MIGRATION AS AN ACT OF RELIGIOUS REFORMATION

Throughout the 1630s thousands of Puritans crossed the Atlantic to reach New England where they intended to dedicate their lives to God and His word. They came with the belief that the millennium, or the time in which Christ would reign on earth with his saints, as described in the Book of Revelation, was at hand. “If the servants of Christ be not mistaken,” wrote Edward Johnson of his fellow Puritan emigrants' millennial expectations, “the downfall of Antichrist is at hand, and then the Kingdome[s] of the Earth shall become the Kingdome of our Lord Christ.” The realization of their millennial expectations and the transformation of the world into the Kingdom of God, the Puritans believed, depended on the saints assuming an active and decisive role in the apocalyptical events preceding the millennium, as vividly portrayed in Revelation. Thus the saints were to gather themselves into fellowships, or congregations, consisting only of “visible saints.”