Customer Reviews

Back to the Future

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I'm a Pastor who serves on the Doctoral Review Board of Reformation International Theological Seminary (RITS), the school that granted Ralph E. Bass, Jr., his doctorate. So I was one of those who read and approved, "Back to the Future," which was written, originally, as Dr. Bass' doctoral dissertation.

The more I read, the more I liked it. This commentary on Revelation is one of the best that I've read, perhaps even the best. Dr. Bass has gleaned insights from the best commentators out there, along with doing his own careful exegesis. I grew to like his style in presenting his case simply, without a lot of extraneous verbiage. He takes the "Partial Preterist" position, meaning he believes that the bulk of the prophetic material in Revelation was fulfilled in AD 70, with the destruction of Jerusalem and the apostate Jews. He doesn't go into a lot of application, as some commentaries do, but I liked the way in which he didn't simply refer to OT texts, but printed them out, demonstrating the many parallels between the book of Revelation and the OT, as well as with NT prophetic material. And I liked how he allowed the reader to come to his own conclusions, in light of those parallels. He was dogmatic in areas where dogmatism was warranted, and tentative in areas where things weren't nailed down as well. I found myself in agreement with most of the positions he took in his interpretation. I also appreciated his refutation of some of the ideas from the "Full Preterist" camp. "Full Preterists," I believe, go too far in stating that Christ's final coming also occurred in AD 70, a position which denies the creeds and confessions of most churches today. Nowadays, one can't write a comprehensive, "Partial Preterist" commentary on Revelation without dealing with "Full Preterism," a serious threat to what I consider to be a more Biblical preterism.

In short, I was more than happy to sign off on this doctorate level work. And if I ever gain the courage to preach on the book of Revelation, this book will be one of my first resources!

First, some comments about the edition. I like the nice large print, with plenty of white space. This made it very easy on the eyes. I could actually read it without my glasses! However, it also has editing issues, primarily in the dropping of punctuation. Sometimes I had to re-read a sentence because a comma or quotation marks were left out. It was just a minor distraction.

Second, as to content. Bass writes from a Reformed, postmillenial (properly speaking, optimistic ammillenial), preterist viewpoint. He holds that most of the Revelation regards the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70AD. In his own terminology, Bass holds to the "orthodox preterist" position, i.e., he still looks for a future resurrection, judgment, and Second Coming. He opposes "unorthodox preterists" who hold that those events also occurred in 70AD. He has a special gift for demonstrating that the common uses of terms in the book point to events of that time, not sometime in the unknown future. He also makes devastating verse-by-verse critiques of the interpretations given to the passages by dispensationalists. He demonstrates that their spin is anything by "literal."

The book is written in simple, everyday language. There are a few oints where he refers to the Greek terms, but he is alwys careful to transliterate the terms, and then explain them in everyday language. this is also true of the few technical theological terms. He never assumes that the reader is a trained theologian.

Thank you! The book arrived sooner than promised and is in excellent shape. I would certainly buy from you again!