A history of end-time thinking
By Richard Kyle
IVP. 256 pages.
ISBN 0 85111 581 0
I recently had a forwarded email from an individual styling himself 'Rapturewatch', which suggested that events in Iraq now so fulfilled Scripture that the end was nigh.
Indeed, so imminent was the event that readers of this review (assuming they have not already been raptured by the time this is published) might want to hesitate before taking out another year's subscription to EN. Reading Richard Kyle's detailed summary of the history of apocalyptic speculation within (and beyond) Christianity suggests such a hesitation might be inappropriate. The snappier US title: 'The Last Days Are Here Again' summarises the thrust of much of Kyle's book: that throughout history we have had an endless and varied succession of speculations of an imminent end. So widespread is apocalypticism that to survey it is, in fact, an almost impossible subject; for example among the first dozen entries under 'C' in the index we have: 'Calvin'; 'Camisards'; 'Capra, Fritjof'; 'Carbon dioxide'; 'Carter, Jimmy'; 'Cayce, Edgar'; 'Centuries (Nostradamus)' and 'CFCs'. However, Kyle (Professor of History and Religion at Tabor College in the States) is undaunted and, moving at a fast pace, manages to hold together the strands of an exceedingly complex story with its plethora of movements, mystics and messiahs. He assumes little previous knowledge and I found his summaries of various viewpoints clear and helpful. He is particularly good on the origins of the premillennial thought that seems to dominate much of modern American thinking. The book wears its scholarship lightly and there is a fine-print bibliography of over 40 pages although many EN readers will be surprised to find Iain Murray's excellent 'The Puritan Hope' missing from it.
