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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Backgrounder, January 22, 2004
The timing of the rapture is a matter of much debate these days, and in order to have a discussion in what I call "the James 3 tradition" (respect, love, humility, and grace), it helps to have an accurate understanding of what the other positions are and why others hold to them. As such, this book does a good job of describing three of the four main premillennial positions on this topic. I believe the omission of the emerging and rapidly mainstreaming prewrath position, however, was an unfortunate oversight that I hope will be corrected in future editions. One of the most fascinating aspects of this book is its introduction that discusses the development of the pretrib, midtrib, and posttrib positions. When one understands how these positions developed and why one gained more steam and notoriety than others, one begins to understand why popularity alone does not determine orthodoxy. Interestingly, the origination of the pretrib concept in the early 1800s and its rapid deployment throughout the evangelical circles in the 1900s had less to do with good practices of scriptural interpretation than a response to the amillennial interpretations that had dominated for centuries, combined with popular exposure to this position due to power and resources of its defenders during a time of relative scriptural ignorance among the general population. The midtrib and posttrib positions developed in the academic circles in response to the perceived error of rapidly popularizing pretrib position, but they came too late; pretrib had already become entrenched. Such background is fascinating and necessary for any student of the rapture and helps to put the positions themselves into perspective. The presenters of each of the three positions covered in this book are well chosen, and they provide good, overall assessments of the academic proof-texting of each of these three views. The back-and-forth debates between the holders of each position expose the reader to the basic reasoning behind them, as well as the strengths and flaws in each argument. They also expose the fact that none of these positions can stand strong against critical scrutiny and holds firm only in isolation. Hence, my disappointment that the prewrath view was not included in this discussion. I think this is a terrific book for anyone wanting to gain grace and understanding in the rapture debate. I do not recommend it because any of the three presentations are, in themselves, convincing (they are not). Rather, I recommend it as an important backgrounder and primer on three of the four primary positions from an academic (rather than popular) perspective and a good sense of how and why they developed. -- H. L. Nigro, author of Before God's Wrath: The Bible's Answer to the Timing of the Rapture
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