Interviewed By a Preterist

On August 23rd 2015 I was interviewed by preterist, Corey Shultz. The written interview is as follows:

Corey Shultz

Roderick Edwards, Thank you for interviewing with me today. To start, how long have you been a Christian, and how long have you been studying the bible?

Roderick Edwards

While like most Christians I was somewhat raised "Christian", neither of my parents were Christians. At age 16, in 1984 I was struggling with life questions, as many teens do. I contemplated suicide. I figured it was important to figure out if God is "real". Oddly enough, I found a brand new Bible in a cabinet in my dad's basement, apparently left there by previous occupants. I began to read it like any other book; from the beginning.

The Man Full Preterists Hate the Most

While in June of 2010, then full preterist circuit speaker, Sam Frost said that I am "one of the most abhorred persons in the history of full preterism, it is now 2013-2014 and that honorable title has been passed to a new recipient. There is a fellow who has been a full preterist since the early years of the movement...that's the 1970 for you newbies. Because of the nature of his federal work, he chooses to use an alias. He currently uses the name "Rivers Of Eden" He consistently posts under this name so there is no attempt to hide his identity otherwise. Hey, it's not like he was a seminary president who went on a full preterist site using the name "superpreterist" and told his friends not to tell anyone it was him...oh yeah, that was Kenneth Talbot, the fraud of frauds (that's for you Jason Bradfield, you need a post to steal and repost on your cowardly site). Anyhow, back to the point.

WHY? 
Why do full preterists hate this guy so much? Well, first off, let me demonstrate the kind of hate they show him.  Full Pret, Dave Green often calls Rivers' "Rivers of Evil". (ref)  Although I'm not certain who first coined this name for Rivers, Green's buddy and fellow full pret, Michael Sullivan claimed it was "seasoned" full preterist, Larry Siegle. (ref)

Another fellow on Facebook, presumably a full pret named Joe Simpson even took to the Vaduva-Bradfieldesque approach of trying to elicit violence against Rivers by posting over and over, in what state Rivers supposedly lives.  How is this relevant? It is just bully tactics to try to get someone to shut up.  I've had bullies like Phil Nassens do this to me before, even posting the city where I live and where my daughter went to school.  Why?

But as for the reason these folks hate Rivers so much; it is because he is demonstrating what full preterism is if applied consistently. And if applied consistently, full preterism destroys a person's faith...or at least their ability to claim they are Christian in any historical sense.

CONSISTENT FULL PRETERISM 
To understand what is meant by consistently applied full preterism we must understand full preterism premises

• It's all about audience relevancy
• All is fulfilled

These two points sum up, beyond just "Jesus already came back" what it means to not only be a full preterist but how to think like a person who can become or is a full preterist.

Is Full Preterism "Logical" and "Exegetical"?

In discussions with Full Preterists, you will encounter the stance that they came to Full Preterism because of "logical" or "exegetical" reasons. That is; they will claim they deduced Full Preterism simply by reading the Bible. If you try to point out the origins or claimed "founders" of Full Preterism (such as Max King's), they will claim they either didn't know anything about these origins when they themselves adopted Full Preterism, or they will reassert they came to Full Preterism simply by reading the Bible.  What they fail to interact with is why over 2,000 years of billions of people reading the same Bible never came to these conclusions. But when they do interact with this fact, they normally chalk it up to how they smugly must know something no one else saw. Or that there had been some sort of mass misunderstanding or conspiracy that caused the bulk Christianity to not conclude anything like Full Preterism.

Introduction to Preterism: The Book

I have been working on a book on Preterism for some time now. I'd like to share the introduction with my readers. There is more to the book, but this is just a taste of it so far.

Roderick Edwards spent 15 years within the Full or Hyper-Preterist movement. His writings while all online were very profuse and varied on topics many Preterist writers never thought to consider; such as the validity of pastors if indeed the Chief Shepherd came in AD70.

Edwards always held a strained relationship with many of the “leaders” within the movement because of his propensity to push the theory of Hyper-preterism to its logical conclusions.

In about 2007, Edwards officially renounced Hyper-preterism and began trying to undo some of the damage he has done. This has made him an enemy not only of the Hyper-preterists, but also of many of the so-called “Partial-Preterists” whom he points to as having aided in the advancement of Hyper-preterism.
This book will give the reader a clear, and honestly critical view not only of Hyper-preterism but of Preterism in general and how it is affecting and will affect Christianity in general.

ENDORSEMENTS:

“Roderick Edwards is the most vicious critic of Full Preterism to date” – Samuel Frost; ex-Hyper-Preterist circuit speaker.

The Failed Clarkian Rubric and Hyperpreterism

As readers may be aware, at one time I was part of a website called PreteristBlog.  PreteristBlog was the premiere site for the effort against Hyperpreterism.  The site owner, Dee Dee Warren has collected an impressive amount of material.  From its founding until about 2009, PreteristBlog used what we might call the Mathison-Wilson-Gentry method or rubric in combating hyperpreterism (see here). This method started with what Doug Wilson called the Authority argument.  That is, hyperpreterism MUST claim God did not maintain any authority over how the Church at large has represented God's plan.  That somehow, we have been in gross eschatological error for 2,000 years.  Further, Kenneth Gentry has said "We are opening our critique [of hyperpreterism] with the historic argument, that is, the argument from the historic creeds of the Church. We do this in order to establish the significance of the debate: We are defending the historic, corporate, public, universal, systematic Christian faith." (Ken Gentry WSTTB pg 2)  This is not to say we never bring the Bible into it, but BEFORE we even get to the Bible and the proof-texts that hyperpreterists use, we MUST FIRST deal with their overarching premise.  In the same way, when a person wants us to get into discussing which "green laws" we should pass, we MUST FIRST discuss the validity of the premise of "man-made global warming".