There has been a surge in recent years of a belief in what is known theologically as partial preterism. Preterists teach that Christ returned in 70 A.D. and fulfilled all of the prophecies of the Olivet Discourse and Revelation. Partial preterists believe that most of the prophecies of the Olivet Discourse and Revelation had their fulfillment in 70 A.D., but that there is still a future coming of Christ at the end of the age.
So what are we to make of preterism and partial preterism? Is there any validity to this belief?
Find out what we think.
I am a full Preterist. Have been for a very long time. The last days madness caused by dispensational teaching does not only a great disservice to the body of Christ by promoting a mixture of fear of the future, but also creates a paralysis about advancing the Kingdom of God in the here and now. Worse yet, is what it does to the teaching and the person of Jesus Christ, and the worst offender is actually one of my favourite apologists, C.S. Lewis, a fellow Ulsterman from Northern Ireland. He actually stated that Jesus got the future of the world wrong and that he misled his disciples. How can that be? How can we then put our trust in the full sacrifice of Christ as our Saviour and Lord if we cannot trust Him in what He stated about the end of the Hebrew age, the end of the sacrificial Old Covenant system? This is the only “end” He prophesied, and prophesied nothing that applies to our own day. What Lewis and others have done is turn the historical, biblical Jesus into a liar through their unbelief and have attacked the absolute authority of Scripture in the process. This is why I am a Preterist, and I personally do not care if it is a minority opinion. I do know however that it is a growing opinion and for that I am thankful, as all the ones I know turning to this way of understanding, are doing so in wanting to honour and obey the Word of God and Jesus as best they know and understand.
Hi Tim,
Thanks for the article. The historical details were helpful to me, and the literal, common-sense approach to Scripture was clear. Thanks again.
Thank you for your comment. I count all who seek to follow Jesus Christ and obey His Word as friends.
I hope you understand that the excesses of some can never be a valid reason to reject a position. It it was, then no logical person could ever believe in Christ because some have committed horrible acts in His name. The mere fact that some in the dispensational camp have allowed their views to thwart the gospel message cannot be a basis on which one accepts or rejects dispensationalism, or any other position. For Christians, the basis for testing all teachings must be the words of God.
In approaching the text, it is important to have a hermeneutic that creates some buffer against self-deception. To accomplish this, we must have a way to ensure that our interaction with the text is not us reading into the text what we want to believe, but rather creating the ability of the text to challenge our thinking and sometimes leave us a bit uncomfortable. It is precisely because the Antiochian school of hermeneutics (the grammatical-historical approach) allows this to happen, as well as because I see that the Biblical writers and Jesus seemed to employ this grammatical-historical approach to their use of other Biblical texts, that I have tended to follow that hermeneutic. Of course, from your vantage point, the downside is that the hermeneutic tends to place some priority to fixing our hope on the coming of Jesus.