Which Is Your Interpretive Lens?

 

 

Everyone has an eschatology

Be it biblical or not,

We regularly think of the end times

And what will be our final lot.

 

Some believe not in heaven or hell

And some wish that there were only one

And that they would awake up there

On that resurrection morn.

 

Now is as good a time as any

To state that belief does not change fact

And that our feelings, desires and wishes

Often lead us into traps.

 

Hence, a question worth considering

Is, what is your eschatology,

This is a critical question indeed

Pertaining to one’s destiny.

 

 

The Bible speaks of the end times

And of the return of Jesus Christ,

Thus, an eschatology outside of the Bible

Most definitely will not suffice.

 

The books of Daniel and Revelation

Speak to this eventuality

However, these are not the only books

That feature eschatology.

 

One’s eschatological stance

Is dependent on one’s interpretive lens,

There are four distinctive positions

Though with some common trends.

 

 

 

There are the Futurist and the Preterist

The Historicist and the Idealist

But the overarching narrative is the same

Regarding the four on this list.

 

In the book of Revelation especially

There is a distinctive storyline

Beginning with letters to seven churches

And concluding with the end of time.

 

These four basic eschatological positions

In some way relate to this event line

And through their interpretive lenses

They determine the prophetic time.

 

From the letters to the Lamb’s Throne

Then the seals, the trumpets and the bowls

These three comprise the tribulation

And then the millennium unfolds.

The Futurist may be pre-tribulation,

Mid-tribulation or even post-tribulation,

Whichever of these positions he holds

His belief is premillennialism.

 

For him the tribulation is yet to be

As well as the promised millennium,

He stands at the beginning of Revelation

When none of these has begun.

 

The preterist is quite the opposite

And stands at the ending of Revelation,

The great tribulation has already passed

And this is currently the millennium.

 

 

The tribulation for him was in AD 70

When the Jewish temple was destroyed,

This signaled the end of the Old Covenant

And the beginning of New Covenant joy.

 

He is noticeably postmillennial

And sees the world as getting better

Quite unlike the premillennial futurist

That believes it will get even darker.

 

Well what about the Idealist?

What was the stance he took?

Well he is considered as amillennialism

The millennium is different in his book.

 

 

The millennium is the church age

This is the period the devil is bound

The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ

Now to everyone redounds.

  

For him the events are repeated

As humans traverse the annals of time

The book of Revelation is a repeated pattern

Thus, not one, but many story lines.

 

The historicist is precisely that

It is an overview of the entire church age

And they can hold a different position

At a specific given stage.

 

 

Like a middle of the road position

While at times siding with the other three:

Amillennialism, premillennialism or even post-

Dependent on actual history.

 

Not as definitive and as precise

As each of the other three

But still holding a prominent position

As it relates to eschatology.

 

Stewart Russell © February 22, 2021