Question;
1. If you don't know what happened for over a 1000 years, then why are posting that you do. doos you or don't you know????
It has been shown that Baptists in America find their origins in Colonial and some English Puritanism. English Baptists continually avowed allegiance to the Protestant Reformation, their early leaders all being Puritans. The Anabaptism of the Continent, although holding some clear Baptistic principles, were not the fathers of modern Baptists (neither in America directly nor via Britain);
nor were they without roots in Roman Catholicism themselves. Is it true, who knows, if true you just made fun of your forefather?
Laugh all you want while you hold on to Jewish religion who rejected Christ. Like it or not, the Catholics did keep a history of which it seems the Baptist did not. Also, you forgot to tell John Calvin and the Calvinist.
(On Chiliasm / Millenarianism)
"Though millenialism was supressed by the early church, it was nevertheless from time to time revived by heretical sects. " (Schaff's History, pg. 299)
You can trace your belief back to John Darby and maybe a litte farther.
The vain worldly expectation that the Messiah would establish a literal kingdom caused the Jews to reject him, and his spiritual kingdom. And caused them to kill Him.
Amillennialism has been the predominate philosophy of the church from its inception. According to Louis Berkhof,
(Louis Berkhof (1873 - 1957) was a Reformedsystematic theologian, then we got you) "Some premillennialists have spoken of Amillennialism as a new view and as one of the most recent novelties, but this is certainly not in accord with the testimony of history. The name is indeed new, but the view to which it is applied is as old as Christianity. It had at least as many advocates as Chiliasm among the Church Fathers of the second and third centuries, supposed to have been the heyday of Chiliasm. It has ever since been the view most widely accepted, is the only view that is either expressed or implied in the great historical Confessions of the Church, and has always been the prevalent view in Reformed circles"
John Calvin (1536)
"But a little later there followed the chiliasts, who limited the reign of Christ to a thousand years. Now their fiction is too childish either to need or to be worth a refutation. And the Apocalypse, from which they undoubtedly drew a pretext for their error does not support them. For the number "one thousand" (Rev. 20:4) does not apply to the eternal blessedness of the church but only to the various disturbances that awaited the church, while still toiling on earth."
"For when we apply to it the measure of our own understanding, what can we conceive that is not gross and earthly? So it happens that like beasts our senses attract us to what appeals to our flesh, and we grasp at what is at hand. So we see that the Chialists (i.e. those who believed that Christ would reign on earth for a thousand years) fell into a like error. Jesus intended to banish from the disciples' minds a false impression regarding the earthly kingdom: for that, as He points out in a few words, consists of the preaching of the Gospel. They have no cause therefore to dream of wealth, luxury, power in the world or any other earthly thing when they hear that Christ is reigning when He subdues the world to Himself by the preaching of the Gospel.
It follows from this that His reign is spiritual and not after the pattern of this world." - Comm. on Acts 1:8
I tell you the same thing I told someone else, the Catholics had some things right.
You can't even prove that your roots don't go back to St. Augustine.
II. Historical review of millennial thinking in Christian theology.
A. Early church (c. 100-250) - millennium not emphasized. Variety of views.
B. Early reaction to view of earthly millennium.
1. Origen (c. 185-254) attributed such thinking to heretic, Cerinthus
2. Montanist heresy (c.175) had excesses of earthly millennial views.
3. Rampant speculation to calculate end time.
C. Augustine (354-430) rejected his previous earthly millennial position and interpreted
"1000 years" of Rev. 20 as symbolic of entire period from first coming of Christ to
second coming of Christ.
1. Council of Ephesus (431) condemned earthly millennium interpretation as heretical
superstition.
2. Became orthodox view of Church for centuries.
D. Reformation (sixteenth century) - Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Anabaptists accepted symbolic
interpretation of "1000 years." Regarded Catholic Pope as Antichrist.
E. Seventeenth - nineteenth centuries - gradually revived earthly millennium view.
F. Nineteenth & twentieth centuries.
1. J.N. Darby (Plymouth Brethren), followed by D.L. Moody, C.I. Scofield, H.A. Ironside
(Dallas Theological Sem.), developed theological system of Dispensationalism
incorporating earthly millennium and pre-tribulation rapture of Church. Became a
primarily American theological phenomenon.
2. Majority of theological community (Post-millennial and Amillennial) has regarded
Dispensationalism as a modernist aberrational (disorder of the mind) interpretation.
I do not know if this is true historical fact or not.
