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MILLENNIUM

A 1000-year era in which the resurrected martyrs reign with Christ on earth. It is often understood as occurring between the destruction of this evil, temporal age ruled by Satan and the creation of a new heaven and earth in a righteous, eternal age indisputably ruled by God. While the term “millennium” is from the Latin for a “thousand years,” the synonym “chiliasm” is from a Greek term, also for a “thousand years” (Rev. 20:4), which often has the pejorative connotation of sensual bliss that many associated with the millennium.

The concept of a millennium does not occur in the OT, but is derived in part from later prophecy of the coming of the Messiah to rule the nations from Jerusalem for an indeterminate length of time (Isa. 11; 40:9-11; 52:7-12; 65:17-25; Dan. 7:13-14, 27; Zech. 9:9-10). The millennium is the combination of this prophetic ideal of a messianic kingdom with an array of apocalyptic hopes. Jewish apocrypha and pseudepigrapha present various scenarios of a temporally limited reign of the faithful on earth, with or without the Messiah. It is often portrayed as an era of peace and great fertility in nature. Underlying some projections is the assumption that the earth exists for seven days of 1000 years each (cf. Ps. 90:4; 2 Pet. 3:8), to be followed by an eighth day of 1000 years of bliss followed in turn by judgment (1 En. 91:12-17; 93; 2 En. 33:1; 4 Ezra 7:26-31; 2 Apoc. Bar. 29-30; 2 Esdr. 7:26-44). Rabbinic sources describe a “day of the Messiah,” a temporal messianic reign on earth of various lengths (including 1000 years) which stands in contrast to this world and the world to come (Ber. 34b; Sanh. 97a, 99a; Šabb. 63a, 113b). The Apocalypse of Elijah, a christianized Jewish work, mentions a 1000- year reign of Christ (5:36-39).

In the NT the millennium may be implicit in 1 Cor. 15:23-28, which indicates that Christ will rule until the cosmic powers, including death, have been conquered, and then he will hand over the kingdom to God (cf. Matt. 19:28; Col. 1:12-13). The only explicit reference to the millennium in the NT is Rev. 20:4-6, which teaches that the martyrs experience a first resurrection and rule with Christ for 1000 years (perhaps with other saints as well). Then follow the general resurrection, the judgment, and the creation of a new heaven and a new earth. The millennium vindicates and rewards those who remained faithful in spite of the antichrist’s demand for allegiance.

The major question in the history of interpretation has been whether Rev. 20:4-6 is to be taken literally (millennialism) or figuratively (amillennialism). The patristic evidence is divided. Many believed in a literal millennial reign of Christ and the saints on earth from a rebuilt Jerusalem. The reign is pictured as marked by peace, harmony in the animal kingdom and between it and humanity, and great fertility in nature, to be followed by the resurrection and the judgment. The millennium is often seen as the fulfillment of the promise of Abraham that he would inherit the land (Gen. 15). Millennialists include Papias, who traced the teaching to Jesus himself (Irenaeus Adv. haer. 5.33.3-4; Eusebius HE 3.39.12), Justin Martyr (Dial. 80-81), Irenaeus (Adv. haer. 5.32-36), the Montanists, Tertullian (Adv. Marc. 3.25; Apol. 48), Lactantius (Div. inst. 7.14), and Victorinus of Pettau who wrote the earliest extant commentary on Revelation in Latin (cf. also Barn. 15, Mart. Isa. 4:14-18).

There was also a movement to spiritualize or allegorize the millennium (amillennialist), partly in response to chiliasm. Origen (De prin. 2.11.2-3; 3.6) allegorized the millennium to be the spiritual rule of Christ in the believer until Christ hands over the believer to God. Tyconius, the Donatist theologian, taught that the millennial rule was from the passion to the second coming of Christ, a position which influenced Augustine to abandon millenarianism for amillennialism. Commenting on Rev. 20:1-6, Augustine interpreted the first resurrection as death to sin and resurrection to new life in faith and baptism. The second resurrection is bodily resurrection at the end of the world. The millennium is the reign of Christ through the Church between his first and second comings (Civ. Dei 20.6-7). After Augustine, this was the opinion of the majority in the Western Church through the Reformation and Renaissance. The Eastern Church rejected Revelation along with millennium thinking.

In America the two traditional positions on the millennium can be readily found. Amillennialism takes a symbolic or allegorical view of Revelation, interpreting the millennium as a symbol of the saints reigning with Christ forever in victory. Millennialism assumes a literal rule of Christ on earth, with Christ’s second coming preceding (premillennialism) or following (postmillennialism) the millennium. Postmillennialism assumes that God’s power becomes more manifest as the second coming of Christ approaches. However, the two world wars destroyed this optimistic view of human possibilities. Also, the remainder of Revelation teaches that there is a continual increase and concentration of anti-Christian power before the second coming of Christ. Premillennialism has been a dominant position in American Christianity, often integrated into a dispensational view. Millennialism ignores the fact that in apocalyptic literature numbers, such as 1000, are often symbolic rather than literal.

Bibliography. R. G. Clouse, ed., The Meaning of the Millennium (Downers Grove, 1977); N. Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, rev. ed. (New York, 1970); B. W. Snyder, “How Millennial is the Millennium? A Study in the Background of the 1000 Years in Revelation 20,,” Evangelical Journal 9 (1991): 51-74.

Duane F. Watson

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

MILLENNIUM

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)