English

Alternative forms

• Chiliasm

Noun

chiliasm ‎(plural chiliasms)

1. Belief in an earthly thousand-year period of peace and prosperity, sometimes equated with the return of Jesus for that period.
   • 1975, Gershom Gerhard Scholem (translated by R. J. Zwi Werblowsky), Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676, page 101

     It was, however, in the Puritan movement in England, and in similar movements on the continent — especially the Bohemian Brethren — that chiliasm asserted its greatest vitality as an historical force.

   • 1985, Colin Loader, The Intellectual Development of Karl Mannheim, page 104

     One of them, bureaucratic conservatism, represented the routinized sphere of administration, whereas the other, chiliasm, gave rise to the utopian consciousness and modern politics.

   • 2008, Detlef Garbe, Between Resistance and Martyrdom: Jehovah's Witnesses in the Third Reich, page 49

     It is a known fact that Bolshevism has unmistakable characteristics of apocalyptic chiliasm, albeit misinterpreted in a physical, earthly way.

Synonyms

• (belief): premillennialism

Related terms

• chiliad
• chiliast
• chiliastic

Translations