In God's Time

Eugene Peterson
author of The Message
"Sane, convincing, biblical writing. Pastors, teachers, and parents — all of us who are responsible for providing Christian guidance through the verbal clutter and emotional hysteria associated with the 'end times' — will welcome Craig Hill's accessible and timely teaching."

Graham Stanton
University of Cambridge
"This is a splendid, well-written book on a topic of continuing importance for the health of the church. A gifted teacher and a wise guide, Craig Hill explains the Bible's teaching on 'God's time' clearly and judiciously. He doesn't assume any prior knowledge, nor does he duck the awkward questions his readers are likely to have. His book is packed with helpful insights for a wide range of readers. Many will wish the could have read this book years ago."

A. Katherine Grieb
Virginia Theological Seminary
"Thanks to Craig Hill for this powerful and timely word calling the church to take seriously its eschatological beginnings. A must-read for understanding the Christian faith."

Luke Timothy Johnson
Candler School of Theology, Emory University
"Hill writes for Christians who don't know what (or how)to think about the End Time and what Scripture sa s about it. He tackles the hard questions and comes up with answers that are both specific and remarkably sane. While completely informed by the best scholarship, his prose is lively, unaffected, and clear. Here is the sort of writing too seldom found — work by an expert who actually says something helpful to ordinary people."

Pheme Perkins
Boston College
"Every Sunday Christians confess belief in the 'last things' — the second coming of Jesus, resurrection of the dead, and final judgment. Hill here provides students, pastors, and interested laity with a much-needed guide to New Testament eschatology and its Jewish roots. He includes a helpful guide to reading apocalypses like Daniel and Revelation and explains the origins of contemporary beliefs about 'the rapture.' This book should be required seminary reading. Christians living in the twenty-first century need not abandon the core elements of their ancestors' faith."

Walter Brueggemann
Columbia Theological Seminary
"Craig Hill's book ranges widely over the biblical text to consider the way the Bible hopes. The book is attentive to the many different nuances given the permeating act of hope in Scripture.Hill shows how characteristic and crucial is hope for biblical faith and yet how liable it is to distortion and misreading. His book is an invitation to rethink the odd claim of faith in a cultural context where hope is either impossible or transposed into fanciful escape."

Charlotte Allen
author of The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus
"This is a wonderful study of the book of Revelation and of Jesus' own words in the Gospels about the End Times. Hill argues persuasively that these texts require neither an ultraliteral 'left behind' interpretation nor the skepticism of the Jesus Seminar, which has dismissed the texts as inauthentic. Hill demonstrates that apocalyptic literature was a popular Jewish religious genre during Jesus' time, a poetic wat of talking about God's dramatic intervention in the world on behalf of his people. To the earliest Christians, who were all Jewish, the culmination of that intervention was, of course, Jesus himself."

Rowan Williams
Archbishop of Canterbury
"When Christians talk about the end of the world, they often think that they are repeating what the Bible says when in fact the text is far more subtle and interesting. Craig Hill is both a first-rate scholar and a lucid communicator, and he manages in this admirable book to clarify decisively what Scripture does and doesn't say about the last days. He cuts through much nonsense and helps us see the really important themes in the texts he discusses. "

Richard B. Wilke
founder of the DISCIPLE Bible study series
"Such clarity, such vigor, such color! I love the metaphors, down-home examples, and faith insights — mixed right in with erudite scholarship. In God's Time is a must-read book for all serious students of Scripture. "

Tony Campolo
Eastern University
"Craig Hill has done the Christian community a great service by spelling out in a sensible, scholarly, and readable manner what the Bible says about the end times. At a time when popular books on the second coming are leading to confusion and a right-wing political mind-set, here is a book that is balanced and inspiring and helpful."

Theological Book Review
"This is a good book. It does what it sets out to do. Using the tools of historical criticism the author shows just how conditioned the biblical 'prophecy' writers were in the way that they wrote about the end of the age and how, in Hill's view, the truth found in books like Revelation is not dependent upon historical accuracy. . . A useful book, then, that would be a useful addition to any theological library."

United Methodist Reporter
"In God's Time provides pastors and laity a foundation for understanding and living toward the future that will come in God's time. It is an excellent study resource for laity and clergy and represents a needed correction to the misrepresentation and abuse of the Bible in much popular portrayal of the End Times."

Christian Marketplace (U.K.)
"Intelligent but not overly academic, readable but eminently sensible, this book should be on the shelves as a good first port of call for people wanting a balanced approach to the future."

The Bible Today
"Written in a lively style, this is a thoughtful and balanced presentation of a difficult topic, one that would make interesting reading for a Bible study group or provide a helpful perspective for pastors and teachers who often have to fend off questions by anxious Christians wondering about the imminent end of the world."

Presbyterian Record
"Combines solid scholarship with eminent readability."
Jurgen Moltmann
University of T?bingen
"This book is written in accordance with the Scripture and simultaneously in accordance with our present time — a wonderful gift and a rare fortune in theology. It is a masterpiece on the biblical foundations of the Christian hope in the coming of God, without doomsday speculations and without the banalities of modern f eeling-good-in-the-present-and-after-us-the-flood religion."

John J. Collins
Yale Divinity School
"A remarkable achievement — a discussion of biblical eschatology that is fully informed by contemporary scholarship and written in such a way as to be accessible to any layperson. There is a tremendous need for this kind of writing, and very few scholars can write at this level of clarity. "

Mike McCurry
White House press secretary, 1995-98
"There is nothing easy about eschatology. Thankfully, Craig Hill has produced a wonderful road map for laypeople and experts alike to follow during the difficult journey through God's time. Hill plays a fine Sherlock Holmes, discovering new insights and fresh clues as to the meaning of the Bible's prophetic and apocalyptic texts. Contemporary events make Hill's treatment all the more compelling and his evaluation of popular biblical interpretations all the more urgent."

Fred Barnes
executive editor of The Weekly Standard
"I thought eschatology was just too scholarly a subject for anyone but theologians to think about. Christians who dwelled on it — well, I found them a bit strange. But Craig Hill has proven me wrong. In God's Time not only makes eschatology understandable to laity but also explains why it's important to every Christian in today's world. And Hill writes beautifully."

John Barton
University of Oxford
"Hill's study of eschatological thinking in the Bible will come as a liberation to many troubled by forms of Christian belief that are fixated on calculating the time of the end. His explanation of biblical prophecy and its relevance for understanding Jesus is clear and forceful, and his accessible style makes the book a pleasure to read."