Thanks to all who stayed for the Revelation study.  We covered the major positions on escatology.  They can be basically boiled down to five positions.  They are listed as follows:

1.  Dispensational premillenialism

2.  Historic premillenialism

3.  Postmillenialism

4.  Amillenialism

5.  Preterism

All of the positions view Scripture as authoritative and inerrant.  The differences come when certain key passages are emphasized or de-emphasized and/or viewed either as "literal" or "figurative."   

Our goal is to understand authorial intent.  It presumes that the Biblical writer had a message that He was being inspired to communicate.  This message is the true message that we seek to discover and understand.  The best approach to Biblical interpretation, or hermenutic, is the historial and grammatical approach.  This takes into account the historical and cultural context as well as looking at the grammar, forms of genre and literary context to understand what the author intended to say.

For those who were with the class last year you should have:

1.  highlighted all of the key words in chapter 1.

2.  completed your list that captures the 5 w's and H for chapter 1.

Assignment:

1.  Ask our Lord for wisdom.

2.  Bring your Revelation work sheets to class as well as your outline of chapter 1 and your list of chapter 1.

3.  Be able to describe in a couple of sentences each of the 5 positions listed above.

4.  Outline chapter 1.  Try to make your outline headings as concise as possible.

If you want to get ahead:

1.  Read the entire book at least once between classes.  More if you have time.

2.  Mark the key words in chapter 2.  (assigned at the beginning of last summer)

3.  Complete your list for chapter 2.

4.  Outline chapter 2.  

If you are new to the class, don't worry about the marking of the key words, the lists or the outlne.  Just pray and read Revelation and come to class.  I will review everything at class.

Please don't stress.  If you can the assignments done, great.  If not don't worry we will work through them in class.  At the same time, you will get much more out of the class if you do the assignments before hand.

God Bless,

Steve