Must we then go back to the old doctrine of Papias, Irenaeus, Tertullian: and interpret the Millennium literally?

 We have already said that, although many in the early Church accepted the belief in the Millennium as a part of orthodoxy, many did not. The historian Eusebius almost contemptuously dismisses Papias’ report. ‘I suppose he got those ideas’, he says, ‘through a misunderstanding of the apostolic records, not perceiving that the things said by them were said mystically in figures. For he seems to have been of very limited understanding’ William Barclay, Revelation of John, vol. 2, The New Daily Study Bible (Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 213–214.

And Papias, of whom we are now speaking, confesses that he received the words of the apostles from those that followed them, but says that he was himself a hearer of Aristion and the presbyter John. At least he mentions them frequently by name, and gives their traditions in his writings. These things, we hope, have not been uselessly adduced by us.

But it is fitting to subjoin to the words of Papias which have been quoted, other passages from his works in which he relates some other wonderful events which he claims to have received from tradition.

 That Philip the apostle dwelt at Hierapolis with his daughters has been already stated. But it must be noted here that Papias, their contemporary, says that he heard a wonderful tale from the daughters of Philip. For he relates that in his time [That is, in the time of Philip.] one rose from the dead. And he tells another wonderful story of Justus, surnamed Barsabbas: that he drank a deadly poison, and yet, by the grace of the Lord, suffered no harm.

 The Book of Acts records that the holy apostles after the ascension of the Savior, put forward this Justus, together with Matthias, and prayed that one might be chosen in place of the traitor Judas, to fill up their number. The account is as follows: “And they put forward two, Joseph, called Barsabbas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias; and they prayed and said.” Acts 1:23

 The same writer gives also other accounts which he says came to him through unwritten tradition, certain strange parables and teachings of the Savior, and some other more mythical things. To these belong his statement that there will be a period of some thousand years after the resurrection of the dead, and that the kingdom of Christ will be set up in material form on this very earth.

Chiliasm, or millenarianism,—that is, the belief in a visible reign of Christ on earth for a thousand years before the general judgment,—was very widespread in the early Church. Jewish chiliasm was very common at about the beginning of the Christian era, and is represented in the voluminous apocalyptic literature of that day. Christian chiliasm was an outgrowth of the Jewish, but spiritualized it, and fixed it upon the second, instead of the first, coming of Christ. 

I suppose he got these ideas through a misunderstanding of the apostolic accounts, not perceiving that the things said by them were spoken mystically in figures. For he appears to have been of very limited understanding, [ Eusebius’ judgment of Papias may have been unfavorably influenced by his hostility to the strong chiliasm of the latter; and yet a perusal of the extant fragments of Papias’ writings will lead any one to think that Eusebius was not far wrong in his estimate of the man.] as one can see from his discourses. But it was due to him that so many of the Church Fathers after him adopted a like opinion, urging in their own support the antiquity of the man; as for instance Irenaeus and any one else that may have proclaimed similar views.   

 The chief Biblical support for this doctrine is found in Rev. 20:1–6, and the fact that this book was appealed to so constantly by chiliasts in support of their views was the reason why Dionysius, Eusebius, and others were anxious to disprove its apostolic authorship. Chief among the chiliasts of the ante-Nicene age were the author of the epistle of Barnabas, Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian; while the principal opponents of the doctrine were Caius, Origen, Dionysius of Alexandria, and Eusebius.

 After the time of Constantine, chiliasm was more and more widely regarded as a heresy, and received its worst blow from Augustine, who framed in its stead the doctrine, which from his time on was commonly accepted in the Church, that the millennium is the present reign of Christ, which began with his resurrection. See Schaff’s Church History, II. p. 613 sq., for the history of the doctrine in the ante-Nicene Church and for the literature of the subject. 

Eusebius of Caesaria, “The Church History of Eusebius,” in Eusebius: Church History, Life of Constantine the Great, and Oration in Praise of Constantine, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. Arthur Cushman McGiffert, vol. 1, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1890), 171–172.

‘Must we then go back to the old doctrine of Papias, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Nepos the Egyptian bishop with his friend Coracion, Lactantius, and other visionaries of ancient and modern times, and interpret all the prophecies in relation to the Millennium literally? Must we maintain that a thousand years of carnal feasting and luxury are set before the church, during which the King of Zion will literally descend to the earth, and reign in glory upon the holy mountain at Jerusalem, and all nations go up and worship there, and all sin and suffering and sorrow cease, and the earth be converted into another Eden, substantially like that from which Adam was expelled?’

Such, with regret I acknowledge it, have been the phantasies of many lively imaginations, even of not a few persons otherwise grave and sober, buoyed up by dreamy hopes respecting the future. From the records of even the most early times we have evidence, that such enthusiastic visions were indulged. But of all this I find nothing in the text before us. Not a word of Christ’s descent to the earth, at the beginning of the Millennium.

 Nothing of the literal assembling of the Jews in Palestine; nothing of the Messiah’s temporal reign on earth; nothing of the overflowing abundance of worldly peace and plenty. We find, indeed, most lively images of the like nature in Isaiah, and in other prophets; but how can we doubt that this imagery has a tropical meaning, when we are told, for example, that “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard lie down with the kid, and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and the little child shall lead them; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’s den?” Isa. 11:6–8.

 Does any rational man indeed expect, that beasts of prey and poisonous serpents will undergo an entire change of nature in the Millennium, and that there will be no more sin nor suffering nor sorrow during that period? This is to ask: Whether he expects that the probation and the imperfections of man in the present world are entirely to cease, so that there shall then be no need of a Christian ministry, nor of the preaching of the Gospel?

 Is the depraved disposition of men to exist no more, when this happy period arrives, and is there to be no further need of the sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit, and of repentance and reformation? Idle, yea, worse than idle, are all the fancy-dreams about such a world in expectancy as this. They have done great mischief in the church, even at an early period; nor have they ceased to do it still; but of all these phantasies the author of the Apocalypse is quite guiltless. 

Where were the thrones which John saw? Plainly where the souls were who were to be judged. And where is that? In chap. Rev. 6:9 we are told where it is. It is in heaven. The souls of the martyrs are there represented as at the foot of the altar, in the temple of God in heaven. And where, throughout the Apocalypse, are the souls of departed saints supposed to be?

 Surely with God and Christ in heaven. But here, in the passage before us, no change of place where the souls of martyrs are, is intimated. The writer tells us, that they are to reign with Christ for a thousand years. But Christ is not represented as having changed or transferred his place of abode. Occasionally he is represented as making his appearance at the head of the armies of almighty God, as a resistless conqueror. But his abode is in heaven, upon the throne.

In heaven, then, with Christ, are martyrs and saints to live and reign, during the millennial period. There indeed their spirits were, before this period commenced; but now a new state or condition is brought to view. It is a union of their spirits with their bodies raised from the dead. In this advanced state of happiness, they are to be enthroned with Christ, i.e. they are to be where he dwells, and where, as the Scriptures often teach us, he will continue to dwell, until he shall make his descent at the final judgment-day. (See 1 Thess. 4:16. 2 Thess. 1:7. Acts 1:11, 3:21, which last text many apply to the Millennium, but to this exegesis I cannot accede).

 Why then should our author be taxed with the dreams and phantasies of ancient or modern Millenarians in the literal sense, who make a worldly and sensual kingdom, and bend all things in the Scriptures to the support of such a scheme? There appears to be no solid ground for this; certainly none expressed in our text. Martyrs are to be kings and priests, not of Christ only, during the millennial period, but of God also.

 Is God then to be personally and visibly resident on earth, and are they to serve him in this condition, as the priests of old served in the tabernacle and temple of the Hebrews? This question, at least, needs no discussion. Why then should the other? Will you say: ‘Because Christ and the saints who are raised from the dead have bodies, therefore they must have a local earthly habitation? 

If so, then I would remind you, that the dead are raised “incorruptible,” this “mortal puts on immortality,” the body “is raised in glory,” it “is raised in power,” it “is raised a spiritual body.” How then can a material world be fitted for its abode? How, in the nature of things, can the glorified saints physically associate with those who have never yet undergone the change of death and a resurrection?

 In a word: How can earth become heaven, and saints once there glorified be honored and made more happy by a descent to a world of sin and sorrow, or at all events to a world in which corporeal and material beings dwell? for such it will always be, so long as it is a world of probation; and such a world it must be even during the Millennium. Moses Stuart, A Commentary on the Apocalypse, vol. 2 (Andover; New York: Allen, Morrill and Wardwell; M. H. Newman, 1845), 479–481.

 It can be said with certainty today that the theological rejection of chiliasm can appeal to the fact that primitive Christian thought knew nothing of a messianic interim reign.

 Certainly Paul speaks of Christ finally eliminating the evil powers after his Parousia so that everything can be returned to God’s rule (1 Cor. 15:20–28), but he knows nothing of two resurrections or of a reign of earthly peace between them. Rather, for him the eternal dominion of God in which the resurrected Christians take part begins immediately with the second coming of Christ (1 Thess. 4:13–18)... 

After the catastrophe of A.D. 70 the old earthly national hope was suppressed but nevertheless did not entirely disappear. Thus, one sought to reconcile them with the universal-transcendent notion of the two ages. The result was that unusual view of an earthly national interim reign that precedes the new world. Jürgen Roloff, A Continental Commentary: The Revelation of John (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 224,225.  

 In Jesus’s day Israel expected a tangible, earthly, messianic kingdom whose conditions were depicted in the forms and images of Old Testament prophecy.

 But now these forms and images were taken literally. The shell was mistaken for the core, the image of it for the thing itself, and the form for the essence. The messianic kingdom became the political rule of Israel over the nations—a period of external prosperity and growth. And at the end of it [in this scenario] universal judgment could only occur after the general resurrection, when people were judged according to their works and either received the reward of heavenly blessedness or the penalty of hellish pain. 

 This is how the doctrine of chiliasm arose. Admittedly, a large part of Jewish apocryphal literature continues to adhere to the future expectations of the Old Testament. But frequently, especially in the Apocalypse of Baruch and 4 Ezra, we find the view that the glory of the messianic kingdom is not the last and the highest. On the contrary, after a specific period of time, often calculated—for example, in the Talmud—at four hundred or one thousand years, this kingdom has to make room for the heavenly blessedness of the kingdom of God.

But in any case the ideal which is set forth in these passages is final. The same view appears (Jn 12:34) in the objection to Christ’s prophecy concerning His lifting up. ‘We have heard out of the law that the Christ abides for ever.’ So in the Targ. Jon. (on 1 K 4:33) the Messianic time and the world to come are identified. (Targum. And he prophesied concerning the kings of the house of David who are destined to rule in this world and in the world to come, the world of the Messiah)

 The length of the Messianic kingdom is expressly limited to 400 years—a number explained in the Talmud as due to the combination of Gen. 15:13 (the sojourn in Egypt) with Psa. 90:15 ‘Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us’ (Sanh. 99a). Another passage cites Mic. 7:15 ‘As in the days of thy coming forth out of the land of Egypt will I show unto him marvelous things’ (Tanchuma, Ekeb 7, quoted Weber2, 372).

 In the later Jewish theology the view of the Messiah’s kingdom as limited became the prevailing one.  W. Adams Brown, “MILLENNIUM,” in A Dictionary of the Bible: Dealing with Its Language, Literature, and Contents Including the Biblical Theology, ed. James Hastings et al. (New York; Edinburgh: Charles Scribner’s Sons; T. & T. Clark, 1911–1912), 370,371.

 Accordingly, chiliasm is not of Christian but of Jewish and Persian origin.

 It is always based on a compromise between the expectations of an earthly salvation and those of a heavenly state of blessedness. It attempts to do justice to Old Testament prophecy in the sense that it accepts the earthly messianic kingdom predicted by it but claims that this kingdom will be replaced after a time by the kingdom of God. 

It would appear that chiliasm’s strength lies in the Old Testament, but actually this is not the case. The Old Testament is decidedly not chiliastic. In its depiction of the messianic kingdom, it describes the completed kingdom of God that is without end and lasts forever (Dan. 2:44), preceded by judgment, resurrection, and world renewal.  

  The basic ideas of chiliasm are virtually the same in all its forms. They come down to the assertion that we must distinguish between a twofold return of Christ and a double resurrection. They go on to say that at his first return Christ will overcome the forces of the antichrist, bind Satan, raise the believers who have died, and gather the church around himself, in particular the community of Israel, now repentant and brought back to Palestine. 

From within that community he will rule over the world and usher in a period of spiritual florescence and material prosperity.

 At the end of that time he will return once more to raise all humans from the dead, judge them before his throne of judgment, and decide their eternal destiny. 

Aside from the fact that, as stated earlier, the Old Testament does not view the messianic kingdom as provisional and temporary but as the end result of world history, chiliasm is guilty of the greatest arbitrariness in interpreting prophecy. It doubles the return of Christ and the resurrection of the dead, although the Old Testament does not give the slightest warrant for this. It is devoid of all rule and method and arbitrarily calls a halt, depending on the subjective opinion of the interpreter.

 With equal vigor and force, all the prophets announce not only the conversion of Israel and the nations but also the return to Palestine, the rebuilding of Jerusalem, the restoration of the temple, the priesthood, and sacrificial worship, and so on. And it is nothing but caprice to take one feature of this picture literally and another “spiritually.” Prophecy pictures for us but one single image of the future.

 And either this image is to be taken literally as it presents itself—but then one breaks with Christianity and lapses back into Judaism—or this image calls for a very different interpretation than that attempted by chiliasm. Such an interpretation is furnished by Scripture itself, and we must take it from Scripture. Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 655-658.

Totally wrong, therefore, is the chiliastic view according to which the New Testament, along with the church composed of Gentiles, is an intermezzo, a detour taken by God because Israel rejected its Messiah, so that the actual continuation and fulfillment of the Old Testament can begin only with Christ’s second coming. The opposite, rather, is true. Not the New Testament but the Old is an intermezzo.

 The covenant with Israel is temporary; the law has been inserted in between the promise to Abraham and its fulfillment in Christ, that it might increase the trespass and be a disciplinarian leading to Christ (Rom. 5:20; Gal. 3:24ff.). For that reason Paul always goes back to Abraham (Rom. 4:11ff.; Gal. 3:6ff.) and links his gospel to the promise made to him. Abraham is the father of believers, of all believers, not only believers from among the Jews, but also from among the Gentiles (Rom. 4:11). The children of the promise are his offspring (Rom.9:6–8). In Christ the blessing of Abraham comes to the Gentiles (Gal. 3:14). Those who belong to Christ are Abraham’s offspring and heirs according to promise (Gal. 3:29). 

Therefore the New Testament is not an intermezzo or interlude, neither a detour nor a departure from the line of the old covenant, but the long-aimed-for goal, the direct continuation and the genuine fulfillment of the Old Testament. Chiliasm, judging otherwise, comes in conflict with Christianity itself. In principle it is one with Judaism and must get to where it attributes a temporary, passing value to Christianity, the historical person of Christ, and his suffering and death, and it only first expects real salvation from Christ’s second coming, his appearance in glory.

 Like Judaism, it subordinates the spiritual to the material, the ethical to the physical, confirms the Jews in their carnal-mindedness, excuses their rejection of the Messiah, reinforces the veil that lies over their minds when they hear the reading of the Old Testament, and promotes the illusion that the physical descendants of Abraham will as such still enjoy an advantage in the kingdom of heaven.

 Scripture, on the other hand, tells us that the true reading and interpretation of the Old Testament is to be found with those who have turned in repentance to the Lord Christ (2 Cor. 3:14–16). It tells us that a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and that circumcision is a matter of the heart (Rom. 2:29). It teaches that in Christ there is neither man nor woman, neither Jew nor Greek, but that they are all one in Christ Jesus (1 Cor. 12:13; Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11). The Jewish person who becomes a Christian was not a child of Abraham but becomes such by faith (Gal. 3:29). Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 662–663.  

 Israel was unique among the nations because the Lord was its King, governing his covenant people by his gracious presence, righteous laws, and saving power. (Psa. 24:7–10; 68:24; Isa. 33:22; 43:15; 44:6.) Though some secularists mistakenly apply the label of “theocracy” to any attempt to apply biblical law and wisdom to civil government,

 theocracy requires the claim of direct involvement by God to constitute and rule a community through leaders to whom he gives special revelation and possibly also miraculous power.

 Even a nation with a state-sponsored religion is not necessarily a theocracy. [Josephus knew that the Roman imperial government was very religious in its devotion to the Roman gods, cultic rites, and the adoration of the emperor, but he saw theocracy as unique to Israel]. The attempt by radical Anabaptists to turn Münster into a new Jerusalem (1534–1535) may be considered a tragic example of pretended theocracy.

 Today, a leader claiming to be divine or a prophet might try to set up a theocratic community, but it would be considered a cult. The New Jerusalem is in heaven (Gal. 4:26; Heb. 12:22). True theocracy will not come to earth until Christ returns to make all things new (Rev. 21:1–5).  Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology: Church and Last Things, vol. 4, Reformed Systematic Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024), 252–253.

 The chiliast expectation that a converted nation of Israel, restored to the land of Palestine, under Christ will rule over the nations is without biblical foundation.

 Whatever the political future of Israel as a nation, the real ekklēsia, the people of God, transcends ethnic boundaries. The kingdom of God in the teaching of Jesus is not a political reality but a religious-ethical dominion born of water and the Spirit. The salvation rejected by Israel is shared by the Gentiles, and the community of Christ-believers has in all respects replaced national Israel. New Testament passages, such as Rom. 11, which initially seem to teach the contrary, in fact confirm the teaching that God’s promises are fulfilled in the spiritual offspring of Abraham, even though they may be only a remnant.

Furthermore, the New Testament nowhere suggests that the church of Christ will ever achieve earthly power and dominion such as that of Old Testament Israel. Instead, like its Master, the pilgrim church can expect a cross of persecution and suffering. The New Testament does not recommend virtues that lead believers to conquer the world but rather patiently to endure its enmity. John’s Apocalypse assures the suffering church of all times that it shares the certainty of Christ’s victory even in the face of terrible anti-Christian apostasy, lawlessness, and persecution.  

Revelation 20, when compared with the rest of Scripture, confirms this conclusion rather than lending support to chiliast dreams of world rule. Also, Rev. 20 does not teach the chiliast doctrine of a twofold resurrection; the “first” resurrection simply refers to those faithful who die and immediately live and reign with Christ in heaven.

When human apostasy and wickedness reach the apex of power and the world is ripe for judgment, Christ the king will suddenly appear to bring about the end of world history. Jesus’s disciples are to be watchful of the signs but they are also forbidden to calculate. All believers ought at all times to live as though the coming of Christ is at hand. Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 664.

 Whatever John intends to convey with his brief description of the millennium, for him the fulfillment of Old Testament promises of land and temple, the place of the eternal earthly reign of God and Christ and his people (Rev.22:3, 5), and the appropriate focus of his readers’ hopes belong to the new heaven and new earth, the New Jerusalem of Rev. 21:1–22:5. Jonathan A. Moo, “4 Ezra and Revelation 21:1–22:5: Paradise City,” in Reading Revelation in Context: John’s Apocalypse and Second Temple Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2019), 172.

“Postmillennialist” indicates my appreciation for optimism about the gospel. “Nonquantitative” indicates that I do not find grounds for postponing the Second Coming. In fact, the Achilles heel of postmillennialism lies precisely here.

 The first century church had a keen expectation for the Second Coming, an expectation encouraged by the Apostles. 

Postmillennialism, when it becomes quantitative, finds it almost impossible in practice to maintain such fervency, because it shifts its practical focus to the prospect of millennial prosperity rather than the Second Coming.

The ordinary ‘pre-millennial’ application of this verse “is absolutely untenable for these two reasons, apart from any question about the millennium itself. (1) It was the (disembodied) souls of the martyrs which  John saw, not the risen bodies of saints. (2) The word translated ‘beheaded’ is as technical a word (so to speak) as our word ‘guillotined,’ and refers exclusively to those who died under the ‘axe’ of the State executioner of the Roman empire.

 Before any one can rightly understand the just ‘recompense of reward’ signified in this verse, he must realize the exceeding bitterness of the long conflict between public law and private conscience—the exceeding trial to a Roman citizen of being condemned to the axe as a disloyal person, a breaker of the laws, and a traitor to the State” (Canon Rayner Winterbotham, Sermons and Expositions, p. 379). Came to Life] Lit. ‘lived.’  Richard Francis Weymouth, The New Testament in Modern Speech: An Idiomatic Translation into Everyday English from the Text of “The Resultant Greek Testament”: Commentary, ed. Ernest Hampden-Cook (London: James Clarke and Co., 1903), 668.

More precisely the mistake made by both premillennialism and postmillennialism is to posit a coming of the promised kingdom of power and glory foretold by the prophets before the Consummation. Both these millennial views recognize that the ultimate coming of the kingdom in heavenly glory transpires at the Consummation but they also suppose there is a preliminary realization of the antitypal theocratic kingdom in the millennium and thus before the Consummation (which of course comes after the millennium on any view of the sequence of the millennium and the parousia). Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 351. 

The older Messianic hope virtually moves within the boundary of the then present circumstances of the world, and is nothing else than the hope of a better future for the nation. That the nation should be morally purified from all bad elements, that it should exist unmolested and respected in the midst of the Gentile world, whilst its enemies were either destroyed or forced to acknowledge the nation and its God, that it should be governed by a just, wise and powerful king of the house of David, and that therefore internal justice, peace and happiness would prevail, nay that all natural evils would be abolished and a state of unclouded prosperity would appear—this may be said to have formed the foundation of the future hope among the older prophets, This picture however underwent very important alterations in the consciousness of a subsequent age, partly in the times of the later prophets, but especially in the post-canonical period.

  And first, the view became more and more extended from the nation to the world: the eye was fixed not only on the future of the nation, but on the future of the world. While in the former vision the heathen nations were only objects of consideration, so far as they stood in some kind of relation to Israel, the expectation of after times fixed its gaze more and more decidedly upon the fate of all mankind, nay of the whole world. The judgment was originally a visitation by which either Israel was purified or its enemies destroyed; it subsequently became the judgment of the world, in which the fate of all men and all nations will be decided, and that either by God Himself or by His Anointed, the Messianic, King of Israel.

 The ideal kingdom of the future does not, according to former expectation, extend beyond the actual limits of the Holy Land; according to the later view, the future kingdom of God comprises all mankind, who willingly or by compulsion are united under the scepter of Israel into a universal monarchy. Thus the Messiah is the judge and ruler of the world. Nay even the irrational creation, heaven and earth, and therefore the whole universe in the strict sense, is transformed, the old destroyed and a new and glorious one made in its stead.

 This extension of the idea of the future was partly brought about by the extension of the political horizon. The more the small separate states were absorbed by the great universal monarchies, the more obvious was it to view the ideal kingdom of the future also as a universal monarchy. After the overthrow of the last heathen universal monarchy God Himself assumes the scepter and founds a universal kingdom, which He, the heavenly King, rules by means of His people.

 But still more important than the enlargement of the political horizon in the development of the Messianic idea, was the enlargement of the notion of God and of the view of the world in general. In the original view Jehovah is only the God and King of Israel. He is subsequently more and more decidedly and evidently regarded as the God and King of the world

The older hope kept within the range of present circumstances. A destruction of the enemies of Israel, a purification of the people and their glorious future, were expected. However ideal the representation of this future prosperity, it still remains within the circle of present circumstances. In the later view the present and the future became more and more pure contrasts, the gulf between the two ever deeper, the view ever more dualistic. 

With the appearance of Messianic times a new course of the world, a new world, is to begin. This future course of the world (the world to come) is however in all respects the entire contrast to the present course of the world (this present world). The present is under the rule of the ungodly powers of Satan and his angels, and therefore sunk in sin and sorrow. The future is under the rule of God and His Anointed: and only righteousness and happiness prevail therein.

 There can scarcely be any connection between the two. By a miraculous act of God the one will be destroyed, the other called into existence. However much this view may be supported by the former representation, the contrast between now and then is much more sharply drawn than in the former view. The latter sees far more the gracious government of God in the present time also. According to the later representation it might almost seem, as if God had for the present given over the government to the Satanic powers, and had reserved for the future world the full exercise of His sway. 

Accordingly the future salvation is also more and more regarded as purely transcendental. All the benefits of the future world come down from above, from heaven, where they had pre-existed from all eternity. They are kept there for the saints as an “inheritance,” which will one day be bestowed upon them. In particular does the perfect, the glorious, new Jerusalem, which will at the time of the consummation of all things descend to earth in the place of the old, exist there already. So too the Messiah, the perfect King of Israel, chosen by God from eternity, is already there in communion with God.

 All that is good and perfect can come only from above, because all that is earthly is in its present condition the direct contrary to the divine. At last therefore the hope of the future outsteps altogether the limits of earthly existence. The final happiness is not even found in the kingdom of glory upon the renewed earth, but in an absolute state of glory in heaven. As the salvation itself, so also is the manner of its realization more and more transcendentally conceived of.

 The judgment is a forensic act, in which, without the intervention of earthly powers, the fate of men is decided simply by the verdict of God, or of His Anointed; and the execution of this sentence is effected only by supernatural powers, by a miraculous act of God, which destroys the old and calls the new order of things into existence. Emil Schürer, A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, Second Division., vol. 4 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1890), 129–134.