Foreword

Foreword

A generation ago, baby boomers and some of their parents were captivated by the end-times prophecies of Scripture. Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth became the bestselling nonfiction book in the U.S. during the 1970s. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, those same boomers and some of their children were titillated by the LEFT BEHIND series from Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, which was clearly touted as fiction but not always treated as such. What these authors shared theologically was the staunch conviction that a pre-Tribulational, premillennial eschatology was the one correct interpretation of Scripture on the events of the last days. Their effects ranged far beyond churches and denominations that already held that perspective. I was invited to teach Revelation in a large adult Sunday school class in a Christian Reformed Church in the Denver metropolitan area shortly before the frenzy over the Y2K crisis that was going to turn the world into chaos on New Year’s Day 2000. Except for one elderly gentleman, no one could articulate Calvin’s view of the end times or amillennial eschatology, which is what the CRC has historically held, but they were all familiar with Lindsey, LaHaye and Jenkins.

As we near the end of the second decade of the 2000s, the scene is quite different. Many Gen Xers and most millennials care very little about eschatology. Often it is an overreaction to their parents’ overreaction in the opposite direction, but often, too, it is a failure to grasp its practical relevance to a world of deep personal and social injustice. Especially if they are reacting against pre-Tribulationism, they recognize the escapist potential and would prefer to concentrate on helping meet people’s needs in the present.

Keener and Brown have crucial things to say both to those who overemphasize and to those who underemphasize biblical eschatology. For the avid pre-Tribulationists, they make a compelling case for post-Tribulationism, both by surveying all the relevant Scriptures and by highlighting the amount of suffering that Christians in many parts of the world have already had to endure, making hopes or promises of escaping the worst of human suffering ring fairly hollow. For the apathetic panmillennialists (it will all just pan out in the end), they stress the need for Western Christians, who have had to make few sacrifices for their faith, to be much better prepared in case hard-core persecution and martyrdom should come their way. For all readers, they put the issues in sound, historical and contemporary perspective. And everything is made that much more interesting by the smattering of personal stories they scatter throughout the book, as both authors went through significant theological and ecclesiastical transformations throughout their own illustrious careers.

So thank you, Craig and Michael, for a wonderful, sane, challenging, inspiring, clear, biblical and convicting little book. It deserves a wide readership. Readers, bring an open mind and a warm heart with you, and you won’t be disappointed.

Craig L. Blomberg, distinguished professor of New Testament, Denver Seminary