Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

Welcome to Defenders. I'm so glad you could join us today.

Well, today we begin our final locus or theological topic in this Defender's course, namely the

doctrine of the last things. I looked the other day at our website and discovered that we

have been through over 250 previous Defender's podcasts up to this point.

Many of you have been with us that entire time, and now at long last, we're coming into

the home stretch and beginning our final locus.

If you are a newcomer to defenders and haven't been with us all of

those years, then I want you to know that transcripts as well as videos of all of the lectures

in Defenders 3 are available through our website, reasonable faith.org. It's a tremendous resource for your own personal

theological education. So it's with a sense of accomplishment and gratitude to the Lord

that at long last we are now completing our course. Today we turn to the doctrine of the last things.

The theological word for this locus is eschatology, from the Greek word eschatos, meaning last or final. So this locus concerns the doctrine of the end of the

world and the final state of man after death. We want to talk, first of all, about the doctrine of the

second coming of Christ. It's the doctrine of the Second Coming of Christ.

It's the teaching of the New Testament that the Eschaton, the final conclusion and culmination

of human history, will come with the return of Christ to the earth. To begin with, let's look at some of the biblical data

concerning the second coming of Christ. First, let's look at some Old Testament background material.

In Old Testament Judaism, there was a fervent hope of a glorious, messianic kingdom that God would someday inaugurate upon the earth.

In the Old Testament prophets, you have predictions of this coming Mesianic kingdom.

For example, let's look at Isaiah chapter 9, verses 6 and 7.

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