From: WWW.JACOBALLEE.COM
It has been a point of study for me for a while now, Eschatology, the study of the end times. I have long-held certain beliefs about the end times (as I am sure many of you have also) that were based purely upon what I had heard in the sermons of others but not upon my own personal study. Actually, generally speaking, I have found that most Christians either hold strong opinions about the end time based on little study (or perhaps a thorough reading of the Left Behind Series), or they withhold any real opinion other than “Jesus is coming back and I’m on His side” because they have studied eschatology enough to know it is complicated. I often tease some of my fellow Reformed brothers that they simply don’t have an opinion about eschatology because Calvin didn’t write a commentary upon Revelation! All kidding aside, to be sure, it is a complex issue and it is one that as brothers and sisters in Christ we ought to show each other with differing views some charity.
The core beliefs concerning the end that we must uphold as Christians is that Jesus Christ will return bodily to the earth once again (Acts 1:9-11) and the dead shall be resurrected, the saved to eternal life with Christ (1 Thessalonians 4:16) and the lost to eternal torment in Hell (Revelation 20:11-15). If someone expresses a view that is contrary to this then, while charity towards the person is always due, charity toward their view need not be extended, but a strong refutation of their view is quite in order.
In this post I want to take a moment and briefly look at some of the most popular schools when it comes to the topic of eschatological teaching in the Bible. We will look at eschatology broadly today and then in an upcoming post we will take a closer look at the issue of how the Millennium in particular is viewed by various schools of thought. The purpose of this post is only to introduce the different schools of thought and so we are not going to dive very deep into the biblical rationale for each school at this point, though I will make a comment here or there about some things. The following are examples of the general framework of some of the schools of thought, it is certainly not exhaustive and there are variations out there of every school:
The Historicist School:
This Historicist School seeks to match biblical prophecy (particularly that of the book of Revelation) with historical events between the time of Christ and present day as illustrated by this chart:
Read more -->HERE.
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