The Millennium is Here Again

Abstract

"Not a little of the fascination of Victorian religion derives from the CCF existence within it of an urgent sense of intermingled crisis and confidence, revival and decline."' We can fairly say this of the period from 1790 on. The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the outbreak of the French Revolution seemed to indicate that the equilibrium of both Nature and the Age of Reason was break up. John Kent has noted the watershed of 1789.~ Was it bliss to be alive in that dawn, or would godless revolution spread throughout Europe-) The captivity of the Pope in 1798 was short-lived good news for Protestants and secularists. Optimism and pessimism existed side by side. The Postmillennialism (the Second Advent follows the golden age) populd by Daniel Whitby was countered by a powerful wave of Premillennialism (the Second Advent inaugurates the millennium)"