John Wesley and the End Times: What Our Founder Thought About the Thousand-Year Reign
“Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” by Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov (1887)
What is God doing in history? How a preacher answers this question will impact the content of preaching. Is the preacher seeking a great spiritual awakening in history or just trying to get a few souls into heaven as an escape from the downward spiral of Christian culture in this world? John Wesley looked for a period of great revival in history before God consummates the kingdom on this earth. Though eschatology was not in the forefront of Wesley’s preaching, it was always in the background of his preaching because of what he believed to be the possible, even probable, extent of God’s soteriological work in this world.
Ideas about the so-called millennium or millennial reign of Christ on earth is usually part of the discussion of “end things.” While the millennial reign of Christ on earth is not usually a major discussion point in Wesleyan theology, John Wesley’s speculation about a millennium did occur in some of his later sermons. As we shall see in this article, John Wesley participated in speculation about the coming millennium. What was that speculation and how did it impact Wesley’s preaching?
The Greek word translated “millennium” occurs six times in Revelation 20 and it means a thousand-year period. The concept usually refers to a long reign of the Messiah on earth. The concept of an earthly millennium also harkens back to the dreams of the Hebrew prophets for a period of peace and prosperity on earth. Such an example is Isaiah who wrote,
The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (11:6-9).
With an equally exciting vision of earthly hope, the prophet Micah promised,
In the days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains . . . . Peoples shall stream to it, and many nations shall come . . . . For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. . . . [T]hey shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more (4:1-4).
These are just two passages from many in the Hebrew prophets that have fueled dreams of an earthly Messianic rule. The Hebrew Bible is filled with a yearning for God’s perfect rule that blesses the whole earth.
The prevailing view among many early Christians like Papias, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus was that history would end with a Messianic rule centered in Jerusalem that followed the return of Christ (i.e., premillennialism). After the Roman empire embraced Christianity, it became more common to spiritualize the concept of the millennium as the reign of Christ in the hearts of his people and the reign of the Christian dead in heaven. So the millennium and church history became coterminous in this theological view of history. Augustine promoted this view that has since become titled amillennialism which technically means no millennium. There actually is a millennium in this theology, but it is just the span of church history. Christians live, then die, then go to heaven. That is the end of the story. This eradication of a paradisiacal earthly kingdom in favor of a spiritualized kingdom only in hearts and heaven was the view that prevailed through the Reformation.
During the 17th century, particularly in Puritan circles, a new view emerged that saw the church age ending with a near-paradisiacal millennial reign of Christ created through the preaching of the gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit. This age of gospel prominence and mass conversions would culminate with the return of Christ. Since the millennium occurs before the return of Christ, this theology is termed postmillennialism. This was the view that inspired the First and Second Great Awakenings in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America. Because of a focus on God’s work in this earth, the revivals of this period were accompanied by great social reform. Postmillennial thought fell out of popularity in American and British Christianity in the last quarter of the nineteenth century with the resurgence of premillennial thought. At the same time, the developing Protestant liberalism did not deal much with eschatology. Many evangelicals embraced the premillennialism that gained popularity in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Much of this modern premillennialism followed the leading of the British preacher, John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), who added the concept of a rapture of the saints seven years before the return of Christ. Darby’s form of premillennialism is referred to as dispensational premillennialism because a strict time barrier is drawn between God’s dealings with Israel and God’s dealings with the Church. After a while, the early Church’s version of premillennialism began to be called historic premillennialism to differentiate it from more modern dispensational premillennialism.
How does John Wesley fit into a discussion of eschatological thought? Was Wesley a premillennialist or postmillennialist, and does it matter? Is this just an esoteric theological discussion that has no bearing on practical Christian living? I think that this is an important question and the answer is important. Wesley’s eschatological considerations greatly impacted his preaching and the same can be true for Wesley’s heirs. What Wesley believed about God’s intended work in history and the coming millennium helps explain some of the motivation and power behind his preaching and the success of the early Methodist movement. In several sermons, Wesley mentioned that a new creation was coming to this earth. His sermons “The General Deliverance” (1781) and “The New Creation” (1785) certainly point to a paradisiacal age on this earth that cannot be spiritualized away or made coterminous with the church age. Because of his view that the earth would be redeemed, Wesley was obviously not an amillennialist, so he parted company with Augustine at this point.
It is difficult to categorize Wesley as either a premillennialist or a postmillennialist. Wesley was not a systematic theologian, especially regarding eschatology. Wesley seemed to create his own eschatological niche that is difficult to categorize. Different eschatological schools have claimed Wesley. The Methodist theologian Harris Franklin Rall declared in Modern Premillennialism and the Christian Hope (1920) that Wesley was not a premillennialist. But on the other hand, an early proponent of the modern resurgence of premillennialism, Presbyterian Nathaniel West claimed enthusiastically that Wesley was a premillennialist in his John Wesley and Premillennialism (1894). (This book was reprinted in 2018 by First Fruits, the academic open press of Asbury Seminary.) I think that both authors are partially right.
What did Wesley preach concerning a future earthly reign of Christ on the earth and how did he think it would be established? Wesley’s Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament (1755) makes abundant use of the writings of Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687-1752). Wesley acknowledged his indebtedness to Bengel in his Preface to the Notes when he referred to him as “that great light of the Christian world.” Bengel was known in his day as a biblical scholar who rather uniquely believed in a dual millennial reign of Christ on earth. Even though Bengel never claimed to have originated this concept, he is remembered for the innovation. According to Bengel, the first millennium will be after the binding of Satan which then will allow for a dramatic spread of the Gospel throughout the world. This first millennium looks like the classic postmillennial hope. Bengel’s second millennium was to be the earthly reign of Christ and the rejuvenation of creation akin to a return to Paradise. This allowed Bengel to be claimed by premillennial thinkers. Bengel saw both millenniums mentioned in Revelation 20.
Drawing on the work of Bengel, Wesley wrote of Revelation 20 in his Notes that it “must be observed, that two distinct thousand years are mentioned throughout this whole passage.” While Wesley did not spend time elaborating on this concept, it appears he accepted Bengel’s view. The concept of a dual millennium would allow for both the postmillennialist hope of a great advancement of the gospel, including the conversion of the Jews as dreamed by Puritan postmillennialists, and an earthly reign of Christ centered in Jerusalem as dreamed by early church premillennialists. Wesley’s hope for the future included both components. He was not willing to let go of either the dream of gospel expansion in this age or a new earth in the age to come. (For a fuller presentation of Wesley’s use of Bengel regarding the concept of a dual millennium, see Kenneth J. Collin’s The Theology of John Wesley, 2007, 314-316. Collins sees both premillennial and postmillennial thought in Wesley, but appropriately emphasizes the dominating role of Wesley’s postmillennial leanings.)
So, again I ask the question, was John Wesley a premillennialist or a postmillennialist and does it matter? I believe that his preaching included elements of both premillennialism and postmillennialism. He was inspired by both eschatological schools particularly where they supported his grace-based optimism. When Wesley touched on eschatological themes, his preaching typically made mention of the major themes of eschatology such as the return of Christ to judge the living and the dead, heaven, hell, and a new creation. Thoughts of an earthly millennium are found in his sermons. Wesley’s dependence upon Bengel certainly allowed him to envision a great earthly kingdom of Christ following the second advent. At the same time, Wesley also imbibed the postmillennial enthusiasm and hope of his age. Wesley’s sermon, “The General Spread of the Gospel” (1783) is an example of the classic eighteenth-century optimism that gave rise to Methodism’s conviction to seek the spread of Scriptural holiness and the conversion of the world. (The United Methodist Baptismal Covenant III still maintains that the Church exists to bring about the “conversion of the world.”) Wesley’s sermon “The General Spread of the Gospel” is based on a favorite text of postmillennial preachers, "The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Isaiah 11:9). Wesley emphatically declares in that sermon, “The loving knowledge of God, producing uniform, uninterrupted holiness and happiness, shall cover the earth; shall fill every soul of man.” The optimism of Wesley was an optimism of grace that could envision the prevailing of perfect love throughout the world. For eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century evangelicals, it would not be a triumph of the Church’s social activism that would change society, but the triumph of Spirit-inspired gospel preaching.
John Wesley believed in the Christianizing of this world before the return of Christ. His blending of the premillennialism of the early Church and the postmillennialism of his age allowed him to show great respect to Scripture as interpreted by the Ante-Nicene premillennialists and to seek revival like an eighteenth-century postmillennialist. Much premillennialism of twentieth-century evangelicalism has been a pessimistic creed that seemed to have given up on the betterment of life on the earth. Because of his view of the transforming power of grace, Wesley would never fall victim to such despair. It is easy to feel the enthusiasm for the mission of the church in the postmillennialism of Isaac Watt’s hymn (1719):
Jesus shall reign where’er the sun
doth its successive journeys run;
his kingdom spread from shore to shore,
till moons shall wax and wane no more.
John Wesley shared Isaac Watts’ hope for the prevailing of the gospel in history. In contrast to that hope, note the premillennial missional gloom of P.P Bliss’s “Hold the Fort” (1870):
Hold the fort, for I am coming,”
Jesus signals still,
Wave the answer back to Heaven,
“By Thy grace we will.”
These two very different hymns illustrate a major shift in eschatology. There is a direct correlation between eschatology and evangelistic zeal even if the correlation is unrecognized. A preacher’s conviction about the power of the gospel to change lives has many practical ramifications for both preaching and prayer. John Wesley’s view of the culmination of history was important. He realistically could accept the ravages of sin without yielding to despair. His view of the path and goal of history allowed for the growth of both the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13.34-43), the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of God in history. Much Christianity today seems to expect the growth of the tares but looks for little growth of the wheat. Great spiritual awakening comes when large numbers of Christians believe that such an awakening is possible and imminent. For many modern evangelicals, a downward trajectory of the church’s spiritual success is indicative of the soon return of Christ, so it is something to be accepted and relished even if unintentionally. Wesley’s eschatology allowed him to be faithful to the hopes of early Christians and the audacious hopes of the best in revival preaching of his own age. Wesley expected God to bring a revival of primitive Christianity to the whole world before the consummation of history. Perhaps great revival tarries today because Christians have lost the hope that revival can happen on a great scale.
Dr. Jeff Patterson is the Senior Pastor at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church in High Point, North Carolina. He is an Elder in the Western North Carolina Conference of the UMC.