Jun 19, 2012 -- 12:24PM, Dickey wrote:

In my discussing on these boards, I notice the HUGE fascination with Revelations and am amazed with the intensity of the arguments over what is claimed in end times prophecy. 

I have to ask, why would someone spend more time with that, than with salvation theology?  What is the fascination?  With so many differences in what Soteriology looks like, wouldn't that be the better discussion?

Isn't the end times, relatively unimportant in the big scheme of things?

IMO, neither; learning and practicing how to love one another and Our Father is where the priority should lie, not with philosophical ramblings which can make words mean anything or nothing at whim.

Warmest regards-

Hatman

Eschatology is not only something sudden that will occur in the End Times.  Eschatology is also gradually laying the foundations of the Kingdom here and now.

If you build it, he will come.

IMHO that's more important than either "getting saved" (we were all saved on the Cross 2,000 years ago) or peering into the future toward the End Times (see Matthew 24:36).

Eschatology, broadly speaking, is not the End Times per se, but the fulfillment of God's plan of creation.  Thus it is not only a final state but also an ongoing process. 

The imminent rather than distant arrival of the Kingdom of God -- at least in incomplete form -- and the necessity of our participation rather than passivity in bringing it into fruition, are prominent eschatological themes that are as old as eschatology itself, older even than Jesus's own ministry. In the school of eschatological thought that deals with these themes, the point is not that God must wait for us, but that we must not wait for God.  I think it can be traced back at least as far as  Isaiah 40:3 ("Prepare ye the way of the Lord").  Jesus taught it in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) and elsewhere.  We see it in history in movements as disparate as the Crusades, Catholic charitable orders, the founding of New England ("for we shall consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill"), the American Civil War ("Mine eyes have see the glory of the coming of the Lord"), 19th century Utopian communities, the Social Gospel, and Martin Luther King's civil rights campaign. It's just that these themes are conveniently neglected by our most vocal eschatologists today -- evangelical Protestant premilennial dispensationalists -- because there's no place for present action in their theology.

I think Jesus summed up the folly of an exclusive eschatological focus on the End Times rather well when he described the servant who buried his talent in the ground and waited for his master to return.

Catholic Encyclopedia entry, Kingdom of God

Shrug.  You asked about the importance of eschatology.  I pointed out that eschatology is about more than waiting for the End Times, it is also about engagement in the world here and now, and that I think the latter aspect is more important than the former.  I'm not going to let you draw me into a pointless argument about human versus divine agency.

Jun 19, 2012 -- 12:24PM, Dickey wrote:

In my discussing on these boards, I notice the HUGE fascination with Revelations and am amazed with the intensity of the arguments over what is claimed in end times prophecy. 

I have to ask, why would someone spend more time with that, than with salvation theology?  What is the fascination?  With so many differences in what Soteriology looks like, wouldn't that be the better discussion?

Isn't the end times, relatively unimportant in the big scheme of things?

The proof of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. (Rev. 19:11)