Doomsday Delusions: What's Wrong with Predictions about the End of the World

Doomsday Delusions is a careful examination of the proper study of biblical prophecy and "end times" predictions in general. The authors start their study by way of introducing some of the more sensationalized accounts of "dooms day" which have fascinated American culture in the late 20th century-such as the David Koresh cult and the "saran cult" in Japan. Moreover, in the first chapter the authors construct their viewpoint which undermines contemporary Doomsday Preaching in light of two key problems. The first problem is Doomsday Preaching's failed prophecy and the second problem is the incorrect keys of interpretation used by the, so called, Doomsday Preachers. Most of the material related to incorrect interpretation methods used by the Doomsday Preachers is couched in a discussion of a "better method" of interpreting end-time prophecy in the Bible. This "better method" deals with the text per the genre type and, evidently by the authors, uses as key the characteristics of end-time prophecy outlined by Leon Morris as general characteristics of apokalypsis. The authors ask the question: "how is end-time prophecy to be interpreted?," and then answer, "The answer is that one should follow the standard fourfold procedure employed in the interpretation of the rest of the biblical materials, which is to look at the historically, culturally, grammatically, and theologically."