THE COMPANY OF HOPE
A History of Bible Prophecy in the Church
by
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Modern human beings have come up
short on hope. In his Waiting for Godot, Becket reflects the hopelessness many in our
time feel. With Communism turning out to be The
God that Failed (as Richard Crossman anticipated in 1950), the narcissism
and flattening out of thought in our time have hardly allowed for the discovery
of a viable alternative. Capitalistic materialism and the therapeutic gospel
have left many churchgoers in the West “without hope and without God in the
world” (Ephesians
Greek and Roman religion with its
endless cycles could never escape eternal recurrence. Biblical faith from the
beginning was built on a faithful and trustworthy God who made promises about
the future and would keep them. So the Judaeo-Christian
faith is linear and Christians see history as beginning with the creation of
Genesis 1-2, focusing on a dynamic mid-point in the death, burial and
resurrection of Christ and looking forward to an omega point - the events
surrounding the second advent of Christ.
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead...” I Peter 1:3
This book is a study of the
Christian hope. Patrick Henry warned the Second Virginia Convention in 1775
that “It is natural to man to indulge in the illusion of hope.”1 When
whimsically we say that “hope springs eternal” or “where there’s life there’s
hope,” we may or we may not have an adequate or sufficient foundation for hope.
Sir Winston Churchill said to Billy Graham years ago: “I see no hope for the
world. Do you have any real hope?” This study of the roots and origin of the
Christian hope is an earnest address to that question.
Lewis Smedes
has pointed out that the Christian hope is more than Kierkegaard’s “passion for
the possible,” it is “a passion for the promises,” the promises of God. Ours is
a time when observers speak of “The Decline of Secular Hope.” If Emil Brunner
was correct in his notion that what oxygen is to the lungs, hope is to our
lives, then this is the time for us to vigorously reassert the Christian hope
and do our utmost to recapture it for our generation.
C.S.Lewis
in Mere Christianity forcefully
argued that the Christian hope is frankly and unabashedly “in the eternal
world” (and that this is not escapism or wishful thinking), and that in fact
“the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought
most of the next.” Glenn Tinder makes a superb case in his understated way for
the great relevance of the Christian hope in our time. I invite you to join me
in a journey of exploration and investigation of a vast continent - the
Christian hope in its many contours and configurations.
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About the Book
The Bible has over 1000
prophecies of the future, half of which have been fulfilled in
62% of The American people profess to believe in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ – more recently fueled by Y2K, staggering world crises and the “Left Behind” series of Apocalyptic fiction. A bewildering array of competitive interpretive options confronts the inquiring student.
This unique study with suggestive end-notes and bibliographical data, can open this vast literature to the beginner or the veteran student. Beginning with an introduction to The Biblical materials themselves, this study considers such early thinkers as Augustine, Joachim of Fiore, Martin Luther and The Anabaptists. Careful attention is paid to The Puritans and Continental Pietists and to such as Isaac Newton. While the thinking of John Nelson Darby is analyzed, careful attention is given to George Ladd, John Walvoord and others in our time like Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye and Billy Graham. The many shades of opinion are analyzed.
About the Author
David L. Larsen, Professor
Emeritus at