Victorious Eschatology
by Harold Eberle and Martin Trench
When it comes to what we choose to believe regarding debatable issues, such as the end times, I go with the position that seems true to the Bible and resonates in my heart. I remember when I first read Arthur Pink’s amazing book, The Sovereignty of God. His words reverberated in my heart. He put down on paper what I already believed, but just had never seen articulated so well. That is what Eberle and Trench do in Victorious Eschatology.
I read this book years ago at the recommendation of a friend. Recently, while working through a study of Daniel, I decided to read it again, hoping it would shed some light on a difficult to interpret book. Wow! Am I ever glad I did! It made a much greater impact this time around. A lot of things make sense now that before seemed muddled. I formerly jokingly, yet truthfully, told people that I am a “pan-millennialist,” meaning I have no idea of how to properly interpret what the Bible says about the end times. I would read books like Daniel and feel that understanding it was hopeless. Instead, I put the end times on the “back burner,” thinking that it will all “pan out” in the end. Now I feel much more confident.
Victorious Eschatology explains what is called the partial preterist view that much of what the Bible has to say about the end has already taken place. This is very different from the futurist view that overlooks 2000 years of church history and believes that a very great deal of everything in Daniel and Revelation still lays ahead of us.
After my recent study of Daniel, I now believe that God gave him a revelation of the coming of the Messiah, his anointing for ministry, rejection and death, and the subsequent judgment of the nation in 70 AD by Rome. Daniel is not about the very end of time at all. It was about the end of the Jewish nation and sacrificial system after the introduction of the perfect sacrifice on Calvary and the Jews’ rejection of their Messianic King. A large section of Victorious Eschatology examines Daniel’s vision from this theological position.
Another large chunk of the book shows how the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24-25) should be broken down into two sections, that which pertains to the subject covered by Daniel and that which is about the Second Coming. The authors’ arguments are very convincing. A third segment of the book interprets Revelation in a similar manner.
The book shows how many modern teachings regarding the Antichrist are mostly unscriptural. It show how the great tribulation was what happened to Jerusalem in 70 AD. It shows how the Emperor Nero fulfilled the Revelation Antichrist to a tee. I will not give away any more of the book. You must read it for yourself.
Any discussion of the end must be done with humility. No one knows for certain what is going to happen. But the Bible does lay out for us a good reason to expect victory, not defeat.
Rather than gloomily expect everything to get worse and worse, we should expect our victorious Lord to reappear at any time to claim his rightful kingdom and impose his glorious rule. Come, Lord Jesus!
