These include following the paths of justice, egalitarian politics, tolerance, and a voluntary collective wave of enthusiasm for this great new world of peace and fellowship, of abundance and generosity. As such, millennial movements have found much opposition historically form the ruling elites. Millennialism feeds some of the most megalomaniac tendencies in people. Partly because of the built-in hostility between the forces of social order and millennialism, the more radical movements have a tendency toward paranoia and violence. When such people actually gain political power, the consequences can be catastrophic.
Totalitarianism is the great temptation of any millennial group that takes power.
Millennial moments offer some of the most extraordinary conditions for affecting broad-based social change. People are not ashamed to feel altruistic, to openly express ideals that under ordinary circumstances would seem like the prattling of fools. It is also a time when relationships between elites and commoners sometimes change in profound ways. Millennial moments in the last 1,000 years have given rise to modern civil society. A Challenge to Mainline Christians Instead of the most progressive and liberal minds jumping on this gold mine of social imagination and emotion, we find precisely that group sitting on its hands, downplaying the date.