Jonathan Edwards on the millennium & Christ's return

1703 – 1758 · REFORMED / CONGREGATIONALIST

READ IN A PRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°

STANCE

Postmillennial — the gospel triumphs before Christ returns

This may suffice as to the prosperous state of the church through the greater part of the period from the destruction of Satan's visible kingdom in the world to Christ's appearing in the clouds of heaven to judgment.

A History of the Work of Redemption, Period III, Part VIII (Hickman, Works 1:610-611)

THE POSITION

The thousand years are a future age of gospel prosperity inside history and before Christ's bodily return. It arrives by ordinary means — "by the preaching of the gospel, and the use of the ordinary means of grace, and so shall be gradually brought to pass" — and it is peopled by ordinary generations, with kings, magistrates, marriage, children and trade, and with true holiness general "though not universal." Only when it ends is Satan loosed for a little season, and only then does Christ appear to judgment. An Humble Attempt makes the same case from the other end: the prophesied abolition of idolatry "must be understood as what shall be brought to pass while this earth and these heavens remain, i.e. before the end of the world."

CAVEAT

The reading turns on Revelation 20:4, which Edwards takes as the church's spiritual resurrection: "the great spiritual resurrection of the church of God accompanying it, resembles the general resurrection at the end of the world more than any other." That is what makes a premillennial reading untenable for him. But the label is not his and is not of his century. He never writes "millennium" — he writes "a thousand years," "the latter-day glory," "the church's jubilee" — and "postmillennial," with the three-way premil/amil/postmil taxonomy it belongs to, is a nineteenth-century coinage applied backwards to him. What the term names is well evidenced from A History of the Work of Redemption: one long age of gospel prosperity inside history, reached by ordinary means, with Christ's bodily return after it and never during it. The scheme is his; the word is the map's.

SCRIPTURE

REVELATION 20:1-3 · BSB

1 Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven with the key to the Abyss, holding in his hand a great chain. 2 He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. 3 And he threw him into the Abyss, shut it, and sealed it over him, so that he could not deceive the nations until the thousand years were complete. After that, he must be released for a brief period of time.

1 OTHER HOLD THIS

John Owen

Amillennial — the millennium is the present church ageAQUINAS · AUGUSTINE · CALVIN · TIM KELLER · LUTHER · PHILIP MELANCHTHON · R.C. SPROUL

Premillennial — Christ returns before a future millenniumIRENAEUS · JOHN MACARTHUR · JUSTIN PETERS · JOHN PIPER

No required position; several views held faithfullyATHANASIUS · M. HEISER · JOSH HOWERTON · SECOND LONDON BAPTIST CONFESSION · WESTMINSTER CONFESSION

See all 23 figures on the millennium & christ's return →

ABOUT THIS FIGURE

New England pastor, revival theologian and philosopher of the First Great Awakening, dismissed from his Northampton pulpit in 1750 over who may come to the Lord's Table. This entry rests on Freedom of the Will (1754), Original Sin (1758), Religious Affections (1746), An Humble Inquiry (1749), Distinguishing Marks (1741), Some Thoughts on the Revival (1742), An Humble Attempt (1747) and A History of the Work of Redemption, read in the Hickman edition.

17 OF 18 POSITIONS QUOTED

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Cite this page

"Jonathan Edwards on the millennium & Christ's return", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/edwards/millennium (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/edwards/millennium).

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