Why Preterism Cannot Be Defended From Scripture

From Lesson 213 of the Biblical Framework Series

Charlie Clough

Beginning on page 122 I’m going to start dismantling the preterist position.

I’m going to do so in a series of paragraphs I’m going to show six different things that show that preterism does not accomplish what it hopes to accomplish. I want to list these and we’re going to have them paragraph by paragraph. The first paragraph on page 122, “Of course, the most common problem with the preterist approach is the lack of Jesus coming back to earth in AD 70.” I mean, let’s start with the basics. The problem is that when the bottom line is made and everything is said and done, the problem is where did Jesus come in 70 AD? So AD 70, is that the Second Advent? Is that the coming of the Lord Jesus?

If all the events of Matthew 24 and Revelation were fulfilled then, where was Jesus’ coming in AD 70?” Turn to Matt. 24 because again that’s one of the key discourses of Jesus; I want to show you some specific verses to show you the problem here. We’re going to flip between Matt. 24 and Rev. 1. In Matt. 24:30, here’s just one, I could site many, but in Jesus’ discussion when He was talking about His coming again and answering the disciple’s questions, look at some of the things He said would happen when He came back. Look at verse 30, when I come back, “the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory.” Isn’t that interesting, quote from Daniel, it’s Old Testament.

Next sentence after Matt. 24:30, “Did ‘every eye…see Him, even they who pierced Him’ (Rev. 1:7)? “Did He return from a cloud,” remember in Acts 1 when we dealt with the ascension, what did the two angels say to the disciples? As He was descending the angels said look, He’s going to come back just the way He left. How did He leave? He left off of the Mount of Olives, went up into the sky and disappeared in a cloud. Two angels are sitting there, the disciples are looking up, and the angels say that’s the way He’s going to come back. Question: Is that the way Jesus came back in AD 70? Are there any reports of Him dropping out of a cloud onto the Mount of Olives in AD 70? I don’t think so!

“Realizing the problem, some ‘partial’ preterists (e.g., R. C. Sproul, Kenneth Gentry) split the second coming passages into two groups: one group (Rev. 1:7; 19:11-21; 22:12-20) supposedly refers to the AD 70 coming in judgment against Israel; a second group (Acts 1:11; 1 Thess. 4:16-17) refers to another future coming in judgment against the whole world.” So now we have two second comings, one in AD 70 and when you can’t deal with that and that doesn’t fit, we plow all the other verses over to the second coming that we believe in. “Other, more logically-consistent full preterists (Don Preston) insist that all such texts refer to the past even of AD 70.” See, within the preterist camp there is some debate going on. “Christ’s coming in AD 70 cannot be associated with the coming of the Holy Spirit some forty years earlier (as some liberal theologians tried to do during the past century or two).” The liberals used to do that, if you go to The First Liberal Church on Easter Sunday morning and you hear them talk about Jesus coming, the code word is spiritual coming, and some of them really think that’s what Pentecost was all about, that’s when Jesus came back, Pentecost. Preterists aren’t doing that, Preterists aren’t making it Pentecost, they’re making it AD 70.

Here’s point 1, this business of AD 70 doesn’t fit the model that we get for the Second Coming of Jesus. The conclusion of that, point 1 is: “Preterists, therefore, are left with trying to associate it with the Roman invasion and judgment upon Israel. Moreover, they are left trying to interpret present history as the manifestation of the long-promised Kingdom age that fulfills all prophecy.” See what happens? If Christ came in AD 70, then 71, 72, 73, all the way up to 1999, 2000, 2002, is what? The Kingdom’s here. You didn’t know that did you? That’s the logic. So point one, this paragraph, what have I said: The preterist attempt to identify the coming with AD 70 doesn’t fit the texts. The texts say certain things are going to happen in the Coming of Christ and those things that the text say didn’t happen in AD 70. So you have to get greasy with your hermeneutics to make the text fit AD 70. Now what have you compromised? Literal interpretation.

[Someone asks what hermeneutics is] It’s the science of how you interpret literature; you can interpret literally, you can interpret allegorically.

Turn to page 123, the second point. The first one was that AD 70 doesn’t fit the Second Coming texts. The second point is the meaning of the coming soon texts mean something different than they think it means. In other words, what is the meaning of “at hand” and “soon?” Are these terms forcing us to have to see something close in to the time of the Lord Jesus or have to conclude that He was wrong and the New Testament is wrong? Let’s follow this, this is a little more difficult so follow this carefully.

“Preterists’ most persuasive arguments concern the ‘time texts’” and I showed you what the time texts were, I took you to Matt. 24 and Revelation, we looked through those verses, those were the “time texts’ apparently indicating that Christ was going to come soon after His ascension. Lexical studies of the terms used, however, clearly show that they can have two meanings:” not one. “Soon” can mean not delaying, but it can also mean, quickly. Let me illustrate the difference. “Which meaning a given instance has must be determined by the context. The former meaning” that means soon, here’s what would agree with the preterists, “the former meaning occurs in 1 Tim. 3:14” when Paul says to Timothy, “(I am writing these things to you, hoping to come to you before long.)” Was Paul hoping to come to Timothy shortly? Yes. So there the term does mean come soon.

But “the latter meaning occurs in Matt. 28:7-8 (‘And go quickly and tell His disciples…and they departed quickly from the tomb….’)” Yeah, it means soon, but it means move it, it means quick.

Here’s an example: if I were to say, using that Greek term, looking at a thunderstorm if I were to say, I’m a weatherman, I have to have a weather illustration, I’m looking at a thunderstorm and I say the bolt of lightening comes quickly. Do I mean that when the thunderstorm starts you start seeing the lightning right away, or do I mean that when the lightening comes it comes quickly? I can mean both, and how you interpret what I say, that’s the context, but you’ve got to be clear that the word itself has two meanings, not one, TWO! It can mean “soon” or it can mean “when it comes it’s going to come quickly.” You can think of an airborne assault, when an airborne assault occurs it occurs quickly, very quickly, soldiers are on top of you all around very quickly. Now it can mean the airborne assault is going to come soon, maybe in the sense of next week, not a month, or it can mean when it does come, it’s going to come quickly. Do you catch the difference in the meaning? That’s the fight about these time terms in the New Testament.

“Such passages sometimes use the illustration of a thief breaking and entering,” remember how many times that’s used in the Bible, Matt. 23:43, the thief, 1 Thess. 5:4, the thief, 2 Pet. 3:10, the thief. “The thought here isn’t that the thief comes soon, but rather whenever he does come he comes so quickly that one cannot respond.” Do you see, have we abandoned literal interpretation? No, we haven’t, that’s a literal meaning of the word; it’s used two ways. These kind of time terms are used in the sense of short time coming or when it comes it comes quickly.

“The thought focuses upon the sudden interruption into the ‘normal’ state-of-affairs, a miraculous intervention into history like the global flood of Noah’s day (Matt. 24:37-39; 2 Pet. 3:1-13.)” Remember what we said, nobody knew about it until what? Until the day that it came. Let’s turn to Matt. 24:37, here’s an ideal picture of the second kind of the meaning for these time terms. “For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. [38] For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, they were marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark.” By the way, how long did Noah preach? 120 years, that didn’t come quickly, did it, in the first sense of the meaning of the word. The flood did not come quickly in the sense of the first meaning; it took 120 years before it came. But what Jesus says, [39] and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be.” Now here’s Jesus Himself characterizing His return, not in terms of meaning number one but in terms of meaning number two. Where was Jesus’ head when He was talking about these things? He wouldn’t have used the Noahic flood, it came soon, no it did not come soon, but when it came, boom, within hours it was there, people had had it, the ark was sealed, the earth started breaking up, flood, rain, never saw rain before, all of a sudden this water is coming out of the heavens. So you had a miraculous intervention.

So we conclude, “That flood did not come soon; it took over a century to come. When it came, however, unbelieving humanity were utterly unprepared. The New Testament emphasis upon the quickness of Christ’s future coming points to its supernaturalness and unpredictability.” That’s the point of these time texts.

So to review, we have given two counter arguments to preterism. Number one, the model of the Second Coming that we get from the New Testament texts doesn’t fit what actually happened in AD 70 unless you start allegorizing the text to make it fit with AD 70. The second counter argument is that the terms for “at hand” and “soon” have a second meaning, you don’t exhaust it by simply saying they mean “soon.” That doesn’t exhaust the literal meanings because a second literal meaning is whenever it comes, it comes quickly. That’s the point that Jesus is making, because we see right in Jesus’ own words, right here in the Olivet Discourse He Himself is thinking that way when He’s using these words because of the way He illustrates it with Noah’s flood.

The repeated use of the “thief” analogy, “the thief” comes through, they knew not until the thief broke in and stole. Thieves don’t take a long time to steal, the pros do it quick. These guys can rip your car off before you can put the key in the ignition, they really are skilled. Not the kids that want drug money or something, they’re stupid, but the professional guys. A really skilled professional crook is a real artist at doing this stuff. He does it quickly. So that metaphor, the thief metaphor tells you it’s meaning number two. The Noah’s ark metaphor tells you it’s meaning number two. So you’ve got built into the textual context enough information to wean you over to number two.

Tommy Ice uses a neat illustration, I’m not a football fan, I don’t know one team from another, but he has this neat expression in one of his prophecy books. He says you know, whatever the bowl is, has been at hand for the Buffalo Bills but they never got it. What he means was they were so close to getting it and they didn’t get it, it was at hand. So the expression “at hand” has a contingency meaning to it, it can or it cannot. That’s not saying that it’s going to come soon, the “soon-ness” meaning isn’t part of that expression. So we’ve got to get sharp. This is why this is not easy material to deal with and I apologize for it because this is not a course on eschatology, it’s a course on the Biblical framework but I have to get into eschatology to deal with the end of the Church Age, so that’s why we’re here. But I’m just trying to warn you that there are subtleties here and you really have to have your head screwed on in looking at the text but it’s not esoteric. We can sit here and we can discuss it, everybody knows a thief comes quickly, it’s all within our grasp, we don’t need a PhD in semantic studies to understand this. Any Christian can understand it, it’s just you have to pause a little bit, turn off the TV for a few hours and think. I know this is stressful to some people. But the point is that that’s the only thing that gets you through this stuff.

Now we come to page 124. Turn to Matt. 24:34, this is their favorite text. I think their Bibles, the binding is cracked right here at Matt. 24. The verse they will quote is verse 34 and in verse 34 Jesus says, “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.” Can you see the problem that they think we have here? If this generation isn’t going to pass away until all these things be fulfilled, and all these things refer to Matt. 24, then how do we interpret “this generation.” Doesn’t that mean that the generation that was listening then to the Lord Jesus Christ will not pass away until these things be fulfilled? That’s their argument for why “these things,” Matt. 24 and the book of Revelation, had to have happened within the lifetime of those people who were hearing the Lord Jesus. So that gives you something to think about.

Before I go any further, do you know where you can see this nicely is in writing reports? If you see a news story of something that happened and they interview somebody, and the reporter is speaking about that event, but when the reporter writes about what the witnesses to the event is saying, they’ll quote somebody who is saying well, this plane did that, this plane did something, this plane fell out of the air. What’s “this plane?” The plane that the guy saw when it happened. But the reporter is reporting his terms for that past event. Relative to the reporter’s writing it was “that” plane last week that did that. But to the observer who was there on the scene, it was “this” plane, the plane that he saw.

Now watch how it happens in prophecy, we see this all the time in the Old Testament, I’m going to illustrate it for you. “Experienced readers of Old Testament prophecy know that such a shifting back-and-forth between a present-centered perspective and a future-centered one is common in eschatological passage. Readers repeatedly observe shifts in temporal viewpoint from the present to the future then back to the present as in Psalm 2 and many other places.”

Turn to Psalm 2, here’s a case in point, we could go to hundreds and hundreds of cases but we’ll just go to two. In Psalm 2, “Why are the nations in an uproar, and the peoples devising a vain thing? [2] The kings of the earth take their stand, and the rulers take counsel together against the LORD and against His Anointed.” In what time framework is that reporter? It’s obviously David and he’s looking into the future. And he looks into the future he sees this, and he quotes what they’re saying in verse 3, but he’s quoting it as though they’re saying it to him now. He doesn’t write in verse 2, “Then they will say, “let us tear their fetters apart,” rather he just quotes it as though he were there. David has moved into the future so that now the future is present to him and he’s observing people saying this. Verse 4 goes on about this and in verse 7 is another case, “I will surely tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to Me, Thou art My son, today I have begotten Thee. [8] Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Thy inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Thy possession.” When is that going to happen? That’s future. But it’s written about as though David is on scene, we are on scene with him and we are there observing it. For example, if we were to use the demonstrative in verse 7 we might have written the text, “I will surely tell of this decree.” Do you see how appropriate it would have been, the present in that situation?

Now I want to show you where the demonstrative, this shifting back and forth, occurs explicitly. It’s implicit in these passages like Psalm 2 where you see oscillation back and forth. Isaiah 12:4, it’s speaking of a future time and it is an expression, very common in prophecy, notice how it begins, “And in that day you will say,” stop there, if you look at that clause, “in that day you will say,” where do you place the writer with respect to what’s happened? Is he there placing himself on scene or is he here now looking into the future? He’s sitting in the present looking into the future. “In that day,” that distant day, “In that day they will say.”

Following the paragraph, “In Isaiah 12, for another example, the text speaks of a future time as ‘that day’ (12:4), a day located further away from the speaker. It shows that the speaker visualizes himself as in the present looking into the future.” But now the text goes on, “Give thanks to the LORD, call on His name. Make known His deeds among the peoples; make them remember that His name is exalted. [5] Praise the LORD in song, for He has done excellent things; let this be known throughout the earth.” What’s that? Where is the center of the text happening in time? Is it happening at the time it is being written or have you been transported forward into the future to observe this being said, and together with the people you are conversing with them and you are saying “let this be known.” Do you see the shift? It’s now that near demonstrative. We could go on and on about this. The problem is that in prophecy you have this shifting back and forth, “this” to “that,” and it’s just the nature of prophecy. That’s just the way the Old Testament is structured in text after text after text.

So the conclusion at the bottom of page 124, “Preterists think that Jesus throughout all of His discourse in Matthew 24 never moves away from a present-centered perspective. In such a perspective ‘this’ and ‘these’ would refer to things present,” i.e. in the year that Jesus spoke that, “and ‘that’ and those’ would refer to things in the future. Indeed, Jesus has this present-centered perspective when speaking of the future time of His coming. He uses ‘that’ and ‘those’ in such expressions as ‘those days’ and ‘that’ hour (24:19, 22, 29, 36).” I deliberately had you look back at Isaiah 12 because I wanted you to observe that in prophecy they’ll often say “that day,” in “that day,” in “that hour.” Jesus follows exactly that Old Testament convention when He’s talking about “in that day” such and such will happen. He’s doing exactly what Isaiah did, Jeremiah did, and all the prophets did. Why? Because He’s Jewish and He operates within the same prophetic framework and understanding as the Semitic peoples of the Old Testament.

“He also speaks of the past flood of Noah as ‘those days’ (24:38). The objects Jesus speaks about are remote to His vantage point in the present. “However, when He speaks of specific events in that future time (wars, famines, earthquakes, astronomical catastrophism), He uses the demonstrative pronoun ‘these’ (24:8, 33….”). Back to Matt. 24 and once again looking at the context. Verse 8, here’s where Jesus did it again, “But all these things,” it doesn’t say “those things,” in the future, He says “these things,” the things that He just got through speaking about, these things that are visually present in the imagination of both Him and the people who have heard Him speak these words. He’s loaded the imaginations up of His disciples, He’s described the things [blank spot]… Verse 7, “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes,” so He’s got all this in the mind’s eye of the people listening to Him.

Now that they’re in the mind’s eye, they’re visualizing gosh, what these famines are going to look like, imagine what the earthquakes will do, so they’re thinking this. They bend their imagination, transported out into the future and they’re looking at these things, look at this, and Jesus says, “these things,’” because He’s placing Himself in that future time frame. So you’ve got to watch it when you look at a prophetic text, you can’t just haul in here at forty miles an hour and drive through. You’ve got to watch the subtleties and this is not hair splitting, this is just understanding how it is with prophetic literature.

Continuing on page 125, “He uses the demonstrative pronoun ‘these’ (24:8, 33) indicating that in His perspective the prophesied phenomena are now in the foreground. No longer is He standing in the present looking to the future. Now He stands in the future look at its features ‘close up.’ He focuses upon these future works of God as though He and His audience are there in that future time looking at them as they occur. And it is while He has this future-centered perspective looking at these features close up, that He utters the sentence, ‘this generation will not pass away until all these things take place,’ (24:34). In this context it is clear that ‘this generation’ belongs to the same visualized foreground as the events themselves. The generation Jesus has in mind is the generation who get to see these Tribulational judgments. Thus He uses the near demonstrative pronouns ‘this’ and ‘these’ that tie both the objects viewed and the viewers together in that same future time.” Now watch this, “If He had meant to say what the preterists think He is saying, He would have remained in the present-centered perspective, looking into the future and uttering something like this: ‘This generation shall not pass away until all those things take place.’” Had He said that we would pause here for some eschatological reconsideration. But He didn’t say it, He said “This generation and these things,” placing the generation and the things in the same temporal foreground. So that’s how we respond to their key proof text.

Another problem that arises with the preterist position: We said that the book of Revelation actually is an expansion of the condensed overview of history Daniel was given in Daniel 9. This is a very, very crucial Old Testament text, it happened toward the end of the Old Testament. Daniel is high up in the bureaucracy of both Iraq and Iran; he’s got to be a leader in both of those countries. We went through this earlier, verses 24-26, look at verse 25. Here’s a verse that looks forward into the future and is summarizing of Israel’s calendar clock. So we have Daniel being told how long things are going to go on. He says “you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks,” seven plus sixty-two is sixty-nine; sixty-nine of these things called “weeks.” But the Aramaic that’s translated “weeks” is simply the word “seven.” So what he’s really saying, to translate literally is “sixty-nine sevens,” and that’s the time in years between the time of going to rebuild Jerusalem at the end of the exile until the Messiah.

Then he says in verse 26, “Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary.” Historically who destroyed the city and the sanctuary in AD 70? What country destroyed Israel? Rome! It says not “the prince who is to come;” it says “the people of the prince who is to come.” Do you understand why people believe the antichrist will be someone who has vast powers over the area that originally was concerned with Rome and the Roman Empire? “…the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined. [27] And he” the prince, “he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week,” look at that, one seven, so there’s a seven all by itself here. There are sixty-nine of the sevens here and there is one seven here. That’s where we get the word “Daniel’s Seventieth Seven” or “Daniels’ Seventieth Week.”

“The people of the prince who is to come … will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week,” how many years is that? What’s the middle of seven? Three and a half. “…in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction,” so right here in the middle of that, there’d be three and a half years, there’s an abomination, and it’s that abomination that Jesus is talking about in Matt. 24. He says when you see the abomination spoken of by Daniel, you get out of the city, and you’d better pray that it doesn’t happen on a Sabbath so you can have traffic.

So Jesus is expanding in Matt. 24 and John in the book of Revelation, the content out of this little verse or two back in Daniel. This is the heart beat that gets expanded as the Holy Spirit expands our knowledge base. Now here’s the problem for preterists. The preterists, while he tries to hold to that sixty-nine in verse 26 as literal because we know literally it happened, he’s got to hold to the literalness of the seventieth week. But the seventieth week is only seven years long. So if you have the crucifixion of Christ and you add seven, Jesus was crucified in 33 AD (in 32 AD by some accounts) that gets up to 40 AD, it doesn’t get you up to 70 AD. So by not handling this right he can’t get the seventieth week pushed up into AD 70. That’s the point in the next paragraph.

This is problem number 5 for preterism. “Preterism experiences difficulty with Daniel 9:24-27. If, like most non-dispensational systems, preterism denies that a gap exists” and they all do “between the first 69 weeks and the 70^th, then that 70^th week, a seven-year period, cannot be made to stretch from AD 32 or 33” all the way up to AD 70 without going allegorical in your interpretation of the numbers. And they can’t do that because they’ve already gone literal with the first 69. You can’t have 69 and all of a sudden have seven imaginary or seven figurative years. So there’s a problem there too.

And ultimately why I’m showing you this is the scheme of interpretation compels them to maintain consistency to go non-literal. This is the problem you always get into. Sooner or later a bad eschatology forces you into a non-literal hermeneutics; somewhere along the line if you push it far enough you get in hot water.

The last one, bottom of page 125, here’s the other problem we run into. It’s quite simple to understand this. If Matthew 24 and the book of Revelation prophecy of AD 70 what does that tell you about the date of their composition? They had to have been written before AD 70. If they’d been written in AD 90 they’re not prophesying about what happened, it would be past history of what happened. In AD 90 you would have written a history of AD 70, you wouldn’t write a prophecy looking forward to it.

So, “preterists must date the book of Revelation before AD 70 in order to have AD 70 events appear as future happenings. Evidence for the date of this book,” and this is debated in scholarly circles. “Evidence for the date of this book is split between an early date near AD 70 and a later date near AD 96. While other schools of interpretation can accept either date,” we can accept either date, frankly, “preterism can accept only the earlier date.” Let me give you a clue as to why most conservative scholars accept an AD 96 date for Revelation. Here’s why. There was an early church father who was called Irenaeus; here are his dates: he was born in 120 AD and he died in 202, so he’s the next generation after the apostles. He left some writings about what he thought the date of Revelation was. So he’s a lot closer than we are, he’s only a generation removed. He wrote this statement around 180 and here’s what he said. “We will not, however, incur the risk of pronouncing positively as to the name of the antichrist, for if it were necessary that his name should be distinctly revealed in this present time it would have been announced by him who beheld the apocalyptic vision.” Who do you suppose he’s talking about? John. “For that was seen not very long time since, but almost in our day toward the end of Domitian’s reign.”

So here’s a guy, a church father, and he’s saying the book of Revelation is written by John right near Domitian’s reign. Well, Domitian reigned after AD. 70. So again preterism has a problem here trying to establish that this book has got to be written before AD 70 and the evidence just really isn’t there.

So I’ve gone through five problems with preterism, let me give you one more. Number six in the objection is the date of revelation. Here’s another problem with preterism. “Moreover, if preterism were true, then much of the rest of the New Testament motivational passages that rely upon the future coming of Christ to encourage godly living would become irrelevant,” would it not. The entire book of Revelation would be irrelevant, wouldn’t it, if it’s already happened. So often we read in the New Testament passages, the passages that always look forward to the coming of Christ and all this and that, well if He came in AD 70 what happens to all these things. Basically you’ve lost your whole motivation that’s given to you in the New Testament.

“With Christ’s coming already past, much of the New Testament cannot,” and here’s the big point, most of the New Testament now, and this is where there is a spirit, I believe there is a deception going on in this view that’s very serious and it smells of Satan right here. Here’s the key sentence. “With Christ’s coming already past, much of the New cannot directly relate to the Christian life today.” See, much of the New Testament is irrelevant, it was only written to those people that lived between the time of Pentecost and AD 70. “It would have applied only to believers living between Pentecost and AD 70. Preterism, for all its complaints against dispensationalism, winds up in the end creating its own dispensation between the ascension of Jesus Christ and AD 70 that takes away much of the New Testament!”

Thus ends the discussion on preterism and I hope I’ve raised enough issues for you so you won’t waste your time in life worrying about preterism.