12. Nero

Since it seems plain from a straightforward reading of Scripture that the Beast is a figure yet future, how is it that preterists find Nero to fill the bill? The answer, once again, is hermeneutics, the art and science of interpretation. By ignoring the details in the Word of God, the preterists are able to “shoe horn” Nero into what they believe is a fulfillment of these prophecies. They simply refuse to read the text in its literal sense because they are motivated to move the future back to the past and Nero provides their best chance of doing so.

In the ensuing discussion, we would ask the reader to notice a key weakness of those who argue for a Neronic fulfillment of the Beast passages of the book of Revelation. They place great emphasis on similarities which are lacking in objectivity or are subject to widely different possibility of fulfillment while minimizing objective details given in the text which simply do not fit Nero. Anyone who attempts to identify the Beast based primarily on numeric calculations concerning his name (gematria) while paying relatively little attention to the details of the text is headed for trouble.

Notes

¹ Image courtesy of Mike McCorkle.

² “According to Suetonius, he stabbed himself in the throat with a dagger. According to another version (recounted by Tacitus and almost certainly fiction) he reached the Greek islands, where the following year (69) the governor of Cythnos (modern K�thnos) recognized him in the guise of a red-haired prophet and leader of the poor, had him arrested, and executed the [death] sentence that had been passed by the Senate”—Britannica CD 99 Multimedia Edition, s.v. “Nero.”