Book review: The Days of Vengeance

Posted on Friday, February 25, 2011 in Book Reviews | 0 comments

by David Chilton

★★★★★

For those of you that read my review of Alan Bondar’s book (http://www.dubiousdisciple.com/2011/02/book-review-reading-the-bible-through-new-covenant-eyes.html) and yearned for more, here’s a book you absolutely must read. Chilton (1951-1997) is no stranger to preterist scholarship and first-century eschatology. I suspect this book sits on the shelf of every preterist researcher. And it should.

It’s not a quick read; over 700 pages. A comprehensive exposition, going verse by verse through Revelation, showing its relevance to first-century happenings. It is Chilton who quipped, “Not once did [John] imply that his book was written with the twentieth century in mind, and that Christians would be wasting their time attempting to decipher it until the Scofield Reference Bible would become a best-selling novel.”

Some of the analysis goes a bit deep; one of Chilton’s most important contributions is a long, convincing explanation of how rabbinic numerology would have recognized the number 666 already as the mark of both a king and a kingdom in the Dragon’s image. They also identified, from Daniel, the Roman Empire as the fourth and final kingdom before the end times.  Then, lo and behold, along comes a Roman emperor (Nero Caesar) matching this very number!

Do you really want to understand why first-century Christians were so completely convinced of Christ’s impending return? Then this book is a must-read.