Who else held to the “six-thousand-year” premise, and that God had given the time prophecies of Daniel and of Revelation by which the approach of the judgment might be known?
JOHN GILL (1697-1771): Ordained in 1718, and thoroughly versed in Hebrew and Latin, Gill was an eminent Baptist expositor on prophecy. He held that the millennium will be bounded by the two literal, corporeal resurrections, and the eternal kingdom is to be on earth, not in heaven. He lectured extensively on the year-day principle of prophetic time prophecies from Daniel and Revelation calculating that certain year-days mentioned therein would close at the end of the sixth millennium cleansing the church from all corruption.
ABRAHAM BAR HIYYA HANASI (1065-1136): Spanish astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher. Hanasi sought to determine the apocalyptic end. His calculations were derived from the date of creation, as he believed that the world would last 6,000 years, with the seventh as the millennial Sabbath. His is the first eschatological work, The Scroll of the Revealer, of a European rabbi, and it later influenced Nahmanides.
NAHMANIDES, or Moses ben Nahman (1195-1270) of Spain: Was a practicing physician and rabbi. He set 1358 C.E. for the Messiah’s coming and believed that the six days of creation represented six millennia, at the end of which the Messiah would appear. The seventh would be the millennial Sabbath.
ANDREAS MUSCULUS (1514-1581): A fervent Lutheran professor of theology at Frankfurt der Oder, Germany, lecturing on the last days, death, resurrection and judgment. Musculus wrote a number of tracts, such as, “About the Last Days,” and “Consider the End.” He said, “The world will not stand longer than 5,000 years. It has continued already for 5,556 years and should have some other 500 years to go…”
THEODOR BIBLIANDER (1504-1564): Lecturer on the Apocalypse, was born near Constance. He studied Hebrew at Zurich. In 1531, he was made Zwingli’s successor as professor of theology and Old Testament literature at Zurich. Bibliander believed that after six thousand years of prevailing wickedness there would come the still future predicted millennium of righteousness.
HUGH LATIMER (1490-1555): One of the most distinguished prelates of the Church of England. Latimer believed the end was less than 400 years distant. As to the approximate time to the end, he held to the six-thousand-year theory, as did many of his contemporaries. Latimer wrote, “The world was ordained to endure, as all learned men affirm and prove it with scripture, 6,000 years. Now of that number there be passed 5552, so that there is no more left but 448. … Therefore all those excellent learned men, which without doubt God hath sent into this world in these latter days to give the world warning, all those men do gather out of scripture that the last day cannot be far off.”
THOMAS BURNET (1635-1715): English divine and author, Burnet believed that paradise would be restored on a renewed earth, after it had run its predicted course—creation week being the type. He stated that the “Sex-millennial” duration of the world (the 6,000-year theory) was very much insisted upon by the Christian fathers and cited nearly a score of early fathers in its behalf.
And there are many more prominent theologians of yesteryear who set dates for the end of the world by using the 6,000-year theory. I’ll reference their names and backgrounds in the next article.