The two mainstream attitudes towards Christian eschatology are unsurprisingly erroneous. There are plenty of visible Christians who are eager to make mere assumptions about whether they are living in the "last days" in the sense that the return of Christ is directly at hand, and others are content to either assume the last days are far off or to practically never think about eschatology out of dismissal despite some entire sections of the Bible being clearly devoted to it. Since it is a part of Biblical theology, a thoughtful Christian will not avoid it forever. However, he or she will not make any assumptions upon thinking about the subject directly. Neither the importance nor immanence of eschatological events will be distorted.
The evangelical obsession with distorted eschatology usually treats the end as just around the corner when the "birth pangs" of Matthew 24 leasing to the return of Christ have historically been far worse than they are now, which means there is not just no evidence that we are in the Biblical last days, but there is direct evidence we are not. Diseases that could have eliminated entire civilizations are manageable today or mostly gone; for all the sins of the world in the present age, at least there are now more overt attempts to move past some of the more destructive ones (things like rape or racism), even if liberals and conservatives alike are very selective and therefore irrational and hypocritical when it comes to these goals. In no way are we living in the worst of recorded history.
This does not mean that eschatology is not an issue worthy of reflection for Christians now. To be sure, it is far more philosophically important to understand Genesis than anything pertaining to eschatology. After all, without a definitive beginning of the cosmos, the universe itself becomes a sort of uncaused cause, and the fact that it is possible to prove that time and matter came into existence at some point in the past (no one can prove when, only that it is logically necessary for them to have come into existence [1]) makes the beginning of the universe, and humanity to a far lesser extent, more important for everything from rationalistic philosophy to its applications for Christian apologetics. At the same time, a verse from Ecclesiastes comparing the beginning and end of something is very relevant to eschatology.
Ecclesiastes 7:8 explicitly says that the end of a matter is better than its beginning. Now, everything I said before this is still true by necessity. No one can prove by logical necessity that the universe will end as is the case with it having a beginning, and no one would be able to prove when it would happen anyway no matter what scientific evidence or the Bible suggests. The beginning is more philosophically knowable and metaphysically important than the end. However, according to Ecclesiastes, there is something special about the end of a sequence that can be better than the beginning. Perhaps the only way this obviously relates to eschatology is obvious at this point: the ultimate destiny of the saved within Christian theology is better than the start of human history. The eternal state of the saved, provided that there is no later deviation from God's moral nature in New Jerusalem, is weightier on this side of theological events than eternal contentment in Eden could have been.
How ironic it is that a verse of the Bible suggests that the end of something is better than its beginning, a verse from the most overtly existentialist book of the Bible, no less, and yet eschatology is commonly sidestepped completely or butchered by evangelicals! Yes, evangelicals talk about the ultimate eternal state (while misrepresenting almost everything about human destiny in hell according to the Bible [2]) with an adoration they almost never speak of Eden with. In a more limited sense that has little to do with the events of the last days themselves, the subjects of New Jerusalem and hell deal with eschatology. It is beyond this where some Christians come up with and defend ideas like that of us being in the final generation before Christ's return.
Eschatology is neither of no importance nor the utmost importance when it comes to philosophy and its subcategory of theology. When a Christian believes something other than this, they are more likely to make other errors, including ones that completely sideline eschatology from their attention or elevate it higher than issues of epistemology and morality, things of much more significance than the details of the last days and what follows. Only by avoiding both pitfalls can one understand how eschatological events could be better than the beginning of human existence without contradicting the higher philosophical importance of the uncaused cause creating things in the first place.
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