Book Review – Millennialism
June 16, 2009
I don’t normally do book reviews for a few reasons:
(1) The books I typically make time to read aren’t very new. Book reviews are generally reserved for titles that are new-releases.
(2) The time I do have to read these not-so-new books is not nearly as plentiful as necessary to make a review series comprehensible.
However, I’m going to put those objections aside to tackle a book that was highly recommended to me by a very Godly & knowledgeable pastor that I’m privileged to have ‘met’ online. It’s definitely not new – the original copyright is 1936. It’s also very comprehensive & I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to blog about it. But because I think it is such an important book to read & understand, I figured blogging an ongoing review/synopsis of the chapters will help motivate me to dig into it a bit better.
The book is simply entitled “Millennialism,” authored by the late Dr. Charles L. Feinberg. Dr. Feinberg was raised in an orthodox Jewish home and had trained to be a rabbi. After converting to Christianity, he became a respected scholar, professor, and conference speaker. From the original foreword (written by LS Chafer), it appears that this particular book was originally written as a thesis for one of Dr. Feinberg’s degrees at Dallas Seminary…it has since gone on to be a classic work on the distinction between Premillennialism and Amillennialism.
Why bother writing a review/synopsis of the book?
Because it’s one thing to know WHAT we believe; it’s still another to know WHY we believe it.
For all the raucous debate that takes place about the end-times, it generally ends up in chest-thumping & flag-waving contests among people who (under normal circumstances) would share a cup of coffee together, pray for one another, and dig deep into the riches of Scripture together.
My personal thought is that the better we know our own position, the less likely we’ll be one of those who has to raise the volume of our voice in order to ensure we’ve made our point.
Feinberg’s book is an excellent place to begin. And so, with many thanks (and apologies) to the late Dr. Feinberg, we’ll begin shortly.
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1. pstrmike | June 17, 2009 at 5:43 am
looking forward to Tim………… I recently acquired two of Feinberg’s commentaries and wondered why haven’t I heard of this guy before?
2. timburns | June 17, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Me too. Feinberg seems to have been a well-respected & brilliant scholar…yet Dave’s mention of him a few weeks ago was the 1st I’d heard of him.
I’m sure that says much more about my own reading habits than anything else.
Chapter 1 is pretty short & simple – I’ll have that one up today. I’m hoping to dig into Ch 2 a little later this week.
3. JoeH | June 17, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Tim,
Looking forward to this. I had the privilege of hearing Dr Feinberg in person, when he conducted a Bible conference at my church, in San Clementem CA back in the early 70’s.