Born-Again Preterist - Part Two

...continued from Part One!

Part Two – What’s so Bad about Dispensationalism?

"I'm completely dedicated to preterism... even though there's really no future in it." - Vernon Klingman

SM: What drives dispensationalists? Is it just the sheer fantasy of it? Or is it a grand conspiracy by the church to keep their minions in a perpetual state of fear?

Vernon: I believe that it remains the dominant view in the Church due to its emotional appeal. It's exciting to think that you're living in the last days and might escape physical death by being taken into heaven. Who would want to give that up?

In fact, the most common response by far that I hear when I explain my position is, "Then where does that leave me?!"

It seems the majority of Christians are more concerned about what they get out of a view than the truth of it.

SM: How accepted is preterism in the Church, overall?

Vernon: It’s extremely rare.

This seems to be changing, though. Advocates of preterism have a much greater presence on the internet than they did five or ten years ago, and I'm finding that people are becoming more and more aware of the events surrounding A.D. 70. This is partly due to the increasing popularity of partial preterism.

SM: I’ve heard that term, but not known exactly what it meant.

Vernon: That’s actually how I began my journey to preterism. The books I mentioned earlier as exposing me to the preterist hermeneutic - that is, its interpretive method - actually present the partial preterist position.

The partial preterist is someone who admits that a great deal of prophecy was fulfilled in the events surrounding the fall of Jerusalem. In fact, they go so far as to say that "a" second coming took place before that generation passed away. However, they insist that "the" second coming is still future, and this is when the dead will be raised, the judgment will take place, and the physical creation will be renewed.

Now, as much as I'd also like to have my cake and eat it too, this just doesn't work. Nowhere in the New Testament do we find any of the apostles distinguishing between a second coming of Christ that was imminent, and another one that would be thousands of years away. It is also unthinkable to me that the apostles could have been anticipating a second second coming when the first second coming had yet to take place!

Anyone who is honest with the text would have to conclude that the early Church was looking for one return of Christ to complete their redemption, and they were convinced that it would take place within their lifetime.

Perhaps the clearest Biblical preclusion of the partial preterist view rests in a comparison between Christ's teaching in the Olivet Discourse and Daniel 12. In these passages, we find both Jesus and Daniel foretelling of the time of the end (Dan. 12:4; Mat. 24:3), the great tribulation (Dan. 12:1; Mat. 24:21), the abomination of desolation (Dan. 12:1; Mat. 24:15), and the gathering of the elect (Dan. 12:2-3; Mat. 24:31). These parallels demonstrate that Jesus and Daniel were speaking of the same time and events. In fact, Jesus stated directly that He was discussing the things that Daniel had predicted (Mat. 24:15).

Now, Jesus taught that all these things, along with His coming in glory and the destruction of the temple, would occur before His generation would pass away (Mat. 24:1-34), and the partial preterist believes this was fulfilled. However, Daniel recorded that all these things, along with the resurrection of the righteous and the wicked, would occur by the time the power of the Jews would be shattered (Dan. 12:2-7). Clearly, both of these prophecies were delimited by the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. This means that all these things, including the coming of Christ to resurrect the righteous and the wicked, would occur by this time.

SM: I think we’ve established that this isn’t merely an academic interest of yours. What are the stakes, as you see them? Would you say that dispensationalism is actually harmful?

Vernon: In no way do I feel my discovery of preterism was limited to an intellectual conclusion, nor do I believe the study of eschatology in general is merely academic. As I’m sure you would agree, how we view the fate of the world impacts how we relate to the planet and our fellow human beings. So, I think the stakes here involve more than just a correct understanding, but also a correct way of life.

Ironically, dispensationlism hijacks the hope of heaven to send the world to hell.

SM: As a skeptic, I can see that as well. There was a story on NPR last year, about a couple with young children who had quit their jobs and budgeted out their money to the last penny to last them until May 21, 2011, when Harold Camping had predicted the end of the world.

That's an extreme example, of course.

But another example - and I don't think this is an extreme example at all, but generally mainstream - is the idea of interpreting current events in light of Revelation, so that you have George Bush being asked at a press conference how he thinks the situation in the Middle East ties in with the End of Days. I'd say a fair amount of his base believed that the war in Iraq and the threat of Muslim extremists is all in the Bible.

What's terrifying to me is that I think we - obviously! - need world leaders who believe that peace is possible, and is something the human race can reach towards. I don't see how you can earnestly claim to be seeking peace, while at the same time, your religious beliefs are telling you that God is bringing about World War III to usher in the end of days, and the planet is ultimately doomed. These people should have YouTube channels, not be in charge of foreign affairs.

Vernon: Dispensationalism tells people that Jesus is about to show up, so don't worry about this place. As J. Vernon McGee used to put it, "You don't polish the brass on a sinking ship." Such a perspective, as you've pointed out, can not only cause people to stop striving for peace on earth, it can even make them give up on their own lives.

While dispensationalism didn't cause me to abandon all hope for this world, it did contribute to my lack of concern for it. Caring for our resources was not a priority for me, nor was involvement in social issues.

SM: If nothing is known about the future, could we just as easily wipe ourselves out with nuclear weapons as colonize the galaxy?

Vernon: While the full preterist doesn't believe the Bible speaks to the fate of the planet or mankind specifically, he does believe it teaches that it's the nature of God's kingdom  to grow, so he generally has an optimistic outlook. However, that's not to say we couldn't experience some  major setbacks along the way.

When I became a preterist, and realized the planet was going to be around for a while, it made me want to be a better steward of the environment, and caused me to realize that investing in the lives of others, especially children, had tremendous value, as it would affect many, many generations to come.

Next: Vernon takes on C.S. Lewis, only one will be left standing!

Born-Again Preterist - Part One

The end is perpetually nigh!

Or so I've been told.

Growing up rather fundamentalist, I'd always assumed that the standard end-of-days narrative (Anti-Christ, rapture, mark of the beast, eating our babies for breakfast) was just part-and-parcel with a belief in God and Jesus and singing hymns, it all just went together. At some moment, people will just start vanishing before your eyes, and then immediately afterward, the president will announce that its high time we all get barcodes tattooed to our foreheads.

It's an easy belief to mock, and I was doing just that one day a couple of years ago, with a friend who is also a pastor, and he just said very matter-of-factly, "Oh, don't you know? Revelation actually refers to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD."

What? No, I didn't know that. How could I have grown up completely ensconced within the Christian subculture and never even heard of such a thing?

Not long afterward, a friend from facebook suggested that I 'like' a page done by a friend of hers, Preterism. Looking through the posts, I realized, aha, this was what my pastor-friend had been talking about.

I can’t say that I'm sold on it, but it at least opened me up to seeing that one could be a Christian who believes in the book of Revelation without necessarily constructing a bunker in their backyard.

The founder of the page is Vernon C. Klingman. He agreed to be my guinea pig.

Part One  - What Do You Believe and Why?

"When it comes to viewing eschatology, hindsight is 20/20.”

-Vernon Klingman

Vernon: Preterism is the belief that the second coming of Christ and its attendant events took place by the time of the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The term “preterism” comes from the Latin word "praeter,” which simply denotes something is past. Those who hold this view of Bible prophecy are called “preterists.”

The preterist sees Jesus teaching that He would return before His apostles could personally preach to all the cities in Israel (Mat. 10:23), that He would arrive in His kingdom before some standing beside Him would die (Mat. 16:27-28), and that His coming would  coincide with the destruction of the Jewish temple that would take place before the passing of His generation (Mat. 24:34).

The preterist also sees Jesus teaching that His kingdom is not of this physical world (John 18:36), and that it would not come with observation, nor with people pointing at it, but that it would nevertheless be in our midst (Luke 17:20-21).

In light of these teachings, the preterist believes that the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 signaled the return of Christ to establish a spiritual kingdom in the unseen realm that is in our midst. The preterist also holds that anyone who believes that Jesus died for their sins and rose again, manifests this kingdom on earth, and will enter the fullness of it upon their passing from this life.

SM: Growing up, I was always attracted to The Book of Revelation and the end times myself. Everything about it sounded so fantastic: people vanishing in the blink of an eye, the mark of the beast... This was years before the Left Behind series, but I'm sure I would have eaten them up if they'd been around. I even wrote stories about superheroes dealing with the rise of the Anti-Christ!

I recall vividly our church having a meeting concerning the book, 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be In 1988, and I remember we had a speaker who had this whole system worked out wherein he added up the numeric value of the letters of Sadam Hussein's name…

When I grew older, though, I realized, wait… do I really believe all this stuff? It just seemed so crazy. It made for good fantasy - clearly - but was just too insane for me to take seriously anymore.

When I learned about preterism through your facebook page, it made the insanity of Revelation seem somewhat more grounded in reality, relatively speaking. I wonder how I would have reacted to it if I'd known about it at a young age.

Vernon: It is certainly not the view I was raised with either.

I grew up in a church like yours, that taught pre-millennial dispensationalism - the theology of the Left Behind series. This view asserts, among other things, that the coming of Christ is yet future, and that His kingdom will in fact come with observation and have its capital in modern-day Israel. So it's about as far from preterism as you can get.

I can remember staring out the car window as a child - I'm not exactly sure how old I was, but I know I was in elementary school - wondering if the prophet Daniel or John might be standing on the sidewalk in the spiritual realm, watching our family drive by, since I thought that some of their visions spoke of modern transportation. I can also remember sitting in a pew during "grown-up" church - I must have been about the same age - reading the Book of Revelation and praying to God that I would one day understand it.

As I got older, I continued studying prophecy from a dispensational perspective. I spent countless hours reading books and listening to sermons on the last days by teachers such as John MacArthur, David Jeremiah, and J. Vernon McGee. I had their system down.

However, as I entered my twenties, I found myself being increasingly bothered by the time-statements regarding the return of Christ.

As a dispensationalist, I knew how to pick them apart one by one, and explain how they didn't really mean what they seemed to say. However, as I continued encountering these statements, they began striking me as too numerous and too varied in their expression not to mean exactly what they clearly seemed to say: that the return of Christ had, in fact, been near: in the first century.

So I decided to explore other views of eschatology, that is, the study of last things. That's when I picked up Revelation: Four Views, by Steve Gregg. This book presented four parallel commentaries on the book of Revelation, all from different theological perspectives, including the preterist view. As I read the commentary from the preterist perspective, it so resonated with me that I found it difficult to keep reading the commentaries from the other views.

I think what impressed me most about preterism is how consistently it applied reasonable and logical principles of interpretation to the Scriptures. I knew that to properly interpret a book of the Bible, I had to consider its original audience, their culture, and the events of their day. However, it seemed that dispensationalism required me to abandon these principles when interpreting passages relating to last things. The preterist view, however, insisted that applying these principles to passages relating to eschatology was the key to understanding them as well.

After reading Gregg's book, I began reading the authors he cited in it, such as David Chilton, Kenneth Gentry and James Russell. While I certainly gained Biblical insight from these authors, and others, I feel it was the preterist view itself that truly opened up God's Word to my understanding. I believe it did this by motivating me to consistently apply proper interpretive methods to the Bible, and by encouraging me to just believe what Christ said concerning the timing and nature of His kingdom.

SM: It sounds like you're describing a born-again experience.

Vernon: I suppose, in a sense, it was. It certainly felt as though I had been blind, but could now see.

It's hard for me to imagine what my life would have been like had I not arrived at this position, but knowing my disdain for the ignorance and hypocrisy of the institutionalized Church, and my conviction to place my faith only in what is sound and reasonable, I'm not completely sure I would have continued in the Christian faith otherwise.

Next: Partial Preterists, beware!