In What Happens Next, well-known inspirational writer Max Lucado takes his turn offering his understanding of the end times. His motivation is to provide hope for believers today because “hope is an endangered species” (p. 3), and his encouragement is to fill the reader’s mind with the Bible’s teaching about our ultimate destination. Therefore, we should “face the problems of this life by focusing on the promises of the next” (p. 4).
This theme recurs throughout the book, inviting believers to lift their eyes from this present world and fix their gaze on the world to come. “Every page and promise of the Bible invites and excites with the lure of a new age and a renewed world. Your best life awaits you!” (p. 180).
Summary
First, before even getting to page 1, we learn what approach Lucado will take in the book. He provides what he calls “heaven’s timeline” that depicts a classic dispensational understanding of the end times.
Following that, there’s an introductory chapter which encourages us to focus our life on the destination God is taking us to.
Then the book itself is laid out in two parts.
In part 1, Lucado lays out four key ideas that he believes shape the biblical story related to our ultimate destination. Chapter 2 shows how humans were created to reign with God over the earth, and someday “God’s perfected children will reign over a perfect earth” (p. 31). Chapter 3 contends that God’s covenants were made with Israel and he will fulfill those covenants someday. Chapter 4 offers a classic dispensational reading of the 70-weeks prophecy in Daniel 9, suggesting that the 70th week refers to the seven years of great tribulation at the end of time. And in chapter 5, Lucado explains why he believes there will be a literal millennium (1000-year reign of Christ) before the final judgment.
In part 2, Lucado lays out what he believes remains on heaven’s timeline. He reflects on where God’s people today go when they die (chapter 6). He offers his conception of the rapture (chapter 7). Chapters 8-9 describe what he thinks will happen for Christians who have been raptured. Then, Lucado gives his take on the tribulation in chapters 10-11, before turning to the return of Christ, the millennium, and final judgment in the remaining few chapters of the book.
“He provides what he calls “heaven’s timeline” that depicts a classic dispensational understanding of the end times.”
What’s Good and Helpful
There are a number of things I appreciated about this book, so let me highlight a few.
1. The call to hope
In historic Christian teaching, hope is considered a theological virtue. And yet it seems like in the evangelical church today, there is a huge deficit of hope, and teaching about our Christian hope. Lucado has done us a service by packaging the book as a call to live in light of eternity. And for me this is where he’s at his best in the book, offering vintage Lucado inspiration with stories and well-crafted sentences that aim to inspire great hope in God’s plan for the future.
2. An Often-Overlooked Hope
I appreciated the focus of chapter 2 entitled “It Looks Like Reign.” The focus was on the human vocation in the beginning and ending of the biblical story, namely reigning in partnership with God over the earth. This is an often-overlooked but important part of Christian hope. Lucado kept the new heavens and new earth in view, so we wouldn’t miss that as our final destination.
“The focus was on the human vocation in the beginning and ending of the biblical story, namely reigning in partnership with God over the earth.”
3. A Humble Approach
The gracious humility of Max’s approach. I’ve encountered too many dispensationalist teachers who acted as if their view of end times was the only legitimate biblical view and spoke rather disparagingly about people who held other views. Lucado did not do that. He even writes that “there are many God-fearing, Christ-seeking, heaven-bound men and women who see the Bible’s references to the thousand-year reign as a symbol” (p. 49). And he emphasizes what Christians agree on as essentials of our hope (p. 50). He even briefly summarizes three main schools of thought concerning the millennium ( p. 51).
Drawback
This leads me to what I see as the major drawback of the book, and that’s Lucado’s dispensationalism. Here’s a handful of problems.
1. Dispensational premillennialism must be differentiated from historic premillennialism, and this Lucado doesn’t do.
Lucado calls on the early church fathers in support of his view of the millennium on pages 56-57. But the premillennialism of the early church fathers was very different from the unique end-times scheme of modern-day dispensationalists. Therefore, it’s not accurate to say or suggest that the early church fathers held the same view of end times as dispensational premillennialism. Historic premillennialism was less complicated and way more responsible in its handling of Scripture than its modern dispensational counterpart.
“Historic premillennialism was less complicated and way more responsible in its handling of Scripture than its modern dispensational counterpart.”
2. The exegesis that leads to distinctive dispensational beliefs is hard to defend.
Here are a few examples.
- Lucado refers to the church age as “the parenthetical period” in God’s time. But that’s not at all how the church is presented in the New Testament. The church is regularly presented as the culmination of God’s promises, the fulfillment of Old Testament hopes.
- It is difficult to support the idea that, between week 69 and week 70 of Daniel’s 70-weeks prophecy, there is a gap of an unspecified amount of time that so far spans over 2000 years. Lucado does a commendable job with the starting point and the initial timeline of the prophecy, but then he contends that somehow that timeline was put on hiatus and will resume during the last 7 years of history before the millennium as the great tribulation. There are less strained ways of reading that passage.
- Like most dispensationalists, Lucado contends that Old Testament prophecies given to Israel cannot be fulfilled in Jesus and the church. For example, concerning Jeremiah 31:31ff (the new covenant prophecy), Lucado argues that this hasn’t been fulfilled because it’s given to Israel and Judah. The problem? The author of Hebrews actually quotes these very words from Jeremiah and says they are fulfilled now in the present in what God has done in Jesus. In fact, all through the New Testament, promises made to Israel are said to be fulfilled in Christ and those in him.
3. The imaginative speculation of dispensationalism goes way beyond Scripture.
Most of the time this book doesn’t slip into the sensationalism that has sometimes gone along with dispensational premillennialism (e.g., think the Left Behind book series). Though I disagree with some of its exegesis, much of the time Lucado doesn’t stray too far from what the text actually says.
But when it comes to many unique views of dispensationalism, all caution is thrown to the wind and imaginative speculation prevails. “What will life be like after the rapture?” he asks as he opens chapter 11. And what follows is nothing more than speculation with no basis in the text of Scripture. Classrooms half-empty. Planes crashing because pilots vanished. Lucado even creates an entire story about a young man named Jeff that comprises the bulk of the chapter.
Such imaginings are presented as fact, and I find that problematic and unhelpful to encouraging biblical hope.
“Much of the time Lucado doesn’t stray too far from what the text actually says.”
Conclusion
I commend What Comes Next for its aim of inspiring greater Christian hope. But while it offers some inspiration and encouragement, it lacks the biblical depth to provide a sure and certain hope that can be an anchor for our souls (Hebrews 6:19).
