The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 4

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Premillennialism Rallies Stalwart Defenders

I. Winthrop-Outspoken Champion of Premillennialism

EDWARD WINTHROP (1811-1865), minister of St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church of Cincinnati, and later of St. Paul’s in Norwalk, Ohio, was previously professor of sacred literature in the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary of Lexington, Kentucky, and author of three books on prophecy—Lectures on the Second Advent of Messiah (1843), Letters on the Prophetic Scriptures (1850), and The Premium Essay on the Characteristics and Laws of Prophetic Symbols (1853). The last-named work received first award in a competition announced by the editor of the Theological and Literary Journal, and promoted by about forty-eight clergymen of note from Rutgers, Dartmouth, Princeton, Williams, Amherst, and Richmond colleges, and from widely scattered prominent pastorates. Three prominent men served as judges—Bishop Charles P. M’llvaine of Ohio, and Doctors John Forsyth and Alexander T. M’Gill of Princeton. PFF4 350.1

1. CHRIST COMING IN PERSON, POWER, AND GLORY

Winthrop is another of those stalwart, outspoken defenders of premillennialism who declared that they were standing in the breach that had been made in the last-day wall of sound Biblical teaching. Certain modern divines, he contended, have left “the old paths of the primitive church” and have introduced such theories as Whitby’s “new hypothesis” of an un-Scriptural” spiritual millennium in the personal absence of the Bridegroom, even of our Lord Jesus Christ.” But Winthrop maintains that the second advent will not merely take place “spiritually,” nor simply “providentially.” Nor is it at the death of each individual. Christ will return personally in power and visible glory. He will probably be seen, first by saints and then by sinners. Though we do not know the precise time, His advent will be premillennial—not at the close of the millennium. ¹ PFF4 350.2

This was the belief of the early church Fathers, he added, and of such Church of England contemporaries as M’Neile, Noel, Bickersteth, and others. The destruction of Antichrist, preparatory to the millennial age, will be affected by “the personal presence and coming” of Christ. (2 Thessalonians 2.) Daniel presents this destruction in chapter 7. And John tells of the seven vials of wrath to be poured out previous to the thousand years. The harvest is to be reaped and the vintage gleaned before the reign of Christ. The world continues on in a state of wickedness up to Messiah’s appearance. Both wheat and tares grow together until the harvest. ² PFF4 351.1

2. FIRST RESURRECTION Is LITERAL AND BODILY

Again, the first resurrection of the bodies of the saints-literal, not-figurative-takes place at least a thousand years before the final judgment on the wicked. The resurrection of Daniel 12:1, 2, of the sleepers in the dust, is contemporaneous with the overthrow of Antichrist, and is therefore premillennial. The resurrected saints are changed and glorified. This doctrine of the resurrection is the key that unlocks many difficult scriptures. ³ PFF4 351.2

3. Six LEADING SIGNS OF THE TIMES

In discussing the outstanding signs of the times, Winthrop lists six: (1) General disbelief in the personal and premillennial coming of the Son of man as the avenger of the elect; (2) prevalence of scoffers saying, “Where is the promise of his coming?”; (3) present aspect of the world accords with Scriptural description of the last days—the wicked do wickedly, there is unprecedented licentiousness, lawlessness, infidelity, political and ecclesiastical upheavals, growth of Catholicism; (4) increase of knowledge of the prophetic scriptures, and general expansion of knowledge, communication, and transportation; (5) the gospel preached as a witness to all nations, not however that all the world will be converted until the millennium; and (6) the decline of the Ottoman Empire, which for twenty years has been steadily dwindling. ⁴ PFF4 351.3

Winthrop concludes by summarizing the testimony of the early church on the principles of premillennialism. He cites pseudo—Barnabas, Papias, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, Epiphanius, and, in contrast, the allegorizing mode introduced by Origen, and shows that the doctrine of a spiritual millennium, previous to the second, personal advent, is a novelty of modern times. ⁵ PFF4 352.1

4. HOLDS STANDARD VIEWS ON Daniel 7

Winthrop’s views on the outline prophecies were those of the standard Historical School. They are presented in a later work-Rome as the fourth world power, the civil rulers of Daniel’s ten kingdoms equating with the ten horns of the Beast, with the Little Horn as the pope, to be destroyed just before the millennium—and this brought about by the second, personal, visible advent of Christ from the clouds of heaven. (Revelation 1:7; 1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17.) The ten-horned and two-horned beasts of Revelation 13 are Rome in civil and papal forms, Western Rome being divided into ten Romano-Gothic horn kingdoms—originally the Vandals, Suevi, Visigoths, Alans, Burgundians, Franks, Saxons, Ostrogoths, Lombards, and Heruli. And the seven heads are forms of government—kings, consuls, dictators, decemvirs, tribunes, pagan imperial, and “false-christian imperial,” with the eighth the “decemregal” or ten-kingdom form that was eventually united under the spiritual headship of the Papacy. The Beast’s 1260 years are nearly run out, and the Man of Sin, the Papacy, is the same as the Little Horn and the head of the two-horned beast. ⁶ PFF4 352.2

Winthrop is aware of E. B. Elliott’s dating of the 1260 years from 529-533 as a “primary beginning,” and from 604 to 608 as a “secondary and complete beginning,” thus providing the same 75-year difference between the two as between Daniel’s 1260 and 1335 years; but he says most writers date it from 606. And the “666” stands possibly for Lateinos—the Latin church, Latin worship, Latin rites, Latin Scriptures, and Latin edicts and decrees. ⁷ Babylon, the harlot sorceress, is the papal hierarchies (and any Protestant hierarchies of the ten kingdoms that are corrupt at the advent). The drying of the mystic Euphrates pertains, he believes, to the masses of people sustaining the mystical Babylon, and not the wasting away of the Turkish Empire; but preparing the way for the fall of the nationalized hierarchies. ⁸ It is a modification of the standard Historical School interpretation. PFF4 353.1