Journey To Preterism

[Apologiaphoenix]

I would think it just means He's the king.

[Christianbookworm]

Idk why iton rod sounds scary to me.

[Apologiaphoenix]

Idk why iton rod sounds scary to me.

It depends on who is holding it.

[3 Resurrections]

It depends on who is holding it.

And also who it is wielded against. That "iron rod" over the nations is also translated "SHEPHERD the nations with a rod of iron". A wooden shepherd's staff not only was used for guiding the sheep, but for defense against predators. Both were equally necessary functions for the shepherd to safeguard the flock.

The fact that this rod or shepherd's staff in Revelation 12 is made of iron simply proves that it is an UNBREAKABLE instrument in Christ's hands that can never be worn out or laid aside as unusable.

"Thy rod and thy staff, they COMFORT ME..."

[Apologiaphoenix]

What can you learn by a conversation?

Link

-------

What are the first steps in coming to Preterism? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

On my journey in eschatology, I had heard about Preterism before. The sad reality is, I did not know what it was. I thought I knew, but I didn’t know. I remained convinced that Preterists believed that everything had happened in the first century and that there was no resurrection and no return of Jesus. I’d see Christians I know who would have defenses of Preterism and I would just wonder about it. “Why would they do that?”

It’s not uncommon. I had someone leave a comment here recently asking if I knew any Preterists who held to the creedal statements of the church, especially on doctrines like the future resurrection of Christians and the bodily resurrection of Jesus. I replied with what I now know to be the truth. All orthodox Preterists hold to those doctrines. That doesn’t make us partial-futurists. That makes us Christians.

This is also why I don’t call myself a partial Preterist. The idea of so-called Full Preterism is that everything has happened and I consider that a heresy since it can lead logically to the denial of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. I think it has to even. It doesn’t work to change the rule and say Jesus is the exception. If we are raised like He was raised, then we are either both spiritual or both physical.

I am not a partial heretic. It’s my stance that so-called Full Preterism is denying the physical resurrection of Jesus at least implicitly and thus puts us in the area of heresy. That is also a term I do not use lightly. Not once in all of this have I referred to dispensationalists who I disagree with incredibly as heretics. They are my fellow Christians, all things being equal.

I am an orthodox Preterist instead, and what really led to me embracing that? It happened back in 2006, a year I can easily find out since I am wearing a t-shirt now for TheologyWeb convention 2006. TheologyWeb is a site I help moderate on and have my own section on.

You can come here if you want to join. You can find sections for debating every area of theology, other religions, atheism and agnosticism, politics and history, as well as areas just to have fun. There’s also a Deeper Waters section where you can interact with other people on the material that I write here. People of all faiths and no faiths are welcome. Also, after you’re done signing up, your breath will feel minty fresh.

Anyway, at this convention, I did something unusual really. I joined in a talk where I sat down with two people who hold to Orthodox Preterism that they were giving and I listened and asked questions. What they said that I can remember, I will try to explain in future posts, but I want to get to this part first off.

If you want to know about a position, one of the best ways to do so is to just talk to someone who is informed on the position and holds it and ask honest questions. It’s easy to think the worst of your intellectual opponents at times. Generally, there’s a rule that if you can make a position look absolutely ridiculous, you probably haven’t understood it.

Years ago, TheologyWeb had a section for remedial Christian teachings where I would answer questions. Now what if someone wanted to hear an answer from the dispensational position? This was an easy chance for me if I wanted to take it to come up with an answer to make dispensationalism look really stupid and thus get more people to Preterism.

Never took it. Instead, I would find a well-informed dispensationalist that while I disagreed with, I knew had studied the issue, and asked them to give the best answer from their position. I want people to have informed opinions.

This works politically too. I remember reading a story and I think it was about Matt Damon about how he went and interacted with several Trump voters somewhere. He walked away saying “Those people really aren’t the way that I thought they were.” Now that doesn’t mean he went and put on a MAGA hat, but he did at least understand their reasoning.

The sad reality for me is I could have cut off years of time in my search if I had just done this. I just always assumed I knew what was meant by Preterism and what a shock to find out that I didn’t. That is why I say when I entered that talk, I was doubtful, but when I left, I had enough questions answered and no remaining doubts strong enough to overcome the conclusion that the Preterist position had the best arguments.

So over the next few posts, we’ll be talking about those arguments. For this one, I just want to encourage you to really listen to someone about a viewpoint. Ask questions, but try not to be antagonistic. Consider this a fact-finding mission, like being a detective. Maybe you’ll change your mind. Even if you don’t, you’ll at least have a better idea of what you disagree with and a better idea of why the other person holds what they hold.

Give it a try.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

[Apologiaphoenix]

What has David's life to do with eschatology?

Link

------

What does an Old Testament passage not about eschatology have to do with eschatology? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When I had that talk with two Preterists, I remember distinctly hearing about 2 Samuel 22. This is not a prophecy or a passage about eschatology. This is about the life of David and what happened during his days. So what on Earth does this have to do with eschatology?

Let’s look at the passage. We’re not going to go through the whole thing. It’s just going to be the relevant parts.

David sang to the Lord the words of this song when the Lord delivered him from the hand of all his enemies and from the hand of Saul. ² He said:

“The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;
³ my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield and the horn of my salvation.
He is my stronghold, my refuge and my savior—
from violent people you save me.

⁴ “I called to the Lord, who is worthy of praise,
and have been saved from my enemies.
⁵ The waves of death swirled about me;
the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.
⁶ The cords of the grave coiled around me;
the snares of death confronted me.

Here, we can recognize a lot of poetic license going on. This is the ways of poetry and even the hardest internet atheist could understand that this is not to be taken literally. This is David talking about how he felt hopeless. Those Christians who say we should always take the Bible “literally” will recognize this as well.

But what happens when we get to the next part?

⁷ “In my distress I called to the Lord;
I called out to my God.
From his temple he heard my voice;
my cry came to his ears.
⁸ The earth trembled and quaked,
the foundations of the heavens shook;
they trembled because he was angry.
⁹ Smoke rose from his nostrils;
consuming fire came from his mouth,
burning coals blazed out of it.
¹⁰ He parted the heavens and came down;
dark clouds were under his feet.
¹¹ He mounted the cherubim and flew;
he soared on the wings of the wind.
¹² He made darkness his canopy around him—
the dark rain clouds of the sky.
¹³ Out of the brightness of his presence
bolts of lightning blazed forth.
¹⁴ The Lord thundered from heaven;
the voice of the Most High resounded.
¹⁵ He shot his arrows and scattered the enemy,
with great bolts of lightning he routed them.
¹⁶ The valleys of the sea were exposed
and the foundations of the earth laid bare
at the rebuke of the Lord,
at the blast of breath from his nostrils.

¹⁷ “He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
he drew me out of deep waters.
¹⁸ He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
from my foes, who were too strong for me.
¹⁹ They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
but the Lord was my support.
²⁰ He brought me out into a spacious place;
he rescued me because he delighted in me.

Whoa. What happens with your interpretation here? This is quite an amazing event in the life of David. David is surrounded by enemies and here comes YHWH flying out of Heaven on the backs of Gabriel and Michael. He is preceded by a massive earthquake and then YHWH starts shooting arrows at all of the bad guys.

This is a fascinating event and as we look back at the books of 1 and 2 Samuel, we find that this battle took place in…

Wait. I can’t find it….

It’s got to be here somewhere! An earthquake and then YHWH flying on angels shooting arrows at the enemies of David! Surely this would be worth mentioning! Where is it?!

Wait. Wait. You mean this whole chapter is poetic license? This is not a literal reading? This is David describing political events, such as ordinary battles and running from Saul, in cosmic language?

Who on Earth ever talks this way? Who uses over the top language to describe an event?

What? You mean a football team was described as destroying their opponents? That political announcement was said to be Earth-shattering? America’s story has a history of a shot heard around the world?

So you’re saying that if David is an Old Testament prophet, as is said in the New Testament such as in Acts 2, then maybe we should see this is how prophets spoke? Maybe prophets did use this kind of language regularly and it’s a mistake to take it “literally”?

It might be tempting to think this is an isolated incident, but it isn’t. There are several passages like this in the Old Testament. As we go through, we will find that this is the way that Jews spoke of events in their lives. Something literally happened, of course, but language used to describe it is often highly apocalyptic in nature. For us, a football team does get defeated, but the language we use is often very far from literal.

I had read this passage several times before and never considered it. This opened me up to a whole new way of reading the text. I had always understood it was poetic license, but I never had considered that this could be done in prophecy as well as the exact same language shows up there.

And as we’ll eventually see, the New Testament does the same, but that’s for the future.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

[Christianbookworm]

Well, the destruction of a city might as well be the end of the world for the poor folk in the city about to get killed. Why did rhey like to turn the mundane into something epic sounding?

[Apologiaphoenix]

Isaiah 13

Link

-------

When will judgment take place? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

When talking with these Preterists, another passage that came to my mind was Isaiah 13. We’ll go through the latter part of it bit by bit, though not exhaustively, of course.

⁹ See, the day of the Lord is coming
—a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger—
to make the land desolate
and destroy the sinners within it.
¹⁰ The stars of heaven and their constellations
will not show their light.
The rising sun will be darkened
and the moon will not give its light.
¹¹ I will punish the world for its evil,
the wicked for their sins.
I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty
and will humble the pride of the ruthless.
¹² I will make people scarcer than pure gold,
more rare than the gold of Ophir.
¹³ Therefore I will make the heavens tremble;
and the earth will shake from its place
at the wrath of the Lord Almighty,
in the day of his burning anger.

Now if you read this normally, many of us will think that this is something far off in the future. The start of the chapter tells us that this is a prophecy against Babylon. Well, isn’t Babylon supposed to be brought back in the end? That’s it. This must be something in the future and it sounds really bad. The sun is dark, the moon doesn’t give light, and all the world is punished!

¹⁴ Like a hunted gazelle,
like sheep without a shepherd,
they will all return to their own people,
they will flee to their native land.
¹⁵ Whoever is captured will be thrust through;
all who are caught will fall by the sword.
¹⁶ Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes;
their houses will be looted and their wives violated.

Okay. This doesn’t seem to fit in. If all this destruction has taken place, how are people fleeing to their native land? How are people being captured? Kind of hard to do that if everything is dark. Oh! This is the future! Right! Electric lighting or something of that kind!

¹⁷ See, I will stir up against them the Medes,
who do not care for silver
and have no delight in gold.
¹⁸ Their bows will strike down the young men;
they will have no mercy on infants,
nor will they look with compassion on children.
¹⁹ Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms,
the pride and glory of the Babylonians,
will be overthrown by God
like Sodom and Gomorrah.
²⁰ She will never be inhabited
or lived in through all generations;
there no nomads will pitch their tents,
there no shepherds will rest their flocks.
²¹ But desert creatures will lie there,
jackals will fill her houses;
there the owls will dwell,
and there the wild goats will leap about.
²² Hyenas will inhabit her strongholds,
jackals her luxurious palaces.
Her time is at hand,
and her days will not be prolonged.

Okay. This will take a bit of time. The Medes? They’re not around anymore. Not only that, but these people don’t really seem to be bothered by universal destruction going on. Not only that, but the animals seem to get along just fine. This seems really difficult to put in the distant future.

But what if….

What if it was the future….

But not the distant future?

After all, all of this has happened before with Babylon being conquered and lo and behold, it was by the Medes. Okay. That did happen, but what about this language of great universal destruction? Oh wait. That’s the point of the 2 Samuel 22 post. That language there was not to be read in a literal sense either.

Now does that mean the text is false? No more than it means that a news report is false when it says a football game turned into a bloodbath for the loser team. No one hears that and expects that if they were to go to the stadium that they would see several dead bodies floating in blood. This is hyperbolic language, which Jews used a lot, to express a point of destruction. We could consider it in some ways to be akin to trash talking.

Isaiah was then giving a prophecy and it was of the future, but it was not of the far distant future. It was of the Babylon that existed in his own time. What does this mean for us?

It means we need to stop going to every prophecy in the Bible and thinking the only thing the prophets wanted to talk about was our own time in the future. They often spoke more of a fulfillment in their own time. However, there is still one possible objection remaining.

What about dual fulfillment? Could something like this happen in the future. That could be, but the problem is this is the burden of the futurist at this point. If I have a past fulfillment, why should I think there is another future one except to save the case for the futurist viewpoint? Even if this happened in the future for a specific prophecy, it does not follow that it will happen for all.

This opened up to me a new way of reading the texts. Preterism started to make a lot more sense and showed me ways I was misreading the texts. It is now also a point of mine to try to find out how the text was most likely immediately relevant to the audience of the time instead of reading our own questions into the text when the text could not even have our concerns in mind.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

[Rushing Jaws]

If Christ is ruling the nations with a rod of iron, why are there still evil governments? Guess He's rrally patient.

Because He is King, whatever the nations do. The Kingship of God has never meant there will be no evil or oppressive governments - it has always meant (among other things) that evil and oppression never have the final victory or the last word. God has always been King, even before the creation of man, and despite anything man can do.

[Rushing Jaws]

Eye witness accounts are always anecdotal, and anecdotal evidence is always worthless.


When the audience doesn't like it.

That has implications for the events which resulted in NT Christianity.

So what, then, is it based on ?

[tabibito]

That has implications for the events which resulted in NT Christianity.

So what, then, is it based on ?

It was a snarky comment.

Dismissing an argument on the grounds that it is only "anecdotal evidence" is about as specious a reason to hand wave claims away as can exist. Hypotheses are grounded in anecdotal evidence that has been considered worthy of investigation.

Newton - "I saw an apple fall from a tree."
Objector - "pah - that's just anecdotal evidence."

[NorrinRadd]

Undeniable evidence, it seems to me, is a very solid reason for converting.

John 10:37-38 seems possibly relevant here.

[tabibito]

John 10:37-38 seems possibly relevant here.

I can't believe that I had not added that one to my list.

[Rushing Jaws]

It was a snarky comment.

Dismissing an argument on the grounds that it is only "anecdotal evidence" is about as specious a reason to hand wave claims away as can exist. Hypotheses are grounded in anecdotal evidence that has been considered worthy of investigation.

Newton - "I saw an apple fall from a tree."
Objector - "pah - that's just anecdotal evidence."

I took it for a serious point. The Net is not very good at conveying such things as tone of voice.

[tabibito]

I took it for a serious point. The Net is not very good at conveying such things as tone of voice.

Always look for the final line - in this case "when the audience doesn't like it." I try to remember to add remarks that throw the first into its context, but quite often forget.

I would use the sarcasm tags, but it has that "said in jest" bit, which isn't what I use sarcasm for.