My Review of Sam Storm's "Kingdom Come"

I recently reviewed Sam Storm's important new book on amillennialism, Kingdom Come:  The Amillennial Alternative for Modern Reformation magazine (Nov./Dec. 2013
Volume: 22 Issue: 6).

The editors of Modern Reformation have given me permission to link to that review in its entirety

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There are a number of books currently in print that make the case for an amillennial understanding of biblical eschatology. Sam Storms's Kingdom Come is an important addition to a list that includes O. T. Allis's Prophecy & the Church (P&R, 1945); Anthony Hoekema's The Bible & the Future (Eerdmans, 1979); Cornel Venema's The Promise of the Future (Banner, 2000); as well as my own, A Case for Amillennialism (Baker, 2003/2013). But Sam Storms's Kingdom Come does not merely replicate the arguments of those writing before him. As he recounts in his introduction, Storms was a student at Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS)—the bastion of dispensationalism—and studied under dispensationalism's most capable advocates: John Walvoord, Charles Ryrie, and J. Dwight Pentecost (10). By 1985, Storms had given up dispensationalism, and subsequently premillennialism, which he recounted in a manuscript that he developed—after much honing and reflection—some twenty-eight years later into this current volume (12).

As a DTS insider, Sam Storms knows well the problems with dispensationalism and premillennialism. His unique perspective on the topic, I submit, explains why Kingdom Come is more of a refutation of dispensationalism and premillennialism, than it is a statement and defense of amillennialism (characteristic of the previously mentioned books on the subject).

This is precisely why Storms's book is such a welcome addition to the field. Although dispensationalism has serious flaws, it stills survives as a system of interpretation largely because the previous volumes are not comprehensive in terms of fleshing out and exposing the particular exegetical details and problems underlying the dispensational premillennial system. As long as dispensationalists can argue that the details of the system remain intact, they are not likely to give it up—despite the "big picture" criticisms raised against the entire system. Storms's invaluable contribution does precisely this as he painstakingly fleshes out those details, explaining why both dispensationalism and premillennialism fail to properly explain the meaning of a number of biblical passages. In the process, Storms accumulates an impressive amount of evidence as to why amillennialism provides a better way to make sense of the eschatology of the Bible.

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