I had come, for awhile, to dismiss eschatology as not only non-essential, but unimportant. Perhaps I was reacting more to the "scared saved" stuff of my childhood, where kids were told that "the Antichrist is comin' to get ya, but you can escape if you pray this prayer - quick before the Antichrist comes!"

We were taught to fear man's wrath rather than God's justice. We were told that we could be rescued by Jesus from the horrific wrath of the Antichrist - if we agreed to His terms.

So newly Reformed, I has delighted to learn that Dispensationalism is not only biblically false, but historically unsupported as well. It "wrongly divides the people of God." And once disproved, it also quashed my Charismatic questions and freed me from a lot of the superstition associated with it.

Eschatology is important because it describes the nature of the Kingdom. Is it of this world or the next? Is it Jewish or more universal? Is it physical / political / cultural or eternal and non-temporal? These are the questions that helped shape my understanding of eschatology, and I know longer consider eschatology to be "non-essential." I say that belief in the physical and temporal return of Jesus Christ is essential doctrine, and furthermore that any eschatology which redirects the sinner's terror from the wrath of God to the wrath of men is heretical and ought to be universally condemned by those who love the gospel.