Quote:
Originally Posted by Sons to Glory!
The dispensationalist view takes this 1000 years as literal. The amillennialism view looks at it allegorically, meaning they don't think the 1000 years is a literal amount of time and is more symbolic (e.g., the Lamb of God not being an actual lamb).
I didn't realize lately that the views I hold on this are strongly dispensational premillennialism, as that's almost the only view I'd been exposed to in the LC and from other sources. But lately, a few in my circle have expressed an amillennialism viewpoint, so this has made me aware that there's other ideas on this. According to them, it was first promoted by JN Darby around 150 years ago, and prior to that, amillennialism was more prevalent (since Augustine). Does that mean that the teaching of premillennialism (Christ returns prior to a 1000 year reign) wasn't taught at all prior to Darby?
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Here is a short article that tries to date premillennialism way back to Justin Martyr:
https://christianhistoryinstitute.or...emillennialism
Simply based on my memory from my reading of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus over 20 years ago, this article seems legit.
I think the premillennialist viewpoint can be held and kept distinct from the larger doctrine of dispensationalism, which is rightly (I think) attributed to Darby