The kingdom of God is a cornerstone of the gospel. Indeed the gospel is defined as being comprised of “the things concerning the kingdom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ. “Acts 8:12.
As a shining beacon the kingdom has encouraged saints in their pilgrimage and provided a light by which they have been able to chart their progress through the snares around them.
When the saints encountered persecution and trial it was the hope of the kingdom which sustained them, II Thessalonians 1:5. This was true not just in the apostolic era, but also in the generations which followed. Historians such as Gibbon, Mosheim and others testify that it was the hope of this kingdom which encouraged and strengthened the ecclesia in the difficult days of the first, second and third centuries. Gibbon’s testimony is particularly well known to us, having been quoted by Bro. Thomas in “Eureka”, Volume 1, page 41 (red edition page 29).
As the ecclesia corrupted into the apostate Roman church the hope of the kingdom became obscured and eventually was extinguished. Not surprisingly this co-incised with the final forsaking of all other vestiges of the true gospel, thus confirming the words of the proverb:
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18.
Although the Roman system abandoned the truth concerning the kingdom of God it was not forsaken by all. Here and there small groups of dedicated Bible students kept alive the embers of this glorious hope. The fragments of their writings
which have been preserved serve to remind us of the potency of this hope. Deep is the gratitude the brotherhood owes to Bro. Alan Eyre for his labours in bringing to light evidence of the faith of these brethren and fellow labourers.
In addition to this testimony we also have the written confirmation of historians and others to testify that our understanding of the kingdom of God has always been the motivating force in the life of true believers. The following extracts have been compiled to show that our belief is the stand consistently taken by faithful Bible students since apostolic times. These quotes may be of value to readers to confirm their confidence: they may also be of assistance to those who seek to teach others of the truth of these matters.
1. Testimony Of ‘Church Fathers’
Irenaeus ‘Against Heresies’
If, then, God promised him (Abraham) the inheritance of the (promised) land, but in all his sojourning there he did not receive it, it must be that he will receive it with his seed, that is, with those who fear God and believe in him, at the resurrection of the just.
John therefore predicted precisely the first resurrection of the just, and (their) inheritance of the earth in the Kingdom, and the prophets prophesied about this in agreement with each other.
Justin Martyr “Dialogue With Trypho, The Jew”
For if you have conversed with some that are indeed called Christians, and do not maintain these opinions, but even dare to blaspheme the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and say that there is no resurrection of the dead, but that the souls, as soon as they leave the body, are received up into heaven, take care that you do not look upon these as Christians … But I and all those Christians that are really orthodox in every respect do know that there will be a resurrection of the body and a thousand years in Jerusalem, when it is built again, and adorned and enlarged, as Ezekiel and Esaias and the rest of the prophets declare.
Hegisippus
Now there still survived of the family of the Lord grandsons of Judas, who was said to have been his brother according to the flesh, and they were delayed (informed against) as being of the family of David. These the officer brought to Domitian Caesar, for like Herod, he was afraid of the coming of Christ.
2. Testimony Of Historians
Suetonius “The Twelve Caesars”
An ancient superstition was current in the East that out of Judaea would come the rulers of the world.
Cambridge Ancient History Vol. XI
But for some time even Gentiles displayed little interest in the philosophical issues raised by Christian teaching, for the simple reason that they confidently expected an immediate return of Christ in glory to judge the world and inaugurate a reign of supernatural blessedness. Indeed, this ‘Advent hope’ was the very core of the ‘good news’ which the missionary proclaimed.
Mosheim “Ecclesiastical History”
The most famous controversies that divided the Christians during this century were those concerning the millennium, or reign of a thousand years; the baptism of heretics, and the doctrine of Origin. Long before this period, an opinion had prevailed; that Christ was to come and reign a thousand years among men, before the entire and final dissolution of the world. This opinion, which had hitherto met with no opposition, was differently interpreted by different persons; nor did all promise themselves the same kind of enjoyments in that future and glorious kingdom. But, in this century, (i.e. third century) its credit began to decline principally through the influence and authority of Origin, who opposed it with the greatest warmth, because it was incompatible with some of his favourite sentiments. Nepos, an Egyptian Bishop, endeavoured to restore this opinion to its former credit, in a book written against the allegorists, for so he called, by way of contempt, the adversaries of the Millenarian system. This work, and the hypothesis it defended, were extremely well received by great numbers in the canon of Arsinoe; and among others by Coracion, a presbyter of no mean influence and reputation. But Dionysus of Alexandria, a disciple of Origin, stopped the growing progress of this doctrine by his private discourse, and also by two learned and judicious dissertations concerning divine promises.
Philipp Schaff “History Of The Christian Church”
The most striking fact of pre-Nicene Christianity is millenarianism or advent hope, and personal rule of Christ on earth.
Frank Morison “Who Moved The Stone”
None knew better than Caiaphas what were the personal and political consequences of the coming of the real Messiah in the flesh. That it involved some definite kind of kingship, with Jerusalem and the Holy Places as its Court, is obvious.
Like large numbers of his fellow-Christians, St. Paul believed that Jesus of Nazareth would return in his own lifetime … It was a belief which commended itself to vast numbers of people during the first fifty years of the Christian era.
Albert Schweitzer ‘The Kingdom of God and Primitive Christianity”
Jesus, like the prophetic books of the last post exilic period and the books of Daniel and Enoch, knows only the Kingdom which follows upon the resurrection. The expression kingdom of heaven, which he frequently uses, is identical in meaning with the kingdom of God. It does not indicate that the kingdom is in heaven but that it comes to earth from heaven, so that the earth thereby acquires a supernatural perfection.
Rev. L Pullen ‘The Church of the Fathers”
The prosperity of the Church under Constantine extinguished those hopes of a millenium which persecution had fanned into flame.
Bro. A. Eyre ‘The Protesters”
“There will be a millenium after the resurrection from the dead”, Papias is reported as saying, “When the personal reign of Christ will be established in the earth.” Papias, who died in 163 AD, had known intimately some who had known Jesus personally, and Eusebius emphasises the apostolic origin of this millenial hope. The writings of Tertullian (162-240) abound with references to the millenium and the coming stone that would smite the image of Daniel’s prophecy.
Of the Brethren in Christ of the Sixteenth Century, Bro. Eyre writes: “Belief in the second coming of Jesus Christ and the reign of the saints was characteristic of the brotherhood, the intensity of millenary zeal fluctuating from time to time with varying political fortunes. Undoubtedly the apocalypses of Daniel and Revelation were among the books studied both individually and in groups.”
3. Testimonies Of Other Sources
John Bunyan, And Forty Other Baptists, “A Confession Of Faith, 1660”
We believe that there will be an order in the resurrection; Christ is the first-fruits; and the next, or after, they that are Christ’s at His coming; then, or afterwards, cometh the end. Concerning the kingdom and reign of our Lord Jesus Christ, as we do believe that he is now in heaven, at his Father’s right hand, so do we believe that, at the time appointed by the Father, he shall come again in power and great glory; and that at, or after his coming the second time, he will not only raise the dead and judge and restore the world, but will also take to himself his kingdom, and will, according to the Scriptures, reign on the throne of his father David, on Mount Zion, in Jerusalem, for ever.
We believe that the kingdom of our Lord will be a universal kingdom, and in this kingdom the Lord Jesus Christ himself will be alone, visible, supreme king of the whole earth.
We believe as this kingdom will be universal, so it will be also an everlasting kingdom, that shall have no end, nor cannot be shaken; in which kingdom the saints and faithful in Christ Jesus shall receive the end of their faith, even the salvation of their souls; where the Lord is they shall be also.
We believe that the new Jerusalem that shall come down from God out of heaven, when the tabernacle of God shall be with them, and he will dwell among them, will be the metropolitan city of this kingdom, and will be the glorious place of residence of both Christ and his saints for ever; and will be so situate as that the kingly palace will be on Mount Zion, the holy hill of David, where his throne was.
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Faith in the nearness of Christ’s second advent and the establishment of his reign of glory on the earth was undoubtedly a strong point in the primitive Christian Church … That a philosopher like Justin, with a bias towards an Hellenic construction of the Christian religion, should nevertheless have accepted its chiliastic (millennial) element is the strongest proof that these enthusiastic expectations were inseparably bound up with the Christian faith down to the middle of the second century. After the middle of the second century these expectations were gradually thrust into the background.
After the Montanistic controversy chiliastic views were more and more discredited in the Greek Church; they were, in fact, stigmatized as ‘Jewish’ and therefore ‘heretical’.
The earlier fathers, Iranaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, believed in Chiliasm simply because it was a part of the tradition of the Church … It is the same all through the third and fourth centuries with those Latin theologians who escaped the influence of Greek speculation. Commodian, Victorinus Pettavenisis, Lactantius and Sulpicious Severus were all pronounced millenarians, holding by the very details of the primitive Christian expectations. As to the canonicity and apostolic authorship of the Apocalypse no doubts were ever entertained in the West … These facts show how vigorously the early hopes of the future maintained themselves in the West. In the hands of moralistic theologians, like Lactantius, they certainly assumed a somewhat grotesque form, but the fact that these men clung to them is the clearest evidence that in the West millenarianism was still a point of ‘orthodoxy’ in the fourth century.
This state of matters, however, gradually disappeared after the end of the fourth century. The change was brought about by two causes — first Greek theology, which reached the West chiefly through Jerome, Ruffians and Ambrosia, and second, the new idea of the Church wrought out by Augustine on the basis of the altered political situation of the Church. Augustine was the first who ventured to teach that the Catholic Church, in its empirical form, was the kingdom of Christ, that the millennial kingdom had commenced with the appearing of Christ, and was therefore an accomplished fact. By this doctrine of Augustine’s the old millenarianism, though not completely extirpated, was at least banished from the official theology.
At the various periods in the history of the middle ages we encounter sudden outbreaks of millenarianism, sometimes as the tenet of a small sect, sometimes as a far reaching movement. In addition, since it has been suppressed, not as in the East by mystical speculation (its mightiest antagonist), but by the political church of the hierarchy, we find that wherever chiliasm appears in the middle ages it makes common cause with all enemies of the secularized Church.
In the revolutionary movements of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries — especially in the Ana-baptist movements — it appears with all its old uncompromising energy. If the Church, and not the State, was regarded as Babylon, and the Pope declared to be the Anti-Christ, these were legitimate inferences from the ancient traditions and the actual position of the Church.
Interpreters’ Dictionary of the Bible
The millenial hope became quite popular in the next few centuries, with the term ‘chiliasm’ used to denote a belief in a materialistic concept of the millenium with sensuous delights and pleasures. Among the second century believers in the millenial reign, some more chiliastic than others, were Cerinthus, Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Montanus, with Hippolytus and Lactantius in the following century.
Justin Martyr said that many Christians accepted the doctrine, which he supported by Old Testament prophecy and Revelation 20:4-5
Cerinthus is said to have depicted the future kingdom of Christ as providing sensual pleasures: eating, drinking and marriage festivities. Papias ascribed to Jesus a prophecy of a marvellously productive earth, in terms similar to a messianic promise.
Lactantius is even more detailed. The heavenly bodies will give more light during the interim reign of Christ; the earth will reproduce food of its own accord; the mountains will drip with honey; there will be streams of wine and milk; all animals and birds will live in peace.
The millenial hope, never died out in the Western church; indeed, from time to time it became quite prominent in one form or another. It was emphasized in the Reformation period by reformers and by some Anabaptists.
The Sabbath and Israel and Jesus’ work on the Sabbath