Millenarianism in Christian History

Abstract

Unless the total impression made by present tendencies in church life is deception, we are passing through one of the recurrent cycles of interest in the Second Coming of Christ. All periods of intellectual activity in religion have seen the same phenomena. Those who take the Bible literally without regard to the context, history, or form of speech have always seen in the events of their own days a forecast of the Day of Judgment. In this conviction they have sometimes explicitly, sometimes in general terms, insisted that this Second Coming was in the immediate future. To understand this phenomenon in our modern days it is well to present a sketch of the history of similar movements in the past. This will be done by Professor Cross in two articles, the first of which is here given. Unless we mistake, these papers will make it plain that some earnest souls have always identified the gospel with whatever the Bible records of the beliefs of the early Christians. Whether the gospel is indeed coextensive with ...