Me? A Preterist? No, No, No.
After my posts on Preterism a while back, I had some mixed reactions. My posts were aimed at proving that the Futurist position is the superior one. In a nutshell, I was striving to show that the things that were fulfilled in 70 A.D. were a literal fulfillment of what Jesus had clearly foretold. Many things were not fulfilled literally and remain unfulfilled at this point in time. God intends to literally fulfill them. But Preterists want to take those things that weren’t fulfilled and somehow say that they were fulfilled in a spiritual or symbolic way in the first century.
I don’t intend to rewrite all those posts as I will post links to them below. To sum up, here are the things that were literally fulfilled in the first century.
-The destruction of specific Galilean cities, Matthew 11:20-24, Luke 10:13-15.
-Jerusalem surrounded by armies, Luke 21:20
-The destruction of the temple, Matthew 24:1-2, Mark 13:1-2, Luke 21:5-6
-The destruction of Jerusalem, Matthew 23:37-39, Luke 13:32-35
-The kingdom of God taken from national Israel, Matthew 21:43
Now here are some prophesied events that were not fulfilled but Preterists try to say they were in a spiritual way.
-The resurrection of the righteous
-The new heavens and new earth
-The cosmic signs
-The abomination of desolation
-The great tribulation
-The antichrist
-The coming of the Son of Man
My point is that if we are to practice a consistent hermeneutic, then these fulfillments cannot be spiritualized, but will come to pass quite literally, or as the language actually reads. After all, isn’t that how the 70 A.D. events were fulfilled? The temple wasn’t spiritually destroyed; it was literally destroyed in the very manner Christ predicted. The city of Jerusalem wasn’t spiritually desolated; Titus physically desolated it.
I’m posting another post on this to say that there are some Preterists who are in agreement with my point of view. This is what I meant by mixed reactions. They call themselves True Preterists and distance themselves from a position they term HyperPreterism. They deem HyperPreterism to be heresy and want no part of it. But like me, they see 70 A.D. fulfillment. But in my view, they cave on issues like the coming of the Son of Man, the abomination of desolation, and the great tribulation which they try to fit in to the destruction of Herod’s temple. Truth be told, though, Jesus did not come with His holy angels and reward the saints, no abomination was placed in the temple for the purpose of worshiping it, and the great tribulation which was supposed to be unequaled was surpassed by the Holocaust.
To be gracious, I don’t want to say that these “True Preterists” are guilty of heresy since they hold to a future physical, bodily resurrection, a future new heavens and new earth, and a future coming of Jesus Christ. I have quite a few things in common with them since I am not shying away from the fact that many things that Jesus prophesied of were fulfilled in 70 A.D. This makes some Preterists read my materials and think I hold to their position. Dee Dee Warren has links up to some of my articles over at The Preterist Site. I’m not joking; you can see the links for yourself here. She understands that I am a Futurist, but the common denominators link us together. Here are the links to some of the posts I wrote on Preterism.
Jesus Prophetically Pronounced Judgement On His Own Generation
The “Mark Dilemma” For Futurists
Luke 21 does not contain the Olivet Discourse (emphasis on Jerusalem)
Luke 21 contains a discourse at the temple
Prophetic Tension and the Olivet Discourse
And to wrap it up…
There were more, but you’ll have to do your own homework. I wrote them all about the same time so just look in that general time span. If you read the above articles, though, you will get the general idea of where I am coming from.
Have fun and stay busy – Luke 19:13
The Anti-Preterist’s Blog 