Vespasian as The Beast of Revelation

 I’m writing this as still primarily a Futurist but simply as a thought experiment.  I decided it would be fun to see if I could argue for a 70 AD Fulfillment of Revelation better than actual Preterists do.  But perhaps also elements of how I make this argument could prove Typologically useful to Futurists and other more niche forms of Preterism that are less focused on the 1st Century (I mostly wrote this before the Epiphany that inspired the prior on this blog, but I wanted to share my work anyway).

First of all I have come to take the language of Revelation 17:11 as saying that the 8th King is the Individual person The Beast passages are about even when still during the reigns of the first 7.  

Caesarea Maritima means Caesarea “by the sea”, and it was also a very sandy location.  It was always the Roman Provincial Capital of Judea and as such played an important role in the 66-73 AD War including as a location Vespasian used as a base of operations.  

The Seven Heads are further explained in Revelation 17 as being Seven Kings.  Roman Emperors didn’t like to admit they were Kings but we see in John 19:15 that Jews in Judea didn’t care about their semantics.  Why Kings would be represented as Heads is perhaps explained by the language of Bible Verses like 1 Corinthians 11:3, Ephesians 5:23 and Colossians 1:18 where Christ is The Head of The Church and God The Father is the Head of Christ, but there's also Hebrew Bible precedent for Kings as Heads in 1 Samuel 15:17 and Isaiah 7:8-9.  Your Head is a person who holds authority over you, hence why the 8th King which is The Beast isn’t an 8th Head.

Vitellius from the year of the 4 Emperors was never recognized in the East, the Roman Armies of the East chose Vespasian as soon as Otho was dead.  So for example when looking at the Archaeological record of the Roman Pharaohs we see that Vespasian was the 8th and the first 7 were Augustus, Tiberius, Calgiula, Claudius, Nero, Galba and Otho who did indeed have the shortest reign.  Vespasian was born during the reign of Augustus so each of those 7 had also personally been Vespasian’s Head.

I no longer believe the 6th King being associated with the present is meant to be a clue to when Revelation was written, rather for this theory I think it has to do with Revelation 17’s point in the narrative following the 7th Bowl of Wrath.  There was a major Earthquake during the reign of Galda which Suetonius refers to having been considered an Omen of his coming demise, that could be identified with the Earthquake of the 7th Bowl.  

Back to where we left off in chapter 13.  The 10 Horns, Leopard, Bear and Lion imagery are evoking Daniel 7.  Daniel 7 was primarily fulfilled by Intertestamental History, Revelation is picking up later with a Rome that has annexed most of the Greek Empire and portions of Babylon and Persia.  The 10 Horns we also know represent lesser kings allied with the Beast, these are likely various local Client Kings and Tribal Leaders who assisted Vespasian in the Conquest of Judea like Antiochus IV Epiphanes of Commagene.

The Mortal Wound being Healed could have multiple meanings.  Vespasian did suffer a serious wound during the Siege of Yodfat that Josephus makes a big deal out of.  But it’s seemingly associated with one of the specific Seven Heads, most of them died violently but Vespasian presented himself as the Heir of Otho.

For Revelation 13:5 the YLT says “Make War” where the KJV says “Continue” and I think that is more accurate to the Greek.  This is about the Authority Vespasian was given to carry out the War against Judea.  There are two ways we could count the 42 months, we could begin them with when Vespasian was first formally placed in charge of the Campaign on September 22nd 66 AD ending it in March of 70 AD.  In April of 70 the War continued but now with Vespain fully established as sole Emperor and his son the one actively carrying out the Campaign in Judea.  Or we could say the 42 months started when Vespasian actually arrived in Judea seemingly in Spring of 67 then continued to September of 70 AD when the Siege of Jerusalem was fully completed.

Vespasian was in Alexandria when he was proclaimed Emperor, and as such was the only Roman Pharoah ever consecrated by proper Egyptian Ceremonies, much of which symbolically Deified him.

Verse 7 of chapter 13 repeats language from chapter 11 verse 7.  If you watch Historia civillis YouTube video on The Roman Triumph and then read Josephus’s description of Titus and Vespasian’s Triumph in celebration of Conquering Judea in Wars of The Jews Book 7 Chapter 5 Section 5, the possibility that Revelation 11:7-10 could be describing that Triumph with the Two Witness representing executed leaders of the Jewish Revolt will be become quite compelling.

Revelation 13:10 is about Captivity which is obviously relevant to 70 AD.

The Beast out of The Earth called elsewhere The False Prophet I think could have been Tiberius Julius Alexander.  Many have argued “out of the Earth” in contrast to “out of the Sea” implies a Jewish background for the second Beast as opposed to the Gentile Background of the First, and Alexander fits that even though he was considered an Apostate.  He had formerly been a Governor of Judea but was Prefect of Egypt when the War started and was vital to Vespasian becoming Emperor due to the control that position gave him over the Empire’s Food Supply.  And he was involved in that Ceremonial Deification of Vespasian as Pharaoh as well which did include performing false Miracles.

When the Image of The Beast is introduced in verse 14 many translations wrongly say the Image was “made”, but the Greek doesn’t use a word for Create here, it should read that they Set Up the Image, meaning the Image could be something that already existed.

In Genesis 5:3 Seth is called the Image and Likeness of Adam as his son.  Multiple New Testament passages further connect Jesus as the Image of God to Him being The Son of God, like Romans 8:29 and Colossians 1:15.  So there is Biblical Precedent for a person’s Image being their Son.

The Image of The Beast in this model would be Titus the Son of Vespasian who had the same full name and was also elevated by Tiberius Julius Alexander who joined him in the Conquest of Judea where he was proclaimed Imperator after destroying Jerusalem.

The name identified by the number 666 can’t be Nero because that’s based on Aramaic/Hebrew Gematria and Revelation is in Greek with this number clearly echoing 888 as the Isopsephy value of Iesous.  Nero in Greek has an Omega in it so Nero can never work, the same goes for trying to make Nero fit the 616 variant.  It is also verified by Chapter 39 of Suetonius Life of Nero that the Isopsephy associated with the name of Nero was 1005.

If the 616 Variant is correct (which I consider unlikely) that probably points to Theos Caesar and/or Dios Caesar which were used for the Deified Roman Emperors in the Eastern Provinces, but in that context it doesn’t apply to only one.  Revelation 13:1 and 17:3 do seem to imply the Blasphemous Name associated with this Beast is on each of the heads and not merely an individual name.

I don’t know how to make 666 fit Vespasian, but I also have come to doubt it literally refers to the actual name.  I still think Iapetos is the best name for 666, ways to make that poetically fit Vespasian are possible.  

Some even question the practice of using Isopsephy/Gematria entirely and suggest like other symbols in Revelation the key is its Hebrew Bible precedent.  666 as a number has two notable appearances, being associated with Solomon in 1 Kings 10:14 and 2 Chronicles 9:13 but also with Nebuchadnezzar's Image in Daniel 3.  The Builder of The Temple and its destroyers, and one could also call Solomon spiritually a destroyer based on his moral failures the next chapter records.  Daniel seems more directly the source material of Revelation then Kings or Chronicles.  Nero was Emperor when the Rebellion started but wasn’t personally involved.  Nebuchadnezzar was personally involved in all his Sieges of Jerusalem and the first one was while still serving under a prior King.

That leads us to the matter of Jerusalem as Babylon.  The arguments for it are well known but in the past my issue with holding that view at the same time as The Beast being Rome was that I misunderstood Revelation 17 as implying Babylon held power over The Beast, but I now know the text doesn’t describe her as Riding the Beast.  Berenice in her affair with Titus seems frankly like a good personification of the Harlot.  The word “kill” isn’t actually used in Revelation 17 or 18 (and with Jezebel in chapter 2 only her children are killed), the City is destroyed by the people represented by The Harlot still live on to, in my view, eventually become the Bride of chapter 19 and Lamb’s Wife of Chapter 21.

Revelation 17 also strictly speaking says the Ten Horns hate Babylon and destroy her with fire not the Beast himself.  This could be relevant to how Vespasian was in Rome when the final Siege happened but also Titus himself did not want to Destroy the Temple, his troops and allies got out of control.  I also have considered that because of how the word “Wilderness” is used in Revelation this final destruction of Babylon refers to the fall of Masada.

When was Jesus's Not One Stone Prophecy fully fulfilled?

You might think the answer to that is obvious and well known, but you'd be surprised.  First I'm going to quote the account of the Prophecy from Mark 13:1-2 since I think it's the most complete account of exactly what Jesus in this case.

And as he went out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto him, "Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!" And Jesus answering said unto him, "Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down".

Notice that it isn't JUST about The Temple, it's about all the Buildings, plural.  

While Matthew and Luke's account of this in their main Olivet Discourse chapters downplay the inclusion of other buildings, Luke 19:44 also refers to not one stone being left, with The Temple not even being the focus, that Prophecy is about the entirety of Jerusalem.

The 9th of Av in AD 70 (presumed to be August 4th on the Roman Calendar) as recorded in Josephus Wars of The Jews Book VI Chapters 4-5 is the day The Temple was destroyed in the sense of not being able to be used as a Temple anymore.  Remember what happened to the Notre Dame Cathedral a few years ago?  The worst case scenario people were fearing that day is basically what happened to The Temple on the 9th of Av.  The next day however as recorded by Josephus in Wars Book VI Chapter 6 there are clearly still standing ruins.  

The beginning of Book VII is when Titus demolishes even those ruins and thus this is where most Christians talking about AD 70 via Josephus (both Preterists and Futurists) say the Not One Stone Prophecy was fulfilled.  Except Josephus tells us there were three towers that Titus left standing, in my view as long as those three towers were still standing this Prophecy of Jesus was incomplete.

In AD 131 Emperor Hadrian while visiting Jerusalem after ending his extended stay in Egypt announced his plans to rebuilt Jerusalem as a Greco-Roman City with a Temple to Zeus being built over the former site of The Temple.  I think the early stages of that project is when even those three remaining towers were torn down.  

Then after Hadrian left the Near East for Asia Minor in 132 the Bar Kokchba Revolt broke out.  That probably stalled the reconstruction project even though the Rebels never held Jerusalem during that war.  Then after the revolt was put down in 135 the project restarted.

A Millennium already past

This post shall be me playing Devil's Advocate with Post-Millenialists and Partial Preterists, by arguing that their eschatological position does not necessarily require allegorizing the time period of The Millennium.

There is a common misnomer out there that believing in a Literal Thousand Years means believing The Kingdom of that time period ends at some point, which is why you occasionally see an argument that the Nicene-Constantinople Creed's quotation of Gabriel in Luke 1:33 somehow was specifically a refutation of Pre-Mil.  However the only thing Revelation 20 explicitly says happens exactly a Thousand years later is Satan being let out of the Abyss, he then stirs up Gog and Magog and they besiege the "Beloved City" however their siege fails.  Revelation 21 and 22 are about the separation between the spiritual and physical finally completely ending, not about a completely New Messianic Kingdom starting.  The Greek word translated New in those chapters isn't Neo which I wrote an entire post on already.

Now at face value it seems like everything from Satan being let loose to the White Throne Judgment happens pretty rapidly.  But that's because we're reading a summary, maybe it will happen quickly but it could theoretically all take decades, centuries or maybe even another thousand years to play out.

So Post-Mils and Partial Preterists do have the option to consider identifying The Millennium with an exactly one Thousand year time period of recorded Church Age history, and placing us right now in Revelation 20:9 with the "Camp of the saints" being understood spiritually rather then tied to a specific geographical location.

And in that context I have a few hypothetical models to propose, because even though I'm not Post-Mil currently I have considered it.  

But first I want to address how most of these models implicitly identity the "Hoards of Gog and Magog" with principally the Turks and perhaps by extension other Altaic peoples like the Mongols.  This part of Revelation is among the Bible passages that have been abused by White Supremacists so I want to make myself clear, IF any of these interpretations are true it's about the Turks having a specific role to play in God's plan, however I believe in Universal Salvation meaning all of them are still Children of Adam who God Loves as much as everyone else.  So do not use this material to justify being Racist.

Now on to the hypothetical Millenniums.

I place the end of the 70 Weeks of Daniel in 37 AD one Week following the Crucifixion, Resurrection and Pentecost in 30 AD, which I argued for on this blog years ago.  Low and behold 1037 AD is the beginning of the reign of Tughril the first Sultan of the Seljuk Turks.  It was under his leadership that the Turks first moved south of the Gates of Alexander into Persia.

However it was under Alp Arslan and Malik Shah that the Seljuk Turks first came into conflict with "Christendom" around 1070 AD.  The significance of 1070 minus 1000 I shouldn't need to explain to Preterists.

In 1135 AD a thousand years after the defeat of the Bar-Kochba Revolt Seljuk Ruler Imad Al-Din Zengi crossed the Eurphrates River.  1137-1144 contained other notable events.

Later in the early 1300s a Thousand years after Constantine is when the Ottomans under Osman I and Orhan and other Turkic Tribes conquered deeper into Western Anatolia capturing what had long been core Byzantine territories including the cities that housed the 7 Churches of Revelation 2-3. They besieged Nicaea just a few years after the one thousand year anniversary of the Council of Nicaea.  324 was the year Constantine defeated Licinius and began the founding of Constantinople, 1317-1326 was the Seige of Bursa which secured Ottoman control of most of Asia Minor with only the core area around Constantinople still free.

The decade from 380-390 is when Theodosius I firmly established Christianity as the State Religion of the Roman Empire.  Ticonius published the first real Post-Millennial interpretation of Revelation in 380.  A thousand years later 1380-1390 would be when the Ottoman Empire really began entering Europe.

The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans was in 1454 BC, about 3 years following the Millennial Anniversary of the Council of Chalcedon.

There isn't a single event in the reign of Emperor Justinian that doesn't have it's Millennial anniversary during the reign of Suliman The Magnificent.  I actually already made a post on arguing for Bible Prophecy being fulfilled in the time of Justinian, that was mainly in the context of playing Devil's Advocate with Historicism, but it can be adapted for this purpose.

Some people have an odd fixation on viewing Bible Prophecy from an Anglo-Centric POV.  Interestingly the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons was pretty complete by 640.  One thousand years later and 1640 is when the English Civil War starts.

How much Patristic support is there for Preterism?

I ultimately don't actually care what the "Early Church Fathers" thought on anything.  I'm true Sola Sciprtura, and my exact views on Bible Prophecy are not 100% in agreement with any interpretation known to have been expressed in antiquity.  If aspects of what I believe genuinely didn't exist before a guy named Darby in the 1800s then so be it, all I care about is what conclusions the Scriptures lead me to.

But preterists both full and partial, amillenials and post-millennialism in all it's forms don't have that option even when they are nominally protestant.  If the history of The Church is the fulfillment of the Thousand Years refereed to in Revelation 20 and/or New Jerusalem, then we should have known that from the start.

I don't necessarily expect the reverse to be true though, the whole point of Pre-Millennialism is that we consider the age of Grace to be one where the follows of the true God are just as capable of getting things wrong as we were before, even at the earliest stage, The Apostles themselves kept misunderstanding Jesus while He was right there correcting them.

So I'm not even making this investigation because I think it could be the ultimate death nail to other views.  It's because I care about history being represented properly, and because I do respect the early Christians, even the ones I most disagree with, and so don't want to see their views misrepresented for the sake of an ideological argument by anyone on my side or agaisnt it.

First let's talk about what does not inherently make someone a Preterist in their view of Revelation.

1. Referring to what happened in 70 AD as being foretold by Jesus.

There seems to be some straw-manning of Futurism going around where some think any acknowledgment that Jesus "not one stone" comment refers to 70 AD is incompatible with Futurism.  When the truth is I've rarely seen that connection denied by even the most extreme futurists.

First of all I don't think we even need the three "Olivte Discourse" chapters to find Jesus foretelling it, in Luke especially he refers to it a lot.  I personally see 70 AD in more prophecies then most of my fellow Futurists.  Of the the three chapters in question I only have a definitively futurist stance on Matthew 24.  However there is also a position called Middleism which takes a Preterist view of Matthew 24 but a Futurist view of Revelation, these terms didn't exist in antiquity but it looks to me like that position was a common one in the Early Church.

2, Viewing the 70th Week of Daniel as already fulfilled.

Lots of Post-Trib Futurists and Historicists (who are generally Pre-Mill and so more akin to Futurism on what I think matters most then Preterism) also view the 70th Week as already fulfilled.  My own view is that the 70th week was 30-37 AD, so on that issue I'm more preterist then the people who obsess over 70 AD.

Basically those are the two most prominent examples of a more general fact that what someone says about other prophecies proves nothing about their view of Revelation.

Yes your view of Revelation will effect how you view other things because it's referencing older Prophets all the time.  But there is no consistency even within a basic view to what conclusions believers will make from those connections.  In my own view sometimes Revelation is claiming to be what that older Prophecy was actually about all along, but sometimes it's more like history repeating itself and/or making an analogy to help us understand what it's talking about.

3. Identifying The Church as now the true Israel in some capacity.

Like the 70th Week example it seems a lot of people opposing Futurism treat it as if Pre-Trib Dispensationalism is the only form Futurism comes in.  Post-Tribbers pretty much all take this view in some way, and I as a form of Mid-Trib hold a position between the extreme Dispensationalism of Chuck Missler and the extreme conflation of Post-Tribers.

There are multiple non Dispensational views on how The Church and Israel relate.  Two-House theology is predicated on specifically equating The Church or at least the "Gentile" Church with Ephraim.  Mormonism is actually based on a form of that view but it's also popular in the Hebrew Roots/Torah Observant movements.

Rob Skiba likes to call "Replacement Theology" a straw man, he says the Dispensationalists are the true Replacement theologists.  He stresses how even in The Torah citizenship in the Nation of Israel was not predicated solely on bloodlines, people not biologically descended from Jacob or even Abraham could be counted in as long as they got Circumcised and kept the Torah.  To him it's about us being the continuation of Israel.

But that's not a Strawman when applied to 70 AD Preterism.  I was recently watching a Partial Preterist's video on Revelation 11 and the Two Witnesses and he made it explicitly clear, God divorced one wife to replace her with another, there will be no redemption for the divorced wife.  This view is known as Supersessionism.  And make no mistake there are Post-Trib Futurists who also see it that way not Rob Skiba's way.  And the sad thing is that seems to be the way the "Early Church" talked about this issue and is the main reason I have no real desire to agree with them, Anti-Semitism creeped into the Greek Speaking Church very early on.

Even when someone is talking specifically about Revelation some things are simply not as inherently Preterist as Preterists looking for support will assume.

4. Identifying Mystery Babylon with Jerusalem isn't inherently Preterist either.

Chris White is a "Pre-Wrath" Futurist who wrote a book on Babylon being Jerusalem, and he was willing to do that even though he's just as much of a Dispensational Zionist as the Pre-Tribbers.  When he says he intends nothing Anti-Semitic by it I believe him, he's simply misguided.  Among the openly Anti-Semitic Conspiracy theorists there are people like Texe Marrs who was Post-Trib from what I've read.

This 4th example I kinda didn't need to include because I'm currently aware of no early Patristic support for it, though I certainly could have missed something.  In fact from what I've seen so far Babylon as Rome is the only Mystery Babylon view I've seen among them.  Instead the Anti-Semitism of the Early Church manifested in viewing the "Antichrist" as a Jewish Messiah claimant The Jews will accept.  So literally the polar opposite of the standard modern Preterist view on the bad guys of Revelation.

Now onto specific claims.

A website called Preteristarchive has pages devoted to a number of early fathers where they concede the Futurist stances of some but spend a lot of time engaging in the above distractions and other tactics to mislead people.  It does not have pages for Tertullian or Methodius and wrongly classified Ambrose of Milan and Eusebius as Ante-Nicene.

Froom is the name of a Historicist who wrote a book called The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers that you can find online.  He generally avoids trying to make anyone sound more in agreement with his views then they actually were, instead trying to speculate on why they were sometimes wrong in his view.  His one mistake in that area was claiming Tertullian made a connection he didn't actually make regarding The Temple of God as The Church and the Temple in II Thessalonians 2.  While I don't always agree with him his book was a key source in the research I did for this post.

An interesting thing about the most popular forms of Historicism is during the Pre-Nicene and even early post Nicene era their view on at least The Antichrist would have still been a pretty Futurist one.  None the less there were still things you could believe back then pretty incompatible with proper Historicism.

His book documents pretty well how Pre-Nicaea it was pretty much only the Alexandrians and maybe Victorinus of Potiou who entertained any position other then Pre-Mill on Revelation 20.

Justin Martyr is the oldest definitely known example of anyone referencing The Revelation at all.  Maybe The Didichae had Revelation 12's description of The Dragon in mind when it says "the world deceiver", if so that was a futurist application inserted into what seems like a futurist application of Matthew 24 (it's very possible Matthew was in fact the only NT writing the Didichae used at all).

The Preteristarchive has a page on Justin Martyr, and it takes a lot of things he said out of context to make it seem like he's explicitly rejecting Pre-Mill, but they exist in the context of him debating with a Jew about the Rabbinic Jewish Sabbath Millennium concept.  Today many Dispensationalists and Hebrew Roots types like identifying the Revelation 20 Millennium with that Rabbinic concept, but Justin clearly didn't.  I myself have come to not like defining the Millennium as a "Sabbath" Millennium because 1 Corinthians 15 defined it as a period that isn't a "rest" at all.

They failed however to quote the one and only time Justin explicitly refers to The Revelation.  I shall provide it here.

Dialogue with Trypho 81.4 "And further, there was a certain man with us, whose name was John, one of the apostles of Christ, who prophesied, by a revelation that was made to him, that those who believed in our Christ would dwell a thousand years in Jerusalem; and that thereafter the general, and, in short, the eternal resurrection and judgment of all men would likewise take place."

Pretty clearly and unambiguously a Pre-Mill interpretation.

More then one website and blog trying to paint the Early Church as non Pre-Mil as possible will inevitably concede the Pre-Mill Futurism of Hippolytus of Rome and to some extent also his "mentor" Irenaeus.

The problem with conceding him and trying to paint him as the ONLY one is NOT their alleged connection to John which I feel is overstated and don't care about.  It's that only he actually wrote in depth on Bible Prophecy at all, it was really not a major priority of the surviving writings we have from the Early Church especially Pre-Nicaea.  It mostly comes up when refuting Gnostics and Origen on The Resurrection, in which context it frequently comes across that the "Proto-Orthodox" clearly seem Pre-Mil when stressing a literal Bodily Resurrection.  Only Hippolytus wrote an entire book on specifically the subject of The Antichrist.  And in so doing expressed many views on the matter I no longer and/or never did agree with, but his view on the matter was definitely a Futurist one.  And he was not speaking as if he was massively breaking with the norm, he spoke as if some of his specific details may be new but the gist was basically what everyone already agreed on..

And when the only unambiguous counter example(s) to pre-mill are Origen and some other Alexandrians linked to Origen, then your side is on the shakier ground since he was condemned as  a Heretic at a Synod in the 540s.  He's connected to a lot of Heresy, but none of his earliest critics like Methodius of Olympus ever objected to his Soterology, it was his Pre-Existence of Souls doctrine and how that effected his view of The Resurrection that was the core issue.

I'm not an Origen apologist the way most of my modern fellow Universal Salvation proponents often are, because I know that Soteorlogy was also supported by many others who shared none of Origen's issues, and a few condemned for going in the opposite direction on the literal/allegorical dichotomy.

I actually feel like 70 AD Preterism is far more incompatible with a God of Love who Saves ALL then Futurism, because as I stressed above they are adamant on YHWH's refusal to forgive Israel, they make YHWH's promises to never permanently cast Israel aside into bold faced LIES.

Origen's view of Revelation was probably more Idealist then 70 AD focused Preterism given his approach to Scripture in general.

On both Tertullian and Hippolytus one Amill blog admits they were Pre-Mill but says "not like modern Premillenialism", by which they mainly must mean not being Pre-Trib Dispensationalists.  Hippolytus was clearly Post-Trib on his timing of the Parusia, though he did support the gaps in Daniel 9 and 11 that are today usually typical of Dispensationalism.  I myself even in how I view The Millennium's nature am not like most modern pre-Millers, but my disagreement puts the Patristics I've looked at as closer to them then to me.

Tertullian was influenced by the Montanists and so occasionally viewed with suspicion by later generations of The Church, but still not as much suspicion as Origen.  Again Froom tried to paint him as the one Pre-Nicene father who seemed compatible with his Historicism, and indeed Tertulian is the earliest example I've seen of explicitly identifying Babylon with Rome.  But he also clearly identified The Two Witnesses with Enoch and Elijah.

Eusebius of Caesarea was agaisnt the Millennium but because of that questioned the Canonocity of Revelation altogether. Thing is a lot of writers at this time saw the Diocletian Persecution and it's relief under Constantine as the fulfillment of the future Kingdom happening then not back when The Church was founded.  Constantinople was in turn viewed as the New Jerusalem as much as it was a New Rome.

 Athanasius, Ambrose, Hilary and Jerome all spoke about things like The Antichrist in ways that show a futurist understanding of that issue, even Gregory of Nysaa the one time he mentioned The Antichrist clearly viewed him as yet future.  Both versions of the Nicene Creed rule out at least Full Preterism by clearly defining the Parusia as having not happened yet..  

Aphrahat one of the oldest Syrian Fathers also definitely taught Premillenialism and a Literal Resurrection.  His Eschatology can be considered a from of Historicism, but does not have the Antichrist view typical of Protestant Historicism.

In 380 Ticonius published a Revelation commentary that became the foundation of Post Millenialism as we know it today, and was in turn the basis for Augustine of Hippo's eschatology.

Over the course of the next few centuries the leadership of the Church became increasingly either Post-Mill or not Prophecy concerned at all as now Jesus overthrowing the current world system became no longer desirable to them.  However the Popular literature of this era implies Futurism was still the preferred eschatology of the masses, like the Apocalypse of Pseudo Methodius and other texts related to The Last Roman Emperor tradition.  Meanwhile The Book of The Bee shows that understanding of Prophecy continued to thrive among the "Nestorians" into the 13th Century.

Also identifying The Two Witnesses with Enoch and Elijah seemed pretty universal when they came up all.

Can every argument for applying The Olivite Discourse to 70 AD fit the Bar Kochkba Revolt even better?

My answer is not Luke 21 but definitely Mark 13 and Matthew 24 if they can be interpreted Preteristically at all.

First of all even the Preterist interpretation of "this generation", as I documented when arguing for my late date for Revelation there were indeed eyewitnesses to Jesus still around in the reign of Hadrian.

70 AD Preterists obsess over an argument that a Biblical Generation is 40 years because the wandering in the wilderness was to kill off a generation.  But not all of them actually died, that statement was hyperbole, it was mostly just about the 10 spies who gave the bad report.  Numbers 14:33-24 clarifies it was 40 years because the spy mission was 40 days.  Genesis 6 and the lifespan of Moses support making a Biblical generation up to 120 years.

Matthew 24 is the one I'm most strictly futurist on because of certain details completely unique to it, but rhetorically I shall  keep it in mind here.

With Luke 21 it's unique characteristics are what makes it most applicable to 70 AD.  Only Luke 21 actually uses the name of Jerusalem at all, when foretelling it's desolation which is language borrowed from Jeremiah about the fall to Nebuchadnezzar indicating what happened to Jerusalem then will happen again.

But Luke 21 does NOT contain a statement that this time of trouble is will never be surpassed.

The Bark Kochba revolt did not add anything to the destruction of Jerusalem since this time the Rebels never even had Jerusalem to begin with.  But for Judea as a whole that war was far more catastrophic and destructive then the 66-73 AD war and over a shorter period of time.   Many historians consider this the real beginning of the Diaspora.  It is only the fact that it doesn't have it's own Josephus that makes it less analyzed by historians and scholars and less romanticized by artists and poets.

Luke 21 is about things that happened before the "beginnings of sorrows", Matthew 24 about things that happen after, and Mark 13 about things that happen during.  Meanwhile the second time Matthew and Mark's discourses bring up the issue of False Christs has no parallel in Luke at all.

This is significant because contrary to popular opinion the era leading up to and during the 66-73 AD war was NOT filled with would be Messiahs.  Josephus only ever uses the word Christ when describing what Jesus was called. There were would be prophets, and secular revolutionaries, but no claimed Messiahs.  Jewish prophetic expectations of the time were generally that the Messiah can't come till after Rome has already fallen.

Bar Kochba was the first to ever claim to be the Messiah as a rebel leader, that was his innovation.  And he really was the second person after Jesus to ever truly claim that title at all.  Meanwhile since Preterists don't take literally the stuff involving the Sun, Moon and Stars, maybe Stars falling from heaven is also wordplay on the name of Bar Kochba?  Kukbe is the word used in the Peshita?

The Abomination of Desolation is a very specific phrase, that has connotations more specific then just the etymological meanings of the words used to construct it.  Of the two places where the phrase appears in Daniel the one in chapter 12 is probably what Jesus is revealing to still have at least one more yet future fulfillment.  But it's the context in Daniel 11 that defines it.

There are three or four different Hebrew words that get translated "Abomination" in the KJV, the one used in Daniel is not even related to the one used in Leviticus 18-20 and Ezekiel 40-48.  But more importantly to the topic at hand, the precise one used in Daniel is everywhere it appears a synonym for an Idol or False god, from Deuteronomy 29:17 to 1 Kings 11 to Jeremiah 32:34.

But what makes the Abomination of Desolation special is it's being placed inside The Temple (not near it) by a Pagan ruler who had outlawed their faith.  The history of the Hasmonean revolt was to first century Jews not just the reason behind Hanukkah, it was to them as the Revolutionary War or French Revolution is for modern America and France.  When Jesus used this phrase he knew exactly what imagery he was evoking and so did His audience.

Now I'm open to a more "creative" interpretation of what a Futurist fulfillment of this for Matthew 24 may look like, but that's about redefining what this would mean for the New Testament Church with the help of II Thessalonians 2 just as we redefine a number of Hebrew Bible concepts under the doctrine that now we are The Temple.  If you're going to insist this is about the Judea of that time, then you have to be specific to what that idea meant to those Judeans.

70 AD Preterists bend over backwards coming up with every excuse they can to apply that phrase to something that happened in 70 AD.  They take a passage from the Talmud claiming Titus had sex with a whore on a Torah scroll and sliced open the veil with his sword.  Leaving aside how I doubt Titus would have had the means, motive or opportunity to do that from what the actual eyewitness Historian tells us, even this Talmud passage doesn't call that an Abomination of Desolation or compare it to Antiochus Epiphanes in any way.

The timing is also wrong, by the time Titus was able to anything anywhere near The Temple it was already too late to run.  Jesus speaking of the Abomination of Desolation as an event that begins the time of trouble not occurring at the middle or end of it. That fit Hadrian who's said to have set up the initial Idol in 31 AD sparking the Rebellion even though the full Temple is built after.

Preterists aren't the only ones refusing to distinguish between the Olivet Discourses, there are also Futurists who want to use Luke 21 to say Jerusalem will be surrounded by armies again.

Yes the three discourses are "parallel" in a lot of ways, but the differences are there for a reason and ignoring them because you don't want to think Jesus was foretelling more then one thing is simply not respecting the text.  In the case of Luke it has to do with how this isn't even the only place that Gospel records Jesus talking about the fall of Jerusalem, that is a theme of the entire Gospel in a way it's not in the others.

So plenty of people want to argue that Luke 21:20 is about the same thing as The Abomination of Desolation because Jesus then advises basically the same reaction.  As if there can't be more then one good reason to get out of Dodge.

Remember the OG Abomination of Desolation preceded that Jewish revolt, and since they won that war the city was never surrounded by armies.

One of the oldest examples of Patristic support for viewing the Abomination of Desolation as already re-fulfilled is Jerome applying the term to the Statue of Hadrian set up where The Temple formally stood which was still standing when he wrote his commentary on Matthew.  Jerome may have been off on saying it was specifically over the Holy of Holies, in the Bordeaux Pilgrim the two Statues he saw were separate from the "stone" the Jews anointed which I think may have been where the Ark once rested.  Epiphanes' statue was on the Brazen Altar according to 1 Maccabees 1:54-59.

We even have a secular pagan gentile source on this happening, Cassius Dio.

[69.12.1] At Jerusalem, Hadrian founded a city in place of the one which had been razed to the ground, naming it Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the temple of the [Jewish] god, he raised a new temple to Jupiter. This brought on a war of no slight importance nor of brief duration, 

[69.12.2] for the Jews deemed it intolerable that foreign races should be settled in their city and foreign religious rites planted there. So long, indeed, as Hadrian was close by in Egypt and again in Syria, they remained quiet, save in so far as they purposedly made of poor quality such weapons as they were called upon to furnish, in order that the Romans might reject them and they themselves might thus have the use of them. But when Hadrian went farther away, they openly revolted.

Meanwhile somewhat less reliable sources like the Historia Augusta say Hadrian also banned Circumcision and sacrificed Pigs to this Idol making it echo Antiochus Epiphanes even more.  And like then this caused the war rather then being caused by it.  It seem Pigs were depicted on Coins minted in Aelia Capitolina.

And like in 70 AD the Jewish Christians of Jerusalem did as Jesus advised and fled, becoming the Nazarenes of later generations, some may have went to Mesopotamia and also became among the ancestors of the "Nestorians" or other Syraic Rite sects.

Was Rabbinic Judaism founded by Apostate Christians?

That is a shocking suggestion isn't it?

First of all this is another post where I need to remind people up front that I'm ultimately a Futurist because of how I view Matthew 24, Revelation, the Thessalonian Epistles and 2 Peter 3.  But yet I'm open to Preterist interpretations of many Prophecies most Futurists aren't because I think God has his hand in all eras of Human History.

For this I am returning to the subject of Zechariah 12-14.  In the last post where I brought that up, I mentioned how Preterists have argued Zechariah 13:7-9 including the two thirds being killed detail can apply to the Jewish-Roman War of 66-73 AD.  I disagree with them wanting to make Matthew 24 part of that, but much of Luke 21 can apply.

The only problem with that, which I suspect most Preterists ignore, is that part of what Zachariah 13:7-9 says is that all or most of those who survive will be right with God when it's all over.  And from a Christian perspective that would mean becoming Christians.

Well it is interesting that the sects of Judaism that were most hostile to Early Christians, the Sadducees, Zelots, and Shammai Pharisees, were the ones mostly wiped out by that war.  (there is a theory that some Sadducees went to Arabia and became the Himyar kingdom.)  Rabbinic Judaism basically grew out of the post 70 AD evolution of the Pharisees who followed Hillel.  There are plenty of Christians out there seeking to argue that basically Jesus was a Hillel Pharisee.

Chuck Missler likes to say if you study Acts closely it seems like eventually all the Pharisees became Christians.  Well after 70 AD the Pharisees are all that were left.

Karaite Jews reject the Rabbinic traditions, but they as a community are not an independent descent, they are people who left Rabbinic Judaism in the 10th and 11th Centuries, like how Protastants left The Catholic Church.  Inder the leader ship of an Exilarch who descended from the Rabbinic Exilarchs.

Today a lot of Karaite Jews get along well with Torah Observant Christians.  Yet I once years ago read a rant from a Karaite on a message board basically blaming the Talmud and the Mishna for why so many Jews are becoming Messianic Jews now days.  He pointed out how much of what's said in those traditions imply The Messiah already came and was rejected, and even that this happened around 1-100 AD.

I already talked about the Menahem traditions including the Sefer Zerubabel, which has come to define the Eschatology of Rabbinic Judaism.  How they seem to teach that Messiah Ben-David had already come and is waiting to return, and even imply he'll descend from David's son Nathan.  And the strange emphasis on the Mother of the Messiah.  And I've also had my thoughts on how the Messiah Ben-Joseph tradition could be related to the White Horseman of Revelation 6 and/or The Two Witnesses.

Gamaliel the grandson of Hillel the Elder is mentioned in the New Testament twice.  He appears early in Acts encouraging tolerance of Christians.  And then Saul aka Paul a fellow Benjamite claims to have been mentored by Gamaliel.  There are extra Biblical traditions that say eventually Gamaliel converted to Christianity, these are dismissed by mainstream scholars since the Jewish traditions know no hint of it.  But it's interesting to recall that he and his family were the intellectual leaders of Rabbinic Judaism until the Sanhedrin was dissolved around 600 AD.  And much later Rashi descended from the house of Hillel.

The traditional succession of the Exilarchs (descendants of Zerubabel who were leaders of the Jewish Community in Babylonia) skips right from those mentioned in The Hebrew Bible to a contemporary of Trajan.  Is it possible that large gap could be partly filled by The New Testament?  Both Matthew and Luke's Genealogies trace the family of Joseph and Mary to Zerubabel.  I did a post on the Half Brothers of Jesus, and another on Adiabene, which seem to make it plausible that the Exilarchs that popped up in the Second Century could have descended from the Half Brothers of Jesus.

The Epistles of The New Testament seem to foretell a coming Apostacey, not just in II Thessalonians 2.  Apostacey means leaving the faith, not bad doctrine.  Maybe that isn't limited to the End Times, maybe it foretells many Jewish Christians of the East backsliding back into Rabbinism in the late first and early second centuries?  I see today a major problem of many Hebraic Themed Christian leaders calling themselves Rabbis and acting like Rabbinic interpretations are valid, even though Jesus said "Call no man Rabbi" in the same place he said "Call no man Father" which we love to use against the Catholic Church.  Being Torah observant is good, but over valuing the Rabbis, even though they got a few things right, is dangerous.

But I'm not necessarily saying the majority of these Jewish Believers fell away.   Maybe many who spread The Gospel to Gentile nations simply in time become absorbed into their populations?  Edessa for example was a city with a major Jewish population in the days of Trajan (when Christians were still seen as a sect of Jews by the Romans) and later became a major center of Syraic Christianity later.  Also there are apparently families in Antioch that claim descend from Simon Peter.

Update May 2nd 2017:  Leaders of the Sanhedrin.

I mentioned Gamaliel I up above.  He is traditionally the Nasi of the Sanhedrin till about 50 AD.  Then his son Simeon or Shimon II is from 50-70, some have already theorized he could be Simon the Pharisee of Luke 7.

After 70 AD things get more clouded.  Sometimes no one is listed between Simon II and Gamaliel II.  But often Gamaliel II (the son of Simon II) isn't said to have become Nasi till 80 AD.

Gamaliel II (80-118) is noted for disputing with early Christians.  In fact he seems to be the earliest known example of someone misusing Matthew 5:17 to support legalism.  Perhaps it is under him this Apostacey began?

Update March 27 2018: After reading more on Johanan ben Zakai I'm not longer comfortable with theorizing he's a Biblical John.

Does The Bible talk about the End Times more then the Life of Jesus?

Chuck Missler likes to say it does, calling it.

"a period of time about which the Bible says more than it does about any other period in human history- including the time when Jesus walked the shores of the Sea of Galilee or climbed the mountains of Judea. "

And my being uncomfortable with that implication is perhaps a factor in why, even though I am ultimately a Futurist based on my view of Matthew 24 and Revelation, and Paul's Thessalonian Epistles, and 2 Peter 3.  I'm increasingly becoming sympathetic to Preterist interpretations of many passages where my fellow Futurists aren't fond of Preterist interpretations.  Because I do believe the Death and Resurrection of Jesus is the time period around which The Bible revolves

Not all Preterism is so focused on 70 AD, some say much was fulfilled by within Seven Years of Jesus Crucifixion.  And that is where I am in terms of the 70th Week of Daniel, I don't think it refers to 66-73 AD.  I think it was 30-37 AD or maybe 29-36 AD.  And that Jesus was Crucified at it's beginning or end but NOT the Middle.

Still 70 AD can be viewed as in some senses "close enough" to the time of Jesus, plenty of people lived through both time periods.  And I think Jesus did especially in Luke foretell the events of 70 AD often.

I already made one post on Zechariah 12-14, and how I'm unsure what to think of it but am growing more and more open to it being about 30-70 AD.  And I recently became aware of a new argument for that.

Zechariah 13:7 is quoted by Jesus in Matthew 26:31 and Mark 14:27 as being fulfilled by His arrest.

 Then saith Jesus unto them, "All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, "I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad"."

The following verses of Zechariah 13 are the basis for saying in the End Times two thirds of all Jews will be massacred, probably by The Antichrist.  Preterists have argued this was filled by by how many Jews were killed in the 66-73 AD Jewish-Roman War.  I will object to any claims that 70 AD fulfilled Matthew 24, but as far as Zechariah 12-14 (and much of Luke 21) go, it fits.

And on Daniel 12 I have strong reasons for believing that can apply to the First Century AD also.  As The Book of Revelation defines it's existence as the unsealing of Daniel.  And the Resurrection alluded to is the same one alluded to in Matthew 27:52-43, as those are the only two Resurrection verses that say "many" rather then All.  And I've shown that Daniel 36-45 is about Augustus Caesar.

And my thoughts on Isaiah 19 are also complicated.

I also think some passages usually assumed to be about before The Millennium are actually about after The Millennium.  Like the Gog and Magog invasion.

My view on Modern Israel in Bible Prophecy

I don't believe in traditional Dispensationalism, or Two House Theology, or Catholic and Mainline Protestant understandings of "Replacement Theology".  So what do I think about Modern Israel?

I agree that most of the Bible Prophecies that Dispensationalists and Christian Zionists want to cite as being about 1948 like Isaiah 11:11 are clearly about something far more Supernatural and Messianic, where they return in belief.  However I disagree with Rob Skiba that they are about the Millennium.  I think they are about the New Heaven and New Earth and the descent of New Jerusalem.

Well, Ezekiel 37 is an exception, that is the one directly linked to the Resurrection, so that is possibly about the Millennium, though I think it may be possible it'll take the entire Millennium for all of it to be fully fulfilled.  And then Ezekiel 38 is about what happens between the end of the Millennium and the White Throne Judgment.  And then Ezekiel 40-48 are about the New Heaven and New Earth.

Psalm 48 is about New Jerusalem.  I've already argued that Isaiah 65-66 define themselves as being about the New Heaven and New Earth.  Leviticus 26&Deuteronomy 29 is where Bible Prophecy about the regathering of Israel begins, they I have come to view as not fully finally fulfilled until the descent of New Jerusalem.

I have talked before about how The Millennium is not as Utopic as people are assuming it will be.  For Believers it'll certainly be better then the world is now.  But most of the World will be obeying Jesus out of Fear not Love during this time.  This is where I think Zechariah 14 ends.

The Rothschild involvement in the 1948 birth of modern Israel is grossly overstated by Conspiracy Theorists.  Some of them financially supported it, but they were not the masterminds of it.  And to this day some Rothschilds are still Anti-Zionists.

Anti-Zionist Christians like to say it can only be God doing it if it's blatantly Supernatural.  And when we remind them about Cyrus they dismiss that by saying that God would tell his people through his Prophets if he was going to do it that way.  Well I'm a Continuationist, and the fact is throughout the 19th and early 20th Century many Christians seemed to know the time of Israel's return was approaching, and history vindicated them.

God tells us it was Him who scattered them, even though to terrestrial eyes it was Gentile Nations.  So who says their return can't be done the same way?

The Roman Captivity was very much a repeat of the Babylonian Captivity, right down to events playing out on the same days.  Chad Schafer has been talking a lot about Egypt's overlooked significance to the Roman Captivity, well Egypt was very vital to the Babylonian Captivity as well.  Jeremiah tells us that many Jews went to Egypt after Jerusalem fell, and that is part of why Egypt was carried away into Captivity by Babylon.

So it makes sense that the Return from the Roman Captivity would be very similar to the return from the Babylonian Captivity.  Truman however was not the Cyrus of 1948 like he sought to claim to be, he had nothing to do with making it happen.  Great Britain was in the role of Cyrus, and it's King at this time interestingly had Arthur in his full name.  Great Britain cemented their status as a modern successor to Rome when they defeated Napoleon and erected the Wellington Arch.  Just as Cyrus had taken the throne of Nebuchadnezzar.

However another layer of Typology is that I see the Seven Years King David ruled from Hebron as a type of the Seven Year period over which much of Revelation will play out.  And the time David Ruled from Zion and Jerusalem a type of the Millennium, and the early Reign of Solomon, when he was doing well, as a type of the full Messianic Kingdom.  In which context it's interesting to remember that before that was the reign of King Saul.

Could Modern Israel's destiny be to become the House of Saul to the Returning Jesus's David?  It's interesting that the current Prime Minister is named Benjamin, after Saul's Tribe.  I also alluded to reasons based on Jeremiah 6 for associating modern Israel with Benjamin in a Revelation 12 theory I came to last year.  In which case it's interesting that Ishbosheth ruled in the Trans-Jordan, near Mount Hermon.

The secular Capital of Modern Israel is Tel-Aviv.  The Ancient City that Tel-Aviv is adjacent to is Joppa/Jaffa.  Acts 9:32-28 refers to Lydda as being nigh to Joppa.  Lydda is in the Hebrew Bible Lod which is identified as a town of Benjamin (1 Chronicles 8:12; Ezra 2:33; Nehemiah 7:37; 11:35).

It's interesting that most Ahskenazim (and to a lesser extend many Shephardi) families that claim descent from David, do so via Rashi who did so via Hillel The Elder.  Hillel claimed through his mother descent from David's son Shaphatiah by Avital.  But Tribal Identity was traditionally determined paternally, and Hillel's father was a Benjamite, since he was born in Babylonia he may have come from the same Benjamite clan that Esther and Mordecai did, which came from a relative of Saul.  Gamaliel was Hillel's grandson, Paul claimed to have studied at his feet, and we know Paul was a Benjamite and originally a namesake of Saul, could Paul have been a relative of the House of Hillel?

The Khazar myth about where the Ashkenazim come from can be easily debunked, like in this video by Chris White.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDWUZ6EqWHc

[Update: or this one from Casual Historian.]

There is a small truth to it in that yes some Khazars intermarried into Jewish families, so many Ashekanazim may have some Khazars in their ancestry, but that does not contradict also descending from Jews who were in Israel at the Time of Christ.

Some like Britam and Veilikovsky (in Beyond the Mountains of Darkness) have sought to claim Lost Tribes descent for the Khazars.  But I find it more interesting that Benjamin had a son named Rosh (Genesis 46:21), and that the name of Rosh can also be linked to the same region as Meshech and Tubal, which is the land where the Khazars emerged, between the Black and Caspian Seas (something Chris White has also talked about).

I obviously disagree with the aspects of Velikovsky's argument that involve reinterpreting where Assyria first took them, I've built much of this Blog on that they were taken to parts of eastern Iraq and northern Iran.  But it's also possible that just as some remnants of the northern Tribes existed in Judah, that some Benjamites might have been among those deported when Samaria fell.  When the division first happened the border was mostly Benjamite territory on Judah's side.  But later there were times were Israel was winning in it's wars with Judah and so the border moved further south.

There is at least one website out there seeking to argue the Spanish came from Benjamin.  What they wound up making is a strong argument for the Shaphardi Jews coming chiefly from Benjamin, but Shaphardi Jews are genetically distinct from the gentile populations of Spain in-spite of how much they may look the same.  Another connection between Benjamin and Spain is Paul himself who in Romans expressed a desire to go to Spain which later traditions say he did.

The term Mizrahi Jews refers to Jewish communities of Iraq/Persia, and the Mountain Jews also associated with the same region as the Khazzars and Rosh.  Also the Oral Traditions of the Mountain Jews claim they came specifically from Jerusalem.

As far as the Jewish communities of Iraq/Persia go, we know the family of Esther and Mordechai dwelt there coming from a relative of Saul.  And that the Descendants of Hillel were based there during the time the Babylonian Talmud was composed.  The Exilarchs (traditionally descendants of David via Zerubabel) were also in Iraq for a long time.  But the Rabbinic Jewish traditions about them skip right form when the TNAK ends to the time of Hadrian, maybe their claimed David descent was not unlike Hillel's.  At any-rate most families today claiming descent from the Exilarchs do so via a lot of intermingling with the descent from Rashi.

Temani/Yemenite Jews I theorize mainly descend from Simeon (probably from the clan of Jamin) Simeon and Levi were both destined to be scattered among the other tribes.

I also see a poetic logic in the early Jewish Communities of Rome (who existed at least as early as the first Pentacost) coming from Benjamin.   Given the wolf association of both.

I think some remnant of Judah may exist among them.  But mostly I think Judah went to Africa after 70 AD.  Though I also think the descendants of the half-siblings of Jesus, and of Jesus Apostles, inevitably became absorbed into gentile populations.

David promised Johnathon Ben Saul that his seed would be preserved.  And we see him keep that later when he spared Johnathon's son Mephibosheth from the killing of descendants of Saul done to appease the Gibeonites.  Often such promises correlate to that line having a role to play in Eschatology.

Benjamin was the only son born in the Promised Land.  Maybe that is a reason for it to make sense he would be the only one who's Nation at the time of the Regathering would be already in Israel.

Zechariah 12-14, I think may need some serious re-evaluation

First thing's first, all three of these chapters are one big Prophecy.  The modern chapter divisions weren't in the original texts, chapter 12 begins with the terminology that indicates a new Prophecy is starting and that's the last time such terminology appears in Zechariah

I'm a Futurist in my overall view of Bible Prophecy because I'm Pre-Millennial, I reject the Day=Year theory, and view the Seals, Trumpets and Bowls of Revelation as affiliated with a seven year period of time the proceeds the start of the Millennium.

However there are certain prophecies I'm willing to entertain a Preterist or Post-Millennial interpretation of over the traditional Futurist ones.  But Matthew 24 and the Thessalonian Epistles are not among those.

The Pastor who I do not like to name did a sermon on Zechariah 12 where even though he too is a Futurist over all, he argued that Zechariah 12 is about the time of Christ.  The allusions to Jerusalem being attacked he said are only hypothetical and that the mourning is of Jesus, because The Gospels do record many people mourning him.

I do not want to link to this sermon or promote him because of the hateful rhetoric he preaches elsewhere, but over all his argument was fairly convincing.  But he didn't mention how 13 and 14 are still the same prophecy, the beginning of 14 is in no way hypothetical in it's talk about Jerusalem being under siege.

He didn't mention in that Sermon what I've read about recently of how Hadad-Rimmon is thought to allude to a myth about Baal Hadad dying and being mourned, like the myth recorded in the Ugarit Baal cycle.  Generally Christians reject this view, but I think it's possible that God could have been talking about the mourning for Jesus and comparing it to a pagan custom of mourning a dying god in a way that is derogatory to the pagan deity.

Or maybe one could argue the actual Hebrew meaning of Hadad or Adad and Rimmon (Pomegranate) could work as a title of Christ.

Many Jews believe it is the mourning of Josiah this future mourning is being compared to.  Since Kings often had more then one name, that's possible.

Many including myself in the past have overlooked the detail of the beginning of Zechariah 14 that the Siege of Jerusalem recorded there does result in a captivity, it's not thwarted.  And since Zechariah wrote this down after the Babylonian captivity, I feel the opening of Zechariah 14 makes the most sense to view as being about 70 AD.

Now critics might insist that "All Nations" gathered against Jerusalem is not literally fulfilled in 70 AD.  In certain contexts what I mean when I say I take The Bible literally would not exclude hyperbolic or exaggerative language.  Rome did have help from many allied and client kingdoms.  Including a controversial claim that the Nubian Queen at the time sent troops to help Rome put down this revolt.

The thing I've come to accept that many of my fellows Futurists do not. Is that the part of Revelation about before the Millennium starts, chapters 6-19, feature no siege of Jerusalem, either a successful or a failed one.  Not unless you think Babylon is Jerusalem, but I refute that in my Great City post and my initial Mystery Babylon post.  The gathering at Armageddon is to march on Jesus at his return, not a City, and I don't think Jerusalem is where he will be till after Chapter 19 is over.

The only Siege of Jerusalem in Revelation is the Gog and Magog invasion after The Millennium.  But that is entirely thwarted, there will be no captivity there.

Being Trodden under Foot of the Gentiles in Chapter 11 (that I feel we need Luke 21 and Romans 9-11 to full understand) could imply a siege happens before the seven years starts, but that's speculative.  It can be viewed as still Trodden Under Foot from the 70 AD siege, due to the Muslim presence there.

It is possible that Zechariah jumps from 70 AD to the End Times between 14:2 and 14:3.  But it sounds immediate, either way verses 3 and up is the most difficult part for a Preterist interpretation of this Prophecy.

I'm not sure entirely what to think yet.  But I think many assumptions we tend to make about this Prophecy are wrong and more research needs to be done into it.

Middleism

Is a school of Eschatological thought I've recently been made aware of.

The description of it given to me is that they hold a Futurist view of Revelation and a Preterist view of Matthew 24.

So on Revelation we agree basically, that's good.

I've already argued against Preterist views of Matthew 24 in previous posts with the Preterism, 70 AD and Matthew 24 labels.

I assume they must also be Preterist on the other Olivte Discourse chapters, since Matthew's is literally the most difficult to make a Preterist interpretation work.  Much of Luke 21 I believe is about 70 AD.  At the same time Luke has a clear tie in to Revelation 11 with the part about Jerusalem being trodden under foot of The Gentiles.

I'm not sure what their views on 1 Thessalonians 4 and II Thessalonians 2 would be.  I have argued before they are essentially Paul's commentary on Matthew 24.

So the only things I should need to say specific to Middleism is how to prove with Scripture that Matthew 24 correlates to things in Revelation.  Since I've before criticized connecting the Four Horsemen to the "Non Signs" and gone back and forth on how if at all I feel the Matthew 24 Abomination of Desolation statement ties into Revelation 13.  I'm perhaps less able to do that then other Futurists.

But I do believe Matthew 24:14's statement about the Gospel being Preached to the whole world probably ties into Revelation 14.

Also Matthew 24 and Revelation are the only parts of Scripture that use the specific phrase "Great Tribulation" in Revelation 7 it's used of the multitude that is clearly the same multitude of martyrs seen in the Fifth Seal.  They all are Christian martyrs not just of a specific time period which is what puts me in conflict even with most Futurists.  As long as Christians are still being martyred (they are in most of the world, we just have it easy in the West) the Great Tribulation isn't over.

And I believe the Last Trumpet is the Seventh Trumpet.

And I believe the "Sign of the Son of Man" refers to either the Ark of the Covenant being seen in Heaven in Revelation 11 or to the signs of Revelation 12 which I believe will literally be seen in the Heavens before the Rapture.

And I believe the Son of Man coming on a Cloud is fulfilled in Revelation 14.

P.S.  Looking back on my earlier post about the Eschatological views of those who reject Paul as a False Prophet.   They were essentially a form of Middleism, believing Matthew 24 was a warning about Paul basically, but seemingly still treating Revelation as yet future.

UFO Activity and Israel

In 2 Kings 6:17 Elisha prayed to God and He briefly allowed his servant to see beyond our normal 3 dimensional perception and glimpse the Heavenly armies that were there to fight for Israel.  Note that Israel was not in obedience at this time, this was the Northern Kingdom.

Daniel 10 likewise shows us that political upheavals in the Terrestrial realm seem to have corresponding conflicts in the Heavenly realm.  And tells us Michael fights to defend Israel.  See also Ephesians 6.

In the Apocryphal Second Maccabees Chapter 5 we are told that before Antiochus Epiphanes attacked Jerusalem, chariots were seen for 40 days fighting in the heavens above the City. Daniel 8 does seem to also imply heavenly warfare going on at this time.  But 2 Maccabees is less reliable then 1 Maccabees, for example I don't know if this was before his first or second sacking of Jerusalem since 2 Maccabees seems to merge the two together.  The second one is what resulted in the Abomination of Desolation in Kislev 167 BC.  1 Maccabees 1 and Josephus Antiquities of The Jews Book 15 Chapter 5 makes clear there were two attacks but the first was over 2 years earlier and was relevantly bloodless.

In Wars of The Jews Book 6 Chapter 5 Section 3, Josephus informs us of similar visions seen in the heavens before the War started in 66 AD.

Besides these, a few days after that feast, on the one and twentieth day of the month Artemisius, [Jyar,] a certain prodigious and incredible phenomenon appeared: I suppose the account of it would seem to be a fable, were it not related by those that saw it, and were not the events that followed it of so considerable a nature as to deserve such signals; for, before sun-setting, chariots and troops of soldiers in their armor were seen running about among the clouds, and surrounding of cities. 

Thing is the events he describes both before and after this I have reasons for suspecting actually happened in 30 AD the year of the Crucifixion/Resurrection and Birth of The Church.  Either way important dates in Israel's History. 

If you look at a Time-Line of Early modern UFO Sightings, and a Time-Line of the development of modern Israel, you'll see a lot of correlations between key milestone events.  A third Timeline to consider is the biography of Aleister Crowley.

The decade of the first Zionist Congress was the 1890s, same decade when people were seeing Jules Verne style Airships.  1909 in which Airship sightings occurred in New Zealand was the same year Tel-Aviv, the secular Capital of modern Israel was founded.

1917 was the year the Sun Miracle was performed in Fatima, and of the Balfur Declaration.  In occult History that is the year Aleister Crowley performed the Alamantra Working.  And in the following year he conjured Lam, the entity that resembled the Greys.

Crowley also performed some key rituals in 1923, same year as the British Mandate for Palestine.

1933 was the year of the Transfer Agreement, and the year of some key UFO sightings also.  There were also a lot of interesting UFO occurrences during WWII.

1947 was the year of the Babalon Working, and right after that was Roswell and the other events that are considered the full beginning of the modern UFO craze.  1947-49 also marks the birth of modern Israel.

"Those UFOs weren't seen in Israel" you might object.  We're dealing with a conflict that is actually going on beyond our 4 Dimensional perception, but spilling over into it.  At any-rate there have been UFO sightings in Israel, I remember just last year or the year before there was a big buzz about one sighted just over the Temple Mount.

Prophecy in The News had done an episode years ago on correlations between UFO Flaps and Israel's Wars.  They didn't cover much of what I laid out above, but did cover stuff about later wars I don't feel like getting into myself.

Hopefully those stay up on Youtube.  It was called Israel's Wars and UFO Flaps.

Nothing anyone predicted happened during the September 2015 Blood Moon.  But my brother did catch a UFO taking pictures of it.  And moves were made towards dividing Israel during September's UN Meetings.

In the study I did on This Generation Shall Not Pass, I mentioned 120 years as a potential number to use, with one Biblical reason for it being Genesis 6.  Now one may object "the context of this is about the Nephilim Activity and The Flood".  Well Jesus said "as the days of Noah were" so shall His return be.  And many have seen that as among their reasons for connecting the modern UFO Phenomenon with Fallen Angels.

Right now I'm leaning towards, though am by no means predicting, a 2030-2037 End Times model, with a 2033 Rapture.  2037 is 120 years from 1917, and 70 years from the Six Days War.  And 2030 would be Two Thousand Years from The Crucifixion.

But remember the Generation is a maximum time limit, not an exact calculation.

Preterists and Pre-Tirbulationists

I find it amusing when I see people who hold a Preterist and/or Amillenial view of Revelation/Matthew 24 joining the trendy chorus of Post-Tribbers in mocking Pre-Trib and going on about how there is no mass vanishing in The Bible.

However the basic fallacy that lies behind the Secret Rapture doctrine, That Christ's Coming described in 1 Thessalonians 4 could go mostly unnoticed by The World, that he won't be seen by every single living person, is needed for Preterism to work too.

But Pre-Tribbers at least see it as a world wide event, while Preterists mostly think what was visible to the world was only seen in Jerusalem.  Citing Supernatural events described by Josephus and Tacitus and The Yossipon (I could do a whole post on Yossipon if an English version was available to the masses).

Preterism views the 70th Week of Daniel as the 7 years of the First Jewish-Roman War.  With the Abomination of Desolation event happening in it's 4th year in 70 AD.  One Preterist website I was reading cited historical references to what they view as the "Spiritual Resurrection" (reading this website made me realize how Gnostic full preterism tends to be) fulfilling 1 Corinthians 15, places them in 66 AD.

And some will add an event Cassius Dio and Suetonius record Nero seeing in Greece.  This must have been earlier then 70 AD.

One event they refereed to happened on Pentecost 66 AD, at the start of the War.  So they're even specifically Pre-Trib in timing.

And this same Website refereed to multiple returns of Jesus during the 60s and 70s AD.  So they don't even agree with those Post-Tribbers on only one "Second Coming".

All those three basic Biblical points of contention they are with Pre-Trib on more then any other Futurist model.  All they share with Post-Trib is Replacement theology.  And that makes no sense, all Futurists who believe in Two Comings believe it's because he has two covenant people to come back for.  These Preterists have Jesus doing all this back and forth for not much of a reason at all.

On the subject of the Pentecost incident recorded by Josephus, Tacitus and Yossipon (the latter two are merely adapting Josephus to suit their own agendas so no they aren't independent witnesses).

Josephus The Wars of the Jews 6.5.3.

"Moreover, at that feast which we call Pentecost, as the priests were going by night into the inner [court of the temple,] as their custom was, to perform their sacred ministrations, they said that, in the first place, they felt a quaking, and heard a great noise, and after that they heard a sound as of a great multitude, saying, "Let us remove hence.""

Tacitus

 “The doors of the holy place abruptly opened, a superhuman voice was heard to declare that the gods were leaving it, and in the same instant came the rushing tumult of their departure.”

Sepher Yosippon, Trans. Dr. Steven Bowman, Ch. 87, Burning of the Temple, cited in Edward E. Stevens, First Century Events in Chronological Order: From the Birth of Christ to the Destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, (Pre-publication manuscript, 2008), 59-60.

  “When the holiday of Shavouth came in those days, during the night the priests heard within the Temple something like the sound of men walking, the sound of many men’s marching feet walking within the Temple, and a terrible and mighty voice was heard speaking, ‘Let’s go and leave this House.’”

 This doesn't seem like a Resurrection to me, but the divine presence leaving The Temple.  Josephus does not claim to have been an eyewitness to this event.  He was near Jerusalem but not in her at the time.  The Talmud says the Door of The Temple suddenly flew open 40 years before The Temple was destroyed, same year I believe Jesus was Crucified.  Maybe Josephus had deliberately changed or been mislead on when this happened.  Maybe this is the divine presence of The Holy Spirit leaving the Temple made of Stone and entering The Body of Christ on the Pentecost of 30 AD.  After the Veil was Torn.

In this same account, during the Feast of Unleavened Bread before this Pentecost Josephus says.

Moreover, the eastern gate of the inner [court of the] temple, which was of brass, and vastly heavy, and had been with difficulty shut by twenty men, and rested upon a basis armed with iron, and had bolts fastened very deep into the firm floor, which was there made of one entire stone, was seen to be opened of its own accord about the sixth hour of the night. Now those that kept watch in the temple came hereupon running to the captain of the temple, and told him of it; who then came up thither, and not without great difficulty was able to shut the gate again.

Before this it also talked about a strange Light in the Temple at the ninth hour, and a heifer giving birth to a Lamb.  Both signs that were originally interpreted as positive things but that Josephus insists the learned men knew were signs of disaster.

In Jerome's commentary on Matthew he repeatedly mentions differences that Gospel has in the version used by a sect of Jewish Christians (who's over all views he may or may not be misrepresenting) he called the Nazarenes or Ebonites.  When discussing Matthew 27:51 he says this Gospel claimed the lintel of The Temple was broken and split.

The Talmud actually claims the Veil was Torn because Titus slashed it with his Sword, in a passage Preterists love to quote as proving he committed an Abomination of Desolation.  So there is a precedent for the concept that some people wanted to move things that happened to the Temple in 30 AD up to 70 AD.

A theory about the Death of James The Just, The brother of Jesus

According to a passage found in existing manuscripts of Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews, (xx.9) "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" met his death after the death of the procurator Porcius Festus, yet before Lucceius Albinus took office (Antiquities 20,9) — which has been dated to 62 A.D.. The High Priest Hanan ben Hanan (Anani Ananus in Latin) took advantage of this lack of imperial oversight to assemble a Sanhedrin (although the correct translation of the Greek synhedion kriton is "a council of judges"), who condemned James "on the charge of breaking the law," then had him executed by stoning. Josephus reports that Hanan's act was widely viewed as little more than judicial murder and offended a number of "those who were considered the most fair-minded people in the City, and strict in their observance of the Law," who went as far as meeting Albinus as he entered the province to petition him about the matter. In response, King Agrippa II replaced Ananus with Jesus son of Damneus.

But early Christian tradition (recounted in Hegesippus as related by Eusebius) says James was thrown off the Temple in 66-70 AD.  Simeon becoming the second Bishop of Jerusalem is consistently dated to that time. Later post Constantine Christian historians tried awkwardly to reconcile these accounts.

Also, some skeptics of the Historicity of Jesus insist that "who was called Christ" is a latter addition not in Jospehus's original.  But the majority of legitimate scholars reject that.

However, a poster on IMDB who's username is austenw (who doesn't view The Bible to be inerrant) has an interesting theory that it's the name of James that was added latter.

 it's a matter of Greek grammar; the sentence reads:

    "Ananus ...brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was named Christ - James his name - and some others;"

In this quotation, blue = nominative (subject); red = accusative (object), green = genitive (possessive), purple = dative (a difficult one to define, but can be a bit like possessive).

Crucially, the words "his name, James" in the nominative, does not fit into the architecture of the sentence; it could be removed without altering the grammar whatsoever, between the two accusatives "the brother" and "some others".

More importantly, however, the "traditional" theory - that the name James is original and the reference to Jesus is the interpolation - simply can't be correct, because were this to be so, then "James" would have had to have originally been in the accusative, or else he wouldn't have been knit into the architecture of the sentence at all, and the "[was] his name" would have been entirely redundant. This means that the supposed interpolator would have had to go to the trouble of changing a perfectly acceptable accusative case for "James" to the nominative case, and adding "his name", and for no reason whatsoever. Why bother to do this, when he could simply have added the clause "the brother (accusative).. etc", after the name?

However, if "James [was] his name" was originally a marginal note - written in the nominative, playing no grammatical part within the sentence - all makes sense. A later scribe included the marginal note, verbatim, in the only place he could - after the words "the brother of Jesus called Christ" - since nowhere else would have done.

 So basically that would mean it was possibly another Brother of Jesus (not named by Josephus) who was stoned in 62 A.D.  But someone leaving a marginal note later assumed it was the most famous of them.

Two of Jesus half brothers are known to have served as Bishop of Jerusalem. first James from the beginning of the Church until whenever he died. Then Simon from around 69 (Traditions agree he became Bishop just before the Destruction of the Second Temple) till 107 A.D.

We don't know much about Joses or Jude however.  Jude we know had later descendants, two grandchildren who were alive during the reign of Domitian, and Judah Kyriakos who was the last Jewish Bishop of Jerusalem. Though the start of his period as bishop of Jerusalem is not known, Judah is said to have lived beyond the Bar Kokhba revolt (132-136), up to about the eleventh year of Antoninus Pius (148 A.D.) though Marcus was appointed bishop of Aelia Capitolina in 135 by the Metropolitan of Caesarea.

Matthew 27:56 refers to some of the Women at the Cross when Jesus was crucified.  "Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee's children."  Mark 15:40-161 refers to the same first two women, but the third is simply a woman named Salome, (the only time that name is used in the New Testament).  Luke doesn't name the women at all.  John's Gospel in chapter 19 alone informs us clearly that Mary the Mother of Jesus was there.

Joses is a shortened form of Joseph.  The only other Joseph refereed to as Joses in The Gospels is the half-brother of Jesus (and an ancestor of Jesus in Luke's genealogy).  At face value John's Gospel is the only one that obviously tells us the Mother of Jesus was among those women.  John also seems to tell us she had a Sister.  I think it's possible that Sister, Salome from Mark's account, and the Mother of Zebedee's children are all the same individual.

I think in Matthew and Mark, the Mary mother of James and Joses is the same as the Mother of Jesus, but why is she not refereed to as such?  Maybe because of the events of Matthew 12-13 and Mark 6 the narrative voice ceases to refer to Jesus biological relatives as such after he effectively temporarily disowns them.

Why name only two of her four other Sons?  Who knows, but in Mark later references to clearly the same Woman refer to only one.  James and Joses are the two oldest in the list of Jesus brothers.

As far as the more popular view of making the mother of James and Joses the same as Mary the Wife of Cleophas/Clopas.  Cleophas/Clopas I feel is likely the disciple (probably one of the 70 but not one of the 12) Cleopas from Luke 14, the Road to Emmaus.  He's probably the same generation as the 12.

That view conflicts with making this person the same as the Alpheaus who is the father of the James and Jude among the 12.  Cleopas being a parent of any among the 12 is unlikely.  The tradition making Clopas the brother of Joseph has it's origin among those early fathers seeking to deny the siblings of Jesus were of Mary.

Certain authors devising alternative history theories have sought to say that Joseph of Arimathea was an uncle of Jesus, and one that he was the same person as James the half-brother of Jesus.  Logically it would make more sense if you want to make him a half-brother of Jesus to go with Joses.

Joseph of Arimathea is introduced in essentially the same narrative that deals with the Women at the Cross.  I think it would make sense to use the full name when referring to him and the shortened form when referring to someone else as a relative of him.  The last verse of Mark 15 refers to Mary only as the mother of Joses while finishing the narrative of Joseph of Airmathea arranging the burial of Jesus.

There is also the fact that this responsibility Joseph of Arimathea takes, burying the body, is one that in Jewish Custom belonged to the nearest living relatives.

The only problem with that theory is that the traditional assumption is none of Jesus brothers became Believers till after the Resurrection.  We know none were when John 7 occurs, half a year before the Crucifixion.  That fact refutes any theory reliant on making any of the 12 Disciples the same as any of the people refereed to as his siblings (a strategy used by some both for and against them being children of Mary).

But a lot can change in 6-7 months.

He could have moved from Nazareth to Arimathea (I agree with the theory that NT Arimathea is one of the OT Ramah or Ramaths, or perhaps Ramoth which was in Issachar in 1 Chronicles 6:73 and thus near the traditional site of Nazareth), sometime after their father died. But it's also possible Arimathea was an epithet not meant to identify a city, there is a lot of speculation involved here.

If Joses was Joseph of Airmathea then he was in the Sanhedrin.  Antiquities 20.9 does not explicitly say this half brother of Jesus was a Sanhedrin member, but the over all theme of Josephus in depicting these murders leading up to 70 AD is about people that were prominent but against doing a violent revolution against Rome.

Catholics like to argue the references to these four brothers and unnamed sisters are using the words loosely, referring to cousins or close friends or something.  The Greek words for brother and sister are sometimes used in similar senses, I've seen interesting theories about Lazarus, Martha and Mary of Bethany, but context tells us the difference.

Mark 6 is about contrasting a strict literal definition to one that widens it.  As I said above Jesus effectively disowns His biological family who didn't yet believe in Him, and said His true family are those who believe in Him.

And if the New Testament writers felt this word for brother could apply to a cousin, as is popularly suggested.  Why not use it of John The Baptist, who is more undisputedly then anyone else in The Gospel narrative a cousin of Jesus?  Maybe they'd say he's not a first cousin, he'd be second at the closest.

Another attempt to reconcile this with the perpetual virginity heresy is to say they are sons Joseph had by a different wife.  Because these same people are uncomfortable with acknowledging polygamy still went on in Judaism at this time, they insist a wife who died before he married Mary.  But if Jesus isn't the First-Born Son legally to both parents then He isn't the rightful Heir to David.  Yes a younger son superseding the actual First-Born is a common theme in Scripture, but if Jesus were an example of that the Gospel writers, especially Matthew, would have stressed it.  Those supercedings happen to help show how God doesn't really care about the formalities of The Law.  But Jesus himself had to be a perfect fulfillment of The Law.

The wording in Mark 6 of "the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him."  Starts with Mary and doesn't even mention Joseph (who is generally theorized to have died by then).  That tells me these siblings are siblings via being also sons and daughters of that same Mary.

Some will use that James the Brother of Jesus is called an Apostle by Paul in Galatians to prove he's one of the 12.  I already showed why these individuals can't be counted among the 12.  Apostle applied to any eye witness of the Resurrection.  Which is why Paul used it of himself calling himself the last Apostle.  And in Roman 16 identifies as among the Apostles a couple not even mentioned anywhere else in Scripture.

Matthew 1:25 says of Joseph.  "And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son." This verse isn't just saying he didn't know her before, it also clearly tells us he did know her after.