In his chapter A Vision in the Night: Setting the Interpretive Stage for John’s Apocalypse, Gerald Stevens asserts
“Today’s rampant confusion of convoluted end-time scenarios constantly falsified by actual historical developments is our own Tower of Babel. What often is obscured in the din of this theological noise is the dire need for an adequate doctrine of judgment. To discplace all of divine judgment to the end of history only makes a mockery of God’s present sovereignty. God’s coming judgment at the end of history has no justification if he already has not been expressing his judgment in some way throughout history. Thus, in as much as we attempt to indulge an incorrigible voyeurism to know the future, especially in attempting to divine some end-time plot, we deny ourselves the power to understand the present. John’s use of second coming truth, in other words, is a way to impress upon his readers the significance of decisions made right now.” (emphasis mine) 11-12
This is from Essays on Revelation: Appropriating Yesterday’s Apocalypse in Today’s World (Gerald Stevens, ed.).
Αυτω η δοξα
