The Second Advent finds its analog in many respects in the First Advent, and that, not in its facts only, but in its difficulties as well. According to the Old Testament, a great Redeemer was to appear; he was to be a prophet, priest, and king, and was to deliver his people from their sins and from their oppressors; he was to set up a kingdom that should become universal, absorbing all earthly kingdoms; and he was to exalt his people to the summit of prosperity and glory. These predictions turned the minds of the whole Jewish race toward the future, in confident expectation of the coming Messiah, in whose birth and career they all anticipated their fulfilment. Nevertheless, tho Christ came indeed fulfilling prophecy, it was “in a way which no man did anticipate or could have anticipated.”
So the main features of the Second Advent have been prophetically presented with like fulness, and yet, as of old, the Church has had to remain “satisfied with the great truths which those prophecies unfold, and leave the details to be explained by the event.”
The many theories of the Second Coming of Christ and of the millennium—or the thousand years’ reign of Christ at the end of time, as connecting with that coming—may be reduced to two, one based upon the literal and the other upon the spiritual interpretation of the Scriptures on this subject.
1st. The literal, or Chiliastic, notion of the millennium, as held by some Christians, was derived from the Jews, and was largely confined originally to the converts from Judaism to Christianity. The Jewish doctrine received its peculiar form from Rabbi Elias, who lived about two centuries before the Christian era. According to this ante-Jewish tradition:
“The world is to last seven thousand years—six thousand to be years of toil and trouble, and the seventh thousand to be a grand Sabbatism. It is to be ushered in by the advent of the Messiah, who is to establish his throne at Jerusalem. The Holy City is to be rebuilt with surpassing magnificence, as described by Tobit (xiii., xiv.); the Jews are to return to Palestine; their pious ancestors are to be raised from the dead and reign in their own land, with their offspring, under the Messiah” (see T. O. Summers, in Johnson’s “Universal Cyclopedia,” article “Millennium”).
Some of the early Christians—like the early Jews, pressed with persecutions and longing for temporal deliverance—adopted this literal view, except that they modified it by recognizing Jesus as the true Messiah, and by acknowledging the equality of Gentile with Jewish believers in the millennial age. The Thessalonian Christians, in particular, early developed a tendency to the literal, Chiliastic interpretation, which was, however, checked and corrected by Paul’s letters to them.
But the first teacher who is clearly recorded as having adopted the crude Jewish notion was Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, in Phrygia; altho Cerinthus, a heretic of the first century, is said to have held it. According to Irenæus, Papias pretended to have received a glowing tradition direct from the Apostle John embodying and enlarging all the Jewish literalism.
In part it is to this effect: “The days shall come in which there shall be vines which shall severally have ten thousand branches, and every one of these shall have ten thousand lesser branches, and every one of these branches shall have ten thousand twigs, and every one of these twigs shall have ten thousand clusters of grapes, and in every one of these clusters shall be ten thousand grapes, and every one of these grapes being pressed shall give twenty-five metretas of wine; and when a person shall take hold of one of these sacred bunches, another shall cry out, ‘I am a better bunch, take me, and by me bless the Lord.’”
Irenæus reports similar fanciful traditions respecting extraordinary temporal blessings during the millennial period. Papias taught that Christ’s reign on earth should be corporeal. In the main, Justin Martyr, Irenæus, Tertullian, Nepos, and Lactantius agree with Papias, teaching the Christians under their instruction these views, each varying the details according to his own fancy.
The disciples of Papias and their successors naturally pressed into their service Rev. xx. 1-10, interpreting it with the baldest literalness.