Abstract
“When will this happen?” asked the astonished disciples in response to Jesus’ prediction that the beautiful temple in Jerusalem would one day be destroyed. Convinced that such a catastrophic event would by necessity mark the end of the world as they knew it, they added, “and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” (Matt. 24:3 New International Version). According to Matthew’s narrative, what followed was Jesus’ lengthy depiction of the end times, which is often termed the Mount Olivet discourse because of the location where the gospel writer places it. The disciples’ query has been raised by Christians at nearly every turn in church history. Indeed, concern for this perennial question—“When will this happen?”—accounts in part for the popularity of the Left Behind series. In these books, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins present in fictional form one widely propagated interpretation of the end-times scenario that Jesus outlined in his conversation with his disciples on the Mount of Olives nearly two thousand years ago.
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Notes
The material in this chapter is adapted from Stanley J. Grenz, The Millennial Maze: Sorting Out Evangelical Options © 1992 by Stanley J. Grenz, and is used with permission from InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois.
as cited in James H. Moorhead, “The Erosion of Postmillennialism in American Religious Thought, 1865–1925,” Church History 53 (March 1984), 61.
Ernest W. Shurtleff, “Lead On, O King Eternal” (1887), in The Hymnal for Worship and Celebration, ed. Tom Fettke and Ken Barker (Waco, Tex.: Word Music, 1986), #483.
H. Ernest Nichol, “We’ve a Story to Tell to the Nations” (1896), in The Hymnal for Worship and Celebration, ed. Tom Fettke and Ken Barker (Waco, Tex.: Word Music, 1986), #296.
Augustus Hopkins Strong, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Griffith and Rowland, 1909), 3:1014.
See also Loraine Boettner, “Postmillennialism,” in The Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views, ed. Robert G. Clouse (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1977), 117.
Loraine Boettner, The Millennium (Philadelphia: Reformed Publishing Co., 1957), 30.
Benjamin B. Warfield, Biblical Doctrines, Banner of Truth ed. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1988), 647–648, 662, see also Boettner, Millennium, 31–34.
For a treatment of these parables, see James H. Snowden, The Coming of the Lord: Will It Be Premillennial? (New York: Macmillan, 1919), 72–84.
Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (New York: Scribner, Armstrong, and Co., 1872), 3:800.
For example, see Herman Hoyt, “Current Trends in Eschatological Beliefs,” in Understanding the Times, ed. William Culbertson and Herman B. Centz (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1952), 147–51.
See The Scofield Reference Bible, ed. C. I. Scofield (New York: Oxford, 1909), note to Genesis 1:28.
For an earlier alternative enumeration, see, C. I. Scofield, Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth (New York: Loizeaux Brothers, 1896), 12—16.
Scofield’s followers eventually renamed the dispensation of grace, preferring to call it the dispensation of the church, in that grace was not limited to the present era but was available in all dispensations. See The New Scofield Reference Bible, ed. E. Schuyler English et al. (New York: Oxford, 1967), note to Genesis 1:27.
Ryrie, however, continued the older nomenclature. Charles C. Ryrie, Dispensationalism Today (Chicago: Moody, 1965), 50–52.
J. Dwight Pentecost, Things to Come (Findlay, OH: Dunham, 1958), 219–228.
Millard Erickson, Contemporary Options in Eschatology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1977), 91–92.
D. H. Kromminga, The Millennium (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1948), 48.
George Eldon Ladd, Critical Questions about the Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1952), 146.
Douglas J. Moo, “The Posttribulation Rapture Position,” in The Rapture: Pre-, Mid-, or Post-Tribulational, ed. Richard R. Reiter et al. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Academie, 1984), 177–178.
Oswald T. Allis, Prophecy and the Church (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1972), 5.
G. C. Berkhouwer, The Return of Christ (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1972), 314–315.
William E. Cox, In These Last Days (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1964), 80–81.
Floyd Hamilton, The Basis of Millennial Faith (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1952), 53–54.
The location of the reign is the subject of the short study by Roman Catholic scholar Michel Gourgues, “The Thousand Year Reign (Rev. 20:1–6): Terrestrial or Celestial,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 47, no. 4 (October 1985): 676–681.
See James A. Hughes, “Revelation 20:4–6 and the Question of the Millennium,” Westminster Theological Journal 35, no. 3 (Spring 1973), 289–291.
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© 2004 Bruce David Forbes and Jeanne Halgren Kilde
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Grenz, S.J. (2004). When Do Christians Think the End Times Will Happen?. In: Forbes, B.D., Kilde, J.H. (eds) Rapture, Revelation, and the End Times. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403980212_5
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