I'm speaking to you that have been preterist for 5, 10 or more years. Can you imagine what would happen if you were no longer a preterist? I'm not trying to tell you it would be a country song in reverse where the spouse comes back, the dog comes back and your pickup truck is running again. I'm not talking about all the positive things that may come with not being a preterist. I want to focus on what you would lose.
I mean, being a preterist is...well...kind of cool to you right? It makes you "unique". It makes you the smartest one in the room...or a least smarter since the "room" is much, much smaller. You have spent years arguing or talking about why preterism is superior to all other theological interpretations. You have built an entire culture around being preterist.
Maybe you are part of preterist discussion groups or even a moderator or owner of the group. You might have attended or spoken at a preterist conference; not to mention all the preterist books you have.
Seriously, who will you be if you're not a preterist?
You think of yourself as "seasoned". You know all the proof-texts to every "stupid futurist" argument. No one can debate scripture like you. So, if you are no longer a preterist who will you be? Just another Christian in the sea of millions of other Christians. Nothing to make you stand out. Nothing to say; "hey, I'm a rebel and a little bit daring". What a bummer dude.
Maybe you can kind of be a preterist without admitting to it. You can decide to never use the word preterist or preterism. Just talk about "fulfilled eschatology" or any other way to avoid the new uncool label of "preterist". That's how Max King and his son Tim King did it. They are "beyond preterism". They even trademarked their brand of non-preterism preterism, calling it "Transmillenialism"...which oddly enough must not be cool anymore since Max King's website seems to have purged the term.
If you think about it too long, you'll realize that Christianity is not a place to be a rockstar...well unless you subscribe to some sort of pseudo Christianity...
1 comment:
Those are some good points. If that's why those people stay with hyper-preterism, that's pretty sad.
I was reading this article by J.P. Holding, and I wanted to share something with you:
Tektonics: The Olivet Discourse and Preterist Interpretation
First of all, I want to clarify that J.P. considers himself to be a partial preterist. He has beliefs similar to yours.
There is a verse that he brings up in Matthew (12:32) that I want to bring up:
"And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor the world to come."
The word World in that verse is actually Aion in the Greek, which means age. I think that Jesus is differentiating between the Jewish age and the Church age. That probably shows that the world wasn't supposed to end, and Christ wasn't supposed to come back physically in 70 A.D.
Post a Comment