Tradition must give way to the clear statements of the Scripture

   To a large degree, historical forces determined the shape millennialism took in the Middle Ages. The early Middle Ages were not without chaos. But as long as Christendom remained a unity and the Catholic Church maintained a strong grip on society, the non-millenarian orthodoxy held sway. Fringe groups with their wild-eyed apocalyptic ideas were kept in check.  Augustine’s non-millennialism remained the official position of the Catholic Church throughout the Middle Ages. But the apocalyptic groups could no longer be corralled. Apocalypticism erupted with a vengeance. Joachim of Fiore’s ideas opened Pandora’s box. And millennial thinking has not been the same since. The critical events of the late Middle Ages—persecution, crop failures, the Black Death, social upheavals, and reform movements—all combined to produce a growing sense of apocalypticism in the late Middle Ages. ( Richard Kyle, Apocalyptic Fever: End-Time Prophecies in Modern America (Eugene, OR:  Cascade...

    Sheol below is getting excited over you,      to meet you when you come;  it arouses the dead spirits for you,      all of the leaders of the earth.      It raises all of the kings of the nations from their thrones.  All of them will respond and say to you,  ‘You yourself also were made weak like us!      You have become the same as us!’  Your pride is brought down to Sheol,      and the sound of your harps;  maggots are spread out beneath you like a bed,      and your covering is worms. Is 14:9–11 LEB  Therefore since these matters have an end , and two things lie together before us, both death and life , and  each is about to go to one’s own place , Ac. 1.25 cf. (go. Mt 25:41, 46. 26:24. Jn 6:70, 71. 13:27. 17:12. own place. Ac 4:23. Ps 9:17. NTSN)  for just as there are two coinages, Mt. 22.19,20 one which is of God, another which is of ...