The lack of room in Scripture to fit a
mass conversion of Jews before Christ returns has always been a problem for its
advocates and consequently it has always been the death knell for this particular
brand of amillennial eschatology.
Interestingly enough, the very early
Fathers, many of whom believed in premillennial eschatology, did not have this
problem. They had plenty of room and plenty of time because their premillennialism
held that the “one thousand years” of Apocalypse 20:1-6 is speaking of a future
millennial kingdom in which Christ, at his Second coming, will descend to
Jerusalem and reign over the world for one thousand literal years. After the
one thousand years, the eternal state begins. Some of our most famous Fathers
believed in premillennialism (e.g, Papias, Tertullian, Lactantius,
Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, possibly Polycarp).
In premillennial eschatology it was
believed that the last generation of Jews would convert, en masse.
Accordingly, the most accommodating part of their eschatology for these future
converted Jews was that there would be an adequate time and place for them to
be converted. The time was the “one thousand years” and the place was the
millennial kingdom on earth. Everything fit like a glove. The only problem was
that the scriptural exegesis behind premillennialism was full of false
assumptions and loaded with out-of-context conclusions. For example, they misinterpreted
Malachi 4:5 . . . failing to see that the refence to “Elijah” was pointing to
John the Baptist, not the actual Elijah. . . . By the time of Chrysostom,
Augustine and Jerome, the eschatology of the Catholic Church changed
drastically. It made a dramatic shift from premillennialism to amillennialism.
Whereas the Premils believed the 1000-year period of Apocalypse 20 was
describing a future millennial period on earth in which Christ would rule from
Jerusalem; the Amils believed the 1000-years was a symbolic time and place,
encompassing the time from the First coming of Christ to the Second coming.
Although there were seeds of amillennial eschatology in the early patristics
(e.g., Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, Dionysius, Cyprian, Apollinarius,
Athenagorus), it reached its flower with Augustine, Jerome, and Chrysostom
since they discovered that the binding of Satan about which Jesus often
remarked (cf., Jn 12:31; 16:11; Mt 12:29; Mk 3:27; Ep 4:8; Hb 2:14) was
not something that was going to occur right before the Second coming of Christ
but at the First coming; whereas the early Fathers who promoted a 1,000-year
kingdom on earth for the Jews believed the binding of Satan would occur at the
Second coming, after which the millennial kingdom on earth would begin. (Robert
Sungenis, Why There Will Not Be a Mass Conversion of the Jews: A Critique of
“If You Believed Moses” [State Lina, Pa.: Catholic Apologetics International
Publishing, Inc., 2023], 11-12)
One only need look at the early
Fathers of the Church (E.g., Papias [who claims to have received his interpretation
of the Millennium from St. John the Apostle], Ignatius, Irenaeus, Justin
Martyr, Tertullian, Lactantius, et al) who were mostly devout
premillennialists, that is, believers in a literal 1,000 year reign of Christ
on earth after the Second coming, at which time Stan would be literally bound.
They based this opinion on a scrupulously literal interpretation of Apocalypse
20:1-6 . . . The Church eventually abandoned this hyper-literal interpretation and
adopted the eschatology popularized by Augustine, Jerome, and Chrysostom called
“amillennialism,” that is, that there was no future millennium; only an indefinite
period from the First to the Second coming of Christ wherein Satan was spiritually
bound so that the Gospel could go forth to the nations. This view was given
credence by a brief statement at the Council of Ephesus that the binding of
Satan occurred at the cross. (Denzinger ¶140) The point here is that the early
Fathers and Doctors of the Church had two diametrically opposed interpretations
of the mysterious language of the Apocalypse, neither of which has been officially
dogmatized. (Robert Sungenis, Supersessionism is Irrevocable: Facing the Ambiguities,
Compromises, and Heresies in Recent Catholic Documents Regarding the “Old
Covenant” [State Lina, Pa.: Catholic Apologetics International Publishing,
Inc., 2024], 365, 266)
Amillennialism was held, partially or fully, by a number of
early Fathers and a few apocryphal epistles form the second to fourth centuries
but became the official position of the Catholic Church following a number [of]
Fathers and medieval from the fifth century onward. (Ibid., 461)
