected, and the wicked are destroyed here on the earth. All right, then before Christ takes his followers and the faithful men and women of old to heaven, they live for a literal thousand years here on the earth. The curse that was placed on the earth after Adam's sin is taken away. The earth produces enormous food and vegetation. The animals are at peace with one another, are totally subject to man, and all of the wicked are out of the way.
And at the end of the thousand years, then the rest of the dead are resurrected. Satan is let loose, who is bound during this thousand years, he and his demons. There's a final test, and then everybody stands before the judgment seat of God, and the faithful then go on to heaven at that time. And I think it's a beautiful picture. It's a wonderful thought that the earth can be restored and that we can at least experience life here on the earth the way it was in the Garden of Eden.
But again, I wouldn't be dogmatic about it, although I think this does seem to fit exactly what Revelation is saying. Tertullian wrote, "On the other hand, there is to be an end of evil when the chief of evil, the devil, will go away into the fire that God has prepared for him and his angels, having first been cast into the bottomless pit. Likewise, at that time, the manifestation of the children of God will have delivered the animals from evil, for they had been made subject to vanity.
At that time, the cattle will be restored in the innocence and integrity of their nature and will be at peace with beasts of the field. At that time also, little children will play with serpents." So here's Tertullian. He has the same understanding. He writes again, that was in volume three, page 483. This next one is in volume three, page 342, where he says, "We do confess that a kingdom is promised to us upon the earth, although before heaven.
Only it will be in another state of existence, for it will be after the resurrection for a thousand years in the divinely built city of Jerusalem let down from heaven." Now, are you able now to see how primitive millennialism differs from the Scofield premillennialism of today? I mean, in both of them, you have a literal thousand-year reign, but their concept of it is very, very different.
In modern-day Scofieldism or dispensationalism, whatever term you want to use, like say the righteous are raptured and they go up to heaven. And because modern-day Christians have a wrong concept of the resurrection, the righteous who've died in the past are already in heaven anyway. And of course, they're already in heaven. It would be kind of silly to come down and reign on the earth. And so the millennium isn't any kind of wonderful, necessarily wonderful time here on the earth at all.
In fact, there's all these books written about left behind and things like that where they imagine that the rapture is going to take place, but then earth life here on the earth continues on, and then everything centers on the fleshly nation of Israel. Well, see, none of the early Christian writers talk about fleshly Israel at all. To them, the seed of Abraham are all of the faithful, Jew and Gentile alike, who have served God and have loved God.
And these are the ones who will be living on the earth, not the wicked. And Jerusalem isn't the fleshly Jerusalem we see today because Revelation says it's going to be let down out of heaven. So there's going to be a whole new Jerusalem if that part of Revelation is literal, not a continuation of the present-day city. And again, the nations are gone. The nations talked about in Revelation are the nations of all of the righteous who dwell here on the earth because there will be government.
Christians today stay out of government. They don't try to run things here on the earth. But in the millennium, then Christians will be running things because their subjects will all be Christians or believers as well. And this fits almost everything else I've told you about the early church. If you want to know what they believe, go to the scriptures, give the applications a very literal meaning, and invariably that's what the early Christian view is. And the millennium is no exception.
The only difference on it is that in this case, we are having to rely upon Revelation, which is obviously a book written in highly figurative and apocalyptic language. And so the early Christians did not always view prophecy, prophetic language as being fulfilled literally. Now, I would encourage you, if you haven't already done so, to listen to the recordings that I have on what the early Christians believed about Israel because it ties in so much with the millennium.
If you don't have a proper biblical concept of Israel, then you're not going to have one of the millennium either. Anyway, I was saying because we're having to depend upon either Old Testament prophecies or books like Revelation, not all of the early Christians took all of these passages literally. And Justin Martyr makes mention of that either concerning the whole millennium or at least concerning Jerusalem being a literal city again. But in the third century, you find a shift largely because of Origen.
Origen felt that just about every passage of scripture could be read on the literal level, then also on the moral level, that there was a teaching, a purpose there, and also on an allegorical level. But he tended to take these passages in Revelation as only being allegorical. And so he scoffed at the idea that there would be a literal millennium. To him, it was too carnal that Christians had their minds in the wrong places.
Now, he certainly didn't think it was heresy, and he may have been in a small minority, I don't know. But anyway, he wrote this. This is about the year 225. Certain persons adopting a superficial view of the letter of the law are of the opinion that the fulfillment of the promises of the future are to be looked for in bodily pleasure and luxury.
Therefore, they especially desire after the resurrection to have again bodies that will always have the power of eating, drinking, and performing all the functions of flesh and blood. Consequently, they say that after the resurrection, there will be marriages and the beginning of children. They imagine to themselves that the earthly city of Jerusalem is to be rebuilt, its foundations being laid in precious stones.
Moreover, they think that the natives of other countries are to be given them as the servants of their pleasures. They think that they are to receive the wealth of the nations to live on. These views, they think, to establish on the authority of the prophets by those promises that are written regarding Jerusalem.
And from the New Testament too, they quote the saying of the Savior, "Henceforth, I will not drink of this cup until I drink it with you new in my Father's kingdom." He continues, "These people desire the fulfillment of all things looked for in the promises, all according to the manner of things in this life and in all similar matters.
However, those who receive the interpretation of scripture according to the understanding of the apostles entertain the hope that the saints will indeed eat, but that it will be the bread of life that can nourish the soul with the food of truth and wisdom." It's in volume four, page 297.
Now, I'm not sure if Origen is directing his comments towards the orthodox Christians who believed in the millennium or if he's talking about some of the break-off groups, some of which were led by false teachers who went to a rather carnal extreme. And I think that's who he's talking about here.
Now, some of these false teachers who taught about the millennium, they had it the way he describes that the Christians would rule the earth from Jerusalem, that you would still have the pagan nations around, and they would be the servants of the Christians. And they would describe all of these very fleshly pleasures during the millennium of having as many wives as you want, almost like the Muslim concept of paradise, something like that. And I think that's who Origen is directing his comments to.
But on the other hand, it's obvious that Origen likewise did not believe there would be a literal millennium at all. He would have been definitely an amillennialist. And certainly, there were a number of Christians in the third century who were amillennialists, and they may well have been around in the second century. We can't be certain on that point. On the other hand, there are still plenty of writers in the third century.
I'm not going to read to you any more, but Hippolytus, Methodius, and Lactantius all were men and church leaders who believed in a literal millennium. So then what happened to this view? Why did it disappear if this was the original view of the church? Well, it's because of what happened with the rise of Constantine. Now, Constantine himself, that I'm aware of, had no intervention in anything to say about the millennium. But the circumstances of the day changed the view of Christians.
Of course, you already had the influence of Origen, who was certainly viewed with a lot of respect at the time of Constantine in the early 300s. But even greater, you now had a situation that made it look like, well, these expectations of the great tribulation and all of this aren't going to happen because now Christians aren't persecuted anymore, and now they're the ones running everything.
In fact, 50 years after Constantine or after the Council of Nicaea, I should say, Christianity became the state religion, and pagan worship wasn't even allowed any longer. So you get again in the fourth century, and you find writers like Eusebius and Jerome and Ambrose all tended to view millennialism as a heresy, and not as a heresy that you should be put out of the church, but that it was false teaching. At a minimum, they viewed Christians who believed this literally as just being ignorant.
And yet, in the case of Eusebius and Jerome too, he was a historian, and I'm sure Ambrose had read the works of the men before him. I mean, they had to have known that this was the predominant view or maybe the sole view in the second century. So why would they come up with a different view? Oh, it's because they thought God was giving them additional light.
And looking at the circumstances around them, they thought that they could guess where things were going, and they lived in an age of new spiritual enlightenment. And nobody epitomized that view more than Augustine. I mean, he almost single-handedly rewrote the entire Christian faith.
And he had such an influence on the Western church, not so much on the East, but on the West, he had an enormous influence and so many concepts that became just accepted norms within the Roman Catholic Church and, to a large degree, accepted norms for the Reformers. You'll find their origin was in Augustine, that it's not what primitive Christians had believed before his time.
On the subject of the millennium, Augustine taught that the verses in Revelation were to be understood allegorically and that the millennium referred to the church in which Christ reigned with his saints. Because now, in his day, you had the saints—well, I hate to call them saints—you had professing Christians actually ruling, and pagans were then subject to them. And this was still Rome, the mightiest empire on earth. Of course, they didn't last very long.
In fact, during Augustine's own lifetime, Rome was sacked by the Vandals. But anyway, because of Augustine's influence, this became the official view of the Roman Catholic Church that the millennium referred to the reign of the church, which in their eyes was something righteous. I think in the eyes of nearly everyone today, looking back at the history of the Middle Ages, we would see it as anything but a righteous or godly reign.
But anyway, after the time of Augustine, at least in the West, the only ones you find who believed in a literal millennium were usually little splinter groups, either within the Roman Catholic Church or groups that had left the church. And the millennium wasn't really an issue to the first generation of Reformers, so they pretty well just carried on Augustine's view.
Now, there were some small groups like the ones at Munster who looked for a literal millennium to come in, but these were groups who usually had apocalyptic theology. They thought the end was right at hand, and they thought that they were going to get ready to rule, that they could even usher in the millennium. And another example besides Munster would have been the group that were known as the Fifth Monarchists who were around in England during the time of Oliver Cromwell. This is in the middle 1600s.
And with the successful civil war in England that brought the Puritans into power, they thought, "Okay, this is it. We're now going to institute the reign of Christ on earth." They were called the Fifth Monarchy because they looked at Revelation that talked about the four monarchies of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, and then the fifth one was going to be God's rule. And so they thought, "This is it. God's rule is coming right now." And of course, history proved them wrong.
But in general, the Puritan view and the view that became predominant in reformed churches, that is, churches that grew out of Calvin's theology, was a post-millennial view. We're going to usher in God's kingdom here on the earth. And that's exactly what the Puritans tried to do, both in England and in New England, and in both places they failed. Now, during the 1700s, there were a few groups who believed in a literal millennium, but again, Augustine's views tended to predominate.
It wasn't until the 1800s that there was an explosion of interest in a literal millennium. And you find this in groups that started new sects, such as the Adventists or Jehovah's Witnesses, for example. And then in the late 1800s, you had John Darby who came up with a theology that is what is today known as dispensationalism or sometimes called Scofieldism after the Scofield Reference Bible that ties various passages in the Bible to this whole somewhat fanciful scheme.
Now, again, I think John Darby had the right to speculate on this, and I certainly can't say that his view is wrong and the early Christian view is right. As I said before, I don't think it's very likely. But it was with that, and he wasn't the only one teaching this, but he's the one who really got it concrete in a systematic theology. And he coupled it with the new rise of Zionism among Christians and among Jews of reestablishing Israel in the Middle East.
And I go into more detail on that in my message on what the early Christians believed about Israel. And anyway, that brings us to today where it seems like most evangelical Christians, and they've tended to influence a lot of other Bible-believing Christians, believe in a literal millennium, which I think is good. I'm glad to see that the church has returned to that doctrine.
But like I say, now it's tied in with the speculation about Israel and really the teachings of premillennialism sounds more like some of those sects that Origen talks about who have such a carnal interpretation put on everything and that all these wicked nations are going to be around and the righteous are going to be ruling over them. Well, the wonderful thing about the subject of the millennium is that what's going to happen is going to happen regardless of what you or I predict.
If the premillennialists of today are correct, then they're correct. That's what will happen. And the fact that someone doesn't believe in it isn't going to alter it. On the other hand, if that's not God's plan, then it's not going to happen no matter how many books are written and how many people come to adopt that viewpoint. But the key is that none of this should have anything to do with our relationship with Christ or our walk with Christ.
Whether the millennium is literal or not, we know there are promised wonderful rewards ahead of us, and we know that heaven is eventually ahead of us, whether there will be an intervening millennium or not. And over that, I rejoice.
You're probably thinking, "Well, David, this was supposed to be a discussion of the millennium and the rapture, and your time's about out, and you haven't said a word about the rapture except just a little bit." Well, the reason is because the early Christians haven't said very much about the rapture. Now, what is known today as the rapture is based on a passage in 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 15 through 17.
And one reason there's not a lot written by the early Christians is because there's not written in the scriptures about it. They focused on subjects where there's a lot of scriptural discussion. They didn't major on little minor passages. Today, it seems like Christians want to focus on little passages where you don't have a lot of corroborating scriptures and therefore are easily to misinterpret, and they ignore passages where there is a volume of scriptural witness.
Anyway, let me read to you 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 15 through 17, where Paul says, "We who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air." Well, if you want to know what the early Christians believe about that passage, the answer is they believe exactly what that passage says and nothing more. Christ is going to descend from heaven at the end. The dead in Christ will rise first, whether this means just dead Christians or, as I think it means, all believers from all time, that those who have awaited in paradise will be believers in Christ.
They will receive the full gospel message, that they're going to be resurrected, and just immediately after that, the righteous who are here on the earth will rise, as he says, caught up and will meet the Lord in the air. I mean, they believe that very literally. I mean, that's exactly what the scripture says. What else can you believe unless you're going to not believe the scriptures? But see, that's all the passage says.
It doesn't say anything about, "Oh, then they all go on straight to heaven." It doesn't say that. Now, maybe that's what happens, but the passage doesn't say that. It says we're going to meet him in the air. It didn't say we're going to meet him up in heaven. So, as I've spoken to you, it seems like the primitive Christians understood there would be the rapture, and then they all settled here on the earth and live here on the earth for a thousand years.
For example, I'll read to you from Irenaeus, volume 1, page 558. "When in the end, the church will suddenly be caught up from this, it is said there will be tribulations such as not been since the beginning, nor will be. For this is the last contest of the righteous. When they overcome in this contest, they are crowned with incorruption." So, Irenaeus understood the rapture to figure in with the great tribulation that Jesus talked about and the tribulation spoken of in the book of Revelation.
Tertullian wrote in volume 3, page 455, "In the crisis of the last moment and from their instantaneous death while encountering the oppression of the Antichrist, these persons will also undergo a change. They obtain thereby not so much a divestiture of the body as a clothing superimposed upon it without the garment that is from heaven. These persons will put on this heavenly garment over their bodies. Meanwhile, the dead, for their part, will also recover their bodies.
Over their bodies, they too have a garment to put on, the incorruption of heaven. The one group puts on this apparel when they recover their bodies. The others put it on as overcoats, for indeed, they hardly lose their bodies." In another passage, Tertullian wrote in volume 3, page 575, "Before we put off the garment of the flesh, we wish to be clothed with the celestial glory of immortality. Now, the privilege of this favor awaits those who are found in the flesh at the coming of the Lord.
These, owing to the oppression of the times of the Antichrist, deserve by an instantaneous death, which is accomplished by a sudden change, to become qualified to join the rising saints." Paul writes of this to the Thessalonians. So, I think the early Christian view of the rapture would not be remarkably different from the concept most Bible-believing Christians have today, other than they don't necessarily go to heaven at that point.
That the majority view would have been that they stay on the earth and reign here in a paradise for a thousand years. But they do understand that it takes place at the time of the great tribulation. Well, were they pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib? It sounds like from those passages that the early Christians, or at least the ones who wrote about it, who speculated on it, were mid-trib.
It sounds like certainly none of them thought they would be raptured before tribulation because they were enduring horrible persecution during the time when they lived. So, they hardly thought it likely that they would be taken from the earth right when the great challenge came of the Antichrist.
But they did think that many believers would be slain by the Antichrist and that others, as Tertullian puts, it's sort of an instantaneous death where they're taken up away from the earth and receive a different body, or he views it as a spiritual, a heavenly body, a body of immortality is put on over their fleshly body. The only thing I think we need to be focusing on, though, is not debating about, is this pre-trib, post-trib, or even debating whether it would be a literal millennium or not.
It's where will we be when Christ returns? Because we could have all of this figured out exactly, and yet when he returns, we're not one of the ones that are raptured or we're not one of the ones who are resurrected. But rather, we are among the lost because we focused on sensational books about end times, and we didn't focus on our relationship with Jesus Christ and our faithful walk with him.
Because whether or not we go straight to heaven or we live on earth for a thousand years, if we don't belong to Jesus Christ, we won't be doing either. We'll be one of the ones eventually thrown into the lake of fire. So, as Paul said, "Beware, lest you who think you are standing should fall."