Second Thoughts about the Second Coming -- A CTS Indy Book Talk

Bob Cornwall and Ron Allen -- General Assembly Book signing

 My coauthor of Second Thoughts about the Second Coming: Understanding the End Times, Our Future, and Christian Hope (Westminster John Knox Press, 2023), Dr. Ron Allen, had the opportunity to sit down for a Book Talk conversation sponsored by Christian Theological Seminary at the 2023 Disciples of Christ General Assembly in Louisville. Ron taught preaching and, as he would say, Gospels and Letters, at CTS. We had a grand time, talking about the book, which we offer as a gift to the church. Besides the CTS Book Talk, we also had the opportunity to participate in a book signing at the Chalice Press/Westminster John Knox Bookstore. We have another book idea percolating, so this might not be a one-off partnership.

If you want to learn a bit more about the book and our partnership, I invite you to watch the video. Thanks to the folks from CTS for making this possible! For the preachers who see this and think this might be useful for their congregations (we believe it is), there are preaching helps available from Westminster John Knox Press (downloadable PDFs). Besides the preaching helps that Ron wrote, I created a study guide that is included in the book (designed for a six-week series). 

I want to include the closing paragraph of the Introduction, which offers a sense of what we seek to accomplish with the book: 

In this book, we emphasize diverse understandings of eschatology in history and today. Yet, despite the diversity, all Christian forms of thinking about the future known to us presume that God ultimately yearns for conditions of existence (whether in this world or some other world) to align more closely with God's unrelenting desire for love, grace, justice, peace, freedom, and abundance for all. We offer this book out of our love for the church and the wider community. Therefore, we offer it with the prayer that it can help us recognize that God yearns to empower us to join with God in doing our part to bring God's Realm into fruition in this life and/or the next (depending on your point of view). (p. 7).