ESCHATOLOGY
The Study of Last Things
If all of the potential buyers of The Beast of Revelation were to discover in advance that it is not filled with prophecies about brain-implanted computer chips, tattoos with identification numbers, cobra helicopters, nuclear war, and New Age conspiracies, most of them would not buy it. Customers of most Christian bookstores too often prefer to be excited by the misinformation provided by a string of paperback false prophecies than to be confronted by the knowledge that the so-called Great Tribulation is long behind us, and that it was Israel’s tribulation, not the church’s.
- Preface Gary North
Why, then, should Christians believe that some great tribulation faces them in the future - a tribulation so great that nothing like it in history has ever occurred? The answer is: they shouldn't. Why not? Because the great tribulation is behind us. This is what David Chilton argues in The Great Tribulation. David Chilton's magnificent commentary on the Book of Revelation is appropriately called The Days of Vengeance (Dominion Press, 1987). This little book is a brief survey of those sections of Revelation that deal with the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. -Preface Gary North
Evangelical Christians affirm together that a dreadful destiny awaits those who reject God's grace throughout life. According to the traditional view, that destiny will involve unending conscious torment in hell. However, believers are increasingly questioning that understanding, as both unbiblical and inconsistent with the character of God revealed in the Scriptures and in the man Jesus Christ.
This internationally acclaimed book--now fully updated, revised, and expanded--carefully examines the complete teaching of Scripture on the subject of final punishment. It concludes that hell is a place of total annihilation, everlasting destruction, although the destructive process encompasses conscious torment of whatever sort, intensity, and duration God might require in each individual case.
