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Uncle Chip; 1000 silverlings; fortheDeclaration; Dr. Eckleburg; wmfights; Lee N. Field; tabsternager; Lord_Calvinus But whatever the reason, the insight of the Sabbath being the thousand year reign of Christ on earth has been pretty much lost.

Curious "musing". There is little to suggest from the writings of Church history that such was ever the view. In fact, the quote from Barnabas you gave seems to teach something quite different, for Barnabas concludes:

I will make the beginning of the eighth day which is the beginning of another world. Wherefore also we keep the eighth day for rejoicing, in the which also Jesus rose from the dead, and having been manifested ascended into the heavens.

It was the eighth day, i.e., the Lord’s Day, that was significant to the early Church. There is no mention here a literal "thousand years" on the earth as a Sabbath. So there was really nothing for them to loose. The true rest for God’s people is in the new heavens and new earth wherein righteousness dwells.

Hebrews 4 explains the rest of God for His people, and it has nothing to do with the so-called future "thousand years".

Some date the Epistle of Barnabas between 70-131 A.D. Clement of Alexandria cited it as did Origen.

Please reread the entire chapter 15 quoted in my post. There are 7,000 years (7 days) appointed to Adamic man. The last 1,000 years (7^th day) is the Sabbath.

After the 7^th day or 7000 years is the 8^th day – the new heaven and new earth - a time of not counting.

The belief appears again in chapter 33 of 2 Enoch (not to be confused with 1 Enoch) - which has been dated between the 1^st century B.C. to the 10^th century A.D. but most often, late 1^st century A.D.

And I appointed the eighth day also, that the eighth day should be the first-created after my work, and that (the first seven) revolve in the form of the seventh thousand, and that at the beginning of the eighth thousand there should be a time of not-counting, endless, with neither years nor months nor weeks nor days nor hours.

If you wish to dismiss all of this as evidence of what many early Christians believed, that is your choice.

I do not.