Coming Soon from Baker Books - What Does the Future Hold

I often get asked for recommendations for books that layout the various positions on some issue or another. The books that do this best are the Counterpoint Books from Zondervan. Other publishers have followed with their own contributions (the Perspectives Series from B&H Publishing and at least one from Kregel Publications). The advantage of these books is that a representative of the position argues their position and then the other contributors respond. In this way you get, you hope, what is the best case that can be made for a respective position (though this is not always what happens). Second to these books are books which are written by one author who tells you what the positions are and their strengths and weaknesses.


Coming this January is a book from C. Marvin Pate on the various views of the millennium called What Does the Future Hold: Exploring Various Views on the End Times.


Prior to this volume I have recommended two works on this issue. The one in the Counterpoint series called Three Views on the Millennium and Beyond and another by a single author, Millard Erickson's A Basic Guide to Eschatology: Making Sense of the Millennium.


The catalog description follows on Pate's book:



"'It's the end of the world as we know it,' proclaims the popular song. And sometimes the daily news appears to confirm that forecast. The signs of the times hailing Christ's return seem to be all around. Or so it appears. But, is it really the end of the world? Christians through the ages have held to a variety of understandings of the millennium--the belief that a 1,000-year period of utopia will one day come. In this book, prophecy expert and biblical scholar Marvin Pate helpfully highlights the three major views of when Christ will return--premillennialism, postmillennialism, and amillennialism--as well as a fourth skeptical interpretation, expertly analyzing them all. This timely treatment provides a reader-friendly, accessible overview of the ongoing debate over end-times viewpoints."

I am curious about this "fourth skeptical interpretation." The book will be 160 pages and sell for $12.99. (Contrast this with Erickson's work which has 200 pages and sells for $20.00 and the Zondervan book which has 336 pages and sells for $17.99.)