5/3/13:

• Gary DeMar: Flavius Josephus and Preterism "While the Bible is the best interpreter of itself, it helps to have non-biblical historical sources from the same time period to help flesh out details not found in Scripture and to support what is found in the biblical text. The writings of Josephus are some of those historical works. We would be foolish to ignore them."

4/30/13:

• Former Full Preterists : Jason Bradfield: The Subtlety of Heresy "Slow. Down.   Take EVERY step through every door with deep thought and counsel from Godly, biblically-ordained elders/pastors who are committed to Reformed Confessionalism. Stay away from the fads of neo-calvinists. Do not think that your zeal against one heresy makes you immune to other heresies.  And consider that one day, you will give an account for every careless word you speak. You are not beyond committing such things and your words are more influential than you think."

• BBC Drops Documentary on Post-AD70 Exile "According to publicity material for the film, it “looks at new evidence that suggests the majority of the Jewish people may not have been exiled following the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Travelling from Galilee to Jerusalem and the catacombs of Rome, the film asks us to rethink our ideas about an event that has played a critical role in the Christian and Jewish traditions.”
   

4/22/13:

• Book Review - The-Liar's Gospel : A Novel I had a difficult time deciding what, exactly, the author was trying to accomplish here. At first, I sensed that she was trying to put the life of the man who would eventually be crucified by Pilate into an historically valid context. The story is told from the point of view of several characters: Miryam, the mother of Yehoshuah; Iehuda, the disciple who would betray him to the High Priest; Caiaphas, the High Priest; and Bar-Avo – or Barabbas – the leader of a group of terrorists whose object was to bring down the empire that had taken away the freedom of Judaea.

4/15/13:

• Herculaneum ruins still offering clues about 1st C life in Roman world

• Pope Francis, please inventory the spoils of Titus! NYU Professor Lawrence H. Schiffman "As we trace the history of the New Testament traditions, they move from disputes with Pharisees, scribes, and chief priests [all members of various Second Temple-era Jewish sects] to polemics against the Jews and Judaism, from the notion of some Jews as enemies of Jesus to the demonization of the Jewish people as a whole."
   

4/10/13:

• Rare Second Temple Bath Discovered in Jerusalem “The complex that was exposed at this time is a more sophisticated and intricate system...apparently associated with a settlement that was situated there in the Second Temple period."

• Ancient structure under Sea of Galilee It appears to be a giant cairn, rocks piled on top of each other. Structures like this are known from elsewhere in the world and are sometimes used to mark burials. Researchers do not know if the newly discovered structure was used for this purpose.

Researcher Yitzhak Paz, of the Israel Antiquities Authority and Ben-Gurion University, believes it could date back more than 4,000 years. "The more logical possibility is that it belongs to the third millennium B.C., because there are other megalithic phenomena [from that time] that are found close by," Paz told LiveScience in an interview, noting that those sites are associated with fortified settlements. 

4/7/13:

• Peter Pike: Thoughts on my partial preterism "In fact, the “there are some standing here who will not taste death” seems to indicate that Christ is referring to something that is more than just a few years away in time, yet still within the regular life span of a human being. The “some” seems to indicate that the elderly people in attendance would not witness it, yet the young would. If Jesus was preaching around 30 AD then the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD—40 years away—would fit in with the time frame He refers to. A twenty-year-old listening to Christ talk would only be 60 by the time Jerusalem fell. On the other hand, it was quite likely that most people older than forty years would have died before that event." (Matthew 16:27-28 is not pointing to AD70 - a mistake even partial preterists make)

4/6/13:

• Video: Sam Frost - Why I Left Full Preterism "Samuel M. Frost was once a devoted Hyper-Preterist. Now, he's converted to Orthodox Preterism. In this interview, he explains his conversion. Buy his book here: http://thereignofchrist.com"

4/4/13:

• Daniel Morais: A Preterist Responds to "Four Views of the Revelation" "Over the next 1000 years, until the first Crusade, Gentile Christians had migrated into Israel until Jerusalem had become 95% Christian. Christians were an overwhelming majority during this millennium--even after the Muslim conquest. During this 1000 year period, Israel had experienced unprecedented peace--much more so than any other time period in all of Israel's history. Few people know much about events in Israel during the first thousand years of the Common Era, and there is a good reason: virtually nothing bad ever happened."

4/3/13:

• Guardian: One in four Americans think Obama may be the antichrist, survey says Poll asking voters about conspiracy theories reveals alarming beliefs

• Asia Times: How Christians Lost Their Antichrist Spirit Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John's Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com. You can read more of Dallas' writings at www.beverlydarling.com and wn.com//dallasdarling.

3/29/13:

• Samuel Frost: The Westminster Confession of Faith - Where Preterists and Hyper Preterists Split "Come Lord Jesus, come quickly, Amen.”  Amen.  Maranatha.  Come quickly, Lord Jesus.  But, wait, didn’t God come quickly in the OT?  Yup.  Several times.  ”I will quickly come and sieze your house.”  ”The LORD will do this swiftly.”  When God decided to “come down” to Sodom and Gomorrah, he did so quickly.  It didn’t take but a mere half a day to burn those cities.  He comes like a thief.  Did he come in AD 70?  Yup.  Did that exhaust all of his comings in terrible judgments in history?  Nope.  Is there a final coming?  Yup.  Am I Reformed?  Yup?  Are the RINO’s? (Reformed in name only)?  Not in the slightest."

• Review of Klawans, Josephus and the Theologies of Ancient Judaism
• Nebuchadnezzar’s Destruction of Jerusalem, The Cyrus Cylinder, and the Building of the Second Temple

3/28/13:

• Papyrology: Turin shroud is "not a medieval forgery" "Scientists have never been able to explain how the image of a man's body, complete with nail wounds to his wrists and feet, pinpricks from thorns around his forehead and a spear wound to his chest, could have formed on the cloth. Mr Fanti said the imprint was caused by a blast of “exceptional radiation”, although he stopped short of describing it as a miracle. " / "The display of the shroud on a day as special as Holy Saturday means that it represents a very important testimony to the Passion and the resurrection of the Lord," he said.

3/24/13:

• Pretblogging: Daniel Calder: Gary DeMar on the Olivet Discourse

3/21/13:

• The Rabbi and Halley's Comet "The fact is that the visits of Halley's Comet in both 164 BCE and 87 BCE were recorded on Babylonian tablets. Not everyone agrees with this interpretation of the Talmudic anecdote. Some have argued that at the only time during Rabbi Yehoshua's life that Halley's comet appeared, on January 25, 66 CE, Rabbi Gamliel was only in his twenties, and therefore he could not have had students."

• An Analysis of the History Channel's "Bible" Miniseries

3/20/13:

• WH map 'erases' Jerusalem The White House has released what it says is a map of Israel. The only problem is that Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights are missing.

  An Obama administration video highlighting the president’s plans for his Mideast trip depicts Jerusalem, the Golan and the West Bank – also known as Judea and Samaria – as non-Israeli territory.

3/16/13:

• NY Sun - Obama in Jerusalem "Mr. Obama is facing precisely a threat of war over his trip to Jerusalem. It involves the Temple Mount. No less a terrorist organization than Hamas has warned that if Mr. Obama sets foot on the Temple Mount, it will amount to a declaration of war. No one expects Mr. Obama to take a walk on the Temple Mount. But when Ariel Sharon, shortly before becoming prime minister, took a stroll on the Temple Mount, the Arabs reacted with the five years of riots and killings of Jews that became known as the Second Intifada."

3/13/13:

• Dr. Steven Dilday: The Early Church Fathers and The Antichrist The Antichrist (Man of Sin) and Interpretations of the Book of Revelation (Eschatology, Prophecy) Among the Early Church Fathers by Dr. Steven Dilday (Free MP3)

3/11/13:

• Anti-Semitism: NYT: On questioning the Jewish State "My view is that one really ought to question Israel’s right to exist and that doing so does not manifest anti-Semitism. "

3/10/13:

• Josephus: Jewish historian learned how to survive the Roman Empire "Raphael calls the early followers of Jesus “a band of essentially Jewish eccentrics. Until the fall of the city in 70, the members of ‘the Jerusalem church’ were conspicuous in honoring Orthodox traditions in the Temple.”

3/8/13:

• Are All People Really Treated Equally? "Your question No. 2 concerns the story of Jabneh ('Let's Visit Jabneh,' T.&T. of current month), particularly the plea of Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai, "Give me Jabneh and its scholars." You asked, why did not Rabbi Jochanan plead for Jerusalem instead? Your own suggestion was that since Rabbi Jochanan knew that G‑d had decreed the destruction of Jerusalem, he did not want to act against G‑d's wish."

• Vatican Needs 2.8PB Of Hard Disk Space To Digitize 40 Million Pages Of Ancient Manuscripts Though the Vatican raised something of a digital middle finger at Twitter by deleting all of the old Pope's tweets, the church body isn't entirely against digital storage for posterity: It's revealed that its plan to digitize the Vatican Apostolic Library will need some 2.8 petabytes of storage space.  (2.8 petabytes is equivalent to 2,800 terabytes)

• Numismatics: Roman coin hoards may hold the answer
   

• Added to Henry Alford (1810-1871) Study Archive (Historic Premillennialist)

  • The thousand year reign and the sabbath rest

  • Henry Alford’s commentary on Revelation 11:1-14

  • Henry Alford on the woman in the wilderness

  • Henry Alford’s commentary on Revelation 12

3/6/13:

• Pretblogging: Deeper Waters: Why I am a Preterist "Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say I’m a Partial Preterist? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters."

• Armageddon: Jerusalem Police Close Temple Mount

• Gary DeMar -  Making the Clear Confusing: A Response to John Murray's Exposition of Matthew 24-25 - Gary exposes the fundamental chronology error inherent in the "Historical Idealist" view.  The "Modern Idealist" view, called "Preterist-Idealism", sides with DeMar over Murray.

Join the discussion:

1. Thoughts For Young Men says: "Stephen, You wrote:
   
   “the Preterists will try to find a way to get around the fact that NO SIGNS FROM HEAVEN were seen in the generation of Jesus’ peerage”
   
   The destruction of Jerusalem, and specifically the temple in A.D. 70, was a *huge* sign from heaven. Jesus said the temple would be destroyed (“not one stone left on another”), and it happened, just like He said. I mean, what could have been bigger than that?" (March 6, 2013 at 5:59 pm )
   
    

2. Stephen Ray Hale says:  "Except for the fact that Jesus said that in that “this generation” of his peerage, He was not going to give them ANY sign but of Jonah…which represents His death and resurrection, and that resurrection should ought to trump the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem… and THIS was the sign Jesus promised them after the question concerning a “sign from heaven,” the from heaven he denied them. BUT we do see signs from heaven, and as Jesus was THAT sign he DID deliver them concerning Himself and His resurrection in the “this generation” of His peerage, the Great I AM reveals Himself to the “this generation” of the time of His return by being the SIGN IN HEAVEN nigh to His return FROM HEAVEN in Matthew 24. The check mate is found in the fact that Jesus denies the peerage a SIGN FROM HEAVEN, and for the Preterists to search for such places them squarely against the words of scripture." (March 6, 2013 at 7:08 pm)
    

• Hamas steps up its warnings on Obama entering Temple - "Visiting of Obama with Israeli soldiers entering the Al Aqsa Mosque will actually touch the deep and the tender part of the Palestinian, Arabic and Islamic countries all over the world,” Mahmoud al-Zahar, Hamas’s senior leader in the Gaza Strip, stated." - March 20th happens to be the 9th of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar

• Armageddon: Israel on alert as locusts cross in from Egypt

3/5/13:

• Gary DeMar - Was the Preterist Interpretation of Revelation Invented by the Jesuits? "As Frank Gumerlock and others have shown with the advent of translated works that have never been in English, there is a long history of Christians going back long before either Ribera or Alcasar who interpreted parts of Revelation in a preteristic way."

  • "Once last point about Alcasar being the founder of the preterist school of interpretation needs to be made. Frank X. Gumerlock, writing in his book Revelation and the First Century, states that “Luis Alcasar’s commentary on Revelation, published in 1614, was not the first to take a preterist approach to the main body of the Apocalypse (Chs. 6–19). [John] Henten wrote his comments almost a century before the publication of Alcasar’s commentary.”^[7] In 1545, Henten made these comments on the date of Revelation: And first it seems to us that John, this apostle and evangelist who is called the Theologian, was exiled onto Patmos by Nero at the very same time in which he killed the blessed apostles of Christ Peter and Paul. . . . [and] that the Apocalypse was written on Patmos before the destruction of Jerusalem." According to Gumerlock, Henten (1499–1566), or Hentenius as he is also known, “held that Chapters 6–11 of Revelation referred to the abrogation of Judaism, and Chapters 12–19 referred to the destruction of Roman paganism.” Gumerlock, Revelation and the First Century, 42."

R.H. Charles - "Salmeron (1614) took the same view, and agreed with Hentenius that the Apocalypse was written before the fall of Jerusalem. He refused, however, to write a Commentary on the Apocalypse, and compared such an undertaking with an attempt to square the circle. But two names of great merit stand forth from the rest in this school, namely Ribeira (ob. 1591) and Alcasar (1614)." (Studies in the Apocalypse:  being lectures delivered before the University of London, 1913, p. 34)

Ernestine van der Wall - "The Key to the Apocalypse: The Prophecy about the Beast  The key to the Book of Revelation is to be found in the correct interpretation of the prophecy about the beast. The Holy Spirit has devoted six chapters to the origin, reign, signs and downfall of the beast.   If we can determine the true meaning of the prophecy about the seven-headed beast, we will have the key  to the most important rooms of the whole prophecy. The appearance of the beast occurs in the days of the sixth trumpet. The marks of the beast are so various and remarkable that they cannot be applied to may kingdoms in the world. The king is expressly mentioned, Rome (Rev. 17:3). There are two ways of interpreting Revelation: 1) the beast is the pagan Roman empire; 2) the beast is anti-Christianity with Rome as its head. So it is a sure hypothesis that the beast is the Roman empire with its governors, whether pagan or Christian.  There are many expositors, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, who maintain that the seven-headed beast refers to the pagan, idolatrous Roman empire.  As a prominent representative of this opinion Vitringa mentions the Spanish Jesuit Luis de Alcazar.  He then proceeds to expound Grotius' suggestion that both beasts refer to the time of Domition, its seven heads being Roman emperors before Domition.  The hypotheses of Alcazar and Grotius are in themselves not unfounded, Vitringa admits, since the pagan empire has been a cruel beast.   But is it possible to concord the marks of the beast as well as other circumstances of this prophecy with their view?   If so, the interpretation of the beast as pagan Rome, and not as Christian Rome, should be preferred.   It must be noted that Vitringa repeatedly says that he would rather side with Grotius and Bossuet than with the common Protestant interpretation." (Hugo Grotius, Teologian: Essays in Honour of G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes, p. 212)

Thomas Kelly Cheyne - "Conspicuous above all is the Vestigatio arcani sensus in Apocalypsi of Ludovicus ab Alcazar.  That writer was the first to carry out consistently the idea that the Apocalypse in its earlier part is directed against Judaism, and in its second against Paganism, so that in chaps. 12 f. we read of the first persecution of the Christians in the Roman Empire, and in ch. 19 of the final conversion of that Empire.  He thus presents us with the first serious attempt to arrive at a historical and psychological understanding of the book.   The idea worked out by Alcazar had already been expressed by Hentenius in the preface to his edition of Arethas (Oecumenii Commentar, ed. Morelius et Hentenius 2), and by Salmeron (Opera, 12, Cologne, 1614. 'In sacram Jo. Apoc. praeludia'). " (Encyclopedia Biblica: A Critical Dictionary of the Literary Political and Religious History, p. 200)

Moses Stuart - "Near the commencement of the seventeenth century (1614), the Spanish Jesuit Ludovicus ab Alcasar published his Vestigatio arcani Sensus in Apocalypsi, a performance distinguished by one remarkable feature, which was then new. He declared the Apocalypse to be a continuous and connected work, making regular advancement from beginning to end, as parts of one general plan in the mind of the writer. In conformity with this he brought out a result which has been of great importance to succeeding commentators. Rev. v-vi, he thinks, applies to the Jewish enemies of the Christian Church; xi-xix to heathen Rome and carnal and worldly powers, xx-xxii to the final conquests to be made by the church, and also to its rest, and its ultimate glorification. This view of the contents of the book had been merely hinted at before, by Hentenius, in the Preface to his Latin version of Arethas, Par. 1547. 8vo; and by Salmeron in his Preludia in Apoc. But no one had ever developed this idea fully, and endeavoured to illustrate and enforce it, in such a way as Alcasar."  (Commentary on the Apocalypse, Allen, Morrill and Wardell, Andover, 1845, Volume 1, p. 464.)

• FREE ONLINE BOOKS: R.H. Charles - Studies in the Apocalypse:  being lectures delivered before the University of London (1913)

• Henry Hammond - Paraphrase and Annotations, introduction to the Apocalypse (1653) "But it pleased God otherwise to dispose of it ; for before I had read (with the design of translating only) to the end of the first verse of the book, these words, which must come to pass presently, had such an impression on my mind, offering themselves as a key to the whole prophecie, (in like manner as, this generation shall not passe till all these things be fulfilled, Matt. 24.34. have demonstrated infallibly to what coming of Christ the whole Chapter did belong) that I could not resist the force of them, but attempted presently a general survey of the whole Book, to see whether those words might not probably be extended to all the prophecies of it, and have a literal truth in them, viz., that the things foretold and represented in the ensuing vision ; were presently, speedily, to come to passe, one after another, after the writing of them. "

• Frederic W. Farrar - "It has been usual to say that the Spanish Jesuit Alcasar.. was the founder of the Præterist School.. But to me it seems that the founder of the Præterist School is none other than St. John himself."

3/4/13:

• Alexander Campbell (1788-1866) Study Archive "But, to pass over the numerous predictions that respected minor matters and approaching events, we shall proceed to notice a prophecy of great utility, which respected an event about forty years distant. This prediction was designed for public conviction, and was perfectly adapted to this end. It was of that character of events which must necessarily be notorious and eminently conspicuous. Let us attend to it. "

  • 1824: Essays on the Work of the Holy Spirit

  • 1829: Evidences of Christianity: A Debate
     

• Credibility of Josephus: Flavius Josephus: Reception of His Work by Jews and Christians

• Johann Gottfried von Herder: The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, Volume II (1833 Ed.) // Herder Books // Herder and His Times "In 1779 he published the second part of the Ballads, and his Commentary on the Revelation of St. John. It is evident at first sight that in these works he was only fulfilling schemes that had long been on his mind ; but it is significant that, amongst these six, only one is strictly theological, and this one seems to have been the cause of his final rupture with Lavater. And yet so little change of position did Herder himself see in his Maran Atha, or the Coming of the Lord, that he dated his published version 1775. The interpretation of this curious poem of the Revelation evidently caused Herder much perplexity. Guided by his infallible canon of criticism, that we must take our stand by the poet's side, and see what the world looked like to his eyes, he could not escape the conclusion that the author of the Revelation wrote for those around him, and expected the coming of Christ very soon after the destruction of Jerusalem."

• List of Principle Commentators (Note: Those who have a Cross, † , prefixed to their Names, have been perhaps Men of Learning, but they have erred from the Faith which was once delivered to the Saints, and can therefore be consulted only as Critics, or to be refuted.)

3/3/13:

• Bishop John Lightfoot: PDF Index of 1825 Edition (9Mb) "Day of the Lord, Christ's coming in glory and in the clouds, signify only Christ's taking vengeance on the Jewish nation, xi. 303. xii. 433. The Son cometh was expressed to be the same, xi. 304. Day of judgement, and day of vengeance, put for Christ's coming with vengeance to judge the Jewish nation; there are six different ways of expressing it, 404." (Index, "Day of the Lord", Bishop J. Lightfoot's Works; 1825 Edition)

• Bishop John Lightfoot: Lightfoot's "Parergon Concerning the Fall of Jerusalem" (1684 Edition PDF)

• Bishop John Lightfoot: A Commentary of the New Testament from the Talmud and Hebraica: Did you know that Lightfoot - like Spurgeon - is censored in major republications of his own works? 

• Pompeii in A.D.79 - Yet another apocalypse for Titus // "And there were still people around in AD79 who spoke the old native Oscan language (which was gradually being overtaken by Latin). We know that they did so, because there is a graffito in the brothel written in Oscan (it’s probably the last evidence for Oscan that we have anywhere — a sad place for a language to die!)."

3/2/13:

• Maria Leppäkari - Apocalyptic Representations of Jerusalem (2006) "Jerusalem as a symbolic expression of hope attracts attention and religious adherence in relation to its physical presence. The study identifies, traces and examines apocalyptic representations of Jerusalem, and illustrates what happens when these become experienced reality. The empirical part of the book shows how these representations become living images in two contemporary groups’ activity in Jerusalem. Private and public endtime representations of Jerusalem provide meaningful models for interpreting the religious past, present and future. The interplay of these representations also shapes our present images of Jerusalem."

• Mormonism Study Archive - Does Mormonism Teach Historical Preterism?

• Progressive: Marty Angelo - Are We The Last Generation? (2013) "Many of my Christian preterist and futuristic friends don’t know or seem to not even care to take the time to learn where Jesus Christ resides right now. I honestly don't believe that they have a proper understanding of what exactly happened on the Day of Pentecost and in the years leading up to AD70. Jesus Christ was already alive and living within the first century believers (2 Corinthians 13:5).  The people of our generation just as in Christ's first followers need to have a chance to experience and understand the magnitude of the power of Jesus Christ in them and what responsibilities comes with that knowledge. I honestly believe that the two biggest problems with both preterism and futurism are one looks back at the past to AD70 for a second coming of Jesus while the other one looks forward to an unknown future for a second coming of Jesus while both leave out the present. "

• Instances of the word "Armageddon" in international press

• David Pareus (1618) "What Pareus refers to as "preterperfect" is in a modern grammar the second aorist active indicative. The "dramatic" aorist states a result "on the point of being accomplished" with the emphatic "certitude of a past event," although the aorist has "no essential temporal significance" (John Charles Hawley ; Dana and Mantey 1955: 198, 193 - A Commentary upon the Divine Revelation of the Apostle and Evangelist John (p. 342)

3/1/13:

• Netherlands Book and Manuscript Auction this month - Highly recommended auction house.   This is where I found Vestigatio Arcani Sensus in Apocalypi

€  2500 / 3500

Book of the Rapture of Tundal 12th-century religious text reporting the otherworldly vision of the Irish knight Tungdalus   1015. [Cologne] - Libellus de raptu animae Tundali. [Cologne, Printer of the "Historia S. Albani", not after 1 December 1472], 4to, mod. vellum, flat spine, [19 (of 20)] ff. (1 of 2 final blanks preserved), 27 ll., capital spaces (some marg. soiling, single wormholes throughout, wormtrack in blank inner and fore-edge margin). Good rubricated copy. Editio princeps of the "Vision of Tundal", "a 12th-century religious text reporting the otherworldly vision of the Irish knight Tungdalus.  It was the most elaborate text in the medieval genre of visionary infernal literature and had been translated from the original Latin 43 times into 15 languages by the 15th century. The Latin text was written down shortly after 1149 by Brother Marcus, an Irish itinerant monk, in the Scots Monastery, Regensburg. The story is set in Cork, Ireland in 1148. It tells of the knight falling unconscious for three days, during which time an angel guides his soul through Heaven and Hell, experiencing some of the torments of the damned. The angel then charges Tungdalus to well remember what he has seen and to report it to his fellow men. On recovering possession of his body, Tungdalus converts to a pious life. It is situated in a broad Irish tradition of phantastical tales about otherworldly voyages, as well as in a tradition of Christian afterlife visions" (Wikipedia). The date is derived from the Paris copy. BSB assigns the printing to Conrad Winters. Ref. ISTC it00496000. Goff T-496. Polain 3853. Vouilliéme 748. BNParis V-207. BSB München V-240. Not in IDL.

2/28/13:

• Ken Gentry - Back to the Future - The Preterist Perspective (2000)  An older article...  but worth another look.

• The Early Date of Revelation: The Preterist Dating of Revelation "The dispute over the date of the composition of Revelation is a crucial one. If it was composed by John after AD70 and the fall of Jerusalem preterism is at once refuted." (This is a generally assumed point, but it is not accurate.)

2/27/13:

• Patrick Zukeran: Four Views of Revelation (2009)

• MythBusters Case#25a: Future Perfect, Present Tense (2012) "Myth: The Preterist view that most New Testament prophecy was fulfilled at the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 was made up by a Jesuit priest to divert attention from accusations by the Reformers that the Pope is the Anti-Christ."

• Historicist.com: New Website Launch
   

  • Unfulfilled Prophecy as of 70 AD

  • Christ's Second Coming and Unfulfilled Prophecies

  • The Development of Preterism

  • The Papal Origins of Preterism

  • Futurism's Four False Interpretations

• JesusGod: Jesus Has Already Returned
• Herod's Temple: Jerusalem Temple 3D Tour

• David Midkiff - Optimistic Eschatology - Postmillennialism The following is a biblical outline of postmillennial eschatology derived from a lecture series by Dr. Kenneth Gentry, Th.D. Please note that I have made my own additions in the conclusion. Though the outline is in bullet-format, it has readable flow that is meant to draw out scripture passages concerning this subject in a systematic way."

2/24/13:

• Pompeii and Herculaneum treasures rise from the ashes "The villa is believed to have once belonged to Lucius Calpurnius Piso, Julius Caesar’s father-in-law, and was named after more than 1,000 papyrus scrolls were found in library. "
• FREE ONLINE BOOKS: John Hopkins Morison - Disquisitions and notes on the Gospels: Matthew (1860)

Matthew 24:36-51 - The Coming Of The Son Of Man in Judgment To All.

A great deal is said about types. May it not be that all the language relating to the destruction of Jerusalem was meant to be a type of the general judgment? Is there not this double meaning running through it? In the sense in which the expressions type and double meaning are commonly used by theologians, we answer, No.

We have endeavored to explain this remarkable prediction of our Saviour. We have shown how the part of it which applied to "that generation " was fulfilled, not literally perhaps in all its parts, but exactly in accordance with its spirit. And this is the way in which we are to interpret and apply, not only the highest prophecy, but the highest poetry, the profoundest inductions of philosophy, and the grandest generalizations of transcendental mathematics. The literal, precise interpretation of a single expression is often false, and false in proportion to the magnitude of the truth which soars up in its majestic proportions through such words and images as our human forms of speech and thought may furnish. Any one may see that a literal, prosaic interpretation of King Lear, or Paradise Lost, sentence by sentence, in order to show precisely what facts are proved by them, would do no sort of justice to the grander movements of soul which fill out with their inspiration every part of those wonderful works. Far more in the prophetic words of our Saviour, which so far surpass all the other words that have ever been spoken, it is the letter that killeth. No one, whether as the advocate or the enemy of our faith, can understand them, unless he enter beneath the letter into the spirit, and thus catch as he may something of the inspiration, the largeness of thought and affluence of life, which they are fitted to awaken and impart. The humble inquirer, entering thus into the heart of our Saviour's words that he may cherish their spirit and obey their commands, will come nearer to the essential truth which they are designed to teach, than the ablest scholar, who, without religious sympathies, or with a superstitious regard to the letter, seeks to analyze them by applying critically, sentence by sentence, the rules of the grammar and lexicon.

2/23/13:

• George Lind Johnson - "The Great Prediction, or Prophecy"  (2003, The Great Problem and Evidence for Its Solution)

• Rev. Jim West - The Allurement of Hyper Preterism - The Rise of 'Dispensable Eschatology" "Hymenaenism is damnable heresy." // "If a church unwittingly carries Hymenn books (such as the Leonards’ The Promise of His Coming, or J. Stuart Russell’s The Parousia), these books should be torched or removed immediately."

• Second Coming as Spiritual: G.L. White - The Parousia of Christ (1905) "Believers in the bodily return of our Lord make much of the phrase "in like manner," as it stands in both versions of Acts i. 11: "This Jesus which was received up from you into heaven shall so come in like manner as ye beheld him going into heaven." The only other passages where the Greek words translated "in like manner" here, are used may be found in Matt, xxiii. 87, Luke xiii. 34, Acts vii. 25, and 2 Tim. iii. 8. Commenting on the latter passage, Meyer says: "The correlative does not necessarily place emphasis on the similarity of the manner of the act, but often only on the similarity of the act itself." A careful examination of the passages above referred to will lead unprejudiced students to make a stronger statement still, that the comparison is never one concerning the manner of the act, but concerning the act itself." (Homiletic Review)

• The Parousia Reviewed - Have added about a dozen reviews lately (R.T. France, Tim LaHaye, etc); dozens to go... hundreds?

2/22/13:

• The Parousia Reviewed: The Spectator - Book Review of The Parousia,  Volume 52, 1879 "It is with great pleasure that we introduce this work to the notice of our readers. It is an attempt to subject the Eschatology of the New Testament—i.e., its teaching as to the final issues of Revelation—to a critical examination. This we consider to be one of the two questions which, at the present day, urgently demand a most careful investigation on the part of theologians"

• Samuel Lee - Travels of Ibn Batuta with notes, illustrative of the history, geography, botany, antiquities occurring throughout the work (1829) Finally found!  Search title at location to read.

"First Century Chart" by Donald Hochner

• ARTchive  Charts: End Times Infographic Dissects Christian Views on Tribulation, Rapture In Christianity, the end times is punctuated by the tribulation, the rapture and the second coming of Jesus Christ, and is often discussed along the lines of premillennialism, postmillennialism and amillennialism. The Book of Revelation, the final book of the Bible, is usually cited in these discussions, although other New Testament books and prophetic books of the Old Testament are referenced as well. Christians believe the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ will return at some future point to reign on Earth and judge the world — although the purported timeline of events are hotly debated."

• Revelation: An Evangelical Symposium in Reno, NV - DeMar (Preterist), Waldron (Idealist), Hamilton (Futurist)

• Thoughts of a Lesser: Preterist-Idealism?  I think I like it (2007) Dee Dee Warren "Hi Chance - I think all "partial preterists" (I reject that terminology) should be true preterist-idealists of a sort."

• Free Online Books: Free books at the Puritan Library

(Photo: The Christian Post via Josh Byers)

Hyper Preterism (HyP) - (Absolute Fulfillment of all Bible prophecy - Full Preterism and "Resurrection Past" Teachings; Full Preterism is systematized Hyper Preterism - All Full Preterism is Hyper Preterism, but not all Hyper Preterism is Full Preterism.)