Carl Gustav Adolf von Harnack

“ From this fact the whole ancient Christian eschatology was known in later times as “chiliasm”—a name which is not strictly accurate, since the doctrine of the millennium was only one feature in its scheme of the future.
1. This idea that the Messianic kingdom of the future on earth should have a definite duration has—like the whole eschatology of the primitive Church—its roots in the Jewish apocalyptic literature, where it appears at a comparatively late period. ”

“ The “everlasting gospel” of Joachim of Floris was a different thing from the announcement of Christ’s glorious return in the clouds of heaven; the “age of the spirit” which mystics and spiritualists expected contained traits which must be characterized as “modern”; and the “kingdom” of the Anabaptists in Münster was a Satanic caricature of that kingdom in which the Christians of the 2nd century looked for a peaceful Sabbath rest. ”

“ The spirit of philosophical and theological speculation and of ethical reflection, which began to spread through the churches, did not know what to make of the old hopes of the future. To a new generation they seemed paltry, earthly and fantastic, and far-seeing men had good reason to regard them as a source of political danger. ”

“ That a philosopher like Justin, with a bias towards an Hellenic construction of the Christian religion, should nevertheless have accepted its chiliastic elements is the strongest proof that these enthusiastic expectations were inseparably bound up with the Christian faith down to the middle of the 2nd century. ”

“ They still believe, as John did, in the return of Nero as the Antichrist; they still expect that after the first resurrection Christ will reign with his saints “in the flesh” for a thousand years. Once, but only once (in the Gospel of Nicodemus) , the time is reduced to five hundred years. Victorinus wrote a commentary on the Apocalypse of John; and all these theologians, especially Lactantius, were diligent students of the ancient Sibylline oracles of Jewish and Christian origin, and treated them as divine revelations. ”

“ The result was that these books became “Christian” documents; it is entirely to Christian, not to Jewish, tradition that we owe their preservation. The Jewish expectations are adopted for example, by Papias, by the writer of the epistle of Barnabas, and by Justin. Papias actually confounds expressions of Jesus with verses from the Apocalypse of Baruch, referring to the amazing fertility of the days of the Messianic kingdom (Papias in Iren. v. 33) . ”

“ Hence the world will last for six thousand years of toil and labour; then will come one thousand years of Sabbath rest for the people of God in the kingdom of the Messiah.” This idea must have already been very common in the first century before Christ. The combination of Gen. i., Dan. ix. and Ps. xc. 4 was peculiarly fascinating.
Nowhere in the discourses of Jesus is there a hint of a limited duration of the Messianic kingdom. The apostolic epistles are equally free from any trace of chiliasm (neither 1 Cor. xv. 23 seq. nor 1 Thess. iv. 16 seq. points in this direction) . ”