THE SUBTLE CHANGE OF AN EARTHLY

MILLENARIAN KINGDOM TO A SPIRITUAL

ECLESIASTIC KINGDOM
By Mario A. Olcese

The historian Gibbon describes how the original faith lost ground:
“The ancient and popular doctrine of the millennium was
intimately connected to the second coming of Christ. The certainty
of a millennium was carefully inculcated by a succession of Fathers,
from Justine Martyr and Ireneus, who talked with the immediate
disciples of the apostles, to Lactancius, who was preceptor of
Constantine's son ... it seems that it was the reining sentiment
between the orthodox faithful ... But when the church's building
got almost complete, the temporary support was moved over. The
doctrine of Christ's kingdom in the land was first treated as a deep
allegory, at a later time it came to be regarded as a doubtful and
useless opinion, and at the end it was refused as the absurd
invention of heresy and fanaticism" ( Chapter 15 ).

It seems almost impossible how a so fundamental aspect of Christ's teaching

could be discarded by his professed followers. But that is the result when men
follow by their own thoughts, instead of relying on God's word.

But these Christians of the IV century still had the gospels, which contain
uncountable and indelible hints to the kingdom of God. If according to new
ideas the kingdom did not more refer to the Kingdom of Christ at his return,
¿what then did they put in its place?
¡God's kingdom was the same church! This was the revolutionary idea of
Agustine of Hippo at the beginning of the V century. (This Agustine must not
be mixed up with the man who one century later is believed founded the
church in England.) Talking about the original belief in the millennium the
British Encyclopedia continues:
"This state of things, however, gradually disappeared after the end
of the IV century. The change was the result of the new idea of the
church designed by Agustine on the basis of the convulsed political
situation of the church. Agustine was the first that dared to teach
that the Catholic church, in his empiric form, was the kingdom of
Christ, that the millennium had begun with Christ's appearing and
consequently it was an accomplished fact. With this Agustine's
doctrine the old millennarism, although not completely extirpated,
was for the less extirpated of the official theology ".

1
In this way began the official belief of the church that God's kingdom is not a
literal kingdom that will be established at Jesus return, rather it is and always
has been the church on which it is considered that Jesus must reign. I am
confident that aside from the obvious biblical teaching of the kingdom that we
have considered in previous chapters, our brief look to the way in which the
church became unwrapped in after the first century has convinced you that this
is not right. It is a system that deliberately introduced the Greek philosophy,
pagan beliefs and pagan rites in the original Christianity, and that latter on the
church engaged itself in a tyrannical domain on the minds and bodies of men
arriving even to the intrigue and murder to obtain its goals. ¿Is this Christ's
kingdom in the earth, that produces glory to God and peace, joy and happiness
to humanity?
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