Millennialism


Millennialism or is a belief which is held by some religious denominations. According to this belief, a Messianic Age will be established on Earth prior to the Last Judgment and the future permanent state of "eternity".
Christianity and Judaism have both produced messianic movements which featured millennialist teachings—such as the notion that an earthly kingdom of God was at hand. These millenarian movements often led to considerable social unrest.
Similarities to millennialism also exist in Zoroastrianism, which identified successive thousand-year periods, each of which will end in a cataclysm of heresy and destruction, until the final destruction of evil and the final destruction of the spirit of evil by a triumphant king of peace at the end of the final millennial age. Jewish and then Christian interpretations built on Zoroastrianism and on Babylonian astrology, resulting in the construction of a schema of a sequence of seven successive thousand-year periods of earthly human existence.
Scholars have linked various social and political movements, both religious and secular, to millennialist metaphors.

Christianity

Most Christian millennialist thinking is based upon the Book of Revelation, specifically Revelation 20, which describes the vision of an angel who descends from heaven with a large chain and a key to a bottomless pit, and captures Satan, imprisoning him for a thousand years:
The Book of Revelation then describes a series of judges who are seated on thrones, as well as John's vision of the souls of those who were beheaded for their testimony in favor of Jesus and their rejection of the mark of the beast. These souls:

Early church

Premillennialism

During the first centuries after Christ, various forms of chiliasm were to be found in the Church, both East and West. Premillennialism held by the Early Church is called "historic premillennialism", and it was supported in the early church by Papias, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Polycarp, Pseudo-Barnabas, Methodius, Lactantius, Commodianus, Theophilus, Melito, Hippolytus of Rome, Victorinus of Pettau, Nepos, Julius Africanus, Tatian and Montanus. However, the premillennial views of Montanus probably affected the later rejection of premillennialism in the Church, as Montanism was seen as a heresy.

Amillennialism

In the 2nd century, the Alogi were amillennial, as was Caius in the first quarter of the 3rd century. With the influence of Platonism, Clement of Alexandria and Origen denied premillennialism. Likewise, Dionysius of Alexandria argued that Revelation was not written by John and could not be interpreted literally; he was amillennial.
Justin Martyr, who had chiliastic tendencies in his theology, mentions differing views in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, chapter 80:
"I and many others are of this opinion , and that such will take place, as you assuredly are aware; but, on the other hand, I signified to you that many who belong to the pure and pious faith, and are true Christians, think otherwise."
Augustine in his early days affirmed premillennialism, but later changed to amillennialism, causing the view to become popularized together with Pope Gregory the Great.
The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that the 2nd-century proponents of various Gnostic beliefs also rejected millenarianism.

Reformation and beyond

Christian views on the future order of events diversified after the Protestant Reformation. In particular, new emphasis was placed on the passages in the Book of Revelation which seemed to say that as Christ would return to judge the living and the dead, Satan would be locked away for 1000 years, but then released on the world to instigate a final battle against God and his Saints. Previous Catholic and Orthodox theologians had no clear or consensus view on what this actually meant. Millennialist theories try to explain what this "1000 years of Satan bound in chains" would be like.
Various types of millennialism exist with regard to Christian eschatology, especially within Protestantism, such as Premillennialism, Postmillennialism, and Amillennialism. The first two refer to different views of the relationship between the "millennial Kingdom" and Christ's second coming.
Premillennialism sees Christ's second advent as preceding the millennium, thereby separating the Second Coming from the Final Judgment. In this view, "Christ's reign" will be physically on the earth.
Postmillennialism sees Christ's second coming as subsequent to the millennium and concurrent with the final judgment. In this view "Christ's reign" will be spiritual in and through the church.
Amillennialism sees the 1000 year kingdom as being metaphorically described in Rev. 20:1–6 in which "Christ's reign" is current in and through the church. Thus, while this view does not hold to a future millennial reign, it does hold that the New Heavens and New Earth will appear upon the return of Christ.

19th and 20th centuries

Catholic Church

The Catholic Church strongly condemns millennialism as the following shows:

Bible Student movement

The Bible Student movement is a millennialist movement based on views expressed in "The Divine Plan of the Ages," in 1886, in Volume One of the Studies in the Scriptures series, by Pastor Charles Taze Russell. Bible Students believe that there will be a universal opportunity for every person, past and present, not previously recipients of a heavenly calling, to gain everlasting life on Earth during the Millennium.

Jehovah's Witnesses

believe that Christ will rule from heaven for 1,000 years as king over the earth, assisted by the 144,000 ascended humans. According to them during this 1,000 year reign the earth will become a paradise, like the Garden of Eden, and humans will themselves return to the perfection lost by Adam and Eve.

The Church of Almighty God

Also known as Eastern Lightning, The Church of Almighty God mentions in its teachings the Age of Millennial Kingdom, which will follow the catastrophes prophesied in the Book of Revelation in the Bible.

New Apostolic Reformation

Counter to much of the Pentecostal movement, which tends towards belief in premillennialism, the rise of the Antichrist, and the decay of the world prior to the Second Coming, the New Apostolic Reformation's focus is instead on an "optimistic" eschatology. It holds that most end-time prophecies have long since been fulfilled and that modern-day prophets and apostles have divine authority; the end times will be an era in which obedient Christians, through using spiritual warfare and shaping all aspects of society into aligning with their Christian beliefs, will bring about the Second Coming.

Judaism

Millennialist thinking first emerged in Jewish apocryphal literature of the tumultuous Second Temple period,
Gerschom Scholem profiles medieval and early modern Jewish millennialist teachings in his book Sabbatai Sevi, the mystical messiah, which focuses on the 17th-century movement centered on the self-proclaimed messiahship of Sabbatai Zevi

Islam

The Prophet Muhammad has stated that a man from his Household will come and rid the world of all injustice and tyranny. He will be known as the Mahdi.
Muslims also believe that Jesus will come alongside the Mahdi and will fight together with him against oppression and injustice, where the Mahdi will rule for a period of time before the Day of Judgement. The Mahdi is noted in the Sunni books, Sunan Abi Dawud 4285, Sunan Ibn Majah 4083, and Sahih Muslim 2913.
Shia and Sunni Muslims differ on who exactly the Mahdi is. While they both agree that he will come alongside Jesus to save mankind from injustice and oppression; Sunnis believe he is yet to be born, while Shias believe that he is currently alive and in occultation.

Baha'i Faith

Bahá'u'lláh mentioned in the Kitáb-i-Íqán that God will renew the "City of God" about every thousand years, and specifically mentioned that a new Manifestation of God would not appear within 1,000 years of Bahá'u'lláh's Dispensation, but that the authority of Bahá'u'lláh's message could last up to 500,000 years.

Theosophy

The Theosophist Alice Bailey taught that The Christ or The World Teacher would return "sometime after AD 2025", and that this would be the New Age equivalent of the Christian concept of the Second Coming of Christ. Note that the being she speaks of as The World Teacher is the same as that spiritual being best known to other Theosophists as Maitreya.

Social movements

Millennial social movements, a specific form of millenarianism, have as their basis some concept of a cycle of one-thousand years. Sometimes the two terms are used as synonyms, but purists regard this as not entirely accurate. Millennial social movements need not have a religious foundation, but they must have a vision of an apocalypse that can be utopian or dystopian. Those associated with millennial social movements are "prone to ", with certain types of millennialism connected to violence.
In progressive millennialism, the "transformation of the social order is gradual and humans play a role in fostering that transformation".
Catastrophic millennialism "deems the current social order as irrevocably corrupt, and total destruction of this order is necessary as the precursor to the building of a new, godly order".
However, the link between millennialism and violence may be problematic, as new religious movements may stray from the catastrophic view as time progresses.

Nazism

The most controversial interpretation of the three-age system and of millennialism in general involves Adolf Hitler's "Third Reich", which in his vision would last for a thousand years to come but ultimately lasted for only 12 years.
The German thinker Arthur Moeller van den Bruck coined the phrase "Third Reich" and in 1923 published a book titled Das Dritte Reich. Looking back at German history, he distinguished two separate periods, and identified them with the ages of the 12th-century Italian theologian Joachim of Fiore:
After the interval of the Weimar Republic, during which constitutionalism, parliamentarianism and even pacifism dominated, these were then to be followed by:
Although van den Bruck was unimpressed by Hitler when he met him in 1922 and did not join the Nazi Party, nevertheless the Nazis adopted the term "Third Reich" to label the totalitarian state they wanted to set up when they gained power, which they succeeded in doing in 1933. Later, however, the Nazi authorities banned the informal use of "Third Reich" throughout the German press in the summer of 1939, instructing it to use more official terms such as "German Reich", "Greater German Reich", and "National Socialist Germany" exclusively.
During the early part of the Third Reich many Germans also referred to Hitler as being the German Messiah, especially when he conducted the Nuremberg rallies, which came to be held annually at a date somewhat before the September equinox in Nuremberg.
In a speech held on 27 November 1937, Hitler commented on his plans to have major parts of Berlin torn down and rebuilt:
After Adolf Hitler's unsuccessful attempt to implement a thousand-year reign, the Vatican issued an official statement that millennial claims could not be safely taught and that the related scriptures in Revelation should be understood spiritually. Catholic author Bernard LeFrois wrote: