Rating: 
Summary: Good intermediate study on Postmillennialism.
Review: Mathison is one of the leading Postmillennial theologians of our day. Not quite as scholarly as a Gentry, or as theologically broad as a Sproul, but a great start for anyone looking into the basic tenants of a Postmillennial eschatology (along with J.J. Davis' book). After reading this, pick up Angels's In the Architecture by Canon Press. Absolutely the best thing out there on Postmillennialism.
Rating: 
Summary: FOR THEIR MANY WORDS
Review: Mr. Mathison's work is a breath of fresh air and a sigh of relief for the many perplexed minds today who have been bombarded with prophecies of a coming tribulation and Christianity's supposedly utter failure to convert the world in the face of a growing "Antichrist" power. After reading Mathison's book, it is easy to see why Postmillenialism gives the only correct view of God's plans and purposes as revealed in Scriptures.Indeed, victory over sin and Satan and not the rise of evil and Antichrist, is the true message of the Bible. This theme fits remarkably well with the rest of Scripture and when viewed in this light, the many seemingly difficult passages suddenly fit together and the harmony between the various accounts in the old and new testaments render the entire Bible a very interesting, awe-inspiring story ever written. Read this book. And then read Kenneth Gentry's "He Shall Have Dominion" and "Before Jerusalem Fell". Then you will have a complete dose of the Eschatology of Hope, and a renewed appetite for Bible reading. I'm confident Mathison's work will have great positive impact on the thinking of many Christians as it attracts more and more people to its clear, logical and sensible arguments for an eschatology of hope.
Rating: 
Summary: Just one quibble
Review: Overall a great job. Pithy and covers almost all the important points in a gentlemanly style so there is minimal likelihood of offending readers holding to differing eschatologies. Postmillennialists, give it to your a- and pre- friends. A- and pre- friends, buy it and read it to find out about the eschatological position you will certainly hold to after you go to heaven, if not before. I have just one quibble with this book: its adherance to the traditional "covenant of works"/"covenant of grace" dichotomy. This is the standard Presbyterian and Reformed position such as you can find presented in the Westminster Confession of Faith. According to this view, the original covenant given to Adam was a covenant of works and after the Fall it was replaced by a covenant of grace. The implication is that grace was not a predominant feature of the original Creation Mandate. However, this traditional view is just plain wrong. All the covenants, including the Creation Mandate, are properly viewed as predominantly covenants of grace. Jettisoning this flawed view will further strengthen covenantal theology. Let me reiterate, this quibble does not lessen the value of the book as a presentation of postmillennialism. If you're reading this review, it probably belongs on your bookshelf. Another good book that complements this one is "The Covenantal Kingdom: A Brief Summary of the Biblical Argument for Postmilliennialism" by Ralph Allan Smith (Christian Libery Press).
Rating:
Summary: Good Introduction for Reformed people to Postmillenialism
Review: Postmillenialism is most popular among the Reformed community, and Mathison's book is basically a message to them. The pre-millennial views are pretty much cast off without need of a great deal of argument. It is the a-millennial (or pan-millennial, really) views that are reduced. Post-millennialism can be proved accurately from Scripture, and Mr. Mathison outlines these proofs as well as lovingly arguing against the doctrines of the other two views. Really, the only fault (which isn't even that) is Mr. Mathison's repetitiveness. Perhaps, it was necessary, but it's a particular pet peeve with me.
Rating:
Summary: Good Introduction for Reformed people to Postmillenialism
Review: Postmillenialism is most popular among the Reformed community, and Mathison's book is basically a message to them. The pre-millennial views are pretty much cast off without need of a great deal of argument. It is the a-millennial (or pan-millennial, really) views that are reduced. Post-millennialism can be proved accurately from Scripture, and Mr. Mathison outlines these proofs as well as lovingly arguing against the doctrines of the other two views. Really, the only fault (which isn't even that) is Mr. Mathison's repetitiveness. Perhaps, it was necessary, but it's a particular pet peeve with me.
Rating:
Summary: Postmillennial Truth
Review: Postmillennialism: An Eschatology of Hope is a carefully and logically outlined Scriptural argument for the eschatological position known as postmillennialism. This view teaches "that Christ will return to the earth after the Spirit-blessed Gospel has had overwhelming success in bringing the world to the adoption of Christianity." (Kenneth Gentry). At the beginning of the third millennium, this is a much needed antidote to the end times hysteria created by the dispensationalists who have foisted one failed prophecy after another on a gullible Christian populace for over 100 years. With the huge success of such Christian make-believe as the works of Hal Lindsey and the Left Behind series, it appears that postmillennialists have their work cut out for them. This book will be helpful in preparing them for that task. Part One of the book sets forth the author's basic presuppositions, definitions of important terms, and an explanation of the essential difference between covenant theology and dispensationalism. Part Two of Mathison's book is a brief overview of the eschatological positions held throughout church history. Beginning with the church fathers and continuing up to the present, the book provides a helpful historical context for the remaining discussion. Part Three is an exegetical study of Old Testament eschatology, and Part Four covers the New Testament. These six chapters are the heart of the book. Unlike many eschatology books which focus on several select Scriptural passages, this book provides a carefully argued study of the eschatological teaching of the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Part Five includes chapters on the relationship between postmillennialism and other aspects of theology; critiques of amillennialism and premillennialism; and a summary of what postmillennialism is and what it isn't. The last mentioned chapter is especially helpful at overcoming some of the silly stereotypes and outright falsehoods that are often used as "arguments" against postmillennialism. Finally in Part Six, numerous biblical, theological, and practical objections to postmillennialism are dealt with. The book also includes three appendices. The first is a brief overview of the seventy weeks of Daniel 9. The second is an interesting discussion of I Thess. 4 and 5 and II Thess 1 and 2. The final appendix is a brief critique of the hyper-preterist heresy that is gaining recruits to help it in the latest of a long line of assaults upon Christian truth. The book includes a helpful list of books for further study, an exhaustive Scripture index, and it is well footnoted. I would recommend it to anyone who is seriously interested in studying the subject of Christian eschatology.
Rating:
Summary: Postmillennial Truth
Review: Postmillennialism: An Eschatology of Hope is a carefully and logically outlined Scriptural argument for the eschatological position known as postmillennialism. This view teaches "that Christ will return to the earth after the Spirit-blessed Gospel has had overwhelming success in bringing the world to the adoption of Christianity." (Kenneth Gentry). At the beginning of the third millennium, this is a much needed antidote to the end times hysteria created by the dispensationalists who have foisted one failed prophecy after another on a gullible Christian populace for over 100 years. With the huge success of such Christian make-believe as the works of Hal Lindsey and the Left Behind series, it appears that postmillennialists have their work cut out for them. This book will be helpful in preparing them for that task. Part One of the book sets forth the author's basic presuppositions, definitions of important terms, and an explanation of the essential difference between covenant theology and dispensationalism. Part Two of Mathison's book is a brief overview of the eschatological positions held throughout church history. Beginning with the church fathers and continuing up to the present, the book provides a helpful historical context for the remaining discussion. Part Three is an exegetical study of Old Testament eschatology, and Part Four covers the New Testament. These six chapters are the heart of the book. Unlike many eschatology books which focus on several select Scriptural passages, this book provides a carefully argued study of the eschatological teaching of the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Part Five includes chapters on the relationship between postmillennialism and other aspects of theology; critiques of amillennialism and premillennialism; and a summary of what postmillennialism is and what it isn't. The last mentioned chapter is especially helpful at overcoming some of the silly stereotypes and outright falsehoods that are often used as "arguments" against postmillennialism. Finally in Part Six, numerous biblical, theological, and practical objections to postmillennialism are dealt with. The book also includes three appendices. The first is a brief overview of the seventy weeks of Daniel 9. The second is an interesting discussion of I Thess. 4 and 5 and II Thess 1 and 2. The final appendix is a brief critique of the hyper-preterist heresy that is gaining recruits to help it in the latest of a long line of assaults upon Christian truth. The book includes a helpful list of books for further study, an exhaustive Scripture index, and it is well footnoted. I would recommend it to anyone who is seriously interested in studying the subject of Christian eschatology.
Rating:
Summary: Postmillennialism as a Positive Eschatology.
Review: POSTMILLENNIALISM: AN ESCHATOLOGY OF HOPE, published by a conservative Presbyterian group, advances a little known and radical thesis regarding the time of Christ's second coming. Postmillennialism teaches that Jesus will return AFTER the Christian Church has managed to convert the entire world to Christianity, and then the end will come. This eschatological theory is popular with conservative Calvinists and some Pentecostals. The book explains that man, redeemed in Christ, has the duty to live a Christian life on earth, and the "the millennium" mentioned in the Apocalypse/Book of Revelation is in fact already here, and it was inagurated at Christ's ascension into heaven (the Millennium is taken as a figurative, rather than literal concept). Postmillennialism is not to be confused with the two other views of the Second Coming: premillennialism/dispensationalism and amillennialism. Premillennialism is the belief that the Church will be raptured sometime into heaven before the rise of the anti-christ and the seven year tribulation. The millennium is after the second coming when Christ sets up an earthly kingdom before the final destrution of evil a thousand years later. Amillennialism teaches that there is no millennium, that Christ will return at an unknown point, with no rapture of the Church or literal thousand-year Messianic kingdom. Postmillennialism bases its theories on the method of Biblical exgesis known as "covenant theology." Humanity's redemption is centered on the covenants God made with various figures throughout the Biblical narrative. Man in Eden was given the covenant of work to tend the Garden, Adam after the Fall recieved one of grace, Noah, Abraham, Moses David, and the New Covenant. In theory, all of these covenants are one, as opposed to dispensationalism, which teaches two different salvation plans for Christians and Jews. POSTMILLENNIALISM also touches on the history of eschatology in the history of the Church, as taught by the Church Fathers and the creeds. They are a little vague, but the author takes them to mean that Christ will return when Christianity becomes the dominant religion all over the world. To justify further, a Biblical exgesis is presented, with emphasis on Revelation. Revelation is interpreted using the preterist theory--that it is a symbolic description of the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans in AD 70. The great tribulation that Jesus refers to at the end of the Gospel of Matthew is the coming war in Judea, in which the Christians would flee Jerusalem before it was destroyed and thus escape slaughter ("the rapture"). The antichrist is the Roman Emperor Nero, whose name in Greek added up to 666, and was a notorious persecutor of Christians, possibly at the behest of his Jewish mistress, Poppea. Overall, this is an interesting presentation of a dissident view of eschatology, differing from most Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Christians. It impossible to tell whether the Church could ever be as powerful or as successful as the postmillennialist theorists posist, as traditional Christianity is on the decline in Western countries, but may rise in non-Western ones.
Rating:
Summary: Victory
Review: Since I was young, I believed and was taught the usual dispensational view of the last things. Not really because I or my parents rejected any other view directly, but it seems that since dispensationalism's origin in the early 1800s, it's become pretty much the "default" theology of the present day church. However, a couple years ago, without actively looking into other views of eschatology, I started seeing various inconsistencies in the dispensational eschatology that I held, just from reading the Bible on my own. I decided then that I was going to undertake the seemingly impossible task of studying all of the millennial positions. I read books that compared all the views and then gave a chance for each author to try to refute the other's position. It was a fascinating study, and I began to see an increasingly strong case for postmillennialism the more I studied it. Then I bought this book by Keith Mathison. What can I say? It put the nail in the coffin for me, and confirmed what I had been steadily leaning towards in my thousands of pages of study that I had done before reading it. I became overwhelmed with excitement like never before. I recognized for the first time the power of Christ and His victory over sin. I realized for the first time that I could truly hope during the course of history for history. Not with a hope so hope, but with a know so hope, that the world someday will be a Christian world. I was encouraged that the gospel we preach is not preached in vain. Christ's Church is not hopelessly destined for failure as I had believed before. Sure I knew before that Christ would ultimately have the victory over sin, and that he conquered sin on the cross, but the effects of his death had no increasingly visible manifestations on every part of the universe that was touched by sin. According to this view, every aspect of the universe that was touched by sin (culture, physical universe, etc.) was never actually redeemed, but instead it will just get worse and worse until Christ comes again to punish it and have the "victory" over sin. Friends, this is not the victory that Christ expects. Sin corrupted all things in history, so it is in history that Christ will redeem all things, and little by little, bring them back to what was originally purposed for them. Why do you think we are sanctified in the time frame of history? Christ will rule at the right hand of God until all His enemies are put under His feet IN HISTORY. He has conquered sin at the cross and He is subduing it more and more as time goes on. This is the nature of His victory.
This book is invaluable. It will cause you to be more active in missions and in the task of transforming the culture by the power of God. It will make you see the power of the gospel like never before. And lastly, it will teach you to hope and pray for the victory that Christ expects and is even now accomplishing.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Introduction to Covenant Theology
Review: The book shows the fatal defects of dispensationalism as a system of interpreting the Bible. Covenant theology gives justice to the great prophecies in the Bible.
| 
