A Brief Book Notice from Books At a Glance
By Fred Zaspel
The eschatological judgment and reward of believers is a topic that is raised and alluded to in Scripture pervasively. It crops up probably more often than most of us notice. Clearly it is a topic we are intended to be well-acquainted with. It’s ironic, then, that it is a topic so often overlooked. Preparing recently to teach on the subject myself I found very few books on the subject, so when I noticed this new book by Mark Hitchcock I was eager to take a look.
Like most books on this topic, Hitchcock’s is a popular-level treatment, stemming from a series of messages he has presented often. The material is well organized and clear. His reminder that the way we live and think and speak in this life reverberates in eternity is needed and helpful. For whatever reason, when this topic is taken up in book-length treatment it is usually by authors (as Hitchcock) who are dispensational in eschatological perspective and who consider it necessary / helpful to treat the subject in connection with the pre-tribulation rapture. In my view this complicates the presentation unnecessarily. But the doctrine of the believer’s judgment and rewards is so biblically significant that non-dispensationalist readers would do well, just the same, to give the book a fair reading and be challenged by the sobering challenge this topic presents.