By Father Daniel Swires
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
There is an ancient belief among some people known as “millenarianism” or “chiliasm.” This is the belief that Christ will set up an
earthly kingdom and will rule it for a thousand years, usually referred to as the “Millenium.”
This belief actually has its origin in post-exilic Judaism. An anticipation that survived the Babylonian exile was that one day God would restore the kingdom of David under a model anointed king, the Messiah. Even though idealized, this would be an earthly, historical kingdom, and most often its relation to the end-time was not specified.
Another expectation that developed, especially in apocalyptic writings, was that God would directly intervene in the end-time, without any mention of a restoration of the Davidic kingdom.
One way of combining the two expectations was to see
two divine interventions: (1) a restoration of an earthly kingdom or period of blissful prosperity to be followed by (2) God’s end-time victory and judgment. Many writers speculated about these two events. They are found in 1
st Enoch, in 4
th Ezra, in 2
nd Baruch, in the Ascension of Isaiah. It is interesting, though, that each of these writers sees a different time frame for these events. It is quite probable, in fact, that most of them never intended to convey exact times. Rather, they were symbolic ways of predicting divine victory over evil forces that are an obstacle to God’s Kingdom or rule.
St. John, then, in writing the Apocalypse, also used the idea of a thousand-year reign of Christ, not to describe a historical, earthly kingdom, but as a way of saying that ultimately, in His own time, God will have the victory. (It is worth reminding ourselves that only
one passage in the Apocalypse, consisting of two verses, mentions a thousand-year reign: from this one small passage has come a lot of exaggerated speculation.)