Archives for “Eschatology”
I embedded a video at the bottom so that you can hear this TIL while you read it.
All This Time
written and recorded by Sting on The Soul Cages
I looked out across the river today
I saw a city in the fog and an old church tower where the seagulls play
I saw the sad shire horses walking home in the sodium light
Two priests on the ferry, October geese on a cold winter’s night
All this time, the river flowed
Endlessly to the sea
Two priests came round our house tonight
One young, one old, to offer prayers for the dying to serve the final rites
One to learn, one to teach which way the cold wind blows
Fussing and flapping in priestly black like a murder of crows
A reader wrote in recently and asked some really good questions about my eschatology, which I have described on this blog as preteristic. Preterism is the belief that all (or most) of the eschatological expectations of the writers of Scripture were directed at the events culminating in the destruction of the Jerusalem and the Jewish temple.[1]
My position has evolved significantly since I’ve been writing on the subject, the earliest relevant posts dating back a few years. In the intervening time, key aspects of my theology have changed. Particularly, I have become more convinced of the Scripture’s organic nature and origin and have thus rejected inerrancy as an unfair expectation. As a result I have also grown increasingly distrustful of tidy theological schemata composed of verses here and there from this chapter and that book that find some way to incorporate every verse that appears to contradict the main contention, no matter how contrived the resolution may be. But because I continue to regard it as a relatively coherent system as systems go, preterism has so far escaped close scrutiny in light of my revised bibliology (at least on the blog), but in recent months I’ve been increasingly aware that it is indeed due a revisiting.
Related posts:- You contribute: is Jesus coming back? I’ve had a poll running for a couple months asking Undeception readers what topics they’re interested in seeing me address. I decided to give it a while and see if...
- Is full preterism a new doctrine? (revised) Who said this? But the things which took place afterwards, did our Saviour, from his foreknowledge as THE WORD or GOD, foretell should come to pass, by means of those...
- Why eschatology matters Josh’s blog has something important to say on this. ‘Nuff said. ...
John Walton points out that often in the Ancient Near East, a temple dedication ceremony would take place over seven days’ time; for six days, the temple would be furnished and the priests would take up their posts, and finally on the seventh day the deity would come in to take residence and begin to exercise his/her authority. Walton argues that when the Hebrews heard the priests read the creation week of Genesis 1 to them, they would probably not have taken it (primarily, anyway) as a treatise on history or a scientific origins account but as a comosgony framed in terms of an analogy with the construction and resulting importance of the temple as God’s headquarters for the universe. Walton refers to Genesis 1 as a “temple text”: it is a literary form of analogy to the establishment of the sanctuary. His “rest” was not about sleep, but about settling in at the control booth and taking command of the cosmos He had set in place. Six days you shall work, rest on the Sabbath. In fact (and this is not from Walton), that’s why the Sabbath was not made for man, but man for the Sabbath: it became a day of doing nothing (even healing!), when, as Jesus demonstrated with the healing of the man with the withered hand, it was intended to be a day of doing the Lord’s work, a day set aside to remember God’s intention for the heavens and the earth (the implementation of His purposes).
Related posts:- Chaos in Genesis and Germanic mythology Dr. Enns has recently reminded us that the Ancient Near East conceptualized the beginning of creation as a battle between order and disorder, the gods vs. chaos. We see the...
- Why Genesis 1 was written Not that I have all the answers, of course. I thought I’d reproduce a summary of my current thoughts on the issue that I formulated in an interesting comment exchange...
- My position on the origins question Josh recently commented on another thread, “I want to hear your explanation of the origin of life on earth. I have heard the positions you are against. So how did...
I have a friend in seminary at Asbury (Kentucky) named Matt Stout who draws comics. This one’s a classic in that it manages to lampoon more than one annoying aspect of popular evangelicalism. Enjoy! You might also like his regular web comic series Big Sandy Gilmore.
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Related posts:- Reinventing the wheel “Just think of the natural sciences as they increasingly develop into a comprehensive knowledge of the world. A short time ago no one could have conceived of this development. What...
- Peter speaks Preterists point to a panoply of time statements in Scripture regarding the eschaton. Twenty of the twenty-six books of the NT give such time statements, expectations of an imminent occurrence...
I haven’t been posting much lately. To explain why, allow me give you a sketch of my relationship with theology, which has always formed the backbone of this site.
First, a plea: don’t waste your time cultivating the most intellectually and emotionally satisfying theology until you know what the Bible is, nor until you’re willing to come to grips with reality outside of the Bible. You can contrive an internally consistent history and theology as gleaned from the information in the Lord of the Rings or the Star Trek universe, but your systematization of them is going to be nothing more than a clever fiction unless you can find correspondence in the real world. A police detective might be able to piece together a perfectly consistent and intelligible version of events from a flawed and inaccurate police report, but his job is to first determine the reliability of the sources and take into account the shortcomings and limitations of even his most trusted informants. The Bible is a testimony of reliable informants, the most reliable, but even they were functioning under the limitations of humanity.
Related posts:- Does majority rule in theology? In this week’s installment of Theology Unplugged, a podcast I highly recommend, Reclaiming the Mind Ministries president Michael Patton made the following comments about full preterists (like myself): Now I...
- Covenant Theology I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Covenant Radio, today and feeling rather baffled. The hosts, both Presbyterians, were interviewing a Reformed Baptist, Dr. Thomas Schreiner. They were...
- Clash of Titans: Christianity vs. Dr. Mohler’s theology The fireworks continue between BioLogos and the esteemed Joseph Emerson Brown Professor of Christian Theology and President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, God’s chosen Arbiter of Faithful Readings of...
I’ve had a poll running for a couple months asking Undeception readers what topics they’re interested in seeing me address. I decided to give it a while and see if trends emerged. Well, I just noticed yesterday that there is indeed a small trend. At present, there is a four-way tie for second place: Linguistics, Creation/evolution, Calvinism/Arminianism, and Worship. In first place by two votes is Eschatology/preterism, and in last place I was amused (and a bit disappointed) to see the very topic I just declared I was going to be writing another series on: Bibliology/hermeneutics! I still plan on writing on this in the near future, but to throw a bone to the masses, I decided I’d write one on the clear winner, eschatology. Fairly soon I will write about the intersection of eschatology (the study of last things) and protology (the study of first things) in my theology. I think they work together remarkably well, although I developed them mostly independently. But in the meantime, here’s a question to help me get the pulse of my readership on the issue of eschatology. And I expect at least all eight of you to answer! 
- Jesus’ eschatology and me A reader wrote in recently and asked some really good questions about my eschatology, which I have described on this blog as preteristic. Preterism is the belief that all (or...
- Election and Adoption Part 1: Romans 7 and 8 As long as I can remember, I have struggled hard against the Calvinist understanding of the doctrine of election. Recently I have been observing and interacting with a number of...
- Election and Adoption Part 3: God’s Purpose in Election As I stated in Part 2, I reject the notion that foreknowledge is prescriptive. I hold to the conviction that there is an interplay between man’s choice and God’s choice....
I was in college. In my fourth of five years, I heard about a professor who was fairly “liberal” in theology. A friend of mind took his class on Revelation, and was disturbed by how good the arguments were that Revelation was written about first century events. When my friend explained to me in brief terms the professor’s argument, I, too, was apalled – and intrigued. Something about the whole thing rang true. However, I would put it somewhat on the backburner for a little while.
By the time I was out of college, I was ready to dive in and find out if there was anything to this belief system. A few internet searches, and I found that the name for this scandalous view was “preterism”. I looked at a lot of arguments, asked a lot of questions. I discovered that there are two main types of preterists. Partial preterists see only some of prophecy as related to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and hold out for a future something or other (usually the Second Coming and the Resurrection) in the future. Full preterists, the main type of preterist with whom I corresponded on the theological forums, believe that all eschatological events were fulfilled in those events of the first century. Around this time I was starting to see the Bible as literature rather than as a magic text independent of its original cultural context. I saw that the prophetic diction in the New Testament was not a brand new creation, but that it was built upon the tradition of the Old Testament prophecies, and with this revelation and what it did to the Olivet Discourse (Mat 24-25), I was a preterist. Of some sort, anyway.
Then came to a momentous (and stupid) decision: I would decide whether full preterism was true or not by praying and then reading through all the epistles, trying to see if it all made sense from a full preterist standpoint. I didn’t get all the way through before the inevitable happened: I could not reconcile the relevant eschatological passages as I understood them in my fully dispensationalist mindset with the view of preterism. Surprise, surprise, huh?
Related posts:- Common objections to full preterism: below the surface (Preterism is the belief that there are no prophecies in Scripture that await a fulfillment in the future. Hereafter I will use the term “futurist” to describe anyone who believes...
- Is full preterism a new doctrine? (revised) Who said this? But the things which took place afterwards, did our Saviour, from his foreknowledge as THE WORD or GOD, foretell should come to pass, by means of those...
- You contribute: is Jesus coming back? I’ve had a poll running for a couple months asking Undeception readers what topics they’re interested in seeing me address. I decided to give it a while and see if...
Who said this?
Related posts:But the things which took place afterwards, did our Saviour, from his foreknowledge as THE WORD or GOD, foretell should come to pass, by means of those which are (now) before us. For He named the whole Jewish people, the children of the City; and the Temple, He styled their House. And thus He testified, that they should, on their own wicked account, bear the vengeance thus to be inflicted. And, it is right we should wonder at the fulfilment of this prediction, since at no time did this place undergo such an entire desolation as this was. He pointed out moreover, the cause of their desolation when He said, “If thou hadst known, even in this day, the things of thy peace:” intimating too His own coming, which should be for the peace of the whole world. But, when ye shall see it reduced by armies, know ye that which comes upon it, to be a final and full desolation and destruction. He designates the desolation of Jerusalem, by the destruction of the Temple, and the laying aside of those services which were, according to the law of Moses, formerly performed within it. The manner moreover of the captivity, points out the war. of which He spoke; “For (said He) there shall be (great) tribulation upon the land, and great wrath upon this people : and they shall fall by the edge of the sword.” We can learn too, from the writings of Flavius Josephus, how these things took place in their localities, and how those, which had been foretold by our Saviour, were, in fact, fulfilled. On this account He said, “Let those who are in its borders not enter into it, since these are the days of vengeance, that all may be fulfilled which has been written.” Any one therefore, who desires it, may learn the results of these things from the writings of Josephus.
- Common objections to full preterism: below the surface (Preterism is the belief that there are no prophecies in Scripture that await a fulfillment in the future. Hereafter I will use the term “futurist” to describe anyone who believes...
- Major revision to an earlier post A correction from a commenter shows that I was wrong in attributing the following quote to Eusebius, the Early Christian Father (ECF), in my post entitled: “Is full preterism a...
- Does majority rule in theology? In this week’s installment of Theology Unplugged, a podcast I highly recommend, Reclaiming the Mind Ministries president Michael Patton made the following comments about full preterists (like myself): Now I...
I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get into a topic I’ve been reading into for quite a while now, but it’s so deep and I’m so shallow. The issue is the so-called New Perspective on Paul. The Paul Page has some extraordinary articles describing it (start with Mattison’s summary), and so what I reproduce on this blog should only be seen as appetite-whetting for that excellent website.
For those of you who would like a summary of the summary listed above, read on. What is this “new perspective”?
Well, for starters, it’s not really new; it takes into account what its supporters insist is the actual historical context for Paul’s teaching on justification and removes it from the lens of Luther’s anachronistic understanding of the issue. What’s “new” about it is that it wasn’t until the seventies that Christians first started taking it seriously. The four most important scholars for this view are Krister Stendahl, E.P. Sanders (with his watershed 1977 book Paul and Palestinian Judaism), James Dunn (who modified Sanders’s view), and N.T. Wright (who has modified Sanders and Dunn). This position has plunged the scholarly community into a flurry of debate for the last forty years, with old school Reformed types standing the hardest against it but other Reformed theologians (such as Wright) showing a willingness to accept criticism of traditional Lutheran understandings on justification.
If you want a short sound-bite summary of this view as I did, you’ll be disappointed; it is, after all, an interpretation of one of the fundamental aspects of Pauline theology, which is remarkably complex for any position. But let me say a couple things that help position us to view Pauline theology in this way.
Related posts:- Campbell: what did Paul mean by “justified”? Here’s an excerpt from the first part of a review of a book I’ve been interested in since I first heard about it. It’s from the New Perspective school of...
- Election and Adoption Part 3: God’s Purpose in Election As I stated in Part 2, I reject the notion that foreknowledge is prescriptive. I hold to the conviction that there is an interplay between man’s choice and God’s choice....
- Election and Adoption Part 2: Gracious Sovereignty I had to cut the last post short, somewhat abruptly as you might have noticed. But presenting bite-size chunks is better for blogging anyway (not that you would know it...
In this week’s installment of Theology Unplugged, a podcast I highly recommend, Reclaiming the Mind Ministries president Michael Patton made the following comments about full preterists (like myself):
Related posts:Now I would say, you can believe that, and you can make your arguments — and many people do from Scripture. I’m not persuaded at all by them — but at the same time I would say that this is an unChristian way to believe about a particular issue in the end times. It’s an unChristian way or, another way to put it, unorthodox; it is outside of the sphere of orthodoxy within historic Christianity. Now, the next thing we ask is, ok, if it’s outside of the sphere of historic Christianity, does that make… [you] automatically a nonbeliever, someone who is outside the grace of God, someone who is unregenerate as we sometimes put it, or someone who does not have a relationship established with the one true God? And I would say no.
- Is full preterism a new doctrine? (revised) Who said this? But the things which took place afterwards, did our Saviour, from his foreknowledge as THE WORD or GOD, foretell should come to pass, by means of those...
- Covenant Theology I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Covenant Radio, today and feeling rather baffled. The hosts, both Presbyterians, were interviewing a Reformed Baptist, Dr. Thomas Schreiner. They were...
- My love affair with theology I haven’t been posting much lately. To explain why, allow me give you a sketch of my relationship with theology, which has always formed the backbone of this site. First,...
I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Covenant Radio, today and feeling rather baffled.
The hosts, both Presbyterians, were interviewing a Reformed Baptist, Dr. Thomas Schreiner. They were engaging him in regard to a recent book of his called Believer’s Baptism that contended a position contrary to their own Presbyterian position. Not being Presbyterian, or even Reformed for that matter, I have had to read between the lines to discern the hot issues in the Presbyterian community from these hosts’ discussions with major Presbyterian ministers.
Now, as I understand it, there is a major rift in the Presbyterian denominations concerning Covenant: one side equates Covenant with salvation, and the other claims that, just as in the Mosaic system, there are participants in and beneficiaries of the Covenant who themselves are not of the elect.
These latter, of whom the hosts of this podcast are representatives, believe that there are by-products of the Covenant that even those who are damned may enjoy. The privileges of the Covenant, although not exhaustively or explicitly elucidated in the podcasts I’ve heard, ostensibly include such things as divine protection and blessing. So a damned child growing up in a household of elect can benefit from his participation in the New Covenant; this view tends to view the sacraments such as baptism (including, most argue, paedobaptism) and communion as ways for these non-elect to remain under the blessing and protection of the Covenant.
Dr. Schreiner sides with the other camp of Presbyterians and argues for believer’s baptism only, for the same reason that only believers are supposed to partake in communion – they heap (additional?) damnation onto themselves by unworthily participating. He views Hebrews 6 and the other warning passages not as directed toward any non-elect Covenant members (a concept he rejects) but toward the elect. He attempts to defend his view against those like me who say that the multitude of warning passages throughout the Bible, if directed toward the eternally secure elect, are merely empty threats, since it is impossible for them to become apostate. He argues that the teaching of Hebrews 6, “The elect who fall away are damned”, is a completely true statement — only it never actually has the occasion to be realized. In other words, it’s not an empty threat, but a theoretical statement of an impossibility expressed as though it were a possibility. I fail to see how the nonsense factor is mitigated by this spin.
Related posts:- New Perspective I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get into a topic I’ve been reading into for quite a while now, but it’s so deep and I’m so shallow....
- Election and Adoption Part 3: God’s Purpose in Election As I stated in Part 2, I reject the notion that foreknowledge is prescriptive. I hold to the conviction that there is an interplay between man’s choice and God’s choice....
- Does majority rule in theology? In this week’s installment of Theology Unplugged, a podcast I highly recommend, Reclaiming the Mind Ministries president Michael Patton made the following comments about full preterists (like myself): Now I...
As I stated in Part 2, I reject the notion that foreknowledge is prescriptive. I hold to the conviction that there is an interplay between man’s choice and God’s choice. One cannot rationally hold a robot responsible for the destruction it wreaks if it merely follows the software intentionally programmed to make it destructive. Yet the Bible throughout calls people and nations into account for their own choices and decisions.
In Romans 9, Paul gives two examples of “vessels of destruction”, Esau and Pharaoh. Reformed theologians will often argue that these vessels only have the appearance of choosing wicked behavior: in actuality, they (like everyone else) have no free will to choose; my position is that they had the actual ability to choose, and if God were left out of the equation, their nature and character was bent so that they could only hardly have chosen any other way than they did This may seem a trifling distinction in practice, since if God creates people in full knowledge of what good or evil they will do, if He chooses the “hardware” with which they make their decisions, it’s hard not to see that God is passively determining the path of certain people one way or another. However, do not forget that He is said to not be willing that any should perish (2 Pe 3.10), that He takes no delight in the death of the wicked (Ez 18.32), and that “God desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Ti 2.4). Taking these passages into consideration implies that, as a rule, He supplies mankind with “hardware” that could go either way, and only occasionally has He stacked the deck one way or another, as it were. I explained in Part 2 why Pharaoh, for instance, was chosen to be a vessel of destruction; Paul is very clear that vessels of and honor and destruction were chosen only for the purpose of fulfilling “His purpose in election” (Ro 9.11). What is this purpose?
Read more…
- Election and Adoption Part 1: Romans 7 and 8 As long as I can remember, I have struggled hard against the Calvinist understanding of the doctrine of election. Recently I have been observing and interacting with a number of...
- Election and Adoption Part 2: Gracious Sovereignty I had to cut the last post short, somewhat abruptly as you might have noticed. But presenting bite-size chunks is better for blogging anyway (not that you would know it...
- The jealousy of the Jews and the fullness of the Gentiles Something jumped out at me several days ago when I was reading Acts 13: it reminded me of Romans 11. And well it should. After all, Acts was written by...
Preterists who deny a physical Resurrection of the Dead have been accused of being gnostic (because we supposedly believe that only spiritual reality matters and that the physical world is evil). Yet those who demand a destruction of the physical universe and the replacement with a spiritual new heavens and new earth are surely closer to this belief than are full preterists. We don’t see a reason to believe that the earth and the physical universe will not sustain us into virtual perpetuity. Our strictly spiritual Kingdom is more likely to take over the realm of the physical as we apply the mandate for dominion in every area of our lives. Those looking forward to a restoration of the physical universe need look no further than the preterist’s Kingdom of God made manifest in us, the sons of God, the co-heirs with Jesus.
Related posts:- Peter speaks Preterists point to a panoply of time statements in Scripture regarding the eschaton. Twenty of the twenty-six books of the NT give such time statements, expectations of an imminent occurrence...
- Putting our money where their mouths are What would it take to wipe out hunger and give all poor nations a chance at development? Better yet, why aren’t more Christians asking this question? This is something that’s...
- Election and Adoption Part 3: God’s Purpose in Election As I stated in Part 2, I reject the notion that foreknowledge is prescriptive. I hold to the conviction that there is an interplay between man’s choice and God’s choice....
I had to cut the last post short, somewhat abruptly as you might have noticed. But presenting bite-size chunks is better for blogging anyway (not that you would know it from my posts!), so I went ahead and posted it. Here’s a continuation.
What I’m trying to do is present an audience-relevant view on certain passages that have, since Augustine and continuing in the Reformed tradition, been taken out of context and made into what is known as the Calvinist doctrine of election.
On the outset of this one, allow me to cut to the chase for some of you. I do not have a problem believing that God can, and that He in fact has, predestined certain individuals for life and some for destruction. I’m not one who says that God cannot determine someone will for them, or at least provide the circumstances that will tilt someone toward one choice or another. However, is every decision by every human determined by God? This is clearly not so, as a multitude of Scriptures clearly indicate. Here’s something I ran across that presents many of these passages along with some good old fashioned logic.
Many Calvinists aware of these passages feel constrained nonetheless because of certain passages such as Ephesian 1 and Romans 9 that explicitly talk about predestination based on God’s election. The Reformed doctrine of election is the solution to a puzzle with many pieces missing; tragically, many of these pieces are right there in Scripture but result from the misunderstanding of other doctrines. I think the key misplaced piece is eschatology. I am laying a lot of groundwork before expounding my understanding of election. That’s because we can’t view these Calvinist proof-texts in isolation from their original context.
Related posts:- Election and Adoption Part 3: God’s Purpose in Election As I stated in Part 2, I reject the notion that foreknowledge is prescriptive. I hold to the conviction that there is an interplay between man’s choice and God’s choice....
- Election and Adoption Part 1: Romans 7 and 8 As long as I can remember, I have struggled hard against the Calvinist understanding of the doctrine of election. Recently I have been observing and interacting with a number of...
- Disputing Calvinism: vessels of temporary, conditional wrath? I wanted to share this excellent article that answers, mostly via Scripture, many if not most of the arguments of Calvinism. In an admirable show of the author’s critical thinking, while...
As long as I can remember, I have struggled hard against the Calvinist understanding of the doctrine of election. Recently I have been observing and interacting with a number of people of the Reformed persuasion, and I am astounded at the intellects of some of the people wholly sold on a teaching that requires so much nonsense ad hoc philosophy and theology in order to sustain it. In order to make the Calvinist God “sovereign” as they understand that concept, people such as John Piper have to redefine “love” — you know, the love that God says He is and that He requires us to have one for another — to mean its polar opposite: selfishness. All this to prop up an unscriptural understanding of the quite scriptural doctrine of election.
The confusion is magnified because of bad eschatology. This next couple of posts will address eschatology and the doctrine of election at the same time. Sound like fun?
John McPherson, in his article called “A Biblical Perspective on Election”, pulls out one of the most famous proof-texts for the Calvinist take on election, Ephesians 1:4 and 5. Let me supply his annotated version of this passage (vv. 3-12) in context, and I want you to see if you can grasp our point before I spell it out.
“3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: 4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: 5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. 7 In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; 8 Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence; 9 Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: 10 That in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: 11 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: 12 That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ.”
Did you catch the importance of that last sentence? It defines the “we” and “us” everywhere throughout the passage: Paul was referring to his first-century, firstfruits audience!
Leaving that aside for the time, we are going to talk about Paul’s use of the term “adoption”. What is going on in Ephesians 1?
Related posts:- Election and Adoption Part 3: God’s Purpose in Election As I stated in Part 2, I reject the notion that foreknowledge is prescriptive. I hold to the conviction that there is an interplay between man’s choice and God’s choice....
- Election and Adoption Part 2: Gracious Sovereignty I had to cut the last post short, somewhat abruptly as you might have noticed. But presenting bite-size chunks is better for blogging anyway (not that you would know it...
- The Millennium and the Resurrection of the Dead I am firmly indebted to Don Preston for his presentation on the Millennium at the 2004 Preterist Research Institute Conference for much of the layout and content of the following....
One of people’s hang-ups about full preterism is that they feel that the Great White Throne Judgment sounds too momentous to apply to less than the sum total of humanity rather than those who died before AD 70 alone. Has the judgment of the nations occurred yet? Revelation 20 depicts the “General Resurrection” as the time when “the rest of the dead” resurrected at the end of the Millennium would be judged. Enter the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.
Judgment in the Olivet Discourse
Most of Matthew 24 and 25 are in red (Jesus’ words), with no interruptions after verse 3. In fact, the rest of the passage is a response to verse 3, forming an unsegmented pericope. The disciples look at the beautiful Herodian temple, apparently scoping out what they thought would be their inheritance when Christ took the reins in His Kingdom. Jesus responds by predicting the temple’s destruction, saying, “not a stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” Josephus the Jew describes how this literally took place after the first century siege when the Romans noticed the precious metal between the stones and decided to extract it by pulling them apart.
Now, this is very interesting. On hearing this ominous prophecy, the disciples ask an important question: “…When will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” As I stated above, the following verses until the end of chapter 25 is entirely unbroken narrative. Can there be any doubt that this entire passage is related to the same time of the “end” and the same “coming”? Or did Jesus just decide to change the subject to another “coming” mid-stream to make things interesting?
Watch this: 24:30-31 and 33-34 read, “At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other…Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”
At the end of chapter 25, Jesus launches into the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. Let’s look at it here:
When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” Matthew 25:31-34 NIV
Is this the same event? I believe it’s clear that it is. Notice the parallels:
- “The Son of Man” comes “with great glory” (24:30), “in his glory” (25:31)Angels accompany Him
The nations are called into account (24:30) and (25:32)
Separation is made between the righteous and unrighteous (24:31, 25:32)
Please tell me you can see that these are the same event! If so, and if the first was to occur before that generation passed away, the second one must have as well. This means that the judgment of the nations is not a future apocalyptic event at some postulated close of human history. Rather this was what happened when the dead were raised, some to a resurrection of life and the others to a resurrection of judgment (John 5:29; cf. Daniel 12:2). This is the judgment of the living and dead that Paul said was “about to” occur in 2 Timothy 4:1.
Related posts:- The Resurrection of the Dead Sheol. The grave. The pit. Hades. What do all these have in common? They’re the same thing. At least, in the Bible they are. The Hebrew word sheol, ubiquitous in...
- The Millennium and the Resurrection of the Dead I am firmly indebted to Don Preston for his presentation on the Millennium at the 2004 Preterist Research Institute Conference for much of the layout and content of the following....
- You contribute: is Jesus coming back? I’ve had a poll running for a couple months asking Undeception readers what topics they’re interested in seeing me address. I decided to give it a while and see if...
Preterists point to a panoply of time statements in Scripture regarding the eschaton. Twenty of the twenty-six books of the NT give such time statements, expectations of an imminent occurrence of eschatological significance: “this generation shall not pass until…”; “about to”; “some standing here will not taste death before…”; “at hand”; “soon”.
Matthew 3:2,7,10,12, 4:17, 10:7,23, 12:32, 16:27,28, 21:40-45, 24:34, 26:64
Mark 1:15, 12:9,12, 13:30
Luke 3:7,9,17, 10:9,11, 20:15-19, 21:22,32, 23:28-30, 24:21
John 14:18,20,22, 21:22
Acts 2:16-17, 4:25, 17:31, 24:15
Romans 4:23-24, 8:13,18, 13:11-12, 16:20
1 Corinthians 7:29,31, 10:11, 15:51-52, 16:22
Ephesians 1:21
Philippians 4:5
Colossians 1:23,46, 2:16-17
1 Thessalonians 4:15,17, 5:23
2 Thessalonians 1:6-7
1 Timothy 4:8, 6:14,19
2 Timothy 3:1-9, 4:1
Hebrews 1:1-2,14, 2:5, 6:5,7-8, 8:13, 9:8-10,11,26, 10:1,25,27,37, 13:14
James 2:12, 5:1,3,7,8
1 Peter 1:6,20, 3:3,5, 4:5,7,17, 5:1
2 Peter 1:19, 2:3, 3:10-12
1 John 2:8,17,18, 4:3
Jude 4,14-15,17-19
Revelation 1:1,3, 2:25, 3:10,11, 12:5, 18:24, 22:6,7,10,12,20
If time statements are at all suggestive, they must always be taken at face value. It is no good to point at the majority of these listed above and proclaim, “The New Testament ubiquitously predicts an imminent, first-century Day of the Lord,” and then deny one or two instances of those time statements. If one or two may be denied as truly imminent, all may be denied. If Jesus’ standing “at the door” (Rev 3:20) or if the axe “already laid at the root of the tree” (Matt 3:10) can be said to admit a multi-millennia interval, then partial preterists cannot claim with a straight face that any of the other time statements demand imminent fulfillment.
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Josh’s blog has something important to say on this.
‘Nuff said.
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(Preterism is the belief that there are no prophecies in Scripture that await a fulfillment in the future. Hereafter I will use the term “futurist” to describe anyone who believes that there is a yet future fulfillment of prophecy, including partial preterists. Similarly, I will use “preterist/preterism” as ellipsis for “full preterist/preterism”.)
Now, I realize that some people aren’t even convinced of partial preterism yet. But to anyone willing to learn and analyze Scripture honestly, it is usually only a matter of time after presenting the preteristic framework that a futurist will become convinced that at least some Scriptures must have been fulfilled in AD 70.
Yet sometimes these hold out hope that only some of them were fulfilled, considering the principle of total fulfillment an overreaction. They want the best of both worlds.
Even after a cogent presentation of the arguments for preterism, objections understandably crop up. These objections come in two flavors: rational and sub-rational. This post will deal only with the latter.
Some objections are unvoiced, and are frequently accompanied by a queasy feeling in the stomach. These objections are usually never identified because they occur beneath the surface. Yet I contend that the sub-rational objection is the single greatest factor in the rejection of preterism. Let me be clear: I do not believe that just because you have not accepted full preterism that it is because of any of the following, since you may be an honest person with rational objections. But I would ask you to seriously ask yourself if any of these sound like you:
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I am firmly indebted to Don Preston for his presentation on the Millennium at the 2004 Preterist Research Institute Conference for much of the layout and content of the following.
Biblical eschatology is Jewish eschatology. A “time of the end” for the Church is never addressed in Scripture. Every passage that futurists and partial preterists say applies to a yet future apocalyptic event is easily tied to a promise made to Old Covenant Israel and fulfilled with the birth of New Covenant Israel.
The Resurrection of the Dead was the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel.
1 Corinthians 15 is, of course, the sine qua non of the doctrine of the Resurrection. Paul goes into much more depth here than anywhere else, and this one passage hosts a number of thematic and linguistic links to other passages that strongly suggest an integral unity between them. Let’s start by looking at verses 54 and 55. [All the following citations are from the NIV.]
When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?
Paul alludes to two Old Testament passages. Most commentators see in verse 54 that he applies language from Isaiah 25:7-8 to the Resurrection. Here is what it says:
On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death for ever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth. The LORD has spoken.
Next, he paraphrases Hosea 13:14, which reads:
I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction?
Now, this is the kicker: why must the Resurrection have occurred in the first century? Look at Paul’s next statement (v. 56):
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the Law.
When the Resurrection occurs, the Law is done away with. The Resurrection is the final fulfillment of the Law. Remember, Jesus says in Matthew 5:18 that “not one jot or tittle” could disappear before the Law was completely and totally fulfilled. Now, is the Law still in effect? If you don’t believe that the Law has been abolished, I trust you are still making animal sacrifices and following Mosaic dietary laws! Note also the correlation between sin and the Law that we see in Romans. Sin was finally done away with when the only true propitiation was made for it, which was Christ’s sacrifice, and the New Covenant was ratified and took full effect (cf. Hebrew 10:16-18). Paul correlates the Resurrection with the end of the Old and the beginning of the New Covenant in Romans 11:15, “For if their [Old Covenant Israel's] rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their [the remnant comprising New Covenant Israel's] acceptance be but life from the dead?” Do not miss, however, the fact that Paul in numerous places implies that the Law still lingered during his time: this ended with the destruction of the temple and of the Holy City.
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I, like Josh, don’t believe the Bible teaches a “rapture”. Shocking as that may be for some, the passage that serves as the primary source for the doctrine was never about a rapture, at least as commonly understood. That passage is 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. Let’s get a picture of what’s going on here.
Most modern translations of 1 Thessalonians 4:16 apparently take their cue from the KJV: “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first.”
“For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.” (NKJV)
“For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of {the} archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.” (NASB)
“For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.” (NIV)
Close scrutiny of both the grammar and vocabulary made me question the propriety of this translation. Let’s start with the vocabulary. Read more…
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What would it take to wipe out hunger and give all poor nations a chance at development?
Better yet, why aren’t more Christians asking this question?
This is something that’s been in my mind of late. Thoughts of children suffering and dying and their parents helpless to prevent it are so burdensome that only my strong defense mechanism (called “ignoring it”) keeps me from being constantly disturbed. But I ask myself – if you knew that your sibling(s) and/or parents were somewhere far away suffering the same way unaided, would you be content to put it out of your mind? Where’s the love for “the least of these”?
The U.N. tells us that 24,000 people die from starvation/malnutrition every single day. This figure is one of the lower I’ve read, so don’t think the U.N. is making it look worse than it is. Nor does this data even take into account the number of deaths that happen because of untreated, though easily treatable, medical problems.
Does any of that shock you? Or are they just statistics?
I have been disturbed to hear committed evangelical Christians shrug their shoulders at the insurmountable tasks I pointed out above. Three common responses:
1) If they’d just get off their lazy butts, they’d be able to do something about it.
It’s not the well who need a doctor, but the sick. Jesus came to seek and save the lost: even given occasional accuracy of the “laziness” accusation, those who are lost in self-destructive habits are prime examples of those who need our Savior’s administration in their lives.
2) All we can hope is to spread the gospel to as many places as possible so that Jesus can come back and end poverty once and for all.
This is a load of garbage (since I try to use more than four letters for all of my descriptive words, I will leave it at that). This is a perfect example of why futurist eschatology is dysfunctional and dangerous. That aside, this mindset makes the gospel look irrelevant: it ignores the example of Jesus who customarily treated the physical need before (or as a way of) ministering to the heart.
Related posts:3) We do send missionaries to help where they can. We’re helping out little by little.
- And the Lord spake, saying, “What was I thinking?!” Preterists who deny a physical Resurrection of the Dead have been accused of being gnostic (because we supposedly believe that only spiritual reality matters and that the physical world is...
- Why eschatology matters Josh’s blog has something important to say on this. ‘Nuff said. ...
- Peter speaks Preterists point to a panoply of time statements in Scripture regarding the eschaton. Twenty of the twenty-six books of the NT give such time statements, expectations of an imminent occurrence...
…you enjoy eschatological wit. My brother-in-law (Josh) and I have had occasion to produce a couple of zingers lately. I would like to present them as a litmus test for determining whether you are a preterist geek.
1) One of the first questions asked by incredulous Christians coming into contact with preterism for the first time is inevitably, “So if all that’s fulfilled, what is there left to happen in the future?” Today, when facing that question, I countered (jovially), “Preterism is the only eschatology with a future: we’re the ones that don’t have to look forward to getting defeated and looking to Jesus for an escape plan. We live in victory.” I was right proud of my extemporaneous outburst, and particularly because of the positive reaction I got. It actually brought a smile to the people (futurists) I was talking to – I think they saw the hope of a fulfilled eschatology for the first time.
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- You contribute: is Jesus coming back? I’ve had a poll running for a couple months asking Undeception readers what topics they’re interested in seeing me address. I decided to give it a while and see if...
- Is full preterism a new doctrine? (revised) Who said this? But the things which took place afterwards, did our Saviour, from his foreknowledge as THE WORD or GOD, foretell should come to pass, by means of those...