Millennialism (from millennium, Latin for "thousand years"), or chiliasm in Greek, is a belief held by some Christian denominations that there will be a Golden Age or Paradise on Earth in which "Christ will reign" for 1000 years prior to the final judgment and future eternal state (the "World to Come" of the New Heavens and New Earth). This belief is derived primarily from the Book of Revelation 20:1-6. Millennialism as such is a specific form of Millenarianism.

Among Christians who hold this belief, this is not the "end of the world", but rather the penultimate age, the age just prior to the end of the world when the present heavens and earth will flee away (Rev. 21:1). Some believe that between the millennium proper and the end of the world there will be a brief period in which a final battle with Satan will take place. After this follows the Last Judgment.

Millennialism is also a doctrine of medieval Zoroastrianism concerning successive thousand-year periods, each of which will end in a cataclysm of heresy and destruction, until the final destruction of evil and of the spirit of evil by a triumphant king of peace at the end of the final millennial age (supposed by some to be the year 2000). "Then Saoshyant makes the creatures again pure, and the resurrection and future existence occur" (Zand-i Vohuman Yasht 3:62).

John Franklyn Norris (September 18, 1877 – August 20, 1952) was a flamboyant Baptist preacher, one of the most controversial figures in the history of fundamentalism.

J. Frank Norris was born in Dadeville, Alabama, but the family shortly moved to Arkansas and then back to Columbiana, Alabama. In the late 1880s, the Norrises bought land near Hubbard, Texas, about thirty miles from Waco, where they farmed. James Warner Norris was an alcoholic, and Frank Norris claimed that his father once severely injured him after he had emptied his liquor bottles. In 1891, both were shot by an acquaintance of Warner Norris, and Frank said he did not fully recuperate for three years.

Norris was converted at a Baptist revival meeting in the early 1890s, and in 1897, he became pastor of Mount Antioch Baptist Church, Mount Calm, Texas. The following year he enrolled in Baylor University (1898-1903). He earned a master of theology degree from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1905, Norris returned to Texas as the pastor of the McKinney Avenue Baptist Church in Dallas, resigning in 1907 to become editor of the Baptist Standard. Norris is credited with ending the Texas Baptist newspaper war, with moving Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary from Waco to Fort Worth, and with persuading the state legislature to abolish racetrack gambling.

Benjamin Franklin Norris, Jr. (March 5, 1870 – October 25, 1902) was an American novelist, during the Progressive Era, writing predominantly in the naturalist genre. His notable works include McTeague (1899), The Octopus: A Story of California (1901), and The Pit (1903).

Frank Norris was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1870. His father, Benjamin, was a self-made Chicago businessman and his mother, Gertrude Glorvina Doggett, had a stage career. In 1884 the family moved to San Francisco where Benjamin went into real estate. In 1887, after the death of his brother and a brief stay in London, young Norris went to Académie Julian in Paris where he studied painting for two years and was exposed to the naturalist novels of Emile Zola. Between 1890 and 1894 he attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he picked up the ideas of human evolution of Darwin and Spencer that are reflected in his later writings. His stories appeared in the undergraduate magazine at Berkeley and in the San Francisco Wave. After his parents' divorce he went east and spent a year in the English Department of Harvard University. There he came under the influence of Lewis E. Gates, who encouraged his writing. He worked as a news correspondent in South Africa in 1895–96, and then an editorial assistant on the San Francisco Wave (1896–97). He worked for McClure's Magazine as a war correspondent in Cuba during the Spanish-American war in 1898. He joined the New York City publishing firm of Doubleday & Page in 1899.