The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1543 page)

Millennialism
or Millenarianism
.

In the narrowest sense, the belief in a future millennium, or thousand-year reign of
Christ
. The main source of the belief is Revelation 20. Its adherents are pre- or post-millennialists, according to whether they conceive Christ's second coming (
parousia
) as coming before or after the millennium. Millenarian groups since the Reformation include
Anabaptists
, Bohemian and
Moravian Brethren
, early
Independents
, 17th–18th cent.
Pietists
,
Catholic
Apostolic Church,
Plymouth Brethren
, and
Adventists
.
In a more general sense, millenarian movements are those which envisage a coming age (usually imminent) in which a faithful group will be particularly rewarded on this earth. Such movements are extremely common. Some are derived from Christianity (e.g. some elements of
T’ai-ping
,
Adventists
), but others have no such connection.

 
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see
DHIMMA
.

 
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Mi-lo-fo
:

see
LAUGHING BUDDHA
.

 
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(1608–74).
Poet and controversialist. Hostile to Archbishop W. Laud's
high churchmanship
and the ‘hireling shepherds’, he supported the parliamentarians in the Civil War and served as Latin Secretary under the Commonwealth. Favouring the disestablishment of all Churches, he came to disagree with Cromwell's later ecclesiastical policy. Difficult relationships with his first wife probably occasioned his sympathetic approach to marriage problems in
The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce
(1643). A prolific writer, he published works against
episcopacy
and wrote vigorously in support of the freedom of the press (
Areopagitica
, 1644). He became totally blind in 1651. His monumental
Paradise Lost
(1667) undertakes to ‘justify the ways of God to man’ and to show the cause of evil and injustice in the world.

 
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M
m
s
: