Ask Augustine with Dr. Paul Tambrino
Ask Augustine is a weekly column where professor/author Dr. Paul Tambrino discusses various theological questions with wit, clarity and substance.
Question #58 – What Are the Various End Times (Or Eschatological) Views?
Eschatology is a twenty-dollar word that comes from the Greek. It literally means “last discourse.”
It is the doctrine of last things and end times covering all of creation. It is related to the second coming of Christ, often referred to as the time of the Rapture.
The second coming of Christ is also referred to as the “parousia,” from the Greek word meaning “coming” or “presence.”
Millenarianism or chiliasm are two additional twenty-dollar words that mean the same thing, a belief in a 1,000 year period at the end of the age when Christ shall come again.
Christian bookstores are often shelved with literature about the end times; perhaps with the most popular example being the Left Behind series.
Millennialists are divided into three general views.
Those who expect that the Lord will return before the millennium (the 1,000 year period at the end of the present age when Jesus Christ reigns with his people over the earth) are called Premillennialists. “Christian bookstores are often shelved with literature about the end times; perhaps with the most popular example being the Left Behind series.”
Those who hold that the second coming will take place after the millennium (a golden age on earth in which the church is triumphant) are called Postmillennialists.
The third view holds that there is no sufficient Scriptural ground for the expectation of a millennium.
There will be no literal 1,000 year reign of Christ on earth but His second coming on the last day will usher in eternal paradise for some and eternal damnation for others.
Those who hold to this third view are know as Amillennialists.
Premillennialists may be divided into three sub-groups. The first sub-group is known as Historic Premillennialists and they say that Jesus will come back for His own one thousand years before the end of the world.
The other two sub groups are classified as Dispensational Premillennialists upon which the Left Behind series of books is based.
One group says that Jesus will come back for His own one thousand and seven years before the end of the world.
A second group says that He will come back for His own one thousand three and a half years before the end of the world.
Preterism is the eschatological view that places most (or all) last times events in the past, especially during the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A. D.
Its views range from placing all of the end times events in the first century to most (that view is called Partial-preterism) of those end times events, with the exception of the Second Coming and the final judgment, in 70 A. D.
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