Preterism's Achille's HeelBy Reggie Kelly"A Short Bible Study Course for the Serious Student Interested in Disputing the Deception of Preterism (Replacement Theology)" The cornerstone of replacement theology is ‘Preterism,’ - “the belief that holds that the Tribulation prophecies occurred in the first century [A.D.], and thus are past” (Kenneth Gentry). The hallmark of Preterism is its denial of the futurity of ‘the great tribulation’ (specifically
Any comparison of these texts, particularly in their larger contexts (e.g. Dn 7:21-25; 11:36-12:13 with 2 Thes 2:1-8;
Scholars agree that Dn 12:2 stands out as the most unambiguous reference to resurrection to be found anywhere in the OT. However, in order to avoid the implications of ‘apocalyptic futurism,’ preterists must interpret this otherwise clear reference to eternal resurrection as a non-literal metaphor standing for national revival (e.g. Ezk 37).
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But Daniel, who sees a prolonged exile, puts the unequaled tribulation and subsequent resurrection at “the end”. (7:25-26; 8:17, 19; 9:27; 11:27, 35, 40; 12:1-13). This, however, provides no deterrent at all to preterism's postulate of two distinct ends to two distinct ages, i.e., the 'Jewish age' and the 'church age'.
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But there is no analogy in
The exegetical force of this manifest interrelation of events is not lost on a minority of scholars that identify themselves as ‘consistent preterists’ vis-à-vis ‘moderate preterist'. However, rather than admitting a future fulfillment of this indivisible complex of events, ‘consistent preterists’ feel justified in saying that the resurrection described in
The time of the day of the Lord is made clear by noting that the stellar darkness that comes “immediately AFTER the tribulation of those days” (Mt 24:29) is shown in
Only the strength of a powerfully overriding presupposition can account for the decision to make the post-tribulational coming described in the Olivet prophecy and in John’s Apocalypse the exception to all other NT references to Christ’s coming and attendant resurrection. In all other NT texts, the resurrection is united to the ‘blessed hope’ of the Church. It is therefore the more curious that the only passages that are treated as exceptions happen to be those that make explicit or implicit prophetic reference to the
But NT witness to the abiding prophetic significance of the Land would not be so ‘missing’ if the larger part of NT prophecy was not assigned to the past. Furthermore, it is not the New Testament’s first interest to ‘reiterate’ everything that Jews of the first century naturally understood as irrevocable features of the covenant (Jer 31:35-37; Ezk 36:22, 32; Ro 11:29), deferred only “UNTIL the times of restoration of all things” (Acts 3:21). Rather, the NT’s emphasis falls on the revelation of things formerly hidden, bound up in the mystery of Christ’s twofold advent. All that related to a future “restoration of the kingdom to
The real question to be decided is what the exegetical and historical evidence is for how Jesus, Paul, and John, all apocalyptically oriented Jews of the first century, would have understood the relationship of Daniel’s unequaled tribulation to the resurrection? Both ‘moderate’ and ‘consistent’ preterists insist that Christ returned mystically in apocalyptic judgment “immediately after the tribulation of those days” (Mt 24:19, 22, 29), understood as the days of the Roman sacking of
This is the price that ‘consistency’ must pay if the time of unequaled tribulation is to be placed in the past. Such strained interpretations force themselves whenever the time of ‘unequaled tribulation’ is placed in the past, simply because all exegetes are compelled to recognize the inseparable relationship of Daniel’s reference to the resurrection in 12:2 with the ‘unequaled tribulation’ that precedes it in 12:1. Among ‘moderate preterists,’ however, there is usually the belief of a future unsignaled return of Christ and a general resurrection that is not to be identified with the resurrection that Daniel describes as ending the unequaled tribulation (12:1-2). But this is to forfeit consistency, as it divides the indivisible (2 Tim
The manifest interrelation and indivisibility of the events described in the above parallel passages reveals a basic eschatology common to both testaments, viz., a last days’ anti-Christ persecution of the saints followed by Christ’s return as the glorified Son of Man to destroy the Antichrist, and resurrect the righteous. The same eschatological structure stands behind Paul’s ‘little apocalypse’ (2 Thes 2:1-12) and his comprehensive apologetic for the mystery of
Thus, at the moment of Christ’s return the Antichrist is destroyed (2 Thes 2:8), the Church is raptured (cf.
Until then, the blinded nation (
This is the uniform perspective that becomes unmistakable in Jesus’, Paul’s and John’s parallel use of Daniel. For all that the ‘secret’ of NT revelation (Ro
In both testaments, the day of the Lord marks the point of ultimate divine deliverance that divides ‘this present evil age’ (“the times of the Gentiles”) from ‘the age to come’ that begins with Christ’s post-tribulational return to destroy the Antichrist (cf. Dn 7:11, 21-24; 11:31-12:1; 2 Thes 2:2-4, 8;
A later spiritual application or enlargement of an OT prophecy does not nullify or preclude a future literal fulfillment that meets all the demands of context and original authorial intention, particularly when the still future ‘day of the Lord’ is its stated time of fulfillment. By what logic, then, can any presume that the future day of the Lord may not bring with it the great turning from ungodliness on the part of the ‘natural branches’ that Paul so clearly confesses in complete agreement with the entire eschatology of the OT? And if this much is true, what part of OT prophecy may not be interpreted literally? Such a wholesale overhaul of ‘Jewish eschatology’ (disdainfully referred to as “nationalistic” and “carnal”) is based on unjustified presuppositions that must rule out a future post-tribulational coming of the Son of Man to change believers, raise the dead, and deliver Israel
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all according to the mystery traced by Paul in Ro 9-11.
All that is new to the eschatology of the NT is what has issued out of the mystery of Messiah’s twofold advent (“the mystery of the kingdom”). By this foretold but no less unexpected turn of events, a new tension was created that theologians, borrowing a famous term from Oscar Cullman’s “Christ and Time,” refer to as “the already and the not yet.” Theologians of the so-called ‘Heilsgeschichte’
Thus, the logic of Preterism is clear: Since the tribulation described in Daniel and the Olivet prophecy is past, and since it is without dispute that Jesus returns in glory ‘immediately after the tribulation,’ it follows that Christ has in some sense already returned. But according to the parallel passage in Daniel, if the tribulation is past, then so is the resurrection (12:1-2). But if the tribulation (depicted as brief, unequaled, and age ending) is not past, it is future; and a future tribulation that has its inception in the Land (Dn
One might even wonder if a latent anti-Semitic triumphalism is not the real attraction of Preterism This is perhaps more possible than we are prepared to conceive. Both scripture and history attest to a deep and powerful natural aversion to God’s electing prerogatives, and this is particularly exposed when it comes to the question of the Jew in history and prophecy. However, given the amazing story of the modern return of the Jews to a revived national existence that seemed to rise out of the ashes of the Holocaust, together with the ominous portents implicit in the ensuing
Indeed, it is hard to see how any objective observer could possibly disregard the prophetic futurism implicit in Zechariah’s amazing prophecy that depicts the final world crisis as centered upon the question of Jerusalem (Zech 12:2). This is precisely what we see on the world stage.
Therefore, according to the eschatology of both testaments, the final provocation of divine wrath comes in response to an ultimate arrogance of the nations against the covenant, particularly as it touches the question of the Jew and the Land (cf.
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Working from Jeremiah’s prophecy of the 70 years (see Dn 9:2), Daniel shows that Israel’s final tribulation (“Jacob’s trouble” Jer 30:7; “Zion’s travail” Isa 66:8) does not soon follow the end of the exile, as might have been inferred from Jeremiah, but comes only at the end of an extended exile of seventy additional sevens (9:24-27; 12:1-2, 11). Thus, Daniel’s message of an extended probation addresses the problem of delay. The exiles could not have known that the glorious conditions depicted by the former prophets in association with the promised return would be only partially realized. Much more was expected than a “day of small things” (Ezr
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Especially note the connecting and delimiting phrase “those days” in Mt 24: 19, 22, 29
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Because of the mysterious extension of days recorded in
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Compare also “the great sound of the trumpet” in Mt 24:31 with Paul’s eschatological ‘last trump’ as a resurrection event 1Cor
[5] Philip Mauro interprets the language of Dn 12:2 to signify nothing more than a national spiritual ‘awakening’ in the form of the contemporary preaching of the gospel by which the believer is ‘spiritually’ raised to everlasting life and the unbeliever sentenced to final judgment (“The Seventy Weeks and the Great Tribulation” 168-171). [6] Interestingly, both preterisism and pretribulationism share a common tendency to double the major events of eschatology. Such unnatural doubling of events is the result of a forced distinction and division between events that are exegetically indivisible. [7] Such definite timing of the day of the Lord is equally troublesome for the pretribulational dispensational school of prophetic interpretation, because a principal pillar of this position is the view that Christ’s special pretribulational coming ‘for the Church’ can occur any moment. It cannot therefore be contingent on any preceding events; it is imminent and unsignaled. But in 1 Thes 4:13-5:4 Paul clearly associates the Church’s hope of rapture with its expectation of the day of the Lord, which ‘day’ Paul says “shall NOT come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed …” (2 Thes 2:1-3). Hence, the day of the Lord is NOT unsignaled, and NOT imminent in the sense of pretribulationism.
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By the phrase ‘all
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