BIBLICAL THEOLOGY

Biblical Theology

Biblical Theology Task 3

Introduction

The study of the religious beliefs that are related to death and the end of the world or regarding the final destiny of the human beings is known as Eschatology. The word Eschatology is originated from a Greek word which originally means the study of the last things and the study of the end of the world. It is a common believe in Christianity that a human being is made up from the mixture of material and non material things. After the death, the body will be decomposed but the soul and spirit will become immortal and it will go to the heaven or to hell according to the deeds.

Other believes include that the soul and the spirit of the human beings remains in an intermediate stage until the physical body is not awaken again. It is also indicated in the Bible that the material part of the human will be awaken again and then it will remain eternal in combination with the soul and spirit.

The bible further indicates that their will be a Godly judgment after the end of the times and after the judgment the people with good deeds will go to heaven and the people with bad deeds will be burned in the lake of fire. It is further believed by the Christians that Jesus will return one day to rule over earth and will create a new earth and a heaven for the good people and a lake of fire for the bad ones and those times will remain forever. These all are some basic believes that are accepted by all evangelical Christians (Zukeran, P. 2010 p.2-3).

Discussion

History

Early church

The basic principles of the premillennial eschatology are explained by the early church. The messengers of Jesus expected for his early return and they further anticipated that the period before the returning of Christ will be very suffering. According to the Hellenistic Judaism of Antioch, a group believes that one day of the creation is equivalent to one millennium. Therefore, the seven days of the creation of the earth are equivalent to the seven millenniums. They also have believed that the incarnation of Jesus took place in the 6th millennium and he will return in the 7th millennium. The teachings of the premillenial period are visible from the inscriptions of the fathers of early church. Papias, was a father of early church of second century and he explained about the rule of Jesus on earth which was expanded up to thousand years and he also explained the belief of life after death. He also made use of the writings of Isaiah to explain the thousand year rule of the Christ (Hayes Z. 1987 pp. 45).

Post Constantine church

The roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the year 325 A.D. The Christianity became the official religion after his conversion and the religion became dominant. The superimposing of the concepts of Premillennialism ended after the teachings of Saint ...