The Pilgrim's Blogress: Confused by Eschatology?

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Confused by Eschatology?

I know I am. This is one of those areas of theology that just about always leaves me cross eyed and confused. For those of you who don't know what eschatology is, well you are in the right place. Eschatology comes from the Greek word eskhatos which basically means "last", and another Greek word logia which means "sayings, utterances, oracles". An easier definition is "the study of last things" and we'll just leave it at that.

For most of us, the only eschatology we know is what we were exposed to in the 90's through the Left Behind series. There is quite a bit of scripture that talks about the "last things" but it can be hard to make heads or tails of most of it unless you are willing to spend some time studying it. Left Behind basically told most of us what to believe and we agreed with it 100% because it is all we had ever read on the subject. Sooner or later as we grow in our understanding of God, some big words will start to thrust themselves upon us and we look at them like deer caught in the headlights, either running away from them or getting hit so hard by them that we are left on the side of the road beaten and battered. These words are:

Amillenialism, Premillennialism, Post Millenialism, & Dispensationalism.

Now, if you are anything like me, you will probably look at those words and say, "Who cares?! Jesus doesn't care if I know this stuff." Well, truth be told, it's pretty important. Not "this hinges on eternal salvation" important, but choosing one of theses will define how you view history as well as the future. Rather than try to explain all of these to you, I stumbled on these 4 videos from David Murray at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. They are short and have cartoon pictures. Couldn't be easier. Enjoy!

Amillennial Timeline

Amillennial Timeline from Puritan Reformed on Vimeo.