The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Facts to be Considered by All Full Preterists

What Chad mentions is the big picture or the overall fullness and reach of Godā€™s work in Christ ON BEHALF OF allā€¦ thus the complete salvation (redemption/reconciliation) of mankind on the macro level. Now within that is how individuals might further imbibe of the blessedness of this fulfilled reality which in itself ALSO works a deliverance (salvation) on the micro levelā€¦ check out my link HERE.

Origen, I do not know who you are personally, but you seem to dismiss the evidence that salvation in the first century is different from the 2018 reality of what God is doing in our world. You seem to be stuck in an archaic belief system, not allowing that the very God that created us made us unique and special, and may have wanted us (here and now) to go through hard times to allow us to minister, to be servants, to be able to in our own way be as the first century Christians were, a light to the darkened people?

If you want to discus this let me know. :wink:

Iā€™m not sure how the Preterists here, would respond to this. But to present their side (NOT becoming one, mind you)ā€¦Here is a Q and A by a Preterist at

http://www.preterist.org/get-answers/q-a-topics/
http://apostolicpreterist.com/Preterist_Q___A.html
http://preteristcosmos.com/questionsandanswers.html

P.S. The closest I could ever become, is a partial preterist - like New Testament, Anglican scholar N.T. Wright. Unless a Preterist can convince me, that the Zombie Apocalypse occurred around 70 AD. And why the church fathers, envisioned a future return of Christ - within the historical, orthodox creeds. :wink:

The best Q & A IMO would be theā€¦ preteristcosmos. Someone recently raised the issue of Job 19ā€¦ check Q. 60 for the answer. I must noteā€¦ the author Dave Green is a Calvinist, but donā€™t let that sway you either way. He is a staunch opponent of my inclusive preterism i.e., pantelism, but for all things prĆŖterist itā€™s pretty straightforward.

Well itā€™s a startā€¦ though I think your zombie mates are definitely a better fit with futurism. :wink:

Well itā€™s a startā€¦ though I think your zombie mates are definitely a better fit with futurism. :wink:

Actually they look like they are from 70AD! and also they fit the FP idea of salvation too! :smiley:

:laughing: :laughing:

No, I donā€™t think Jews are a corrupt, perverse race. However, the question is entirely irrelevant. I have no idea how you would come to the conclusion that I doā€”simply on the basis that I think Jesus is talking to representatives of his own people group rather to representatives of all the people who lived at that time.

Jesus Himself (who was a Jew) addressed the Jewish scribes and Pharisees in this way:

Wow! Iā€™ve never said anything like that to or about Jews. Did Jesus hate the scribes and Pharisees?

Oh wait. He called them a ā€œgenerationā€ of vipers. Was He addressing representatives of Jewish people? Or was He addressing representatives of all people who were alive at that time?

If everyone was reconciled to God at the cross c.30, then why did Godā€™s wrath come against Israel & Jerusalem c.66-70 A.D.?

Whatā€™s keeping Godā€™s wrath - from 71 A.D. to 2018 A.D. & beyond - from being unleashed on wicked monstrous humans, both the living and the dead?

Has Godā€™s nature changed, or His attitude toward willful stubbornness? Do the principles of His word no longer apply, such as:

Lk.6:31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.

Gal.6:7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. Whatever a man sows, he will reap in return. 8 The one who sows to please his flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; but the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap aionion life.

1 Cor.6:9 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who submit to or perform homosexual acts, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor verbal abusers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God

P.S. The closest I could ever become, is a partial preterist - like New Testament, Anglican scholar N.T. Wright. Unless a Preterist can convince me, that the Zombie Apocalypse occurred around 70 AD. And why the church fathers, envisioned a future return of Christ - within the historical, orthodox creeds.

Iā€™m pretty familiar with just about every eschatology from FP,PP to Pre-trib,Post trib, Pre-Wrath. IMHO the Historicist view by Ellis Skolfield really rocks. He has a dozen mathematical time connections that to me are compelling. He is an Ammilleanalist and he thinks we are in that last short period when Satan has been released to lead the nations against the Saints. This last period ended with the close of the church age in 1967. We shall see but it certainly is a weird time that canā€™t go on indefinitely.

1967?

Remember that judgement starts in the house of God. To whom much is given, much is demanded.
Certainly noone on this entire forum thinks Jewish dna is any better or any worse than any other (sigh - how do you know that, Dave??? I just do :slight_smile:); but their responsibility under the covenant was great, as was their promised blessing.
DNA has nada to do with it.

ORIGEN SAID:

Because he said it would happen :open_mouth:

ORIGEN SAID:

Well show me a event that has happened post 71AD and show me a scripture that says that is the will of God.

ORIGEN SAID:

Iā€™m not sure what you are asking?

ORIGEN SAID:

You are continually asking about things that have been explained to you, but some how you forget or willfully want to ignore the answer. :astonished:

ORIGEN SAID:

You somehow have a glitch in your matrix. Paul was talking to a group of believers[size=150] there in the first Century[/size], He goes through this laundry list of crap that he is dealing with in this church and telling them that though they were once like that, get it together.

It is good reading but only applies to us in a HISTORICAL CONTEXT.

Cheers.

A number of reasonsā€¦ Jesus prophesied it! He also, along with the apostles, gave warnings to heed his words so as to avoid this cataclysmic end that was coming.

Furtherā€¦ while the Temple stood ā€˜the lawā€™ still stood over and against Israel and to an extent some in the early church, even though through the Cross the law was devoid of any redemptive value. That which came to symbolise the old covenant mode of existence needed removing and within a biblical generation, i.e., 40yrs, such occurred ā€” again, as Jesus foretoldā€¦

Paulā€™sā€¦ ā€œvessels of honourā€ and ā€œvessels of dishonourā€ (Rom 9:21-22) equate to those who either in that dayā€¦ perished (Jn 3:16,18, 36 et al) or were preserved (Mt 24:13 et al).

Nada, Dave? Are you slipping Spanish, into an English sentence? :laughing:

The trouble with languages, is that you need to spend time each day - to deepen and maintain them. For me, that means the popular Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian) and Japanese. And I even attend groups once a week, devoted to Spanish and Japanese. Where we dialogue in those languages. Led by an SME (i.e. Subject Matter Expert(.

Now I just need to find someone, to teach me the Zombie language. So I can converse with them, during the tribulation and the Zombie Apocalypse. :laughing: .

And donā€™t forget to watch The Walking Dead tonight on AMC. :smiley:

This doesnā€™t seem to explain how God could punish & unleash His wrath on the Jews for their wickedness if, as you guys claim, He was at peace/reconciled to them and not holding their sins or wickedness against them. Is Pantelismā€™s God schizophrenic, or just confused?

As for destroying the temple, wasnā€™t God capable of doing so in numerous ways (e.g. fire from heaven) without sending the Romans to kill over a million Jews by starvation, the sword, crucifixion, being burned alive, etc, & taking many thousands more as slaves?

Rom.2:4 Or are you despising the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, being ignorant that the kindness of God is leading you to repentance? 5 Yet, in accord with your hardness and unrepentant heart you are hoarding for yourself indignation in the day of indignation and revelation of the just judgment of God, 6 Who will be paying each one in accord with his acts: 7 to those, indeed, who by endurance in good acts are seeking glory and honor and incorruption, life eonian 8 But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, 9 Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile;ā€¦16 in the day when God will be judging the hidden things of humanity, according to my evangel, through Jesus Christ

And BTW, when was the ā€œdayā€ on which the above verses already occurred according to FP/Pantelism?

Whatā€™s keeping Godā€™s wrath - from 71 A.D. to 2018 A.D. & beyond - from being unleashed on wicked monstrous humans, both the living and the dead?

Has Godā€™s nature changed, or His attitude toward willful stubbornness? Do the principles of His word no longer apply, such as:

Lk.6:31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.

Gal.6:7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. Whatever a man sows, he will reap in return. 8 The one who sows to please his flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; but the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap aionion life.

1 Cor.6:9 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who submit to or perform homosexual acts, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor verbal abusers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God

Those are excellent resources. Thank you. Hereā€™s a few quotes from them:

Sin will always exist

in fact sin was the most important problem humanity had faced, problem solved through the sacrifice of Christ and the destruction of the Jewish Temple in A.D. 70.

So is this present world the New Heavens and New Earth spoken of in the book of Revelation?
Answer: Yes, that seems to be the case.

God created evil.

Do you believe that all the graves of saints are already empty?
ANSWER: Yes.

QUESTION 8: Doesnā€™t Romans eleven teach that Yahweh still has a definite plan for Israel, whom He loves with an irrevocable love?
ANSWER: ā€œAll Israelā€ (Rom. 11:26) was saved in A. D. 70.

QUESTION 21: Is hell, according to the full preterist, a place of only spiritual torment for the non-believer, or is there a physical and bodily torment involved as well?
Luke 16:23 explicitly speaks of a physically dead man ā€œin torments in hell (Hades).ā€ It has been disturbing to see annihilationists brazenly claim that the story takes place in a make-believe setting, that its portrayal of a physically dead man in torments has absolutely no basis in reality whatsoever and that Jesus was actually using pagan mythology as the backdrop for His teaching. The annihilationists annihilate the facts of the story of Lazarus and the rich man in order to justify their denial of the Scriptural teaching that God eternally punishes the unredeemed.

Luke 12:5 likewise teaches that after the death of the unredeemed, God casts them ā€œinto Gehenna,ā€ the eternally burning fire of God wrath:

ā€œBut I will warn you whom to fear: Fear the One who after He has killed has authority to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear Him!ā€ (Lk. 12:5)

May we all listen to Jesus in Luke 12:5, and not to the annihilationistsā€™ sugarcoating of Godā€™s Eternal Judgment!

Now, having established that people physically and bodily taste ā€œthe judgment of hell (Gehenna / Hades)ā€ on Earth, and having shown that the annihilationists shut their eyes to the ā€œafterlifeā€ reality of hell, here is a direct answer to your question about what preterists believe about the nature of eternal punishment after death:

Since all preterists deny that the Resurrection of the dead (Acts 24:15) was fleshly / biological, all preterists necessarily believe that the eternal punishment of the dead is a spiritual torment.

I noticed in your question that you asked if preterists believe that Hell is ā€œonlyā€ spiritual. I gather from that wording that you may think that a ā€œspiritualā€ torment is by definition less severe than a ā€œphysicalā€ torment. If that is what you were suggesting, remember that Satan, who is a spirit, is said to be in the Lake of Fire, being ā€œtormented day and night forever and everā€ (Rev. 20:10). We should not suppose that his ā€œspiritualā€ torment is less severe than any ā€œphysicalā€ torment.

QUESTION 81: God tells us in Isa. 65:20 that there will come a time when there will be no more infant deaths, a time when a hundred years old will be considered young. Obviously, Isaiah was talking about a time in our future (the Millennium) when people will have longer life spans than we have now. As a preterist, how do you get around the plain and obvious teaching of Isa. 65:20?

QUESTION 82: When was Matt. 23:39 fulfilled?

ANSWER:
ā€œFor I say unto you [Jerusalem, the scribes, the Pharisees], You shall not see Me henceforth, till you shall say, ā€˜Blessed is He Who comes in the name of the Lord.ā€™ā€ (Matt. 23:39; Lk. 21:35)

QUESTION 86: Assuming that the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats was fulfilled in A.D. 70, my question is how was it fulfilled? Was it fulfilled symbolically on Earth, or was it fulfilled in Heaven?

ANSWER: The prophecy of Matt. 25:31-46 was fulfilled in Heaven. It was a prophecy (not a ā€œparableā€) of the Judgment of the dead of Christā€™s generation.

Sequence of events:

  1. First the Coming of the Son of Man in A.D. 70 (Matt. 25:31)
  2. Then the gathering of the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:32)
  3. Then the separation of the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:32)
  4. Then the casting out of the wicked into the eternal fire (Matt. 25:41,46)ā€¦
    The prophecy of the Sheep and the Goats is a reiteration of the prophetic teaching of the parable of the Wedding Banquet. In both passages, the gathering and judgment of the righteous and the wicked (the sheep and the goats) take place after the destruction of Jerusalem. Both passages were fulfilled after Godā€™s eschatological judgment on Earth was finished in A.D. 70, (Lk. 12:59) which means that both passages were fulfilled in Heaven, which means that the post-Parousia Judgment was the Judgment of the dead. As Rev. 11:18 says:
    ā€œAnd the nations were enraged, and Your wrath came, and the time came for the dead to be judgedā€¦ā€™ā€

QUESTION 95: Jesus said that ā€œnot one stoneā€ of Jerusalem or of the temple would be left upon another. (Matt. 24:2; Mk. 13:2; Lk. 19:44; 21:6) But even preterists know that the Wailing Wall still stands in Jerusalem to this very day. So it goes without saying that Matthew 24 was NOT fulfilled in A.D. 70, and that Matthew 24 remains unfulfilled as long as the Wailing Wall stands intact, stones and all. Okay, how are you going to spiritualize this one away?

Why not?

Iā€™m not confused, no. But consider the fact, theoretically, that there was a race within humanity that was unloving, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, without love of good, traitorous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

Suppose it was God who ascribed those negative qualities to that race - weā€™ll call it the human race - would it necessarily follow that He is anti-human? NO. He loves his enemies even.

You can figure out the rest.

The Online Bible Lexicon gives definitions of each of the words:

Ī³ĪµĪ½ĪæĻ‚ (Ī³ĪµĪ½ĪµĪ¹, Ī“Ī•ĪĪ•Ī™ is but one form of this word)

  1. kindred
    1a) offspring
    1b) family
    1c) stock, tribe, nation
    1c1) i.e. nationality or descent from a particular people
    1d) the aggregate of many individuals of the same nature, kind, sort

Ī³ĪµĪ½ĪµĪ± (Ī“Ī•ĪĪ•Ī‘)

  1. fathered, birth, nativity
  2. that which has been begotten, men of the same stock, a family
    2a) the several ranks of natural descent, the successive members of a genealogy
    2b) metaph. a group of men very like each other in endowments, pursuits, character
    2b1) esp. in a bad sense, a perverse nation
  3. the whole multitude of men living at the same time
  4. an age (i.e. the time ordinarily occupied by each successive generation), a space of 30-33 years

Not much difference between the definitions of Ī³ĪµĪ½ĪæĻ‚ and definitions 1), 2), 2a), 2b, and 2b1) of Ī³ĪµĪ½ĪµĪ±

1967?

When Israel regained control of Jerusalem plus two years before the NY Mets won the World Series and the NY Jets won the Super Bowl.

Both the Mets and Jets beat Baltimore just as the bible prophesied :laughing: