Author: Kurschner, Alan
Genre: Theology - Eschatology
Tags: Eschatology
Series:
Rick Shrader‘s Review:
This was Alan Kurschner’s first book on the Pre-Wrath rapture position. This was written in 2013 and was followed by PreWrath: A Very Short Introduction (which I reviewed in June ’21) a year later. I happened to read them in reverse order but they are so similar it doesn’t really matter. Both books have the same charts which are helpful in understanding the chronology of the view. I would add here that Kurschner departs from Rosenthal and Van Kampen in that he doesn’t delineate the four “comings” of Jesus at the end of the tribulation. Van Kampen was notorious for that. But Kurschner does agree in seeing the “parousia” of Christ as an ongoing event that basically covers His every appearance from a rapture at 3/4 of the way through the tribulation, to the glorious return after the seven year, to His further return 30 days after that. Imminency is denied because, of course, he believes that the church will go through most of the tribulation and therefore the rapture cannot happen until then. He calls it “expectancy, not imminency” (appendix 4). Also, since this view extends the seal judgments throughout the seven year period of tribulation, this view of the book of Revelation is called the Recapitulation view of the book as opposed to the Telescopic view (which places the events in a more chronological order). Though this view claims to hold to literal interpretation, the reader will question that throughout the book. Lastly, Kurschner’s criticisms of the pretribulational rapture position shows a real lack of understanding of that position, or a willingness to find the most extreme statements and represent them as mainstream. Buy either of his books. No need to read them both.