Letter of Support
by "Faramir"
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I have known Dee Dee Warren for several years, and consider her a good friend.
However, my very first impression of her was mixed at best.
I had been a regular reader of J.P. Holding's site Tektonics.org for some time (well before he "came out" as a preterist). In fact, I was in the midst of abandoning my own long held dispensational futurist eschatology, when I was wishing desperately that J.P. would put something up eschatological. Desperate because I knew he was a member of a Baptist church (like I was) and that if anybody could make sense of futurism and restore my belief in that system, it would be him.
Alas, (well now, in hindsight hoorah) it was about this same time that J.P. began to post his eschatological position. It was preterism. The very same preterism that I myself could not deny, but was not quite ready to abandon my long-held futurist beliefs to embrace. I was disappointed, but continued in my studies.
However, I eventually (begrudgingly at first, but eventually with a passion) rejected dispensationalism and embraced preterism. As I suspect is true with most recent converts from futurism to preterism, there is a lot to learn. I had done most of my research on the internet and had run across terms like partial preterism and full preterism.
It was easy to tell the difference between the two. It was quite another matter to determine which one was right, or even if the distinction was important. In fact, I hoped to eventually pick one or the other, but I certainly did not make that a priority.
But I continued to study everything I could about preterism (at this time I did not make much of a distinction between partial and full), including doing a search for more preterist info on Tektonics.
This is where I was first exposed to Dee Dee Warren (for some reason I pictured her as an elderly retired school teacher). It was her Is It a Duck? article, which was none to kind to full preterism. In fact it called this position heretical. My first thought was that this woman is a bit extreme. (I still think she is extreme, but in a good way.)
I was still seriously considering both partial and full preterism at that time. And her article did not change that. At least not right away. But it did make me aware that there was something more than a minor disagreement, at least among certain segments of the preterist community.
And though her article did not immediately persuade me that full preterism was wrong (much less heretical), it did make me more cautious in my studies. To make a long story short (oops, too late), as a result of Dee Dee's article I made picking a "camp" on the difference between full preterism and partial preterism a top priority.
Without Dee Dee's somewhat hysterical (or so I thought at the time) article I probably would have spent months, maybe even years flip flopping between the two, not thinking that it was important to be firmly planted in either camp.
In the end, I saw that full preterism was in fact contrary to the historic teaching of the church for its entire existence, and much more importantly contrary to scripture. I think that I would have come to this conclusion eventually, without having read Dee Dee´s article, but I have no doubt that reading that article sped up the process. I even begrudgingly acknowledged the possibility that full preterism may be heretical.
By this time I was more aware of the arguments that full preterism was heretical. I was neither wholeheartedly convinced that this was true, nor was I able to articulate a reason as to why it was not true. For this reason took a default position that, "yeah, I guess full preterism is heresy." But I did not really embrace this wholeheartedly.
It was only a few years later, after I became acquainted with Dee Dee through internet debate forums. That I realized that pantelism (as it is rightfully called, as preterism is properly used to describe the orthodox position) is in fact a foul heresy.
Despite her tireless effort to expose pantelism for what it is, I remained only half convinced. Until I was reading 1 and 2 Timothy (passages I had heard over and over again used to support the heretical nature of pantelism) for a Bible study. The Bible Study was on church leadership NOT eschatology. However, for some reason, this time when I read those passages, it became clear that there are only really two alternative. Either pantelism is true, or it is heresy. There is no other option.
And even though it was not Dee Dee's arguments directly that caused me to reach this conclusion, her influence can not be denied.
I want to thank Dee Dee for caring enough about me (a complete stranger at the time), and every other person who may be lured by the heresy of pantelism, to speak up about this dreadful blight that is quickly becoming the next dangerous cult of our time.
Thank you so much Dee Dee. Keep up the good work. Let me know what I can do to help.