Systematic Theology: The Church and the Last Things: 4 - Tapa dura

What is a Christian Church How will the church survive How will Jesus return How will the Cosmic Conflict end These questions and more are ardently probed in light of scriptural revelation in this fourth and final volume of Norman Gulley's Systematic Theology. Here he culminates this work of a lifetime by examining the doctrines of ecclesiology and eschatology within the theological framework of the cosmic controversy between Christ and Satan.This volume examines controversial questions about God's church: Who is its Head Who is its Vicar How does it receive God's grace Who has ultimate authority Gulley both examines and critiques some of the traditional answers by his interpretive framework of Scripture enunciated in his system. The Reformation is not finished, and there is thus a need for increasing clarity.The Bible refers to a coming tribulation, and this work examines how it can be understood and survived. The books of Daniel and Revelation play a pivotal role here, as Gulley surveys and critically examines various approaches to prophetic eschatology that have been held throughout Christian history--preterism, futurism, historicism, and idealism--including their related views regarding the return of Christ. He builds his eschatological outlook on a historicist approach, with biblical prophecy fulfilled throughout Christian history, as well as in the present and the future. The foundational principle employed is that which Gulley began in his Prolegomena--sola scriptura. This final volume of the immense and wide-ranging Systematic Theology thus culminates where the first began with the primacy of Scripture in the cosmic conflict worldview. And it fittingly climaxes with the final resolution of that conflict--the Second Coming of Christ and the final judgment.