1. Expectation of the Advent:
There is no unmistakable evidence that the apostles expected a thousand years of prosperity and peace during Christ's absence in heaven. In Ac 1:11 we read that the heavenly visitants said to the apostles, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye looking into heaven?" This attitude of the men of Galilee became the permanent attitude of the primitive church. It was that of the uplifted gaze. Paul's exultant words respecting the Thessalonians might well be applied to all believers of that ancient time, that they "turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven" (1Th 1:9-10). It is the prominent theme of the New Testament epistles. In the New Testament it is mentioned 318 t. One verse in every thirty, we are told, is occupied with it. It is found shining with a glad hope in the first letters Paul wrote, those to the Thessalonians. It is found in the last he wrote, the second to Timothy, gleaming with the bright anticipation of the crown he was to receive at the Redeemer's appearing. James quickens the flagging courage, and reanimates the drooping spirits of believers with this trumpet peal: "Be ye also patient; establish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord is at hand" (5:8). Peter exhorts to all holy conversation and godliness by the like motive: "Looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God" (2Pe 3:12 margin). Amid the deepening gloom and the gathering storms of the last days, Jude 1:14 cheers us with the words of Enoch, the seventh from Adam, `Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon .... the ungodly.' John closes the Canon with the majestic words, "Behold, he cometh with the clouds," "Behold, I come quickly." These men, speaking by the Spirit of the living God, know there can be no reign of universal righteousness, no deliverance of groaning creation, no redemption of the body, no binding of Satan, and no Millennium while the tares grow side by side with the wheat; while the ungodly world flings its defiant shout after the retiring nobleman, "We will not have this man to reign over us"; and while Satan, that strong, fierce spirit, loose in this age, deceives, leads captive, devours and ruins as he lists. Therefore the passionate longing and the assurance of nearing deliverance at the coming of Christ fill so large a place in the faith and the life of the primitive disciples.
2. Possibility of Survival--Its Implications:
In 1 Thess 4:17 Paul speaks of himself and others who may survive till the Lord's coming: "Then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air" (compare 1Co 15:51-52).
This implies fairly that the apostle did not know that long ages would elapse between his own day and Christ's advent. There was to his mind the possibility of His coming in his lifetime; in fact, he seems to have an expectation that he would not pass through the gates of death at all, that he would live to see the Lord in His glorious return, for the day and the hour of the advent is absolutely concealed even from inspired men. The inference is perfectly legitimate that Paul and his fellow-disciples did not anticipate that a thousand years should intervene between them and the coming.
3. Prophecy of the "Man of Sin":
Furthermore, the Thessalonians had fallen into a serious mistake (2 Thess 9:1-12). By a false spirit, or by a forged epistle as from Paul, they were led to believe that "the day of the Lord is now present" (English Revised Version), 2 Thess 9:2. The apostle sets them right about this solemn matter. He assures them that some things must precede that day, namely, "the falling away," or apostasy, and the appearing of a powerful adversary, whom he calls "the Man of Sin," and describes as "the Son of Perdition." Neither the one nor the other of these two, the apostasy and the Man of Sin, was then present. But the road was fast getting ready for them. There was the "mystery of lawlessness" already at work at the time, and although a certain restraint held it in check, nevertheless when the check was removed it would at once precipitate the apostasy, and it would issue in the advent of the Man of Sin, and he should be brought to nought by the personal coming of Jesus Christ. This appears to be the import of the passage.
Here was the appropriate place to settle forever for these saints and for all others the question of a long period to intervene before the Saviour's advent. How easy and natural it would have been for Paul to write, "Brethren, there is to be first a time of universal blessedness for the world, the Millennium, and after that there will be an apostasy and the revelation of the Man of Sin whom Christ will destroy by the brightness of His coming." But Paul intimated nothing of the sort. Instead, he distinctly says that the mystery of lawlessness is already working, that it will issue in "the falling away," and then shall appear the great adversary, the Lawless One, who shall meet his doom by the advent of Christ. The mystery of lawlessness, however, is held in restraint, we are told. May it not be possible that the check shall be taken off, then the Millennium succeed, and after that the apostasy and the Son of Perdition? No, for its removal is immediately followed by the coming of the great foe, the Antichrist. For this foe has both an apocalypse and a parousia like Christ Himself. Hence, the lifting of the restraint is sudden, by no means a prolonged process.
4. No Room for Millennium:
The apostle speaks of the commencement, progress, and close of a certain period. It had commenced when he wrote. Its close is at the coming of Christ. What intervenes? The continuance of the evil secretly at work in the body of professing Christians, and its progress from the incipient state to the maturity of daring wickedness which will be exhibited in the Man of Sin. This condition of things fills up the whole period, if we accept Paul's teaching as that of inspired truth. There appears to be no place for a Millennium within the limits which the apostle here sets. The only escape from this conclusion, as it seems to us, is, to deny that the coming of Christ is His actual, personal second coming. But the two words, epiphaneia and parousia, which elsewhere are used separately to denote His advent, are here employed to give "graphic vividness" and certainty to the event, and hence, they peremptorily forbid a figurative interpretation. The conclusion seems unavoidable that there can be no Millennium on this side of the advent of Christ.
5. Harmony of Christ and Apostles:
Our Lord's Olivet prophecy (Mt 24:1-51; 25:1-46; Mr 13:1-37; Lu 21:1-38) accords fully with the teaching of the apostles on the subject. In that discourse He foretells wars, commotions among the nations, Jerusalem's capture and the destruction of the temple, Israel's exile, Christians persecuted while bearing their testimony throughout the world, cosmic convulsions, unparalleled tribulation and sufferings which terminate only with His advent. From the day this great prophecy was spoken down to the hour of His actual coming He offers no hope of a Millennium. He opens no place for a thousand years of blessedness for the earth.
These are some of the grounds on which Biblical students known as Premillennialists rest their belief touching the coming of the Lord and the Millennial reign.
LITERATURE.
Premillenarian: H. Bonar, The Coming of the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus; Wood, The Last Things; Guinness, The Approaching End of the Age; Seiss, The Last Times; Gordon, Ecce Venit; Premillennial Essays; Peters, The Theocratic Kingdom; West, The Thousand Years in Both Testaments; Trotter, Plain Papers on Prophetic Subjects; Brookes, Maranatha; Andrews, Christianity and Antichristianity; Kellogg, Predition and Fulfillment.
William G. Moorehead