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INTRODUCTION
In Christian theology, the millennium is the 1,000-year period when Jesus Christ returns to establish His kingdom on earth. Within the fifteen verses found in the 20th chapter of Book of Revelations, it is written that Satan would be thrown “into the Abyss, and locked and sealed…to keep him for deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended.”
There are various interpretations with regards to the millennium. There are those who believe that the Second Coming of Christ will begin this 1,000-year period are called premillennialists while those who believe that Christianity will be accepted worldwide and that the 1,000-year period will reach its climax with the return of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the final judgment are called postmillennialists. Furthermore, there are amillennialists who believe that the millennium is not to be taken in its literal form but that it is in occurrence at the present time.
While the differences among the three may seem basic in that each has its own notion of when the millennium occurs, there are deeper issues that need to be examined to truly see what separates one from the other.
CHAPTER ONE
Premillennialism
Premillennialism takes a literal approach to the Second Coming of Christ. They believe that He will setup His kingdom one millennium or 1,000 years before the end of the world. Thus, Jesus will return before the millennium, pre-millennially.
Premillennialism is divided into two categories: historic and dispensational. Historic premillennialism believes that there will be a Great Tribulation of the church but not led by the church prior to Christ’s Second Coming. Dispensational premillennialism or dispensationalism teaches that just before the Great Tribulation, Jesus will return to resurrect the dead and take them to the heavens in what is known as the Rapture. Those left behind will have to experience the Great Tribulation when Satan leads a war against Israel. Seven years after the Rapture, Jesus will have returned to rule the world from Jerusalem.
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Introduction: The Unspeakables
It was a golden age for Britain. Under Queen Victoria’s reign, the vast empire had a lot to crow about in terms of the economy and industrial progress. Yet, it was also a time of silence. For the prudish atmosphere of that era spoke in hushed tones about more intimate matters. The mere mention of this topic was considered scandalous. Repressed and kept under lock and key, the Victorians hid their sexuality under voluminous skirts and high necklines. Sometimes, a little hint of a scandal would titillate readers to raise newspapers’ circulations. However, ordinary days promised a quiet and humdrum existence. But, where there is a will, there is a way. And slowly, the unspeakable subject of sex soon found its voice – in the long and intricate expositions of literature.
One of the proponents of sexual expression in literature in Victorian Britain was the Irish poet and dramatist Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). He was born on October 16, 1854 in Dublin to unconventional parents. His father, Sir William Wilde, was an Irish antiquarian, a gifted writer, and a specialist in diseases of the eye and ear. His mother, Lady Jane Francesca Wilde, was herself a poet and journalist. After studying at Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, in County Fermanagh, Trinity College in Dublin, and Magdalen College at Oxford, he moved to London. There, he became an art reviewer and playwrite. Among his noted works are his comic masterpieces Lady Windermere's Fan(1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), his only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray(1891) and his fairy tales especially "The Happy Prince." His two major literary-theoretical works were the dialogues "The Decay of Lying" (1889) and "The Critic as Artist" (1890).
Though married with children, Wilde was rumored to have a male lover. This was the athlete and poet Lord Alfred Douglas, who also caused his downfall. Their relationship led to Wilde’s incarceration for homosexuality, which was then a crime in Britain. Upon his release after two years of hard labor, he wrote “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”, which exposed his brutal prison experience. In 1900, Wilde died penniless in a cheap Paris hotel, at the age of 46, a victim of cerebral meningitis.
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