Do you feel discouraged? Is life in general in a hopeless decline? Because of your view of the future, do all the bad things going on in the world prove the end of the world must be near?
To help us all put the wind of encouragement back into our sails, I am recommending the book, Paradise Restored, by David Chilton.
The first chapter is titled THE HOPE. It begins with these words:
"This is a book about hope.
For too long, Christians have been characterized by despair, defeat, and retreat. For too long, Christians have heeded the false doctrine which teaches that we are doomed to failure, that Christians cannot win –the notion that, until Jesus returns, Christians will steadily lose ground to the enemy. The future of the Church, we were told, is to be a steady slide into apostasy. Some of our leaders sadly informed us that we are living in a “Laodicean age” of the Church (a reference to the “lukewarm” church of Laodicea, spoken of in Rev. 3:14-22). Any new outbreak of war, any rise in crime statistics, any new evidence of the breakdown of the family, was often oddly viewed as progress, a step forward toward the expected goal of the total collapse of civilization, a sign that Jesus might come to rescue us at any moment."
Later in the same chapter David says:
"What I am saying is this. The eschatology of defeat is wrong. It is no more Biblical than its twin sister, the false view of Spirituality. Instead of a message of defeat, the Bible gives us Hope, both in this world and the next. The Bible gives us an eschatology of dominion, an eschatology of victory. This is not some blind, “everything-will-work-out-somehow” kind of optimism. It is a solid, confident, Bible-based assurance that, before the Second Coming of Christ, the gospel (good news) will be victorious throughout the entire world.
For many, that will seem incredible. It goes against the whole spirit of the modern age; for years, Christians have been taught to expect defeat. Certainly, it’s a good idea to be careful about “new” doctrines. Everything must be checked by the Scriptures. One thing to consider, however, is that the idea of dominion is not new. In fact, until fairly recently, most Christians held an eschatology of dominion. Most Christians throughout the history of the Church regarded the eschatology of defeat as a doctrine of crackpots."
You can find and read this book free on the web:
Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators and The Great Tribulation. Published by ICE
Days of Vengeance and Paradise Restored published by Dominion Press
For more information check this out: http://www.preteristsite.com/
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