What This Book Is, Instead

This book does not exist to talk you out of dispensationalism through a comparison chart, as though the goal were simply to swap one set of correct answers for another. It exists to walk you through what the whole New Testament actually says about the future — the kingdom you learned about in Part One, already reigning and not yet consummated; what happens the moment you die, which Part Two has already shown you; what has already been accomplished in history and what remains ahead of us even now; and, in the parts still to come, how to tell the difference between a claim that drives you back to Christ and a claim that quietly, one true-sounding piece at a time, empties your faith of everything it was ever meant to give you to hope for.

Dispensationalism is where most readers start, because it is where the culture around most readers starts. It is where this book starts too, for the same reason a map of unfamiliar territory begins with the road you are already standing on. Two more roads are coming. Where you end up standing, once you have walked all three, is not for this book to decide on your behalf.