Fighting Windmills?
by Steve Atkerson
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Theological Liberals are known for their denunciations of the Bible as an errant, uninspired book of human origin. Foremost among their "proof" for such claims are the supposed failed prophecies of Jesus that He would return within the lifetimes of His apostles and in conjunction with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (which fell in AD 70).
Feeling the heat from these Liberal accusations, and sincerely wanting to answer their charges, a new theology of end times events has gained popularity in recent years: neo (or full) preterism. Neo-preterism's logic is simple: If Jesus promised to come back within the lifetimes of His apostles, then come back He did, for the Word of God cannot fail. If people today do not recognize that the Second Coming occurred in conjunction with the Roman invasion of Palestine and the resulting destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, then the problem lies with their faulty understanding of the Second Coming, not with any failed prophecies by Jesus.
In order to maintain their position that Jesus' second coming happened in the first century, it is necessary for the neo-preterists to allegorize virtually everything about the second coming. Though Jerusalem and the Temple were literally destroyed by a real army, that is were the literalism ends. For instance, they conclude that Jesus did not literally come back personally, in a body that could be seen. Every eye did not actually see Him: not the unbelieving Jews, not the invading Romans, not even the Spirit-led church. Such statements are judged to be figurative.
The key to this controversy lies with the word "if." If Jesus promised to come back in the first century, then of course He did. The Liberals insist that He did indeed make such a promise regarding His second appearing. But who are these unbelieving, skeptical, theological Liberals to tell the church what Jesus did or did not promise? Who are they to frame the argument? To answer their charges in kind is to commit a category error. One is doomed to lose the battle before it even begins.
In Scripture, two types of comings of Jesus are evident. Throughout Old Testament history, Jehovah God was said to have "come" in judgment against various ancient cities and nations, resulting in their literal destruction, usually by an invading foreign army. In none of those comings did Jehovah God appear in bodily form. So too in the New Testament, we must distinguish between the non-bodily judgment coming of Jesus against Jerusalem in AD 70 versus the actual Second Coming of Jesus bodily and in person. Christians, for the past two millennia, have made this distinction between a judgment coming of Jesus in AD 70 to judge Jerusalem and the still future second bodily coming of Jesus to judge the whole world.
Theologians are in agreement that at the point of Jesus' second coming, the dead will resurrect. Jesus said that all who are in their graves would come out (Jn 5:28). At this resurrection, every person will be rewarded for the deeds that he has done, whether good or bad (Jn 5:29). Further, those saints alive at the second coming will be transformed and given glorified bodies (1Th 4:13-18), and the mortal will put on immortality (1Co 15:20-57). Since there is no physical evidence that any of this happened when Jerusalem fell, neo-preterists are forced to reinterpret the general resurrection of the dead and the rapture of the church. Such events, they propose, are other-worldly and not liable to empirical verification. The resurrection of the dead was of such a nature that decaying corpses were not restored. The rapture of the church was of such a nature that the mortal saints alive in AD 70 still died physical deaths later on. The great white throne judgement was of such a nature that those on earth who lived through it were not ever aware that it had even happened (Re 20:11-15). If neo-preterist answers to Liberal challenges were effective, one might expect to see Liberal theologians converting to Christianity in mass, but such has not been the case. What some of them did convert to was a milder form preterism, all the while insisting that Jesus is not God, did not die on the cross as a payment for sin, and did not bodily resurrect from the dead.
Another impetus to the recent interest in neo-preterism has probably been in reaction to the Dispensational Futurism popularized in the Left Behind series. Many Christians, from all eschatological camps, are finding much to criticize in LaHaye's writings. Certain unique aspects of his views are a popularized version of a theology of end times that dates only from the mid-1800s. Evidence suggests that these novel components can be traced to the ecstatic revelations of a young Scottish girl named Margaret MacDonald. It was soon promoted by a Scottish minister named Edward Irving (1792-1834) and then also by the founder of dispensationalism, John Nelson Darby (1800-1882). Finally, it gained early popularity in the States through the efforts of a lawyer named C.I. Scofield (1843-1921) and the footnotes he wrote for his Scofield Reference Bible. (Prior to all this, the church universally understood the rapture and the second coming to be simultaneous events.)
Thus, perhaps interest in neo-preterism comes as an overreaction to the abuses of Dispensational Futurism. To counter the novel theological claims of Left Behind, the neo-preterists have to deny such historic tenants of the Christian faith as the literal, bodily, future return of Jesus; the literal, bodily, future resurrection of the dead; and the literal reversal of the curse wherein nature is released from its bondage to decay. Interestingly, like the unique aspects of Dispensational Futurism, neo-preterism only dates from the mid-1800s. Both are new theological novelties. Better alternatives to neo-preterism and futurism can be found in either classical preterism (www.preteristsite.com) or in historicism (www.historicist.com or www.historicism.net or www.endtimeinsights.com), or even idealism.
02/11/05