I'm inquiring as to whether you make any distinction between historical and dispensational millennialism, or if you think they're both false. I accede to your statements about dispensationalism. However, in my personal reading of Revelation 20, I do subscribe to the historical view. Irenaeus was a student of Polycarp, and Papias was a contemporary of Polycarp and a "hearer of John" with Polycarp, and they both taught a literal 1000 year reign. These facts lend credence to historical dispensationalism. -- David Rhinehart (Ventura, California)

I realize that there were millennialists in the second century. Many other things were also taught in that century, not necessarily correct, despite their antiquity. And everyone in the second century was connected -- let the relational chain have enough links! -- with people in the first. (Likewise, the third century church fathers were connected to those in the second.)

The numbers of Revelation I, and nearly all interpreters, take as symbolic. I find it odd that most of us reject the Jehovah's Witness view of 144,000 (the saved in heaven, Revelation 7 and 14) as a literal number, yet embrace the 1000 of chapter 20 as literal! (Why not the "thousand" hills of Psalm 50?)  My (further) thoughts on this are in Revelation & the End of the World, a 4-part audio set.