The popular understanding that "latter-days" refers only to the end of the world needs radical adjustment. Beale demonstrates how “inaugurated eschatology” sheds light on a Christian understanding of the end times. The theological idea of the relation of the indicative to the imperative in the New Testament is used to enhance such an understanding.

The primary themes that configure the book of Joshua are constituted by possession of the promised land, obedience to the commands of Moses, and the extermination of the peoples of the land. Even though there has been common agreement that these themes function to establish a sense of national identity, attempts to describe how they do so have been frustrated by the apparent contradictory perspectives they present.