Eschatology - Michael Scantlebury - Bog

This book you are holding was being prepped for release at the end of 2019, but the Spirit of the Lord interrupted my plans and asked me to hold off for the time being. After discussing this leading with other men of God whose opinions I value, I decided to postpone its publication. Fast-forward with me five months to one morning when the Holy Spirit woke me in the early hours. "Do you remember the day I asked you to pause your work on the book?" He continued, "What is happening now-the Coronavirus pandemic-this is why I had you delay it." At the time, when I was first writing, the chaos of COVID-19 did not exist, or at least, it was not yet made public. But the resulting global lockdown has had many Believers, and even the unsaved, asking if this is the end of the world! The spirit of fear and dread has gripped the hearts of so many; the Lord said to me: "NOW is the time to release this book!!!" Imagine you are a time traveler who has traveled back to the 1800s. You meet Abraham Lincoln and reveal to him that you have arrived from the 21st century. He might ask you how people send messages in the 21st century; you could try to explain how the email system works. How would you describe it? You're trying to communicate how "fast" an email really is delivered; but you're trying to do it in a way that wouldn't totally blow his mind. Would you use imagery with which he's familiar? Perhaps you would tell him it's like a postman riding his horse at 500 miles per hour. Or, you might liken it to delivering a message by train from New York to LA in less than one day. That's the conundrum we face when trying to understand difficult verses in the Bible, especially on themes like eschatology. The prophetic writers of Scripture were limited to conveying God's mysteries in language their readers would understand. Two to three thousand years later as we read these prophetic Scriptures through a 21st century lens, it is possible to come up with strange, speculative interpretations. This especially happens when we don't understand what those Scriptures would have meant to a first century Believer, or to a Jew living in the time of the Old Testament Prophets. The book before you delves deeper into this topic and much more, as it presents you with a biblical view of eschatology.