However, most Jews and Christians prefer not to think about end-time events, including the resurrection of the dead, because they say that if their Rabbis and Pastors don't understand them, or can't agree among themselves, neither can they expect to do so. Thus, they give up before even trying. And this reaction might be preferable to simply accepting without question what many well-intended, but perhaps confused, people teach about eschatological events, and thus end up with a very distorted view. However, God wants us to look forward to the resurrection of the dead, this once-in-a-lifetime (and in all of humankind) event. After all, on a merely superficial reading of the Scriptures we can see that a huge percentage of God's Word deals precisely on the issues of the future resurrection of the dead and the Messianic Kingdom.
The past two decades have produced a significant amount of scholarship on the topic of the resurrection from a fresh and Biblical perspective. The resurrection texts discussed in this book include many comments and analyses from the best of recent Christian and Jewish scholars, such as James H. Charlesworth, John J. Collins, Émile Puech, Jacob Neusner, N. T. Wright, George W. E. Nickelsburg, Bruce Chilton, Oscar Cullman, Torlief Elgvin, William L. Craig, and others.
George Nickelsburg (Ancient Judaism and Christian Origins: Diversity, Continuity, and Transformation, 2003) points out that both Jewish and Christian apocalyptic eschatology has always supported the idea "that history is moving towards its consummation in a new age and a new world," a worldview that dualistically is divided into heaven (the place of the divine) and earth (the human habitat). Its purpose has been to foster endurance and make life more livable in the "here and now," while waiting for the "then and there." Thus, even now, eschatology is the horizon on which one interprets all of Scripture. "The eschaton [end] is portrayed as a return to paradise, and heaven is seen as a place of intimate communion between humanity and God" (p 130).
On the other hand, many modern Dispensationalists prefer to emphasize the topic of the "rapture" far more than the Biblical term of resurrection, based on 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17: "…and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air…" (NASB). The relationship between the concept of the "rapture" and the resurrection is also addressed in this book.
