Continuing the eschatology

The problem with your position is that it sounds just like hyperpreterism. Hyper Preterism Renounced

 

IMO, what it comes down to is just how factual does one take Revelation? If there is any book specific about the end, it is that book.

All of John’s other writings show word choice was very specific, and purpose carefully thought through.

Why some do not hold John’s writing to that same standard in Revelation is puzzling.

If anything, at least the Second coming and millennium are literal, and there is no historical anecdotal evidence of such already having happened.

 

The ONLY return Jesus mentioned is His coming back in great power and glory, seen by all, when He comes to take over David's throne & rule the world. The only prophetic things that happened in 70 AD was the destruction of J & the temple. The rest of the eschatological events have simply not yet happened.

Yes, Jesus is with us SPIRITUALLY, as He said that wherever/whenever two or more are gathered in His name, He will be there. But that's NOT His prophesied return, of course.

Again, there are NO SUBSTITUTES for the actual occurrences of the prophesied events themselves, and it's very-obvious they have NOT yet happened!

 

Perhaps you do not believe you have that belief system.

However to my understanding Hyperpreterism is the end destination of believing prophecies were fulfilled in 70 AD.

 

From the previous thread -

As the events prophesied in Revelation must shortly come to pass .... for the time is at hand, & are for the blessing of those who read, hear & keep what is written, the probability is that the prophecy concerns the AD 70 destruction, & the events prophesied occurred during the siege.

Stars/meteors & massive hail stones could refer to the projectiles & sling stones thrown by the Romans. Also a plague of hail, as against the Egyptians, falling on Egypt but not Goshen.

You've been discussing the 6th seal, & we need to bear in mind that Jesus has been opening the seals, as it were a video picture book, showing the days of vengeance prophesied by the Lord.

When we realise that the prophecy concerns the LAND (of Israel) rather than the whole earth (same word in Greek, understood by context) the scale of the judgments, deaths, etc, is local.

Ezekiel prophesied in 14:21-23
21 For thus says the Lord God: “How much more it shall be when I send My four severe judgments on Jerusalem—the sword and famine and wild beasts and pestilence—to cut off man and beast from it? 22 Yet behold, there shall be left in it a remnant who will be brought out .....
which compares with Revelation 6:8
8 So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth.

The remnant who will be brought out would refer to the redeemed 144,000 firstfruits who were sealed before the angels released the four winds.

 

Please answer the question I asked on the other thread, which no preterist has ever answered for me. If all of the prophecies of Christ's first coming, the incarnation, were fulfilled literally (Bethlehem house of David, etc.), why must the prophecies of the 2nd Coming be fulfilled "spiritually"?

And another question I asked that was never answered: where is the evidence that Jesus came in AD 70? Give one single quote from an early Christian which says so. Otherwise you, along with other preterists, are making up things.

You would be much more convincing if you quit reading junk theology such as what you've mentioned, and read serious stuff from the premil side: Things to Come by Pentecost, Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy by J. Barton Payne (historical premil), Dispensationalism by Ryrie, Revelation by Walvoord, and other important works.

Simply because you never went to college does not mean you cannot get a serious education in eschatology through self study, something you've not yet done.

And though you deny it, all scholars agree that futurism has been around since the first centuries of Christianity. "Even so, come, Lord Jesus."

So much for the claim that you're here to learn.

Again, you sadly misinterpret my mention of degrees. I nowhere attacked you for your lack of degrees. I have known some great Christians with only a high school diploma. My point (and that of Dr. Cassidy) was to give credence to my position as one that is well thought out and valid, just as Paul did when he disclosed to a Jewish audience his training under Gamaliel, the greatest scholar of the Jewish law of the whole first century (Acts 22:5).

And for the record, Keil and Delitzsch were not preterists, so you have completely misunderstood and misrepresented their position.

 

Then declare plainly that you believe that Jesus will bodily come to earth in the future. You have never yet done this. If you do not believe in a future, physical Second Coming of Christ, you are a full preterist, a hyper preterist.

 

Part of the problem must be about WHEN John wrote the Revelation.

The isolation to Patmos probably ended with the emperor change in 96 AD. At that time, John would have been able to deliver the letter to the seven churchs which took it throughout the empire.

John lived to nearly the turn of the first century. He is the only Apostle that died of natural causes and one can visit his grave in Ephesus.

There is no account that John was caught up into the air to return in perfect new body to the earth prior to his death.

Polycarp, one of John’s disciples and took over the Ephesian church when John died, lived nearly as long as John, which takes the church to the middle of the 150’s AD. He was martyred in 155 AD.

Now, if the Lord had returned, wouldn’t both John and Polycarp, who was most certainly pre-millennial as were nearly all earliest church members, been aware of it, and stated so?

Not a single writer expresses the Lord returned.

Even the oldest known written account in her own hand of a woman martyr (diary of Perpetua murdered in 202-3 in Carthage) shows the Lord did not return.

The preterist scheme fails to present the whole truth, and relies upon manipulation of dates that were not in dispute by the earliest students of the apostles.

How can they deny the facts of history?

 

Prophecy70, for the most part I have agreed with your posts. I would suggest that the distinction between full and partial preterism is not quite as cut-and-dried as you quoted. For the most part, for instance, I would call myself Full Preterist (some here enjoy labeling it "hyper- or full-blown Preterist!). But I still believe there are future things. Most importantly, everyone living still has to meet God. That is necessarily future. Also I believe that what the seven thunders uttered most likely concerns events of the future.

 

Talk about a loaded question.

Even a cursory examination of the subject of dating Revelation (which I doubt you have done) would show that many people have dated that book in the 60s (The church historian Schaff, to name just one). The other Christian writers like Clement of Rome and the writer/s of the Didache were also pre-Parousia - that is before the events of Revelation.

 

Why must the return of Christ have to accommodate to your understanding, John? How many times have we read in the NT about the spiritual nature of the coming Kingdom (it doesn't come with observation, not eating and drinking but righteousness,peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, etc.)? First the natural, then the spiritual. (I'll let you find the references0

This is another question that I have answered many times - and on this board too. And yet someone like you comes up and acts as if you shut our mouths. Here it is - again:
1.Many of the supposedly post AD70 writers were actually preAD70 . Clement of Rome and the writer/s of the Didache come on this category.

Besides, I am not sure what you would accept as evidence.

2. There were a couple writers who did say He came then. If I thought you actually either (a) cared or (b) will remember it then I will dig that file up in its entirety and share it with you.

"Don't read that junk. Read our junk!" Let's focus on the Bible, shall we and not rely on Drs. XYZ.

Much of the problem of modern Christianity is that we really too much on Bible commentaries and not enough on the Bible itself. At the very least, when we read all these "helps" (with or without quotes) we should be wide-ranging in our study, considering the insight from various ages and backgrounds of Christianity - not just the last century or two. I know for a matter of fact that much of what I believe I believed late in life merely because I was not aware of other options. You read those folks you quote above and you will get basically minor variations on the same narrow eschatological bandwidth.

And a wrong one at that.

 

The writing took place on Patmos, that is fact.

John was exiled to Patmos just prior to his death in Ephesus, that is fact.

The emperor change occurred in approximately 96AD, that is fact.

Neither John or the writings of Polycarp embrace the preterist scheme of the Lord having returned, that is fact.

Those historical facts alone would show the failure of such thinking that the full preterist folk hold.

Yet, preterist thinking persist in ignoring history trying to invent an alternate set of undocumented and non-documentable “facts” to bolster there view.

It is the same with all false views.

Does not Scripture declare that two angles stood by as the crowd gathered watching the Lord ascend into the clouds?

Did they not say, “what are you doing standing around here looking up? This same Jesus is coming back just as He was taken up (in physical form). Get on now, you got a job to do.” (Agedman’s paraphrased version).

 

"....Those who support the “late” date of its writing (92-96 A.D.) seem to base their belief on the grounds of a solitary quote of Irenaeus who lived from 125-202 A.D. The late Foy E. Wallace Jr. (who supported the “early” date of its writing), in his book titled, “The Book of Revelation,” quotes that statement by Irenaeus. It reads as follows:

“If it were necessary to have his name distinctly announced at the present time it would doubtless have been announced by him who saw the Apocalypse; for it was not a great while ago that (it or he-emphasis by FEW) was seen, but almost in our own generation, toward the end of Domitian’s reign,” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5:30:3, quoted in, The Book of Revelation, Foy E. Wallace Jr., p. 25).

As we can see here, the key phrase in Irenaeus’ statement is, “that was seen!” The question then becomes: Was it 'he' (John?) or 'it' (Revelation?) that was seen? In the

English, it could be either one! Then there other scholars who comment on both Irenaeus and also his statement:

D. Ragan Ewing writes:
“The difficulty arises in Irenaeus’ statement, as translated, “… that was seen …” The Greek text simply reads eJwravqh. The subject of the statement is simply subsumed in the verb, and there is therefore no grammatical indicator as to the referent; it could be the Apocalypse, or it could be John himself. In other words, the English could just as easily be, “… he was seen …”

Ewing further writes:
“Nevertheless, there remains another problem with the Irenaean witness. To what extent are we to take as trustworthy Irenaeus’ historical claims… In one place he portrays James the Apostle as the same person as the brother of the Lord, and in another, he astonishingly informs us that Jesus lived to be between forty and fifty years old! Lapses like these have understandably led to assessments such as Guthrie’s caution that Irenaeus’ historical method is “uncritical,” as well as Moffatt’s comment, “Irenaeus, of course, is no great authority by himself on matters chronological.” Such being the case, should we really place the great confidence in this testimony that many scholars have?”

Kenneth Gentry quoting Irenaeus:
Irenaeus said of the age of Jesus, “but the age of 30 years is the first of a young man’s mind, and that it reaches even to the fortieth year, everyone will allow: but after the fortieth and fiftieth year, it begins to verge towards elder age: which our Lord was when He taught, as the Gospel and all the Elders witness…” (Quoted in Before Jerusalem Fell, Kenneth L. Gentry, p. 63) Can we trust the testimony of a man that says Jesus taught for 15 years and was fifty years old when he died? Yet, it is largely his testimony alone, for the latter date!

Burton Coffman writes:
“His (Eusebius’) quotation (of Irenaeus’ statement) does not even mention “the writing” of Revelation, but refers solely to the time when certain unnamed persons are alleged to have seen either the apostle or the prophecy, nobody knows which. This proves nothing. Besides that: If he meant the Apocalypse was seen, and if it had been originally composed in quotation, could have reference to the Greek translation, if indeed it referred to the Revelation at all. There goes the whole case for the latter date,” (Commentary on Revelation, Burton Coffman, p 4).

William Bell writes:
“Concerning the above statement (Irenaeus’ statement), scholars have long recognized that it is not possible to determine whether Irenaeus meant to say John was seen by Irenaeus’ tutor, Polycarp, or that “the Apocalypse” was seen toward the end of Domitian’s reign. Such ambiguity destroys this argument as evidence. Even Eusebius, who recorded this statement, doubted that John, the apostle, even wrote the book of Revelation. The point here is this, if the statement was not strong enough to convince Eusebius that John even wrote Revelation, why do so many think today that it is strong enough to convince one that the apostle saw it (the Apocalypse) during Domitian’s reign (A.D. 95)? It is weak to say the least.”

Finally, is support of the “early” day of the Apocalypse, are the words of Robert Young, author of “Young’s Analytical concordance of the New Testament,” and “Young’s Literal Translation of the Holy Bible.” In his remarks, you will see that he contends that a mistake has been made on the part of other early writers who quote Irenaeus’ statement. As you will see, it is his belief that the other early writers actually (mis)quote Irenaeus as to the name of the Roman Emperor who was ruling at the time of his statement, and succeeding writer simply followed their lead!

Robert Young (late 1800s) writes:
"It was written in Patmos about A.D.68, whither John had been banished by Domitius Nero, as stated in the title of the Syriac version of the Book; and with this concurs the express statement of Irenaeus (A.D.175), who says it happened in the reign of Domitianou, ie., Domitius (Nero). Sulpicius Severus, Orosius, &c., stupidly mistaking Domitianou for Domitianikos, supposed Irenaeus to refer to Domitian, A.D. 95, and most succeeding writers have fallen into the same blunder. The internal testimony is wholly in favor of the earlier date." (Concise Critical Comments on the Holy Bible, by Robert Young. Published by Pickering and Inglis, London and Glasgow, (no date), Page 179 of the "New Covenant" section. See also: Young's Concise Critical Bible Commmentary, Baker Book House, March 1977, ISBN: 0-8010-9914-5, pg 178.)..."

The Dating of Revelation: Guest Article