Contemporary Amillennial Literature Part 4 -- By: Homer Lemuel Payne

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 107:425 (Jan 1950)
Article: Contemporary Amillennial Literature Part 4
Author: Homer Lemuel Payne


Contemporary Amillennial Literature
Part 4

Homer Lemuel Payne

(Concluded from the October-December Number, 1949)

{Editor’s note: Footnotes in the original printed edition were numbered 115–143, but in this electronic edition are numbered 1–29 respectively.}

The Millennium

As previously intimated, amillennialists either deny or spiritualize the millennium since their system centers in a negative attitude toward that dispensation. Here, more than anywhere else, the lack of unity among amillennialists shows up nevertheless. For the sake of greater utility the following citations are given under group headings.

1. The “Augustinian” view, whereby Christ is now ruling on the Messianic throne. Definitions of this from various authors differ:

Allis, “The millennium is to be interpreted spiritually as fulfilled in the Christian Church.”1

Hall, “The Millennium is now going on.”2

Hamilton, “The millennium is a spiritual or heavenly millennium, rather than…a literal reign of Christ on earth before the final judgment…. A thousand…is held to be the symbolic reference to the perfect period, or the complete period between the two comings of Christ.”3

Lenski, “These 1, 000 years thus extend from the incarnation and the enthronement of the Son to Satan’s final plunge into hell, which is the entire New Testament period.”4

Mauro, “The Kingdom of God…was introduced by the coming of the Holy Ghost…it is NOW RUNNING.”5

Vos, “On our interpretation the Messianic provisional kingdom and the present σωτηρία are coextensive.”6 He seems to concur with the old Augustinian view, which did not conceive of the millennium as beginning until approximately 325 A.D. Other amillennialists accepting the general Augustinian pattern are: Luther,7 Rutgers,8 Swete,9 and Wyngaarden.10 This is the preponderant view, which supports the conclusion that in the main amillennial eschatology is merely a refinement of the traditional Roman...

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