Revelation: Four Views: A Parallel Commentary [Hardcover]

Steve Gregg (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 14, 1997

An even-handed summary of the four traditional views of Revelation in parallel columns. This convenient presentation not only gives you the information you need on these key views, but also informs you about outstanding commentators on the book of Revelation throughout much of church history. A wonderful addition to any Bible study resource library.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 608 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson (May 14, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0840721285
• ISBN-13: 978-0840721280
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #30,985 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

185 of 191 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nothing else quite like it, July 29, 2003

By 

David T. Wayne "aka The 'JollyBlogger'" (Glen Burnie, MD United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Revelation: Four Views: A Parallel Commentary (Hardcover)

This is a terrific book! The author has researched a vast array of commentaries and commentators on the book of Revelation and given us a summary of four different ways of interpreting the book, straight from the mouths of proponents of the various views.

It is obvious that in such a work he cannot be exhaustive. Furthermore, he doesn't really try to prove any one position but simply tries to let the advocates of the various positions state their views.

As a pastor I find this book valuable. Although I obviously have more time to study the bible than most I don't have all the time in the world. I don't have the time to wade through a dozen or more commentaries in preparing to teach on the book of Revelation. However, I have the responsibility to teach accurately and to fairly represent different views which are found within Christendom.

This is where the book shows its greatest strength. Full time scholars will wade through all of the commentaries, but pastors and bible teachers whose time is more limited can turn to this book as a reference on the differing views.

One of the things you will find is that there are four broad categories of approach to the book of Revelation - the historicist, preterist, futurist and idealist. And you will also find that within those categories there are differing angles which are taken on particular passages. This could be discouraging to some because it may make you come away thinking that the task of understanding the book of Revelation is hopeless.

On the other hand, maybe God has a purpose in this confusion. I believe it was Pascal who said something along the lines of this - God did not give us the bible to tickle our intellects but to tranform our our lives. I probably butchered the quote, but the point is that maybe God gave us Revelation in the form it is in to help us understand His greatness and our smallness. Maybe the book of Revelation has received so many different interpretations because God doesn't want us to figure it out or become experts, He wants to humble us and reduce us to awe and wonder at His power which is so richly displayed in the book of Revelation.

All of this is not to say that we can or should be agnostic when it comes to interpreting the book of Revelation. I have a definite opinion on the book and am prepared to argue it. However, this book has tempered my argumentative spirit. It has helped me to see where those I disagree with are coming from and shown me where those opponents have pointed out legitimate weaknesses in my own position. Most importantly though, it helps me embrace those brothers I disagree with as we eagerly await the return of Christ.

60 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A note from the author..., May 17, 2009

By 

Steven D. Gregg (Santa Cruz, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Revelation: Four Views: A Parallel Commentary (Hardcover)

Hi. Thanks for reading these reviews (and thanks to those who wrote them). I am the author of "Revelation: Four Views: A Parallel Commentary." Because of the nature of the book, I have always been listed as the "editor" (rather than "author") though no other hand but my own was involved in the writing of the book. The decision to call me "editor" instead of "author" was made by Thomas Nelson Publishers (with my approval, of course), rather late in the process of preparing for publication. Their rationale for using this title was their concern that a man without schoarly credentials (like me) might not be taken seriously as the "author" of a commentary, whereas readers might lower the bar a bit in assessing the appropriate qualifications for an "editor."

I noticed that (at the time of this writing--which might not be the case in the future), on this Amazon page, while I am referred to as the editor of the book (nothing wrong with that), that "Dr. Howard F. Vos" is listed as its author. Since I don't know the venerable Dr. Vos (I have a book of his on church history, and have found it very useful), and since he would be the first to admit, I am sure, that he had nothing to do with the writing of "Revelation: Four Views...", I am perplexed at how the authorship of the book came to be attributed to him at this website. You will find no reference to him on the pages of the book under consideration, because he had nothing to do with it. I do not point that out in order to avoid his getting credit for any virtues the work may possess, but more to absolve him of responsibility for anything in the book that he might regard as a defect. Since I come to this website but rarely, I cannot say how long this misprint has been here (it has not always been).

This mislabeling also could easily mislead customers who are looking for a book by me, because I am a radio talk show host and international speaker. If people familiar with me come to Amazon.com looking for a book by my name, they may not realize that this is it, if they read that Dr. Vos is the author. I have attempted (and think I have managed) to notify the people at Amazon about this, so, if it gets corrected, this notice will just make me look kind of dumb (It wouldn't be the first time that has happened, of course!).

I give the book four stars. I think the book is pretty good, for many of the reasons that other reviewers have mentioned. Twelve years after its publication, it certainly remains the only book of its type. Whether another man might have done a better job on such a project, we may never know. It fills a niche that no one, apparently, thought needed to be filled before I did, and I can't see why any author would wish to expend the necessary energies, simply to "reinvent the wheel" (unless, of course, the existing design of the wheel is unserviceable), simply in order to unnecessarily fill a void that is no longer empty. I know I wouldn't have!

Thomas Nelson has since approached me, asking me to write similar books on Daniel and Ezekiel. I declined. It can't be done. Unlike the Book of Revelation, a good portion of these books is occupied with historical narratives, for which it would be impossible to find more than one serious interpretation. Then again, when one comes to the prophetic portions of these books, there simply are not four discreet views, taken by commentators. There usually are two views--perhaps three, in some cases. I bring such things out in my recorded lectures on these books, but could never format a complete commentary on even two views of these books (at least I am not clever enough to figure out how to do so).

While I don't necessarily see the same defects in "Revelation: Four Views" that some reviewers have mentioned, I am painfully aware of other defects--worse ones than have been mentioned by any other reviewers.

One grievous defect is that the footnotes for the introductory material, in the final product, somehow got jostled and misnumbered. This would never be discovered by a reader, in all likelihood, but an author referenced in the notes might be alarmed to read that a comment made by a different person has been attributed to him, or that his wit and eloquence have been credited to another man. Of course, I didn't notice this defect until the book was in print, and I have always (in my own mind) blamed the mistake on typesetters. It is easy to put the onus for such embarrassments upon faceless drones whose real identities can never be brought to light.

Another defect (more obvious to any informed reader) is that I made a very foolish choice among various options when selecting a title for the fourth view of Revelation. I do mention, in the introductory material, that this view is difficult to label, and has been known by a variety of names, but the one I chose to place at the head of the fourth column of each comparative page was very ill-chosen. Thus the word "Spiritual" appears as the name of the fourth view, where the much more appropriate label "Idealist" should have been!

In a sense, the term "spiritual" may mislead people to think that this is the view that does all the "spiritualizing," while the other three stick more to a "literal" approach. This is not at all the case, nor is it the impression I intended to convey by the use of that term. What I was intending to communicate was the idea that this view sees the book as teaching spiritual lessons, rather than predicting historical events. However, even here, "Idealist" would have been much better--partly because it is the more-or-less "conventional" or "standard" label for the viewpoint, but also because the concepts depicted in the visions of Revelation, in this view, are not all "spiritual" concepts at all, but are "ideals" or "transcendent concepts." My bad. Look for a change in this, if there is ever a second edition. If you currently use the book as a teaching aid, please note this change--for your sake and that of your students.

Another weakness of the book (which would be remedied in a second edition) is that it does not include consideration of some fairly recent, and important, books on Revelation, which one would wish to include in such a volume. The omission of any mention of Beale's important commentary on Revelation (NIGCT) is a defect--but one for which I will accept no blame, since Beale's book was published two years after mine. On the other hand, I alone am to be blamed for not having been familiar with Richard Bauckham's "The Theology of the Book of Revelation," which was published four years before my book (I was made aware, too late, of Bauckham's book. Hank Hanegraaff brought it to my attention).

I might mention also that another book with a very similar title to mine ("Four Views of Revelation") was published by Zondervan the year following the publication of "Revelation: Four Views." I would imagine that this development may occasion some confusion of identity, among some. Readers who have not seen hard copies of either book, and are trying to decide between them will notice that Zondervan's book (edited by C. Marvin Pate), is a paperback, half the length, and considerably less expensive than my book. What may not be as obvious without one's actually opening the two books is that the similarity of the titles is pretty much the only similarity that exists between the two books. Pate has given us a useful book on Revelation--but it is useful in a different way. His includes chapters and responses from four authors, defending four views (two of the four are futurists, and there is no historicist--an editorial decision easily justified by the fewness of historicists today, and the variety of viewpoints within futurist camps). Thus it is another in what has become a justly popular genre of Christian literature that can be called "four-views books"--a genre created by Professor Robert Clouse, who himself edited four such volumes on as many Christian topics (war, eschatology, economics and the ordination of women). I have about 22 such books, on as many topics (by various publishers and editors) on my shelf, and most of them (including Pate's book) are more than worth the price of owning them.

It is a sign of Dr. Clouse's humility and graciousness that he, though recovering from a heart transplant at the time, actively encouraged me in this project and deigned to write the foreword to my book. "Revelation: Four Views" is not, however, a book of the "four-views" genre created by Dr. Clouse. It is a reference work; a verse-by-verse interpretive commentary (actually, four such commentaries, arranged in parallel columns) on the text of the Book of Revelation. Fifty other commentaries were read or consulted in the process of writing.

While writing, I limited myself to the reading of the commentaries of only one view at a time (I saw no sense in courting premature dementia!). Though I had already reached my present conclusions about the Book of Revelation before commencing the project, I actually sought to tentatively convince myself of each view serially, before writing the complete commentary for that view, and then I would do the same for the next view, etc.

Some reviewers have said that they are still not sure of my own view on Revelation (that would have to mean that they have never heard my lectures on the book). It was actually my design, in writing, to conceal my own leanings throughout, and to be personally convinced (so far as was possible) of each view as I wrote it. My own view, by the way, does not conform to any of the four all the way through Revelation, but draws from at least two of them. It was fairly easy for me to write as if totally objective because my personal commitment in ministry (my philosophy of education) is that students will be... Read more ›

55 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The impossible, accomplished!, February 24, 2005

By 

Errol Hale - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Revelation: Four Views: A Parallel Commentary (Hardcover)

I did not think it could be done. How could anyone write, presenting varying views that are opposed to each other and remain unbiased? Steve Gregg has done just that.
I became a Christian reading a famous book about revelation written from the dispensational perspective. I became so well versed in this view that I could teach the book of Revelation without notes. After attending a Bible College that was exclusively dispensational, a pastor who embraced the historic premillennial view challenged me to learn about other views on the subject. I resisted, like the know-it-all 26 year old I was at the time, but I did follow my pastor's advice and began reading.
I have since evolved through historic premillennialism and am now a humble amillennialist. (I say humble because I know that better men than me have differing opinions on eschatology.)
When I read Steve Gregg's masterpiece, I was stunned to see that he faithfully and charitably presented an unbiased look at the varying views of Revelation. THIS IS A MUST READ for any and all students of eschatology-especially those who are unread in views other than their own. BRAVO!