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Updated: June 23, 2025
The other, from without, was the spiritual ferment of the age, the multiplication of strange sects, Quakers, Free-Willers, Ranters, Anabaptists, Millenarians, and the untempered zeal of all classes, like an engine without a balance wheel, when men were breaking away from authority and setting up their own religious standards.
Their unscriptural error, which some might call an antiscriptural heresy, of the pre-millennial corporeal appearance of our Saviour, with its carnal concomitants, has been a temptation to not a few to look upon this part of the Bible as wholly unintelligible, contrary to its very name, REVELATION, The hereditary and inveterate misconception by Millenarians of the nature of the thousand years' reign of the saints, bears a striking analogy to that of the Jews concerning the kingdom of their Messiah, and suggests a remark by that prince of divines among English Dissenters, Doctor Owen, in his "Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews."
Of this fact those who are historically designated Millenarians have given many illustrations from the primitive ages down to our own time.
He wrote against the Arians, Eunomians, Macedonians, and Manichees; against Origen and Marcellus; and in defence of the Millenarians. Portions of these doctrinal writings are still extant, and display a vigour and elegance of style not inferior to any writer of his day.
Did Millenarians only put this question, and patiently search for the solution in the context, agreeably to the allegorical texture of this whole book, all their hallucinations might be easily and happily obviated.
Their new heaven and new earth was not the reign of the saints, which the millenarians of Cromwell's time prayed for devoutly, but a sort of communistic equality, where every man could do precisely as he liked, take even his neighbor's property, and annihilate all distinctions of society, all inequalities of condition, a miserable, fanatical dream, impossible to realize under any form of government which can be conceived.
The Presbyterian clergy, also saved from the ravages of the Anabaptists and Millenarians, and enjoying their establishments and tithes, were not averse to his government; though he still entertained a great jealousy of that ambitious and restless spirit by which they were actuated.
The first and most numerous were the Millenarians, or Fifth Monarchy men, who insisted that, dominion being founded in grace, all distinction in magistracy must be abolished, except what arose from piety and holiness; who expected suddenly the second coming of Christ upon earth; and who pretended, that the saints in the mean while, that is, themselves, were alone entitled to govern.
Your reasoning applies to the enthusiastic millenarians who discover the number of the beast, and calculate the year when a vial is to be poured out, with as much precision as the day and hour of an eclipse. But it leaves my hope unshaken and untouched. I know that the world has improved; I see that it is improving; and I believe that it will continue to improve in natural and certain progress.
In their efforts to prove two literal resurrections, millenarians always quote with emphasis, "The dead in Christ shall rise first." 1 Thes. 4:16. In doing so they, either ignorantly or wilfully, wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction; for any one can see at a glance that no such thing as two resurrections is even hinted at.
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