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FUTURISM,

FIGURATIVE PRETERISM

and LITERAL PRETERISM

By

Walt Hibbard

With the growing trend among students and scholars of the prophetic scriptures to begin to recognize the importance of the “time statements” that Jesus made about His Second Coming, more and more Christian people are sensing a change of focus in Bible study.  Virtually all of these people were originally taught an interpretative methodology that assigned “end time events” to a time span in their future.  It has been only in comparatively recent years that God has seen fit to open many people’s eyes to the certainty that Bible prophecy had already been fulfilled before the end of the first century A.D.  This discovery has crossed denominational lines into nearly every camp of believers.

Students and scholars, who have been privileged to gain a better understanding of Bible prophecy in this way, call themselves “preterists,” certainly not a term often heard in conversations over the breakfast table.  This past fulfillment understanding has opened up a whole new world of Bible study and given preterists a burden to share their new findings with other Christian people, who, like themselves, have been deceived by well-meaning, but mistaken, pastors, teachers and spiritual leaders.

DOUBLE FULFILLMENT IDEA

While sharing their new-found excitement with others, often in reply a rather strange voice of assent is heard from people known to be staunch futurists.  This unexpected response takes the shape of saying that, “Sure, I believe that Jesus came back in the first century at the time Jerusalem was destroyed, but I also believe that His real and final Coming will happen at the end of the world.”  How should a preterist respond to this “double fulfillment” idea?

As with all theological views, the responder must be asked to support his belief with scripture.  Where are the verses that unmistakably teach that the great and final redemptive events, the Second Coming, the Resurrection of the Dead, and the Judgment, would occur beyond the bounds of the first century A.D.?  This writer, since being given “new eyes to see,” has not been able to find any prophetic verses that speak of future fulfillment that are not better understood as applying to the time of God’s judgment on Jerusalem at A.D. 70.  In fact, in Hebrews 9:28 we read,

…Christ shall appear a second time without sin to those expecting Him for salvation” (LITV). 

There is no mention whatsoever of a third coming. Those who hold to the “double fulfillment” idea fail to acknowledge that Christ at His Second Coming accomplished everything in His Messianic ministry that had not previously been fulfilled.  What possible need would there be, therefore, to have a third coming?

The “double fulfillment” concept, which renders any and all time statements virtually meaningless, could also be applied, for the sake of consistency, to not only the last great redemptive events, but also to other one time events such as the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Judgment, and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost.  Why not also expect, like many dispensationalists, a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem with animal sacrifices to be re-instituted in a so-called future millennium?

No, “double fulfillment” is not the answer.  Rather, it is a futile attempt to explain away or side step the powerful impact of the New Testament’s time statements, both those of Jesus as well as those written by His apostles.  Futurism, in any form, fails to meet the scriptural test, and therefore fails miserably.

OTHER PARTIAL PRETERIST IDEAS

Let’s be sure we understand that the A.D. 70 climax marked the end of the Old Covenant order which began to wind down by A.D. 30 and came to a gigantic and catastrophic end by A.D. 70.  The author of Hebrews, prior to that event, informed his readers that the New Covenant which began to build up during Christ’s earthly ministry,

…has made the first old.  And the thing being made old and growing aged is near disappearing (Heb. 8:13 LITV). 

The Old Covenant, therefore, had not completely disappeared at the time Hebrews was written, but very soon afterwards.  In just a matter of only a few years, it did disappear completely as the Temple, that great center of worship, was demolished, and all genealogical records were destroyed, and the animal sacrifices came to a screeching halt.

The Hebrews writer’s burden was to show “how much superior” the New Covenant was compared to the Old Covenant which it would replace.  The entire order of things would change and pain, misery and even death itself would be conquered.  Those believers in Christ in that first century would find themselves securely anchored in the New Covenant as the Apostle Paul stated:

So that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new II Cor. 5:17 (LITV).

Other Bible students, including many renowned scholars within their ranks, while embracing many aspects of preterism like the fulfillment of the Great Tribulation, still cling to the idea that there is not sufficient evidence to conclude that the Rapture, the Resurrection of the Dead, and the Judgment also took place at the same time.  These scholars rely heavily on the ancient creeds of the church for support of their view, and gain considerable help from these sources to that end.  However, as they seek to find scriptural support for their position, the relevant passages turn out to be very few and far between.  What is even more tragic for this viewpoint is the alarmingly weak exegesis they provide to postpone these verses past the first century, often abandoning the sound preterist interpretative principles that have been their hallmark in becoming “partial preterists” in the first place.  One example from among a number of similar examples is the classic Rapture passage in I Thessalonians:

For we say this to you in the Word of the Lord, that we the living who remain to the coming of the Lord will not at all go before those who have fallen asleep.  Because the Lord Himself shall come down from Heaven with a commanding shout of an archangel's voice, and with God's trumpet.  And the dead in Christ will rise again first.  Then we who remain alive will be caught up together with them in the clouds to a meeting with the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord  (I Thess. 4:15-17 LITV).

I have set in bold type those words that point so clearly to the very people that Paul is addressing in this passage.  It was those then-living first century Christians, those listening to Paul’s voice even as he spoke, who would receive the promises – not a group of Christians who would live a couple thousand years later!  But our “partial preterist” friends who have faithfully employed “audience relevance” principles to teach that the Great Tribulation happened in A.D.70, suddenly forsake their

hermeneutic principles and revert back to their old futurist postponements to deny that the Rapture was imminent to the Christians in the first century.  The “partial preterist” view is truly bankrupt!

FIGURATIVE FULFILLMENT IDEAS

But the options for the confirmed preterist, on the other hand, do not disappear even after he acknowledges that all prophetic scripture was fulfilled by A.D. 70.  There are additional questions that arise which center around what actually happened at the time of those great redemptive events.  How about the Rapture, for example?  How do preterists understand this Second Coming event?  Was it a figurative Coming?  Or was it a literal Coming?  There are numerous proponents on both sides.

First, let’s consider the “Figurative Second Coming” view.  These preterist scholars understand, correctly, that the watershed of biblical covenant history centers on the A.D. 70 point of time. The Old Covenant was clearly forced out of existence as the Temple was laid to waste, the sacrificial lambs no longer needed, and the priests unable to validate their office in the Levitical system.  Jesus Christ, the Mediator of the New Covenant, had fully atoned for the sins of the people, had arisen from the dead, had ascended to God’s throne, and had fulfilled His Second Coming.

Therefore, according to preterists who see the Second Coming in a figurative sense, the O.T. saints and those N.T. saints who physically died before A.D. 70, were resurrected and received their incorruptible spiritual bodies and taken to be with Jesus.  The unsaved O.T. people were also resurrected, judged and sent to their own place, the Lake of Fire.  The living believers on the earth at A.D. 70 were changed (I Cor. 15:51, 52), thus qualifying them for a “postponed glorified status.”  But these living saints, however, would remain on earth until the time of their physical death sequentially, and then would be “changed” spiritually to join those who had been raised out of Hades at A.D. 70, and thus be with the Lord.

The figurative interpretation preterists therefore think of the Second Coming as an entirely spiritual event, virtually impossible to be witnessed by any earthly observers.  Many of the living saints thus lived through and beyond the Great Tribulation, and did not receive glorified bodies the time of their future death, perhaps even as late as A.D. 95.  These living N.T. saints entered the New Heavens and New Earth by virtue of being in the New Covenant, and considered this amazing event that the Apostle Peter anticipated so earnestly (II Peter 3), as purely a spiritual phenomenon, yet somehow much better than the Old Covenant from which they had been delivered at Christ’s Second Coming.

Critics of this figurative view (which is also known as the “remained on earth” view) find numerous faults with the above scenario:

** Perhaps those who hold this view dismiss too quickly the idea that the language in I Thess. 4 and I Cor. 15 may well demand a more literal understanding than often supposed.

** The text of I Thess. 4 strongly suggests that the resurrected saints out of Hades and the living believers of A.D. 70 were gathered as a unified body, together meeting the Lord in the air, one group not experiencing any advantage over the other. So how could the living saints still remain on earth at the time of the Parousia?  This alone breaks down and destroys a clear teaching of scripture.

** This view ignores the visible phenomena over the city of Jerusalem at that time which Josephus graphically describes as “chariots in the clouds” and other celestial actions.

** The figurative view makes it necessary to spiritualize the countless “promises” that Jesus gave to His disciples, such as experiencing “rescue,” “relief,” “reward,” “seeing Him revealed,” “marveling at Him,”

“being caught up,” “meeting Him,” “escape all these things,” “upward call,” “gathering together to Him,” “transform our lowly bodies,” etc.  This view offers no real fulfillment of any of these things! Yet all of these things were promised consummate fulfillment at Christ’s Parousia!

** Adherents of this view want to avoid any similarity of understanding offered by futurist interpreters and in an effort to do so, may be “throwing out the baby with the bathwater.”  Much of the exegesis done by futurist scholars on the Rapture may be accurate, even though the timing misses the mark.

These figurative preterists seem to have very little to say about the entrance of those living first century believers into heaven at the time they physically die.  All of the emphasis appears to be on the supposed exalted state of suddenly finding themselves under the fulfilled New Covenant.  No mention is made about all of the glorious promises of deliverance from earthly persecution that they were promised, but did not receive, at least in tangible form. This brings us to say a brief word about the “heaven now” idea.

Within this group of figurative preterists exists a sub-group known as “heaven now” preterists.  These

folks, apparently possessing a special talent for imaginative and colorful subjective experiences, actually believe that they are already in heaven right now!  They also believe they have received their glorified spiritual bodies, spiritually received of course, and that they possess these bodies in addition to their present physical bodies which they will shed when they die physically. Yet as we observe these people, do they carry the marks of people who are more spiritual than the Apostle Paul, who was not glorified until the time of the Parousia?  Allow this question to sink into our minds.