A Basic Guide to Eschatology: Making Sense of the Millennium

Rating:
Summary: very scholarly, reads like a textbook
Review: This new edition of an earlier work is a very evenly balanced, scholarly work. It reads like a history book in some places and like a textbook in others. There are no dogmatic assertions made for any position, and the author's own opinion is well hidden -- you do not even know what it is until the end of the book.

The book covers a great deal of material including overviews of the traditional viewpoints of the millenium and the timing of the rapture. It includes basic arguments from each position and the persons who are the spokesmen for those positions. One of the prominent features is that evaluations are given of both positive and negative aspects of each position which is a big plus. While the arguments do not go into the greatest detail, they are not unduly brief so as to be unuseful. The scholar as well as the layman will find the book inviting.

Although the book is a newer addition and covers the recent trends in dispensationalism for example, it does not have information about the prewrath rapture position, which is becoming a major theory. It does however cover some of the less popular, or "mediating" positions such as the partial rapture view and the imminent posttribulational view.

This is a very informative and well written book. The author is quite fair to all positions and never engages in personal attacks. The book was written at the request of seminary students for an objective reference to the different eschatological options they would have when they would someday minister. Written by a scholar with the heart of a minister, their request has been well served in this book.

Rating:
Summary: Informative, Organized, and Balanced
Review: What I appreciate most about this book is its organization. In particular, part 2 of the book, the various millennial positions, employs these subheadings for each chapter: Overview, History, Tenets, and Evaluation (both positive and negative); since each view uses the same subheadings, it allows for easy comparison. Part 1 of the book, Background Views, was interesting reading; however, I didn't see how it connected with parts 2 and 3. Then again, I confess I haven't read widely in this field. I thought the presentation of each of the millennial views was more clear in this book than in Clouse's "The Meaning of the Millenium," although I enjoyed and recommend that book, as well.