Millennialism in More Recent History.
(especially premillennialism.)
Taken from: Views of the Millennium by R. C. Clouse
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Modern Millennialism. It was during the seventeenth century that premillennialism of a more scholarly nature was presented. Two Reformed theologians, Johann Heinrich Alsted and Joseph Mede, were responsible for the renewal of this outlook. They did not interpret the book of Revelation in an allegorical manner but rather understood it to contain the promise of a literal kingdom of God to be established on earth before the last judgment. During the Puritan Revolution the writings of these men encouraged others to look for the establishment of the millennial kingdom in England. One of the more radical of these groups, the Fifth Monarchy Men, became infamous for their insistence on the reestablishment of OT law and a reformed government for England. The collapse of the Cromwellimn regime and the restoration of the Stuart monarchy discredited premillennialism. Yet the teaching continued into the eighteenth century through the work of Isaac Newton, Johann Albreech Bengel, and Joseph Priestley.
As the popularity of premillennialism waned, postmillennialism rose to prominence. First expressed in the works of certain Puritan scholars, it received its most influential formulation in the writings of the Anglican commentator Daniel Whitby. It seemed to him that the kingdom of God was coming ever closer and that it would arrive through the same kind of effort that had always triumphed in the past. Among the many theologians and preachers who were convinced by the arguments of Whitby was Jonathan Edwards. Edwardsean postmillennialism also emphasized the place of America in the establishment of millennial conditions upon the earth.
During the nineteenth century premillennialism became popular once) again. The violent uprooting of European social and political institutions during the era of the French Revolution encouraged a more apocalyptic climate of opinion. There was also a revival of interest in the fortunes of the Jews. A new element was added to premillennialism during this period with the rise of dispensationalism. Edward Irving, a Church of Scotland minister who pastored a congregation in London, was one of the out-standing leaders in the development of the new interpretation. He published numerous works on prophecy and organized the Albury Park prophecy conferences, thus setting the pattern for other gatherings of premillenarians during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Irving's apocalyptic exposition found support among the Plymouth Brethren and led many in the group to become enthusiastic teachers of dispensational premillennialism. .
Perhaps the leading early dispensational expositor among the Brethren was John Nelson Darby. He believed that the second coming of Christ consisted of two stages, the first a secret rapture or "catching away" of the saints which would remove the church before a seven-year period of tribulation devastates the earth, and the second when Christ appears visibly with his saints after the tribulation to rule on earth for a thousand years. Darby also taught that the church was a mystery of which only Paul wrote and that the purposes of God can be understood as working through a series of periods, or dispensations, in each of which God dealt with people in unique ways. .
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