12.2.4. Hermeneutics of Preterism

Notes

¹ David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance (Tyler, TX: Dominion Press, 1987), 575.

² “The nature of the event has to do with a ‘Cloud Coming’ of Christ . . .”—Kenneth L. Gentry, Before Jerusalem Fell: Dating the Book of Revelation (Atlanta, GA: American Vision, 1998), 123.

³ “In case we might miss it, he says again, at the close of the book, that ‘the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent His angel to show to His bond-servants the things which must shortly take place’ (Rev. Rev. 22:6+). Given the fact that one important proof of a true prophet lay in the fact that his predictions came true (Deu. Deu. 18:21-22), St. John’s first-century readers had every reason to expect his book to have immediate significance.”—Chilton, The Days of Vengeance, 42.

⁴ Thomas Ice, “Some Practical Dangers of Preterism,” in Tim LaHaye and Thomas Ice, eds., The End Times Controversy (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2003), 426.

⁵ John MacArthur, “Signs in the Sky,” in Tim LaHaye and Thomas Ice, eds., The End Times Controversy (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2003), 111.

⁶ Isn’t this the very reason why the Scriptures indicate the return of Jesus will be visible, global, and unmistakable?

⁷ Larry Spargimino, “How Preterists Misuse History to Advance their View of Prophecy,” in Tim LaHaye and Thomas Ice, eds., The End Times Controversy (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2003), 20.

⁸ Gordon Franz, “Was ‘Babylon’ Destroyed when Jerusalem Fell in A.D. 70?,” in Tim LaHaye and Thomas Ice, eds., The End Times Controversy (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2003), 236.

⁹ Andy Woods, “Revelation 13 and the First Beast,” in Tim LaHaye and Thomas Ice, eds., The End Times Controversy (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2003), 243.

¹⁰ “[Preterists assume] that the book uses a future orientation not to describe future reality but to challenge the situation of the original readers. There are two main variations within preterist interpretation: those who see the book describing events leading to the predicted judgment of apostate Israel and the destruction of the Jewish Temple in A.D. 70 and those who understand its focus as describing the situation of the Christian church within the Roman Empire (the conflict between church and state).”—Grant R. Osborne, Revelation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002), 1. Osborne mentions a third variation which has more in common with the idealist interpretation, providing “a spatial interaction between the earthly and the heavenly so as to give new meaning to the present situation.”—Ibid., 19.

¹¹ Chilton, The Days of Vengeance, 43.