DR. GRESWELL

Greswell has a masterly knowledge of the millenary doctrine, reasons with great clearness and propriety, and comes in here to sum up the case for the millenaries of the ancient church, before we open the doctrine under the church of the Reformation. In the five points following, he affirms that all the fathers of the ancient church agree, and himself believes.HDM 22.3

1. That Elijah must yet come before the end of the world.HDM 22.4

2. That Elijah is one of the witnesses to be slain; the other is commonly supposed to be Enoch.HDM 22.5

3. That Antichrist must come, and must be destroyed by the advent of Christ. In this perfectly agree all, whether friends or foes of the doctrine of the millennium. “The only distinction was, that the advocates of the millennium expected their kingdom to begin and proceed after the destruction of Antichrist; the opponents of the doctrine expected the same of the kingdom of heaven.”HDM 22.6

4. That Antichrist is a person, rather than a character, a bodily agent. Yet they all agree to give the name to the symbolical character of the beast in Revelation, and also to the little horn, and to the king of the North in the prophet Daniel.HDM 22.7

5. Before the appearing of Antichrist, the Roman empire was to be broken up into ten parts, which at his appearing were to be reunited in him and he should reign over them three and a half years. Many understood “that which letteth,” 2 Thessalonians 2:6, to mean the empire, or imperial power. Tertullian says in his Apology, that Christians pray for the emperor and empire in the faith, that while these are prolonged Antichrist is kept back. Lactantius attaches the same interpretation to the city of Rome, instead of the emperor and empire. And the end of Antichrist’s power is the beginning of Christ’s reign; the one will begin when the other is over, and not before.-Greswell, p. 393-395, vol. i.HDM 22.8

They expect the literal return of the carnal Jews, in that flesh and blood which is of the first Adam, to rule the earth for a thousand years in the empire of the second Adam, which empire is the palingennesia, the anapsyxis the apokatastasis pantoon, the resurrection of the just, the first resurrection, and the temporal glory of the millennium: and so he takes the answer to the prayer, “Thy kingdom come,” to be fulfilled in the thousand years’ reign.HDM 23.1