By your own admission on another thread, you do not do your own research on the ECFs. You simply trust and depend upon Thomas Ice, who has been widely proven to be bias in his Pretrib judgment and lacking in his historic evidence. What you submit is simply his opinions, not hard facts. That is because it takes deep research to discover what the ECFs really believed. Here are my own findings on the history of Premil.
The founders of Premil
The first promoter of what we know today as modern-day Premillennialism was
Cerinthus who lived in the first century, who was strongly opposed by the early Christian Church. Cerinthus was from Western Asia Minor (now Turkey) and lived around A.D. 100. He was a shady individual who promoted a perverted blend of Judaism and Christianity. Two issues that seem to stand out more than anything else in his writings are his heretical Gnostic beliefs and his eschatological Premillennialism. That is not to say that Premillennialism is in any way heretical, it is not! Notwithstanding, these two matters are the preeminent focus of early church criticism of him.
Cerinthus
Cerinthus of Asia Minor promoted the restoration of the old covenant arrangement, believing that the earthly Jewish temple would be rebuilt, the old covenant Aaronic priesthood revived and sin offerings restarted. Dionysius describes the millennium Cerinthus anticipated in the future. It is a classic but crude summation of many of the core tenets of modern-day Premillenialism.
Cerinthus, who founded the sect which was called, after him, the Cerinthian, desiring reputable authority for his fiction, prefixed the name. For the doctrine which he taught was this: that the kingdom of Christ will be an earthly one. And as he was himself devoted to the pleasures of the body and altogether sensual in his nature, he dreamed that that kingdom would consist in those things which he desired, namely, in the delights of the belly and of sexual passion, that is to say, in eating and drinking and marrying, and in festivals and sacrifices and the slaying of victims, under the guise of which he thought he could indulge his appetites with a better grace.
This summary covers some of the core tenets of what we know today as Premillennialism. But the key element that is present here, but absent in the Chiliast hope, is where Dionysius describes Cerinthus’ expectation of a return to the Jewish “festivals and sacrifices and the slaying of victims.” Cerinthus saw the reintroduction of the old covenant arrangement. With the return of “festivals and sacrifices,” came (of necessity) the rebuilding of the Jewish temple and the restoration of the old covenant priesthood. This was anathema to orthodox early Christianity. It ran contrary to New Testament teaching and principles.
The early Christians writers of all shades believed that Christ was the last sacrifice for sin. They held that the old covenant was a temporary imperfect unsatisfactory covenant pointing forward to the Lord Jesus Christ and His eternal sacrifice. They taught that the new divine arrangement had superseded the shadow, type and figure.
There is no allowance made by the Patristic writers for a restoration of the Old Testament sacrifice system with its festivals and feast, its meat offerings, sin offerings, trespass offerings, burnt offerings, peace offerings and drink offerings. They made no mention, as today, of “memorial sacrifices.” That is a modern man-made extra-biblical term that is rabbited by the masses in order to justify the unjustifiable.
The old imperfect sacrifices made by the representative priests in the old covenant were
superseded at the cross by the one final satisfactory sacrifice by the one true eternal priest – the Lord Jesus Christ. Man has now only one true heavenly high priest and requires none other. The new covenant with a new priesthood had eternally removed the old covenant with the old priesthood.
Eusebius the historian records Caius of Rome, (17 December, AD 283 to 22 April, AD 296), in his criticism of Cerinthus. He does not go into all the detail of Dionysius, but makes general sweeping statements in regard to his Premillennialism:
By means of revelations which he pretends were written by a great apostle, brings before us marvelous things which he falsely claims were shown him by angels; and he says that after the resurrection the kingdom of Christ will be set up on earth, and that the flesh dwelling in Jerusalem will again be subject to desires and pleasures. And being an enemy of the Scriptures of God, he asserts, with the purpose of deceiving men, that there is to be a period of a thousand years for marriage festivals.
Cerinthus was a follower and advocate of the Jewish law, something Epiphanius (who was Bishop of Constantia in Cyprus, 310-403AD) alludes to in his writings:
Cerinthus … adhered in part to Judaism. He, however, claims that the Law and prophets have been given by the angels, and the law-giver is one of the angels who have made the world (The Panarion, Against Cerinthians or Merinthians, 1:3).
He goes on to allege:
Cerinthus stirred the circumcised multitudes up over Peter on his return to Jerusalem by saying, “He went in to men uncircumcised.” Cerinthus did this before preaching his doctrine in Asia and falling into the deeper pit of his destruction. For, because he was circumcised himself he sought an excuse, through circumcision if you please, for his opposition to the uncircumcised believers (The Panarion, Against Cerinthians or Merinthians, 2:5-6).
Theodoret (Antioch Syria, died October 22, 362) also strongly repudiates Cerinthus and his false teaching, saying:
For, unlike that of Cerinthus and of those whose views are similar to his, the kingdom of our God and Saviour is not to be of this earth, nor circumscribed by a specific time. Those men create for themselves in imagination a period of a thousand years, and luxury that will pass, and other pleasures, and along with them, sacrifices and Jewish solemnities. As for ourselves, we await the life that knows no growing old.
This is the simplistic early overview of modern day Premilennialism. It is what they teach and preach. Little do many know, but, the ancient source of their teaching is the ancient Judaizing heretics. The cross does not seem satisfactory, efficacious and final enough for this founder of early Premillennialist. He wrongly and strongly promoted the full reinstitution of the redundant old covenant arrangement with its multiple additional sin offerings to atone for the sins of man in the future. The “sacrifices and Jewish solemnities” endorsed to arise in a future millennium refers to the full gamut of the Old Testament Mosaic sacrifice system. Cerinthus is the first promoter of a thousand years of blood-letting surrounding the abolished old covenant feasts and festivals.
Marcion
Through his distorted view of the Hebrew Scriptures, Marcion also advanced the idea of the full recovery of the Jewish tradition in the future. He saw the nation retaking its favored Old Testament position above all nations again in the future. He absurdly believed that Israel, according to Old Testament prophecies, has its own unique Messiah, who is distinct to the Jesus of the New Testament.
Listen to Tertullian, a well-known Chiliast, of Carthage, Africa, (now Tunisia), (160 – 220 AD) in Against Marcion Book III, Chapter XXI:
So you cannot get out of this notion of yours a basis for your difference between the two Christs, as if the Jewish Christ were ordained by the Creator for the restoration of the people alone from its dispersion, whilst yours was appointed by the supremely good God for the liberation of the whole human race. Because, after all, the earliest Christians are found on the side of the Creator, not of Marcion, all nations being called to His kingdom, from the fact that God set up that kingdom from the tree (of the cross).
Here you have the seeds of modern-day Premillennialism. To Marcion, the whole idea of the “restoration” of the “Jewish … people” to their land involved the full return of the old covenant scheme, something rejected by early Chiliasts but anticipated on the millennial earth by most Premils today. Marcion also believed that there were two peoples of God, a doctrine unknown to ancient Chiliasm, but prevalent with Dispensationalism today. He made a clear distinction between Israel and the Church, although this arch heretic imagined two different God’s and two different Messiahs overseeing each company.
Tertullian explains in Chapter VI:
Marcion has laid down the position, that Christ who in the days of Tiberius was, by a previously unknown god, revealed for the salvation of all nations, is a different being from Him who was ordained by God the Creator for the restoration of the Jewish state, and who is yet to come.
It seems from the early censures of Marcion by both early Chiliasts and early Amillennialists that the restoration of the Jewish state was at the center and forefront of his eschatological hope. This was not found in any of the orthodox early writers. The Church was God’s only spiritual elect and the true people of God.
Tertullian continues in Chapter XXIV (Christ’s Millennial and Heavenly Glory in Company with His Saints),
God’s kingdom in an everlasting and heavenly possession. Besides, your Christ promises to the Jews their primitive condition, with the recovery of their country; and after this life’s course is over, repose in Hades in Abraham’s bosom.
Tertullian takes Marcion to task over his view that the Jewish Messiah (who was said to be different from Jesus Christ) would give “the Jews their primitive condition, with the recovery of their country.” Here he was advocating the legitimacy of, and the Jewish return to, the old covenant ceremonial system. It is important to say at this juncture, not one of the orthodox early Chiliasts promoted this theology. This was a belief that was outside of the pale of orthodoxy – both Amillennial and Chiliast. It was a Jewish heresy advocated by the neo-Gnostics like Cerinthus and Marcion.
In Marcion’s theology, we see how there was a strong prevailing view among the early heretics that God would bring Israel back to their previous theocratic place of favor. This was strongly rejected by ancients Amils and Premils.
Tertullian (an early Chiliast) refutes Marcion’s error, stating:
As for the restoration of Judæa, however, which even the Jews themselves, induced by the names of places and countries, hope for just as it is described, it would be tedious to state at length how the figurative interpretation is spiritually applicable to Christ and His church, and to the character and fruits thereof.
Orthodox early Chiliast, Tertullian represents the prevailing thought among his peers on national Israel here, demonstrating that the people of God can only be found in the Church of Jesus Christ. There is no second group. There is no alternative place of favor. There is no other plan of salvation.
Marcion's invented Christ would meet all the faulty hyper-literal expectations that the apostate Christ-rejecting Jews desired - including restoring them back to their former land and elevating them to their former glory as God's chosen people and an elite race lording over all the Gentile nations. Whilst orthodox Premils reject the "2 Messiahs heresy" they run with Marcion's future millennial expectancy of a temporary carnal earthly kingdom focused mainly upon the Jews, Jerusalem and the old covenant practice. This is classic Premil!
Hill argued: “Marcion conceded to the Jews the reality of a full chiliastic hope, complete with a messianic deliverer, restoration to the land of promise, and refreshment in the infernal realms for the faithful dead! (The lack of any mention of resurrection is, however, to be noted.) He agreed with the Jews, and against catholic Christians, that the Christ promised in the Old Testament had not yet come. Marcion taught that the Creator’s Christ, when at last he came, would indeed restore the fortunes of the Jewish nation just as the Jews were convinced he would. Marcion of course wanted nothing to do with this Creator, his Christ, or the benefits they would lavish upon the Jews; to him they all savored of the same earthly and fleshly stench which his heavenly Savior had come to dispel. But part of his polemical program against orthodox Christianity was to insist that the Jews were right and the Christians were wrong about the interpretation of the prophets. The Jewish, nationalistic Messiah predicted in the Old Testament bore no likeness to the Christ of the higher God who came to earth during the reign of Tiberius to effect the salvation of mankind.”
The heretical dualists were Premil literalists who opposed the more-figurative Amillennialist position. Origen in his Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew 15.3, explained how Marcion
"prohibited allegorical interpretations of the scripture."
As a Premil, Marcion was a literalist and took the thousand years as a literal period of time after the second coming that involved the continuation of this physical age and all its pleasures and afflictions.
Origen actually summed up the ethos of those that held to a future millennium saturated in mortals (including the wicked) and who promoted the return of the old covenant arrangement as
“understand the divine Scriptures in a sort of Jewish sense” (De Principiis, Book 2, Chapter XI).
This is the classic MO of modern-day Premils. They hurl the same charges at Amillennialists as these ancient heretics through at ancient orthodox Church generally. It comes up continually in discussions with Premils.
The historian Gennadius (died c. 496) identified all the main Millenialists among the ECFs, explaining what they expected on the millennial earth, there among them is both Cerinthus and Marcion:
Not in the divine order of the promises of earthly and transitory life, as the Melitians hoped. Not in the marriage procreation, such as held by the insane Cerinthus and Marcion. Not in drinking, eating and working, even as Papias authored, and Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Lactantius are satisfied. All this in the kingdom of a thousand years after the resurrection of Christ in the land of the future, so the joy of the saints are to reign with him in the hope that, as Nepos, who believed in a prime resurrection of the righteous, and a second of the wicked.
Gennadius records his own opposition to millenialism and a transitory kingdom in between the here-and-now and the NHNE. He exposes the error Cerinthus and Marcion taught of sexual pleasures continuing on a future millennial earth. This this a classic Premil belief. This runs against the teaching of Jesus. In Luke 20:34-36 Jesus basically compares the temporal imperfect state of this present age/world to the glory of the age/world to come.
William Rounseville Alger comments: “According to the heretics Cerinthus and Maricon, the millennium was to consist in an abundance of all sorts of sensual riches and delights. Many of the orthodox Fathers held the same view, but less grossly; while others made its splendors and its pleasures mental and moral” (The Destiny of the Soul).
This couldn’t be any clearer! This unscriptural belief was invented by the heretics Cerinthus and Marcion and is continued today by modern Premils. No early Chiliast advocated this error. The fact is: there will be no marriage and no death in the age to come because the only ones worthy to attain it will be those who have been changed and possess immortal bodies. Contrary to what Premil claims, there are no engagements, marrying or procreation on the new earth; neither is there any sickness or funerals. Death is actually abolished at Christ’s return. Also, the age to come is eternal and not a temporary thousand years time-period as Premil argues.
Even Tertullian (160 – 220 AD) rebukes Marcion in Against Marcion, Book IV, Chapter 38, speaking on Luke 20:34-36:
He therefore gave His answer, that the children of this world marry. You see how pertinent it was to the case in point. Because the question concerned the next world, and He was going to declare that no one marries there, He opens the way by laying down the principles that here, where there is death, there is also marriage. But they whom God shall account worthy of the possession of that world and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; forasmuch as they cannot die any more, since they become equal to the angels, being made the children of God and of the resurrection.