Early Preteristic references include: The Epistle of Barnabas 16:6; Clement of Alexandria, Miscellanies 1:21; Tertullian, Against the Jews 8; Origen, Matthew 24:15; Julius Africanus, Chronography (relevant portions preserved in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 10:10 and Demonstrations of the Gospel 8); Eusebius, Demonstrations 8; Athanasius, Incarnation 40:1
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Popular Preterism:
PRESS CLIPPINGS
Pretblogging
| Preterist View Gaining Popularity
| January, 2001 |
Various Media on Preterism | Google:
Web-Images-News-Blogs-Books-Scholarship
|
PRESS ON DOCTRINES
OF PRETERISM
-
2006:
Ashtabula Star Beacon: The
End Has Already Come "As a preterist, (Terry) Hall doesn’t
worry about the world becoming increasing evil or God pouring out
his wrath. He doesn’t see Christianity as a way to get our ticket
punched to heaven or avoid having the thermostat turned up in the
next life. Rather, it’s a matter of knowing that he can have the
same spiritual relationship with God while he is living on earth
that he will have in heaven. “I begin to realize that I am in
paradise,” he says. “If my perception is that I’m living in a rotten
world, then I’m living in a rotten world. Your judgment, your
evaluation of your situation, becomes the box you must live in. …
I’m learning to judge things the way God judges things.”
- 2004: Dallas News - New Take on Rapture puts authors in apocalyptic feud -
On Hank Hanagraaff's
new book.
- 2003: Times-Mail - Are the End Times Behind Us? - Author with local ties claims the final days already have occurred
- 2002: WorldNetDaily -
Israel and End-Times Fiction |
Are End-Times Detractors Heading for Hell? - "Throughout church history, great Christian leaders, thinkers, expositors and commentators have held radically divergent views from LaHaye and
Lindsey.
John Gill, for instance, did not agree that the "prince" in Daniel 9 was any sort of future Antichrist as LaHaye and Lindsey both espouse. Gill IDs him as Roman emperor Vespasian whose general Titus sacked Jerusalem in A.D. 70, just as Christ prophesied 40 years earlier in the
Olivet Discourse. Gill notes that even contemporary Jewish expositors agreed with that view."
- 2001: North County Times - Preterist movement denies end-of-days prophecies
- 1999: Christianity Today - Millennial Book Awards
- 1999: Knight Ridder - Conservative Christians Resist Last Days Scenarios
-
Caught up in the end times Santa Cruz Sentinel "Others say it was written to the fledgling church as it faced persecution by the Romans, a battle that ensued until the Roman emperor Constantine decided in the 4th century that Christianity should become the religion of the realm."
- Toledo Blade:
Mideast conflict studied for links to Bible
"Not all Bible scholars believe that the words of
ancient prophets apply to today’s citizens.
Gary DeMar,
an Atlanta-based author who has written several books on the End
Times, also believes that many people are taking the prophets’
writings out of context. Mr. DeMar, author of Last Days Madness, said it doesn’t
make sense that prophecy watchers are always looking to verses in the
Old Testament, while the New Testament is rarely cited. “The New Testament is kind of an update of the Old
Testament. It’s the new covenant. Yet they have to continue to go back
to the Old Testament,” he said."
- Ledger:
Anne Rice defends Christ book's scholarship - "I differed from the
skeptics, and mentioned that the scholarship of
N.T. Wright,
Martin Hengel and many other giants was infinitely more compelling. "
-
The End
is Coming Has Already Come - Ohio Star-Beacon "The rapture and Armageddon sell books and make for great movies, but preterists say the ‘end of the age’ occurred in A.D. 70"
- AntiWar.com:
Their
Armageddonites, and Ours - Iran's
president and Pat Robertson more alike than you think "Interestingly,
there is no mention in the Koran about a coming "Mahdi," just as the
born again have also distorted biblical prophecies. For the great
majority of Christians, their forecasts are not recognized. Professor
Leonard Liggio, who teaches the history of law at George Mason
University, describes how nearly all other Christians view the end-times
scenarios: "Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutheran, Methodism, and
some Calvinists do not hold to that stuff. I can speak best about
Catholicism: many early Christians thought that Christ would return
soon, but with the fall of the Temple in 70 A.D. to the Romans, they
interpreted the sayings as referring to that happening."
- Christianity Today:
Left Behind is neither first or last word on "last things" "The
Revelation of John has bred a plethora of end-time interpretations. For
example, first-century Papias (c. 60-120) believed that Christ's
resurrection had already inaugurated the new millennium, while Justin
Martyr (c.100-c.165) believed that the church would reign with Christ
after his second coming (a view typically referred to as
pre-millennialism). Justin admitted that "many who belong to the pure
and pious faith, and are true Christians, think otherwise." As Roman
authorities increased their persecution of the church, Christians like
third-century Hippolytus began making end-time predictions—Hippolytus
expected Christ to establish his millennial reign in 496. Other
Christians, like Alexandria's foremost theologian Origen, preferred to
interpret Revelation allegorically, rejecting detailed schemas
altogether. "
-
Anne Rice believes entire New Testament written prior to AD70
- "The queen of darkness has seen the light. In her latest book,
Christ the Lord, novelist Anne Rice turns away from the doomed souls of
her best-selling tales about vampires and witches in favor of a
first-person account of the 7-year-old Jesus. Rice also
critiques the widespread dating of the Gospels to between about 60 and
90 A.D., and the theory that they appeared decades apart. Instead, she
believes they were produced around the same time, and all before Romans
destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D."
Anne Rice -
Christ the
Lord: Out of Egypt (2005)
"Without ever planning it, I've moved
slowly backwards in history, from the nineteenth century, where I felt
at home in my first two novels, to the first century, where I sought the
answers to enormous questions that became an obsession with me that
simply couldn't be ignored. Ultimately, the figure of
Jesus Christ was at the heart of this obsession. More generally,
it was the birth of Christianity and the fall of the ancient world.
I wanted to know desperately what happened in the first century, and why
people in general never talked about it." (p. 306)
-
Mixing Prophecy and Politics in the Holy Land
"Their journey began in the 1970s, when they read Hal Lindsey's
apocalyptic bestseller, "The Late Great Planet Earth," which laid
out a scenario for the end of the world according to a literal
interpretation of Bible prophecies. "That awakened our
understanding to Israel and its prophetic role in the Last Days,"
Mr. Sanders explains in his spacious Jerusalem office. "That was a
real paradigm shift in our lives."
Most
other Christian groups view these prophecies as predictions fulfilled
long ago or as visions with a purely symbolic or spiritual meaning.
But premillennialists insist they will occur on earth in the future."
- Media
Monitors -
Uses and
Abuses of Bible Prophecy (Rossing Influenced by DeMar) - "Mainline
Christians left the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation to
the fundamentalists for interpretation. As a result, Revelation theology
became the dominant, Christian interpretation - a prophetic, apocalyptic
interpretation - that fuels a lucrative prophecy industry. Another
interpretation of this passage is in regards to the word “meet.”
-
Beast's Real Mark Devalued to 616 "Dr. Aitken said, however, that scholars now believe the number in question has very little to do the devil. It was actually a complicated numerical riddle in Greek, meant to represent someone's name, she said. "It's a number puzzle -- the majority opinion seems to be that it refers to [the Roman emperor]
Nero."
-
Revelation! 666 is not the Number of the Beast (It's a devilish 616) - "This is an example of gematria, where numbers are based on the numerical values of letters in people's names. Early Christians would use numbers to hide the identity of people who they were attacking: 616 refers to the Emperor Caligula." | "satanists responded coolly to the new "Revelation". Peter Gilmore, High Priest of the Church of Satan, based in New York, said: "By using 666 we're using something that the Christians fear. Mind you, if they do switch to 616 being the number of the beast then we'll start using that."
- Santa Cruz Sentinel:
Caught up in the end times "Others say it was written to the fledgling church as it faced persecution by the Romans, a battle that ensued until the Roman emperor Constantine decided in the 4th century that Christianity should become the religion of the realm."
-
Hanegraaff and Schmidt vs Tommy Ice on interpretation of Revelation on MSNBC's 'Scarborough Country' HANEGRAAFF:
"So, Jesus uses the language of the Old Testament prophets and now applies it to a near future event, which is the fall of Jerusalem. So, he uses final eschaton language and applies it to a near future event. In fact, if you read the Book of Revelation, it‘s the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show him, his servants, the things that must soon take place. Soon means soon. Soon does not mean far.
-
LaHaye's Tribulation "The Last Disciple was coauthored by Hank Hanegraaff and Sigmund Brouwer, and teaches that most prophecies in Revelation have already been fulfilled. The Left Behind series, however, is grounded in a premillennial, dispensationalist view of the end times, which includes a pre-Tribulation Rapture. "I guess you would say I am disappointed, perplexed, and confused," LaHaye told
Christianity Today. Ron Beers, Tyndale's senior vice president and publisher, said his company wants to promote healthy dialogue on eschatology. Beers said, "We haven't come up with a consensus on end-times issues."
- Jackson Sun:Tsunami hits at heart "Coleman, like many other Christians, believes that the disaster and other world events are the fulfillment of certain biblical prophecies. The wars and rumors of wars and the variations in the weather patterns all point to the Bible's prophecies coming to past, he said. ''It seems as if some of the prophecies are unfolding before our eyes,'' Coleman said. Like Coleman, (Harry R. Barnes, pastor of Faith Temple Church of God in Christ) Barnes believes that the tsunami is one of the signs of the second coming of Christ, but Barnes believes it is a part of something more, possibly a warning.
Barnes' text for his message on Sunday was Matthew Chapter 24, he said. ''That is when Jesus talked to his disciples, and they were marvelling at the temple and he told them that it would be destroyed and it was destroyed in about A.D. 70,'' he said."
-
Hank Hanegraaff Gave Tim LaHaye the People's
Elbow! "This story is too good to
pass up. LaHaye, alleged author of the Left Behind Series, and Hank
Hanegraaff, the man who refers to himself as the Bible Answer Man
and lives in a palace near San Diego where he suffers for Jesus, are
having a feud about the End Times. Sort of."
-
Eschatology Erupts: LaHaye vs. Hanegraaff, Preterism vs. Premillennialism - "Of course the other thing that occurs to me is that LaHaye feels that because his book series was and is the money making machine, that Tyndale then needs to run any new authors and their ideas past him first. Sort of arrogant, but hey, he's human too."
-
The Bible Answer Man is Right! Crimson Catholic: "Correct me if I'm wrong but a partial preterist interpretation, which Hank is advocating, does not teach that Jesus returned in 68 A.D, that's full preterism, right? Partial preterist's just don't believe in a rapture, I think."
|
PRESS WITH PRET-INTEREST
-
2004:
Kansas City Star:
Rethinking the Rapture
- "She and other scholars worry about the theology behind the
Left Behind series because, she says, it can “encourage
people to try to hasten the scripted apocalyptic events themselves,
with deadly consequences for our world.”
-
2003:
America Obsessed with Future Apocalypse
-
Tom Harpur
of
Toronto Star
"Revelation has absolutely nothing specific to say about
events today or events tomorrow. Fundamentalists conveniently skip over
the fact that its very first verse says its contents are about
happenings that will occur "speedily" and verse three underlines this
by saying the time spoken of is "near" at hand. Nothing could be
clearer."
-
1999: Christianity Today:
Is Revelation Prophecy or History?
-
1999:
Apocalypse Now "Interspersed with the cycles of seven is a stage full of unforgettable props, backdrops, and marvelous characters. But this isn't Hollywood, mind you. John is giving us theology in pictures, and he has an absolutely serious message to convey. Instead of using logical argument and deductive reasoning like Paul the apostle, John uses pictures and narrative to convey his inspired message. Think symbol. Think metaphor. Think poetry. Don't get trapped with wooden literalism—unless you really expect to get to heaven and find that Jesus is a sheep (5:6)." "It was not just kings who bowed to Caesar. On the emperor's birthday, and on other empirewide celebrations, people in all the provinces worshiped their ruler with processions, decorated houses, feasts, choral performances, prayers, incense, and sacrifices. Public squares were filled with residents who showed their allegiance in orchestrated rites. Pressure for Christians to participate came not primarily from Roman officials, but from friends and neighbors who thought everyone should show gratitude."
-
1999: Christianity :
Y2K: Apocalypse Not!
-
1999: Randall Balmer:
Apocalypticism in American Culture
-
1998:
Christianity Today:
How Evangelicals Became Israel's Best Friend - "The State of
Israel has no better friends than American evangelicals. So it
seemed to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he
addressed the Voices United for Israel Conference in Washington,
D.C., in April 1998. Most of the 3,000 in attendance were
evangelicals, including Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition, Kay
Arthur of Precept Ministries, Jane Hanson of Women's Aglow, and
Brandt Gustavson of the National Religious Broadcasters. (Jerry
Falwell and Pat Robertson supported the conference but did not
attend.) Netanyahu told the conference: "We have no greater friends
and allies than the people sitting in this room."
-
1987: Christianity Today:
Some Fundamentalists Ache for Armageddon -
"It’s time to bring out into the open one of the largest political supports for Israeli radicals and debate how some religious leaders, particularly the Reverends Falwell and Robertson, push support for the most militant, settler lobbyists in Israel and against the Israeli peace groups such as led by the murdered Yitzak Rabin. Many fundamentalist leaders have crossed the line from forecasting Armageddon to trying to bring it about. Their alliance with the Zionist radicals is very two sided, each thinks it is using the other for its greater benefit."
-
Apocalypse Now? - Part I |
Part-2 |
Part 3 "He says the Apostle John wrote "Revelation" for the
people of that time in the Bible. "They had no power, they had no
influence, they had no prestige at the time. And Caesar was the
emperor, so they either had to pledge allegiance to Caesar or god."
Doctor Joseph Trafton teaches religious studies at Western Kentucky
University. "I was raised in a church and the Bible never meant
anything to me. I read it, I didn't understand it, till I was
introduced to this perspective. I then began to use it. The Bible
came alive. I changed from wanting to be an oceanographer, to being
a New Testament professor. And I am a Christian, absolutely, but
this just made everything come alive to me."
- CNN Fixated on
Apocalypse (Text and Video) - "PAULA ZAHN: Countless times, some
Christians interpreted calamities as signs that the world was about to
end. Of course, the world went on and on and on. "
-
NYTimes: Riveting Tale of
End of Days, Believe It or Not "Ultimately, the program makes
the case that Revelation was John’s brave plea to his co-religionists,
the sect of Jews in the Holy Land who called themselves Christians, to
take heart. The program makes another point: the Rapture, it
contends, is not an ancient notion, but an eccentric departure from the
Bible that gained American adherents in the 19th century."
- Washington Post:
Accepting Jesus Changes Lives "What Jesus said was something
amazing, because the disciples, and the Jewish people in general, never
imagined that something could happen to their sacred temple. To say that
the temple and the buildings will be destroyed was a crazy idea. It was
an attempt on the life of the entire nation. It was something
impossible. But Jesus said: "Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be
left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down." He didn't say,
"perhaps." He said, "assuredly." There was no doubt, no option; the
temple and the buildings of the temple will be destroyed. Jesus spoke to them about other things apart from the destruction of
the temple. Notice 24:3. They asked Jesus three things: When will these
things be? What will be the sign of Your coming? And of the end of the
age? "
- SF Indy:
Evangelicals,
Netanyahu, Falwell, Lewinsky and Clinton "To Christians, the Temple
is where Jesus threw out the money changers. Its destruction by the
Romans in 70 A.D. came to symbolize the birth of Christianity, when a
new Temple of Jesus, eternal and divine, replaced the earthly Temple
made and destroyed by men. "
- 12/21/5:
Lusting After Apocalypse: "Barbara Rossing is one Christian scholar
who isn't afraid to admit it. "The Rapture is a racket," she accuses
unapologetically in her 2004 book The Rapture Exposed. In this
bold study, Rossing outlines how the theology of the Left Behind
series represents a very real danger because of its promotion of
ethnocentric mentalities, irresponsible environmental ethics and a
militaristic political agenda in America. The most disturbing example she gives is in
the realm of Middle East politics. Premillennial dispensationalists
believe that the Bible names the rebuilding of Israel as a necessary
precursor for Christ's return. So was born an American fundamentalist
movement known as Christian Zionism, which unilaterally supports the
expansion of the modern state of Israel. This alliance between Christian
and Jewish Zionists is deeply ambivalent, however, as the former also
believes that Christ will not return until the great suffering of Israel
and the eventual conversion of his chosen people. Besides their obvious
offensiveness to Jews, Rossing points out that such groups look forward
to "tribulation and war in the Middle East, not peace plans."
- Quincy Whig - Have we entered the End Times? - "The Rev. Joby Brown
of First Christian Church in Quincy does not necessarily subscribe to
the current End Times thinking. "I really don't think any of the
recent natural disasters we have seen are tied toward the rapture,"
Brown said. "We have lots of tragedies each year. Sometimes we see more
storms than in other years." Brown said these tragedies might be
unfolding for a different reason. "God's calling us more to
respond to those in need," he said. Mark Bailey, president of the
Dallas Theological Seminary, a conservative evangelical institution,
says to be careful when predicting specific times and dates for the
ultimate Judgment Day. "There have been storms throughout
history," Bailey said. "To say that any of these that 'this is it' is
dangerous speculation."
- The Economist:
Why do End-Time Beliefs Endure? "Christians
have kept faith with the idea that the world is just about to end since the beginnings of their religion. Jesus Himself hinted more than once that His second coming would happen during the lifetime of His followers."
-
Toronto Star:
Newton's Strange Bedfellows "Every century since
the Book of Revelation (the Apocalypse) was voted into the New
Testament has been marked around its beginnings and ending by an
outbreak of "these are the last days" thinking and prophesying
in the churches and their offshoots. Beware of any
preacher, astrologer, or visionary who proclaims that "this is
it." Newton was dead wrong and so are all the would-be
apocalyptic experts today."
-
An Apocalyptic Showdown - Lexington Herald-Ledger "What if the Rapture has already happened? What if the Book of Revelation's prophecies have been fulfilled?"
-
Reaching to the Choir - "The fundamentalist Christian Zionist movement is especially vexing to (President Jimmy) Carter. Conservative evangelicals like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay offer unilateral support to Israel based on the New Testament prophecy that the reconstruction of the ancient kingdom of David will usher in the "end times" and the Second Coming of Christ. Carter summarily dismissed this cause, tersely calling it "a completely foolish and erroneous interpretation of the Scriptures." "And," he went on, "it has resulted in these last few years with a terrible, very costly, and bloody deterioration in the relationship between Israel and its neighbor. ... [T]his administration, maybe
strongly influenced by ill-advised theologians of the extreme religious right, has pretty well abandoned any real effort that could lead to a resolution of the problems between Israel and the Palestinians."
-
CSM:
The End of the World "Today, as belief in this end-times
prophecy sees a resurgence among Americans - partly because of
the phenomenal success of the "Left Behind" series of novels (58
million sold) and the disturbing "signs" of terrorism and war -
Mr. Currie and others are seeking to refute the apocalyptic
theology."
-
Wash Times: Misread
Rapture! - (1/24/02) "Mr. LaHaye calls the preterist interpretation "the most ridiculous view of eschatology I've ever heard. ... Historically, the fact is the church has always believed that the book of Revelation was written by the Apostle John in 95 A.D., 25 years after the destruction of Jerusalem. Consequently, it has to portray future events."
|
|
Press Clippings: The
Archbishop of Toronto: Schooled in the
Word of God
"These days, some people try to identify
who is the beast being foretold in
John's Apocalypse. Three sixes in a row.
Collins dismisses such speculation. The
Book of Revelation was written in highly
symbolic language during the first
century, he says. Hebrews and Greeks in
that era employed a practice, called
Gematria, in which letters represented
numbers. By adding the numbers which
correspond to the name of Nero Caesar, a
Roman Emperor in the first century who
persecuted Christians, the sum is either
616 or 666, depending on which spelling
is used." |
-
Hanegraaff and
Schmidt vs Tommy Ice on
interpretation of Revelation on
MSNBC's 'Scarborough Country'
FREDERICK SCHMIDT, SOUTHERN
METHODIST UNIVERSITY: What this kind
of reading of scripture really
represents is a sectarian and fairly
narrow approach to the Book of
Revelation in particular. And
what it invites the reader to
suppose is that someone in the 1st
century wrote a book that was
unintelligible to the people of the
1st century, but would be
intelligible to people of the 20th
century, which is just not a
plausible reading of the book.
SCARBOROUGH: Thomas Ice, do
you agree? THOMAS ICE, AUTHOR,
“CHARTING THE END TIMES”: No,
I don‘t. .. HANEGRAAFF: So, Jesus
uses the language of the Old
Testament prophets and now applies
it to a near future event, which is
the fall of Jerusalem. So, he
uses final eschaton language and
applies it to a near future event.
In fact, if you read the Book of
Revelation, it‘s the revelation of
Jesus Christ, which God gave him to
show him, his servants, the things
that must soon take place.
Soon means soon. Soon does not
mean far.
-
LaHaye,
Hanegraaff:
The End:
Best-selling books don't see it
alike - "It's
about much more than selling books,
scholars say. The high-stakes
publishing battle between the two
men comes on the heels of the
millennial fervor surrounding the
year 2000, and feeds a stream of
fear rippling just below the surface
of public consciousness. " "To
Hanegraaff, Revelation was written
before the destruction of the
Jerusalem temple to encourage
persecuted Christians. He says the
"end-time model presented in Left
Behind is hermeneutically false in
that it attributes powers to the
beast that belong only to God, but
it is historically false because it
places the beast in the 21st
century."
|
"I'm surprised to see tendencies towards the Preterist
positions from those claiming to be Adventists. The prophecies, especially
Daniel 7 and 8, are eschatological. They deal with the consummation and the
establishment of the everlasting kingdom. Though Daniel sought only solution and
resolution of Israel's current dilemma by reconciliation of the people to God
and restoration of the cultic system; he nevertheless expresses God's word to
him in the context of his experience to tell the larger story of God dealing
with sin and expunging it from the cosmos to reconcile and restore the Cosmos to
pre-sin condition. Instead, these neo-preterits propose a little insignificant
judgment in the corner to smack the hands of the naughty little horn.."
Adventists Today
|
Apocalypse Now? - Part I |
Apocalypse Now? Part-2 |
Apocalypse Now? - Part 3 "He says the Apostle John wrote
"Revelation" for the people of that time in the Bible. "They had no
power, they had no influence, they had no prestige at the time. And
Caesar was the emperor, so they either had to pledge allegiance to
Caesar or god."
Doctor Joseph Trafton teaches religious studies at Western Kentucky University. "I was raised in a church and the Bible never meant anything to me. I read it, I didn't understand it, till I was introduced to this perspective. I then began to use it. The Bible came alive. I changed from wanting to be an oceanographer, to being a New Testament professor. And I am a Christian, absolutely, but this just made everything come alive to me."
"For those interested in a Biblical study of the almost
forgotten preterist view and interpretation of Bible prophecy concerning the
second coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ please contact Evangelist
John L. Bray at: P.O. Box 90129, Lakeland, Florida 33804. Evangelist Bray
has written books, pamphlets, and numerous articles on preterism.
Also, The Preterist Archive (www.preteristarchive.com) contains much useful
information of interest concerning preterism and the various preterist
interpretations of Bible prophecy."
|
|
Plain Truth Ministries - Response to What
Our Readers Say - "I
am a lot closer to a preterist perspective than I was decades ago,
of that there is no doubt. But I still see many demerits in human
attempts to parse Jesus and his kingdom into our measurements of
time -- whenever we calculate that time to have been or to occur in
some future generation. Having said that, I am weary and leery of
assuming that I now have the last word on prophetic teachings. " |
What do YOU think ?
Send an email with your comments to
todd @ preteristarchive.com
Be sure to include the article name.
They will be posted shortly
upon receipt
|
