| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Browse our Bookshelf Favorites store for big savings on popular fiction, nonfiction, children's books, and more. |
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? |
I felt that the two views represented the best were by far the historic premil and amillennial views articulated by Ladd and Hoekema respectively. Both did a good job of providing a rather thorough presentation of their respective views. I also felt that Hoekema did the best job of critiquing the other 3 views in his short rebuttals to the other 3 proposals. Ladd certainly could have been better in this regard.
I frankly wasn't expecting much from Hoyt, and both his presentation of dispensational premil and his rebuttals were about what I expected - which was disappointing. As was pointed out in the rebuttals to his view, Hoyt did not even attempt to provide an exegesis of Rev. 20:1-6 in his proposal, which is a monumental deficiency in his presentation. In addition, Hoyt, like many dispensationalists unfortunately, had no effective way to defend their 'literal' interpretation technique against the many well argued points made against it by the other 3 scholars.
... Read more ›Back in the early 90's I was studying for ministry and I figured that someone would probably ask me my view of the end times some day, so I decided I needed to study it for myself. So, I acquired a 28 tape set on the end times by one of the leading conservative scholars in America. I listened to all of them, as he explained and defended the above scheme and I came away from that thinking that I would never be able to persuade someone of that position unless they were already heavily predisposed to believing it. What I mean is that I couldn't find a rapture/tribulation, etc. in any of the Scriptures that this teacher used.
So, scratching my head, I did a little more research and came across this book. It opened my eyes to the fact that there were other views of the end times that were held by Christians who believed the Bible was the word of God. I had been told in the past that the only people who don't follow the rapture/tribulation etc., scheme were people who didn't believe the Bible.
I won't tell you what view I adopted, other than to say that I found that all of the views had much to commend them, from a Scriptural standpoint, except the one I formerly held.
This book does an excellent job of letting the representatives from the various schools of thought speak for themselves, and it allows critiques in a scholarly and irenic manner.
... Read more ›Books like this one help you to see that evangelical Christians have different ways of interpreting the Bible's teaching about the end of the world. This may prove unsettling at first, but it is good to be aware of other people's views when the New Testament is not as clear as some would like us to believe.
It is also helpful to see that the main teaching, that Jesus is coming again to take those who believe in him to be with him forever, *is* clear.
Another helpful book, also available from Amazon, is Steve Gregg's Revelation: Four Views - a parallel commentary, which presents several of these views side by side, in their authors' own words.
Both books are warmly recommended.
Each of the contributors explains their view more or less competently, although Hoekema (amillennialism) has by far the most rigorous and well-organized essay. Ladd's essay is also quite good. Hoyt's essay is more about the dispesationalist scheme of Biblical interpretation, and he consistently confuses the concept of metaphorical or symbolic interpretation, arguing in his essay that such interpretation is "literalism" when any speaker of English would tell you that it is not.
Boettner's contribution (post-millennialism) was downright disappointing as he had no Biblical exegesis to back up his admittedly engaging presentation of his view. Some of the responses by each contributor to the other's position are fairly rude, in particular Ladd, but also Hoyt to an extent.
The editor's careless work decreased the value of the book. He did not require all the contributors to address their exegesis of key questions, like that of Rev. 20. He allowed Boettner to get away with a sloppy essay that proved nothing. And he allowed Hoyt to blather on and on in his essay and his responses about "literalism," when any dictionary would show that literalism is not what Hoyt says it is.
In summary, you can dig an understanding of the four views of the millennium out of this book, but the editor could have made it much easier.
|