Addressing The Amillennial Alternative: Chapters 3-4

See Part 1

After addressing some of the opening beauty of Sam Storms' Kingdom Come, I feel the need to skip over some of the good and gritty stuff. A line by line evaluation helps nobody but let me say this book is absolutely worth buying and consuming. So let me skim over some important portions of the next few chapters.

The Seventy Weeks of Daniel and the Old Testament Roots of Dispensationalism

Sam Storms doesn't waste anytime addressing the root of premillennial theology and its reliance on a particular interpretation of Daniel's 70 weeks. Readers who are premillennial will notice and might take offense. In fact I would be shocked if they don't because every single chapter so far has dripped with smashing responses to premillennial theology (especially the one espoused by Dallas Theological Seminary). This may be the only downside to the book so far, permillennialism is clearly in Storms' crosshairs and he is relenting.

The seventy weeks of Daniel are the crux of dispensational theology and Storms does away with it superbly. There are some very interesting questions about when the 490 years commences (76-78) but I am reluctant to disagree with Storms. My major complaint is with the strange style of formatting that occurs when Storms reaches the peek point of his arguments (90). It may seem silly to some but the formatting of the text just doesn't seem fitting for a work like this. It seems very modern and it comes off distracting. The passion of Storms voice carries but the overall quality of Kingdom Come would be better served without it.

Daniel's Contribution to Biblical Eschatology

Let me first say say that this chapter stands as one of the greatest reasons so far to buy Kingdom Come. The book of Daniel is an eschatological playground and a hermeneutical cemetery. Storms does an excellent job of trying to faithfully balance both the differences in opinion as well as the truths of faithful exegesis. It is worth noting for Postmillennial-Preterist like myself that Storms seems to recoil from the concept that the ten horns of Daniel speaks to the Caesars of Rome (106-109). Storms makes an excellent argument for Greece in particular being the culmination of most of Daniels prophecy (109-113). This does not dismantle the Gentry-style preterism of the New Testament but it certainly destroys all attempts at dispensational premillennialism. Storms crushes Daniel 7-8 (120-121) and decimates Walter Kaiser's view (126-128). He does seem to hide from provided a detailed understanding of Daniel 12 (129-132) but all-in-all this chapter is worthy the entire cost of the book.