History and Doctrine of the Millennium

PRESIDENT EDWARDS, A. D. 1750

The men who first gave to this Protestant form of doctrine the sanction of their great names, (as a number of the leading divines of the last century did, and among them President Edwards and Dr. Hopkins, of our own country,) were particularly and solemnly impressed with the awful calamities and unexampled miseries which would be visited on the world just prior to the introduction of the happy millennium. Both Edwards and Hopkins devote chapters to the exhibition of this fearful expectation, resting on copious extracts from the holy prophets; and all their argument in defence of their views of a spiritual millennium, in this carnal world, is hedged around and guarded from sensual abuse, by the fear of the terrific judgments which are expected to separate the righteous from the wicked, the tares from the wheat, and expel the unjust from the face of the earth; until only a holy people, who have come out of great tribulation, are left to inherit it. HDM 37.7

A memorial from certain ministers in Scotland, A. D. 1746, inviting a general concert of prayer for the coming of Christ’s kingdom, “that he would appear in his glory and favor Zion,” called the attention of President Edwards to this subject. He wrote a treatise on “the latter-day glory not yet accomplished,” published in his works, vol. iii. 460. He takes up the same subject in the History of the work of Redemption, explicitly teaching the fall of Antichrist to be “not very distant,” and accompanied with overwhelming sorrows, which are to cut off the wicked, purify the holy people, and prepare the world for the coming glory. He does not reject, neither does he admit openly the doctrine of Christ’s personal appearing in his glory. He rather avoids the point; but the words of the memorial plainly indicate “that he would appear in his glory,” that he, Christ, will soon “appear,” perhaps in terror to his enemies, but certainly to the saints he will manifest himself “in glory.” HDM 38.1

The memorial is not inviting to pray that Christ would manifest his glory, that his glory might appear; but, on the contrary, that he, Christ, in his glory, would himself appear, and favor Zion. And President Edwards urges nothing to the contrary of this; notwithstanding, his omission to embrace the hope of the personal glory of the Lord in the earth, and to hold it up distinctly to view, was a step on the wrong side of faith, which leads others to the open rejection of the hope of the Lord’s coming, and to the substitution of another hope, lukewarm, carnal, and temporal, in its place. HDM 38.2