Perhaps people should educate themselves before condemning a particular view. Listen and learn: http://www.bereanbiblechurch.org/eschatology.php

If you still don’t see how preterism is Biblical then at least you do so with the knowledge of what it is.

mbaker,
that is right, if the gathering away already happened, then where is our hope? We know that Mary and Martha both believed in the Resurrection in the last day. And old prophets did come out of their grave when Jesus died.

Marcelo,
Jesus said God could, but never did say he would…you need to understand the difference in those words. Jesus said…you say you have Abraham to your father…but wait..wasn’t He also a child of Abraham Himself? And did He not say of the woman who was healed “Is she not a daughter of Abraham”?

Jesus said could, indicating the power that God has. Jesus said there would be some standing here who would not taste death…and that was before He even died. What about that?

Kara,

Thanks.

It’s interesting that folks who would persecute Jews because of their ethnicity forget that Jesus was a Jew Himself, and an often overlooked factoid is that Jews usually stoned people to death, like they did Stephen.

However, we can see that they did not stone Jesus, even though he was turned over to them, but He instead was crucified after the Roman custom. So it was a divine prophecy being fulfilled, despite the decrees and the traditions of men.

I think some forms of preterism are like that of the gnostic teaching that the resurrection represented Christ’s ‘second’ coming, which obviously was taken by them literally as well, to mean that it was already a done deal. That’s why I think it is silly for anyone to take literally the parts of the Bible that are obviously meant to be comparisons to prove a point, not the point itself. Otherwise we would all be walking around with no eyes, if we took that scripture literally and plucked them out when we sinned!

However, I think one thing that really blows holes in the preterism theory is that His own disciples, and the apostle Paul, preached salvation and the future coming of Christ as a hope for all generations who would follow them. They obviously were not referring just to their generation, otherwise we could not accept the words of John, the disciple of Christ,who wrote Revelation, as truth.

In fact, Christ Himself also said no one knew the hour of His return, including Him, so one would not think He would have said such a thing if He was just referring to His own generation.

And certainly, if anyone is going to take the preterist point of view seriously, then it wouldn’t make any sense at all for the book of Revelation to have been necessary to have been included in the Bible in the first place. It is called a Revelation of Jesus Christ, and deals with aspects of Christ’s coming back to judge the world. Certain future events, which it gives in much detail, have to take place first.

That’s why I think that preterism is really more of an over actualized concept of eschatology, rather than valid theology.

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Kara Kittle on 06 May 2009 at 10:39 pm #

Marcelo

Matthew 24, that’s what I offer and I believe Jesus knows what He is talking about. There is simply too much in the Bible too reference for this. But consider this…did God raise up the stones to Abraham’s children? He could have and that is the point that was being made. He could have. But He didn’t.

We are Israel by faith only because we have been adopted and grafted in. And we come to Jehovah through Jesus, that is what makes us spiritually Israel, but all the spiritual has a natural and the Jews are the natural children of the flesh of Abraham, they came first, God blessed them and said we all must bless them as well.
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Kara

Jesus said He would raise up children for Abraham. What about the 1st Century Jews who received the Gospel such as Luke, Matthew. Mark, John, Stephen, Barnabas and all those preached to by the disciples who received Christ in the cities? To believe that Christ did not raise up children for Abraham is to forget about all the Jews that received Him. Are they not a remnant of the majority of Israel who rejected the Gospel, the first fruits of the Great Commission?

Were not the first century believers through the disciples all Jews and then Paul began bringing the Gospel to the gentiles? Why ignore them. Jesus did raise up children for Abraham.

Jesus was firm when He told the crowd that not all Israel is Israel. They claimed Abraham as their Father because of race/lineage. Jesus said otherwise. Jesus said Abraham looked forward to His day. Abraham was credited with righteousness through faith and Jesus was clear that Abraham would receive Him (faith.)

If race/lineage made Israel the chosen people why Did Christ state that since they would not receive Him they did not have Abraham as their Father? This is Christ’s words. Those who did not receive Him were not Israel. Only those of Israel with faith in Him were Israel. The gentiles with faith in Christ were then included with believing Israel making one people of God. The Israel of faith.

The plan of God was for all people, not just ethnic Israel to receive Him. The Gospel came first to Jews and then to the Gentiles. Only those of faith could come to the one olive tree whose first fruits were the Jewish believers of the 1st century. Does God see race or sex? See Romans:

Romans 10

12For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, 13for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”[f]

Scripture is clear that there is no distinction, if there is then there are 2 people of God, the Church and Israel. Israel would then be limited to a final generation in the future while all past generations for the past 2000 years have been lost. Does that make sense?

Jews and Gentiles of faith in Christ together since the 1st century make up the one children of God and has been going on for the past 2000 years and will not stop. This is Israel. All of every generation of every century through all time who call on the name of the Lord is Israel. That is a plan. It is ALL based on faith.

God Bless.

I read Matthew 24 as a futurist. Not a preterist. The chapter ends with “immediately after the tribulation of those days..then shall the end come”.

I am saddened by this whole concept of preterism. There is nothing about it that gives me comfort because I realize that since the days Israel has gone into Egypt they have been persecuted so many times. And to deny them today of who they are ethnically is a gross injustice. When the city was sacked in 70 ad it merely proved what the world really thinks of them.

The Jews were forced into Europe because of the Crusades. Then people say they can’t be who they say because they were in Europe. What happened to the Sephardic Jews of Spain and Portugal? They were forced out. So by edicts and pogroms and forceful expulsions these people were made to move from country to country.

They made significant contributions in the countries they went into, their money was taken from them and then they were forced to live in smaller communities until time after time they were forced to leave again. And now people deny them from even being people. What a gross injustice to the millions and millions of Jewish people of the Diaspora. I am just upset and saddened.

mbaker and cheryl u,
perhaps it will be easy to follow your discussion as it has more clarity and thoughtful consideration.

Marcelo

Matthew 24, that’s what I offer and I believe Jesus knows what He is talking about. There is simply too much in the Bible too reference for this. But consider this…did God raise up the stones to Abraham’s children? He could have and that is the point that was being made. He could have. But He didn’t.

We are Israel by faith only because we have been adopted and grafted in. And we come to Jehovah through Jesus, that is what makes us spiritually Israel, but all the spiritual has a natural and the Jews are the natural children of the flesh of Abraham, they came first, God blessed them and said we all must bless them as well.

mbaker,

I have been wondering the same thing. The last chapters of the Book of Revelation specifically would seem to be canceled totally by such an approach. I noticed someone above talked about not taking a lot of things in the Bible literally to make the preterist approach work. I don’t see how one could even spiritulize huge portions of the Bible and have them make any sence at all.

Somehow, it would seem to me like a very strange way of interpreting the Bible if a person is to take one particular verse and then bend the whole rest of the Bible to fit that one verse.

So are we to believe the preterist point of view by taking the word ‘generation’ literally to mean just that applied to that particular generation of believers who saw Christ in person, or what the rest of the Bible says about Christ’s coming in context of the entire counsel of God?

It seems to me just taking it as a generational concept would cancel out large, and extremely important parts of the God’s word to us, and prove Christ to be a liar as to Him dying for the sins for all past, present and future generations. The Saduccees, for instance, believed the second coming had already taken place, and there would be no other.

How does that coincide, one way or another, with the His coming promise to judge the world in person? It seems to me that would cancel out whole books of the Bible in order to proof text a personal agendas well as those of us in generations that followed His.

The Thayer’s Lexicon definitions of the Greek word translated generation, gives the specific meaning of the word discussed in the article linked above.

Thanks, I’ll read it as soon as I have the opportunity.