Page 8 - Watchman- What of the Night

Ireneus (A.D. 183) wrote: ―In as many days as this world was made, in so many

thousand years shall it be concluded…And then (after the reign of Antichrist) the
Lord shall come from heaven in the clouds, in the glory of the Father, sending this
man and those who follow him into the lake of fire, but bringing in for the righteous
the times of the kingdom, that is the rest, the hallowed seventh day; and restoring to

Abraham the promised inheritance in which kingdom the Lord declared that ‗many
coming from the east and from the west, should sit down with Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob‘.‖( Ireneus against Heresies, Book V . Chapters 27, 30). Taylor remarks well
on these words: ―He thus identifies the millennium with the kingdom of God, placing

both at the end of the sixth Chiliad.‖
We see from the above that Ireneus the pupil of Polycarp, the pupil of John held
firmly the real program of premillennialism----the visible return of Christ, the
destruction of Antichrist, the regathering of the remnant of the seed of Abraham, the

establishment of the earthly Kingdom of Christ in Jerusalem for a thousand years.
Tertullian (A. D. 200) in his polemic against Marcion the Gnostic, Book 3 Chap.
24, wrote: ―We confess that a kingdom is promised to us upon the earth, before that in
heaven, only in another state of existence; inasmuch as it will be after the resurrection,

for a thousand years in the divinely built city of Jerusalem, ‗let down from
heaven‘…this both Ezekiel knew and the Apostle saw…We say that this city has been
provided by God for receiving the saints on their resurrection, and refreshing them
with the abundance, of all spiritual good things, in recompense for those which in the

world we have either despised or lost ; since it is both just and God-worthy that they
should there triumph and rejoice, where they have been afflicted for His Name‘s
sake.‖
The voice of Tertullian was one of the very most potent in the early centuries of

the church, even though he was affected by Montanism.
In Taylor‘s ―Voice of the Church‖ page 73 he quotes Dr. Burnet as saying of
Cyprian the pupil of Tertullian that ―with the other fathers he fixed the period of six
thousand years and made the seventh millennium‗the consummation of all‘.‖

Lactantius (A.D. 300) wrote in the Divine Institutes, Book7, ―…Because all the
works of God were finished in six days, it is necessary that the world should remain in
this state six ages, that is six thousand years…And again since God having finished
his works, rested, on the seventh day and blessed it, at the end of the six thousandth

year, all wickedness must be abolished from the earth, and righteousness reign for a
thousand years … When He (the Son of God ) shall have destroyed injustice and
executed His great judgment, and shall have restored the just to life, He shall be
conversant among men a thousand years, and shall rule them with a most righteous

government… At the same time the Prince of Devils shall be bound with chains, and

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