11.9. The Millennial Kingdom in the Early Church
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12 “The tradition was based on : (1) the six days of creation followed by a seventh day of rest (Gen. Gen. 2:1); (2) the Sabbath rest concept found in Hebrews (see Heb. Heb. 3:11; Heb. 4:1, Heb. 4:3, Heb. 4:5, Heb. 4:8-9, Heb. 4:11); and (3) the belief that in biblical chronology a day could represent a thousand years (2Pe. 2Pe. 3:8; Ps. Ps. 90:4). Many of the fathers understood these passages to teach by analogy and in prophetic symbolism that the world would endure for a period of six thousand years (represented by six days of Creation) and would then experience a seventh day of rest (represented by seventh day of rest following Creation). . . . While the year-day tradition was held by Jews and others before the church age, the Epistle of Barnabas (composed ca. A.D. 70/117-138) marked the beginning of the year-day tradition in Christian literature.”—Larry V. Crutchfield, “Millennial Year-Day Tradition,” in Mal Couch, ed., Dictionary of Premillennial Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1996), 265.
13 Robert C. Walton, Chronological and Background Charts of Church History (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1986).
14 Henry Barclay Swete, The Apocalypse of St. John (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1998, 1906), cciv.
15 John D. Woodbridge, ed., Great Leaders of the Christian Church (Chicago, IL: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), 43.
16 Renald E. Showers, There Really Is a Difference! A Comparison of Covenant and Dispensational Theology (Bellmawr, NJ: Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, 1990), 122.
17 Couch, A Bible Handbook to Revelation, 24.
18 Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 2.XII.158.
19 [Woodbridge, Great Leaders of the Christian Church, 77]. The opposition of Jerome correlates to his relatively later date in history, when allegorical interpretation was gaining dominance.
20 Jerome in Robert E. Lerner, “The Medieval Return to the Thousand-Year Sabbath,” in Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn, eds., The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, pp. 38-50, cited in [Thomas Ice and Timothy J. Demy, The Return (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1999), 58].
21 Peters, The Theocratic Kingdom, 1:484.
22 Walton, Chronological and Background Charts of Church History.
23 Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. I (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, 1997), 1.LXXX.239.
24 Britannica CD 99 Multimedia Edition, s.v. “Lactantius.”
25 Showers, There Really Is a Difference! A Comparison of Covenant and Dispensational Theology, 124-126.
26 Walton, Chronological and Background Charts of Church History.
27 J. B. Lightfoot and J. R. Harmer, The Apostolic Fathers, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1989), 315.
28 Walton, Chronological and Background Charts of Church History.
29 Showers, There Really Is a Difference! A Comparison of Covenant and Dispensational Theology, 124.
30 Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 2.XII.158.
31 Ibid., 1.XII.83.
32 Swete, The Apocalypse of St. John, ccv.
33 Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 2.XII.148.