How was millennialistic teaching recovered after the Reformation?
After the Reformation, end-time teaching was largely absent until Joseph Meade wrote about Israel’s return to the land and a thousand-year earthly reign. Though initially little noticed, his work began recovering Millennialistic teaching, which John Darby later advanced in the mid-1800s through pre-tribulation and pre-millennial teaching about Christ’s coming.
Les explains that even from the Reformation there was nothing taught concerning the end time, placing Luther’s start at about 1511. He notes that Joseph Meade, whose lifetime was 1586 to 1638, began writing about the nation of Israel going back to the land and a thousand-year reign on the earth. Meade was not paid too much attention, but from him on, more and more men began to recover Millennialistic teaching. Then in about the middle 1800s, beginning with John Darby in England—whom many feel wrote one of the best Bible translations—Darby became a tremendous proponent of the pre-tribulation and pre-millennial coming of Christ. Since Darby, Les says, there have been thousands of tremendous theologians, and with everything happening on earth and the prophetic plan coming together, it is easier to embrace these things than to say God is all through with the Jew. He also reminds listeners that large groups in Christendom exist, using that word to involve all cults and denominations, Roman Catholicism and all the rest.