Unpreterizing Yourself: How did you get here?

As with any complex & precarious situation in which you might find yourself, one of the first things to help undo the situation is to determine how you might have gotten into it in the first place.

A pattern I have noticed within hyper-preterism is that almost all of them suffer from “rejection syndrome” -- this in its simplest terms means that they were already suffering from a complex of having been rejected by a mainline group. Allow me to elaborate.


Modern “Full Preterism” has its roots within the denomination of “Churches of Christ” (CoC) which by nature is a very “rejected” denomination by most of mainline Christianity. Keep in mind, I am not saying this as an “attack” on or insult toward CoC people as I count many CoC people as friends – but it is just a matter of fact that CoC (originally called “Campbellites” by its detractors) is often considered almost a “cult” by mainline Christianity since CoC grew out of the “Restoration Movement” as did other cults like Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, & Pentecostalism. If you doubt this or it enrages you, please see these sources: (source #1, source #2)


So, with the rejection background CoC people are prime & prone for deviating further & further from any historical form of Christianity, indeed the Restoration Movement from which CoC hails has in common with the other cults, one specific element – all of these groups claimed to be “restoring” Christianity back to its first-century structure & practice. In this effort they tended to reject all historical creeds & confessions of the Catholic AND Protestant Church & in essence started from scratch even to the point of creating many of their own Bible versions to support their new theology, as the Mormons & Jehovah's Witnesses did (Mormon = Book of Mormon, JW = New World Translation). The problem is, these groups were not really getting back to the first-century Church but rather they were innovating & creating their own version of what they thought or wanted the first-century Church to be.

Perhaps at this point a CoC reader is upset about the connection I am making, but again it is not an attempt to disparage because now I will hit closer to home with my own experience since I do NOT have a background within the CoC.

Another group to which hyper-preterism has appealed is some forms of Baptists (which is my background) & just as with the CoC, Baptists have a history of being anti-creedal & anti-confessional yet are still typically accepted within mainline Christianity & indeed in America, the Southern Baptist Convention is now the largest “Protestant” group. This maverick mentality again leaves the average Baptist susceptible to doctrinal perversion. I have experienced this first-hand as I was a practicing Baptist for over 12 years & I know during that time I was rarely taught much of Church history & how we progressed (or digressed depending on your perspective).

So, the pattern I see is that most hyper-preterists are ripe for accepting the belief because they are typically already half way there. They have a mindset of being rejected by the Church or perhaps even self-piously preservers of the “true” Church & thus of course the “true” teachings. Once a hyper-preterist begins to experience even further rejection such as how most hyper-preterist are rejected by even the CoC & the Baptists, it is not a far slide.

An ironic side effect of this rejection syndrome from which most all preterists suffer is their tendency to become even more combative. I say it is ironic because for all their talk of being “victorious” & preaching some extensive end of Death & Satan they tend to live a life of victim-hood – much the same as an injured & cornered animal, such as a family pet will lash out irrationally against even people that are attempting to help, so too do most hyper-preterists when people reach out to bring them back from their errors. They are anything but “victorious”.

As I conclude, I don't want anyone to misconstrue that I am advocating creeds & confessions over Scripture – it should be obvious that I am a strong advocate for Sola Scriptura but Sola Scriptura is not SOLO Scriptura – that is, Scripture has NEVER operated in a vacuum, it is true because it is true when presented in any environment. A creed & a confession is simply a collection of “I believe...” statements. The point is, that our “belief statements” should reflect & accord with Scripture thus EVERY person who calls themselves a Christian follows a creed or/& a confession but at issue is whether it is a personal/vague creed of their own making, a new innovation that departs from sound doctrine, or if it is a biblically-tested, time-tested, Church-tested (as in tested by the whole of Christian peers) belief?

There may be times & points at which to diverge from the majority of Christianity & from the historical Church but those times must be approached with the utmost care & even “fear”. It is no light thing to find yourself against the weight of Christian history. To say it has failed at some point does do harm to the Sovereignty of God & His ability to bring about His Will. This is one reason why the Restoration Movement was so odorous to mainline Protestants – the groups that were coming from the Restoration Movement were actually saying the Church & the Gospel had been “lost” & needed to be “restored”. Oh, what a charge against God who said that even the gates of hades would not prevail against the Church. (Mt 16:18)

Hyper-preterists are certainly not approaching with care & caution with their serious claim of being “reformers” & “restorers” of the Church. They too often blithely talk about “paradigm shifts” as they go about not just uprooting hay, wood, & stubble but actually attempting to pry up the very foundations of historic Christianity & putting in its place their “new kind of Christianity” which is completely disconnected from anything that came before.