This dissertation explores the question of hope in the nuclear age by examining a movement within the North American Christian tradition known as dispensationalism. It concentrates specifically on one author, Hal Lindsey, whose books on the "end-times" are the basis for much of the current Christian apocalyptic thinking on this continent. There are two fundamental questions: (1) What does Lindsey's dispensational interpretation of God and Divine providence do to his understanding of hope?; (2) Does Lindsey's interpretation of the hope contribute anything to an articulation of hope in the nuclear age? In response to the first question, it is determined that Lindsey's Theology is governed by a providentialism which controls both his doctrine of God and his understanding of hope. History is controlled by a providential plan to which everything, even God, is bound. This plan ends with the destruction of the planet. Thus, hope, in Lindsey's terms, can only emerge after the destruction of the present order. In answer to the second question, it is explained that while Lindsey's apocalypticism gives faith a strong motivation and the sense of a limit to human pride, it undermines human responsibility for the planet and diminishes the ethical dimension of the gospel's call to discipleship.

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