I'm reading through the
free excerpt of
A Case for Historic Premillennialism edited by Craig L. Blaising and Sung Wook Chung. I grew up and was educated in the situation described in the first three sentences. My heart beats in time with the final two!
Only a few decades ago it was commonplace for eschatology to be overemphasized in evangelical church and parachurch settings. Seminars, conferences, and preaching series regularly featured as-yet-unfulfilled biblical prophecy. Pretribulational premillennialism could be made a litmus test of correct doctrine and/or fellowship. Many younger Christians have recognized that these trends assigned these concerns to a much more central place in Christian theology than they deserved, and they have, understandably, swung the pendulum in the other direction, sometimes to the point of almost disregarding eschatology altogether. In other cases, a healthy balance has been struck by removing a requirement that a particular view on the millennium or the rapture form part of a church or parachurch ministry’s doctrinal statement that all of its members must affirm, even as teaching continues periodically on these topics and people are guided to see what is and is not at stake in the debates.
It is a shame that so many prominent and influential ministries are still persisting in the former schismatic
tradition!
Blomberg and Chung on Eschatological Positions and Fellowship
Hear, hear.
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