I'm retiring this blog since I've converted to something other then Futurism.

 I could revive it if I change my mind back.  But here is the Link to my new Blog.

https://materialisteschatology.blogspot.com/2023/10/launching-my-new-prophecy-blog.html

Update December 4th 2023: it's also worth noting that I'm slowly redoing some posts that were never strictly about Prophecy to begin with on my main Bible Blog.

https://solascripturachristianliberty.blogspot.com/

Update February 2025: Even if I ever do change my mind back to Futurism this Blog will remain retired, I wasted too much time on it on Fringe ideas I no longer entertain at all.  The title of Materialist Eschatology allows me mind to change quite a bit while still fitting the title.

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.

The Baptism of The Beast

Back in 2018 I argued on my other blog that The Lake of Fire is the Baptism of Fire.  It is chiefly part of how I argue for Universal Salvation.  But one implication of that I failed to focus on, The Beast and False Prophet are cast into The Lake of Fire without being killed first.  In other words the chief villains of this narrative become Christians in the context of my Lake of Fire view.  And the significance of that didn't hit me till today, the same day I'm posting this.

Now when I wrote that I wasn't as open to Partial-Preterism/Post-Millenialism as I have been the last couple years.  This Epiphany has increased my openness even more.

But there are still things to work out, it can be compatible with Futurism but it means the "Antichrist" isn't the irredeemable Demon-Man popular fiction based on the End Times likes to Imagine.

The thing is most legitimate Eschatology scholars whether Futurist, Historicist or Preterist do see The beast as in some capacity being Rome.  So I just opened the door to seeing the Christianization of Rome as part of Bible Prophecy.

But I am still not open to Full Preterism and my Post-Millennialism would still have to be Revivalist not Reconstructionist, since The Beast and False prophet are still in The Lake over a Thousand years later the purging of whatever they represent into truly Christ Like Kingdoms is a process that is still ongoing.

One could also consider Ticonius, he is considered the founder of Post-Millennialism yet his version of it went hand in hand with a basically Historicist view of II Thessalonians 2.

The most recent post on that blog about the Edict of Toleration may be relevant to my now developing ideas, but I have lots of details to work out.

As I said before I'll basically retire this Blog and start a new one if I fully leave Futurism, but for now I'm still thinking.

InspiringPhilosophy finally made a video about his Eschatology views.

He'd been mentioning casually in Tweets being a Partial Preterist and Post Millenialist for awhile now.  So I can't agree with everything in this video but as someone who's become more open to those views it is interesting, certainly closer to something I could accept then the Partial Preterism of Victorious Eschatology.

Things that are NOT signs of the End (a partial Matthew 24 commentary)

[1] And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple.
[2] And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.
[3] And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the age?

I agree with Preterists that when The Disciples said "these things" they were thinking of what Jesus said in the prior verse and probably also what He said at the end of chapter 23.  And I suspect they assumed those things happen at the same time as what they asked about next, the sign of Jesus's Parousia and of the end of the Age.

However there is a theme throughout the Gospels of the Disciples being mistaken about certain things and Jesus then trying to correct them.  And that this is one of those is implied by what Jesus says next.

[4] And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.

Assumptions are frequently key to how deceptions work.

Verses 5-7 are what verse 8 calls the beginning of sorrows.  They are also called the Non Signs by the late Chuck Missler because of the last part of verse 6  "see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet".  But I think it's particularly notable that the "wars and rumours of wars" was what directly preceded that statement.  

The Temple was destroyed because of a war, and it wasn't the only war going on at that time, there had recently been rebellion in Britain and then civil war broke out because of Galba overthrowing Nero starting the year of the four emperors.  The rumors of wars refers to wars that could have happened but were averted, like the tensions between Rome and Parthia at this time.

I'm still of the opinion that the fist proper false Christ was Bar Kochba, but still a more fluid definition of what it means to be a false Christ is applicable to many people both before and during the first Jewish-Roman War.

The verse that proclaims all of these to be not actually signs is rightly used often to make fun of the more sensationalist Futurists.  But it's 70 AD Preterism especially Full Preterism that it outright founded upon ignoring the ramifications of Jesus saying this, if the end was always a mere 40 years away max then it was never not nigh.

I think even the Persecution discussion is really part of the Non Signs, Roman Persecution started with Trajan but the first empire wide one was under Decius and the only really great one was the Diocletian Persecution.  But the end of Roman persecution ushered in Persian Persecution, and even today in many countries Christians are being persecuted.

I've also come to agree with Preterists that the word for "World" in verse 14 being neither Kosmos or Aion is one that can be interpreted as meaning the domain of the Roman Empire.  But even then The Gospel still hadn't reached all of the Roman world by 70 AD.  

It was in the late Second Century that it first came to Gaul and Britannia, I'd been attracted to the various legends and fringe theories about New Testament characters coming to First Century Albion myself in the past, but they don't hold up as even Geoffrey of Monmouth says The British Church began with Lucius in the time of Eleutherius, around then is also when Tertullian first mentions Christians being in Brittan.  There are misleading legends tied even to that Lucius as I don't think he was a King but maybe was Lucius Ulpius Marcellus.  And The Church in Gaul started a little before then with Pothinus and Irenaeus who moved there from Ionia (Ephesus, Smyrna, Miletus).  With Britain you can try to make an excuse that it wasn't part of the Empire yet when Jesus made this Prophecy, but Gaul absolutely was.

Still while verse 14 can be interpreted as having that limited scale I'm inclined to think it's not.  That word translated world is a particularly fancy Greek word for Household.  While Greco-Romans did use if for the Imperium like in Luke 2:1's account of the Census decree.  I think Jesus means the Household of Adam, since Son of Man is the title for Himself that He likes to use when describing The Parousia.

Preterists will then try to prove this was fulfilled in the first century by taking certain things Paul said in Romans and Colossians out of context.  Paul is talking about what the mission of The Church during the Age of Grace is, in context he clearly does not see that mission as actually already accomplished or he wouldn't still be doing what he's doing.  When Preterists "Proof Text" like this it's just like the worst Futurist bad understanding of the concept of using Scripture to Interpret Scripture, just cause those verses use similar language doesn't mean they solve each other.

Verse 15 is where the actual signs of the end start, that is the fig tree showing it's leaves in verse 32, the Generation that sees that is the one that shall not pass away in verse 34.

I've already deconstructed the notion of that being applicable to anything in 70 AD.  I think the similar yet different description in Mark can be applicable to Hadrian's Abomination, but Matthew is different.  Getting into that here would distract from the main point at hand, I'm still not entirely decided on it myself.

Thousand years as a Day

The hyper literal face value understanding of the "surely I come quickly" verses that Full Preterism is built on is naturally incompatible with taking the Thousand Years of Revelation 20 at equally face value.  If EVEYTHING in the book must surely happen quickly, then clearly two of those events can't be separated by a full Millennium.

I specify Full Preterist here because Partial Preterist and Post Millenialists tend to make the Thousand years longer not shorter.  I do still think Partial Preterism is partially correct on many things.

The problem with the Full Preterist understanding of the Millennium is that even a not exactly literal use of "Thousand years" is still clearly meant to imply a long time, it's meant to imply we shouldn't expect it to end within a mortal lifetime.  

So Full Preterists cling to the "Thousand years as a day and a day as a thousand years" verses.  When you engage in very unscholarly proof texting yeah those seem like they give you the excuse they need to make a Thousand utterly meaningless.  

But when you read them in context, when you read the entirety of Psalm 90 and 2 Peter 3, the point being made, the Impression being given, is clearly all about how what can seem like endless ages to humans is nothing to God.  They are clearly conveying the opposite of what Full Preterists want, they give us every reason not to take "surely I come quickly" at face value and no reason to think a promised Earthly Millennium will end in a day.

2 Peter 3 is especially clear on this, because earlier that chapter is foretelling how people in the future will lose faith in the promised Coming because the "fathers fell asleep" and nothing has changed.  The whole point of the passage is specifically that Jesus did not "surely come quickly" by a mortal understanding of time, but we should none the less have faith that God is not slacking off but delaying only to give the heathens more time to repent.

1 Peter may have been written before 70 AD, but 2 Peter certainly came after, Peter never went to Rome and the Neronian persecution didn't happen.

Even without this understanding of the "Thousand Years as a Day" verses, Greek scholars understand that this kind of language used in Revelation 22 was often used euphemistically to mean "certainly will come to pass" and are not inherently meant to be literally taken as timing statements.  Hebrews 10:36-37 is similar, on the one hand it seems to say "soon" but also says "awhile" and tells us to be patient.

Honestly part of the problem with preterist interpretations of passages like Hebrew 10:36-37 is modern individualism which runs contrary the the more collectivist thinking of all first century people Pagan, Jewish and Christian.  They are speaking as if the audience reading this will be there when it happens because they are speaking to the Church and/or Israel (depending on how you prefer to look at it) as a collective not the specific individuals who were the very first to ever read it.

The "this Generation" statement of Matthew 24 exists in the context of what Jesus said before, "this" is grammatically applied to the generation that sees the signs.  Now understand that I am not a conventional Futurist, I have my doubts "this Generation" began when most Dispensationalists currently think it did.  I think the key sign to look for is The Abomination of Desolation.

And it doesn't matter how many other times "this generation" means the people listening to Jesus right now, "this generation" is a phrase that doesn't automatically always mean the same generation every time it appears, the context of where it's said determines it.

And the "there be some standing here" verses always directly proceeds the Transfiguration for a reason.  The "Son of man coming in his kingdom" wording of Mathew 16:28 is in fact peculiar and in my opinion should not be interpreted as specifically about the Parousia, not even just because that word itself isn't used in the Greek, it's about Him glorified having the qualities of the Kingdom.  But if you aren't satisfied by it being fulfilled just by the Transfiguration then it could also apply to just seeing the risen Jesus which all but one of the 12 got to.

Also "some" is a misleading translation, the YLT says "certain" instead and other versions don't feature an equivalent word there at all which actually does better match the Greek.  So no the text of this verse does not imply inherently a minority of the audience being referred to.

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.

The Dual Fulfilment Fallacy

I'm someone who is still at the core of my Eschatology a Premillennial Futurist, but who does interpret a good number of individual Prophecies in ways that fit how a Preterist and/or Historicist could interpret them.  

When I try to argue to a fellow Futurist that a certain Prophecy was clearly meant to be the near future of when the Prophecy was given, or even that at least how it begins was, that Prophets can't really be considered confirmed Prophets at all if nothing they predicted was fulfilled in their lifetime.  I occasionally get responses about the Dual Fulfilment concept, making it sound like it's an absolute that every prophecy has at least 2 fulfilments, near and far.  Understanding it this way makes it almsot impossible to definitively argue for anything.

Nathan's Prophecy about the Son of David building The Temple in 2 Samuel 7 is the core foundation upon which the dual fulfilment concept is based, and the reason why it can't even be called inherently Christian, every Jew who believes in a yet future Messiah Ben-David believes this Prophecy has a second fulfilment in addition to Solomon.

But the thing about this most undisputed case of a second fulfillment being needed, is that the first fulfilment failed.  Now make no mistake God always knew what was gonna happen, but the fact still remains that in theory Solomon alone could have been all this Prophecy needed, but he failed, the entire history of the divided kingdom is the legacy of Solomon's failure.  When you properly add that context it's not a dual fulfilment at all, it's only kind of applicable to Solomon at all because of what could have been.

That's why in my opinion dual fulfilments are possible and occasionally worth speculating on.  But to start building doctrine on some absolute expectation that no Prophecy is properly fulfilled till it's fulfilled twice is in my opinion foolish.

A lot of other almost undisputed examples of dual fulfilments are also ones where the second or final fulfilment is Jesus.  But in a lot of those cases it's typology, to Christians the applicability to Jesus is what matters most because we view everything through the lens of Jesus. But I would still call it wrong to act like that Prophecy wasn't actually fully fulfilled till Jesus.  The sense in which Jesus repeats it is a nice bonus for our Christian view of The Bible's metanarrative, but it often isn't at all what the original Prophet was concerned with.

Any Prophecy where I do feel that Prophecy was always chiefly about Jesus, I generally seek to, like with the failure of Solomon thesis, deconstruct the near fulfilment, which for example is how I currently treat Isaiah 7-8.  

However I no longer desire to treat the "antichrist" the same way.  I actually think we're bordering on Dualism heresy when we treat that figure like a mirror image.  So yes in a sense every Hero of The Hebrew Bible is a foreshadowing of Christ, but that doesn't make every villain a similar type of the "Antichrist".

And the thing about a lot of the Prophecies I do think are about the fall of Jerusalem to Rome in 70 AD. 70 AD was in a sense itself the second fulfilment, it was a repeat of the history of the fall to Nebuchadnezzar in 588 BC. so saying it must happen again in the future is arguing for a full on third fulfilment.

What I'm criticizing here is partly stuff I've been guilty of myself in the past on this very blog.  This is a product of how I feel I've grown wiser as a student of Prophecy.

In The Case of the Abomination of Desolation, Jesus tells us that an already fulfilled event will happen again.  However that doesn't mean every detail of Daniel 11-12 (or 9) is going to happen twice, the context of the next Abomination of Desolation could be very different.  I try to define what the AoD is based on the initial fulfilment of those prophecies, but that's it, everything leading up to and following it could and probably will be different.

Eschatology views Tier Ranking

I'm going to rank various positions on Eschatology in terms of how I personally feel about them at the time of my writing this post on Saturday November 13th of 2021.

S Tier: The Position(s) I currently favor.

I'm currently a Pre-Millennial Futurist with a Rapture Position that can be called "Mid-Trib", but not what many assume Mid-Trib means in that what The Rapture is I view mostly the same as Post-Tribbers, it is the Second Coming, and from my position's own POV the Tribulation by definition ends at The Rapture.  And The Last Trump is the Seventh Trumpet.

I also consider some Idealist readings of Revelation also true, it is also a symbolic summery of The Entire Biblical Meta narrative, but that doesn't conflict with it also being future events, because that's what every good final episode of a saga should be.

A Tier: Positions I'm currently very open to being converted to.

Historicism in it's Pre-Millennial form, Partial-Preterism and Revivalist post-Millennialism, or something that combines elements of those. 

I kind of want to be convinced of something like that now given other things I believe.  But it wouldn't be likely to be any in their current most well known forms, since my hypothetical Preterism wouldn't be 70 AD focused (not for Matthew, Mark or Revelation anyway) and my Historicism would be less fixated on The Vatican viewing Christian Monarchy in general as the Abomination of Desolation.

If I did abandon Futurism I would probably retire this blog and start a new one.

B Tier: Views I consider firmly wrong but not in any way heretical.

Middleism, only in that separating Matthew's Olivette Discourse from Revelation I view as untenable, whichever time period one is about so is the other.

Also any views where my only or main objections come down to not interpreting Revelation as Chronologically as I do.  But thus far everyone I've seen doing that is also guilty of something down below, (It's mainly associated with Post-Trib, Chris White's Pre-Wrath and Preterism).

C Tier: Views I consider tied to Heresy but merely minor ones

Dispensationalism (Pre-Trib, some forms of Mid-Trib, the Pre-Wrath view of Chris White), Supersecessionism (Most forms of Post-Trib, probably some hypothetical forms of Mid-Trib, and also today most Non Futurists).

And also Domminionism which mainly manifests as Reconstructionist Post-Millennialism but can be made compatible with other views.

D Tier: Views heretical in their rejections of core doctrines of the Faith.

Any view that denies a literal bodily Resurrection of The Dead.  Which is firmly required for Full Preterism and Amillenialism.

F Tier: Basically not even really Christian at all anymore.

Any view that identifies the Satan of The New Testament with YHWH The God of The Hebrew Bible.  Like Marcionism and the most well known forms of Gnosticism.

Often goes hand in hand with throwing out Revelation altogether as a False Prophecy.  But they may also selectively use stuff from Revelation.  Also these people are generally also doing the D Tier Heresy.

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.

The Souls of them that were Beheaded

The use of the word "Souls" in Revelation 20 verse 4 is the linchpin of the argument of those who want to claim at least the First Resurrection isn't a literal bodily one but merely a spiritual Resurrection.

The thing is there are plenty of verses in the New Testament where "souls" is used and yet the "souls" in question are definitely still attached to living bodies.

Acts 2:41 referring to three thousand souls, Acts 7:14 referring to three score and fifteen souls, Acts 14:22 is an example that doesn't involve counting, Acts 27:37 referring to the number of souls on those ships.  1 Peter 3:20 refers to the number of souls on Noah's Ark. And there is Hebrew Bible precedent for it going back to Genesis 12:5, the very first time "souls" plural appears in the King James Version.

You might argue that this usage in Revelation is parallel to Revelation 6:9, the souls of Martyrs under the Altar when the Fifth Seal is opened, where only Pre-Tribbers argue the Bodily Resurrection of believers had already happened.

But to me that's the point, the word Resurrection isn't used in the vicinity of that reference nor is anything else said to imply it's already happened.  The Seventh Trumpet is when we're first told that now is the time for the judgment of the dead.  These verses of Revelation 20 are the last phase of the First Resurrection.   So Revelation 6 and 7 show that Souls simply having some kind of conciseness on their own isn't a Resurrection, at least not in how this book uses that term.

I will say that the mere use of the word Souls in the Fifth Seal account should not be used as an argument agaisnt Pre-Trib, they'll just point to Revelation 20.

The thing is even if I were to concede the possibility that these Saints are ruling with Christ in Heaven not on Earth, which I will admit nothing in the immediate context contradicts.  Jesus wasn't seated at the Right Hand of The Father till after His Resurrection, He was in no way reigning between Crucifixion and Resurrection,  So if even Jesus needs a Risen Body to reign then so do the Saints.

Revelation was written to Seven Churches in Asia

70 AD Preterists make the argument in terms of time period that the book must have been for the people who first read it, yet they don't apply that geographically.  If you're going to downgrade the scale of Revelation to not being the entire world but just a local region, then it should be about the region it was written to.  After all Revelation 22:16 says in the Greek and the YLT "these things concerning the Churches".

But Preterists are blind on that fact.  In response to my sharing of my last post on Facebook someone basically mused to themselves why it was written to these churches when it's obviously about Jerusalem???????

I was watching more videos from one of those Partial Preterists, and I began to notice another way in which preterists are oddly exactly like Pre-Trib Dispensationalists.  They can't wrap their heads around the idea of Revelation not being about the same geographical region most of the Old Testament is about, utterly ignoring everything prior New Testament books taught us about how now The Temple is The Church, now the true Holy City or Beloved City is the community of believers not a specific geographical piece of land, what Hebrews taught about the true Jerusalem and Zion being the heavenly one.

They get all those doctrines for how they apply to the present of course.  Their problem is they push back to 70 AD the spiritual changes that happened in 30 AD.  Jesus said the Law and the Prophets were until John (referring to The Baptist), Paul said we were already in the Age of Grace in Galatians written before 62 AD, Stephen was stoned for teaching God already doesn't dwell in a Temple made by human hands.  You see in Christian theology the physical destruction of the Temple is an after thought, a foot note, it was spiritually rendered null and void on The Pentecost of 30 AD at the latest.

Revelation only mentions Jerusalem by name when referring to New Jerusalem, and only says Zion of a location that is seemingly in Heaven in chapter 14.  I just made a post on The Great City.  These preterists don't take as literal geography things that point to Mesopotamia like Babylon and the Euphrates, but any excuse to say this is obviously Jerusalem in Judea they will cling to.

The Temple in chapter 11 is always referring to The Temple in Heaven, it exists in the context of what was just going on in chapter 10, the Angel who speaks about the Witnesses is that Angel, and at the end of the chapter we're explicitly told The Temple in Heaven is the one who's Ark is seen.  Likewise chapters 21-22 clarify that The Holy City is New Jerusalem, which is still in Heaven during the prior chapters.  New Jerusalem's size if you take it literally is large enough that if you put it's center at terrestrial Jerusalem it would encompass the entire region of the Seven Churches.  And Philadelphia is promised to be a Pillar in The Temple of New Jerusalem.

A lot of imagery and terminology later in the book is drawing back on things in the specific messages to the Seven Churches.  Satan's Seat is first in Pergamon but later becomes the Seat of The Beast, fitting it being the center of the Imperial Cult and Apollo's Seat in The Iliad where Aeneas mortal wound was healed.

At this point I feel like doing what I've sometimes done with Historicism, and play devil's advocate for what a proper Preterist interpretation of Revelation should look like.

We could begin within a century of when Revelation was written and look at Alexander The False Prophet, a person who's life was fictionalized by Lucian.  He was based in Asia Minor, he made an Idol of Aeskleius called Glycon that he made it appear to be speaking.  And he was the real driving force behind Christian persecutions that happened during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, Aurelius himself actually tried to oppose the persecution of the Christians.  As interesting as that is it won't fully hold up.

The truth is the only real Great Persecution Christians faced under Pagan Rome was the Diocletian Persecution which was really masterminded by Galerius.  Early Nicene Christians simply started imagining the intensity of that Persecution into the entire Pre-Milvean Bridge era.  We have ancient sources testifying that many Apostatized during this persecution, which is why Donatism was an issue after it ended so that can be the Apostacy of II Thessalonians 2.  It also lased exactly 10 years from February of 303 to February of 313 which means you could apply a Day=Year theory application to the ten days of persecution alluded to in the message to Smyrna.

Then Constantine rose to power in 311-313 and virtually overnight the Empire went from trying to annihilate Christians to being ruled by one.  This era is when Post-Millennial and Partiral Preterist interpretations of Prophecy rose in popularity, with Constantinople being founded to serve as a New Jerusalem in addition to a New Rome, it's original main church was the Hagia Irene, Holy Peace, Irene is basically the Greek translation of Salem.

The region of the Seven Churches remained firmly in Eastern Roman/Byzantine control long past when most of the empire fell to the Ishmaelites, nor did they fall under Latin control after the Fourth Crusade, they remained firmly in the Greek Empire of Nicaea.  However in 1308 is when this region fell under Muslim Turkish control.  So for this region it was about exactly a Thousand Years of Christianity being the politically dominant religion allowing you to argue we are now in verse 8 or 9 of chapter 20.

However that was rhetorical, my view of State Sponsored Christianity is more amendable to Historicism then it is to Post-Millennialism.

The Great City where our Lord was Crucified

So I'm changing my position on the Great City issue slightly.  Jerusalem is only unambiguously called the "Great City" in Revelation 21 where it's New Jerusalem (and in some ancient manuscripts it's not used there, but I'm a Textus Receptus proponent so I'm not gonna place any eggs in that basket).  I am currently for now going to take the position that in Revelation 6-20 the only Great City is the same city called Babylon.

Preterism has been associated with both Babylon=Rome and Babylon=Jerusalem, but for both Full and Partial the Jerusalem theory has become the far more common standard, because Rome wasn't destroyed in 70 AD, it had a fire in 64 but even tradtions claim they didn't start Persecuting Christians till after that so it being a judgment for being drunk on the blood of the martyrs doesn't make sense.

The face value issue with making Jerusalem as Babylon work in a 66-70 AD context is "how can Jerusalem be said to ride the beast" since they still believe the beast is the Roman Empire and in particular Nero.  Well what you could do is take what Josephus tells us about Poppaea Sabina, how she was practically a proselyte and so under her influence Nero was favorable to the Jews and it was months after her death the Jewish revolt begins to break out.  I haven't seen any Preterist use Poppaea this way yet, it's a suggestion I'm giving them out of my magnanimous generosity.

The problem is the Symbolism of Revelation clearly only works with Babylon being Rome in a First Century context.  There is no Biblical support for calling Jerusalem a City on Seven Hills but Rome had that concept as part of it's self identity from the beginning.

I am a Futurist in my basic understanding of Revelation (technically I've come to a historicist understanding of the Seals and am open to that for the first four Trumpets, but Chapter 9 is definitely yet future).  But I do think we need to begin decoding Revelation by understanding what these symbols and imagery would have meant to the initial audience, which were mostly Greek speaking Christians in Asia Minor between 40 and 140 AD.

So while I do believe the final eschatological Babylon is not Rome in the sense of being geographically on the Tiber River of the Italian Peninsula.  If things were going to play out within the lifetime of the original readers, then Babylon=Rome is what the symbolism of the Book was pointing them towards, as I talked about in the post on the Roma Cult.

Among both Preterists and Futurists it's assumed Revelation 11:8 can only be Jerusalem, and so that's the smoking gun that terrestrial Jerusalem is the Great City at least sometimes.

"And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified."

As I've said a few times before, no view on Revelation is free from some level of picking and choosing when to interpret symbolically and when to interpret literally.  In this case however it's within one statement.  We're specifically told the these are things it's called Spiritually but interpreters keep applying that only to the "Sodom and Egypt" part while "where also out Lord was crucified" is taken as a literal geographic indicator.

Number 1, strictly speaking the literal location of the Crucifixion was not in a city at all, John 19 says "near to the city" and Hebrews 13 says "without the gate".  That is semantics you can object, it's definitely associated with Jerusalem, but that still makes it less then strictly literal.

Number 2, what city is actually responsible for the Crucifixion?  

Legally speaking it was Rome, right in the Apostles' Creed we say "Crucified under Pontius Pilate" and Rome was pretending to still be a Republic at this time, so Pilate was theoretically representing the people of Rome.  And even the "Jews" calling for His Crucifixion said "we have no King but Caesar" they pledged their loyalty to Rome.  It was Roman Soldiers who mocked him and placed a Crown of Thrones on His head, Crucifixion was a standard Roman form of Execution. In ancient mindsets a City was more then just a location, it was also it's people.  Fortunately for everyone involved Jesus said "Father forgive them for they know not what they do".

But neither of those is my main argument.  Because I know everyone is going to list off Old Testament prophets who called Jerusalem both Sodom and Egypt as further proof this verse can only mean Jerusalem.  But Jerusalem was spiritually called Sodom and Egypt for a reason, there was a specific sin in mind which plenty of other cities/nations have been guilty of.

When YHWH was telling the Israelites to not be cruel to the strangers(immigrants and refugees) living among them, He reminded them "because you were once strangers in the land of Egypt".  Ezekiel 16, Jesus himself, and if you add them to your Canon both Jubilees and Jasher all clarify Sodom's Sin was their cruelty to strangers, an issue I talk about more on my other blog.  Ezekiel 16 is the main basis for Jerusalem being spiritually Sodom because there YHWH says Jerusalem has become worse then Sodom.

And that basic moral sin is also a factor in why the Pharisees wanted Jesus killed, because he taught that many Gentiles will enter the Kingdom before some of the Children of The Kingdom.

Rome had this Sin in it's own way, a refusal to properly allow full citizenship to "Barbarians" who'd proven their loyalty was a repeated issue, just watch this YouTube video.  And this way of thinking effected even the believers in Rome which is partly what Paul's epistle to the Romans is addressing.

This of course is among the Roman traits that makes America the most Roman nation of the modern world.  But perhaps it can also apply pretty well to Putin's Russia, even Soviet Russia had it's xenophobic tendencies.

There is a third city involved in Ezekiel 16, Samaria representing Ephraim. I have a post on this blog arguing for Rome being Ephraim in a sense, I'm not longer as interested in arguing for that literally genealogically as I was when I first wrote it, but thematically it can still be interesting because of the role Paul's Epistle to Rome plays in it.  

Rome also tied themselves to Egypt when Octavian took over the Pharaonic Worship in Egypt, and a Temple to Isis in Rome played a role in Titus's Triumph celebrating his capture of Jerusalem.  So Egyptian Spirituality was present in Rome when Jesus was Crucified not in Jerusalem.

Victorious Eschatology

My past posts on preterism have typically had Full Preterism in mind.  Patrial Preterism I assume comes in a variety of forms, in theory so could Full Preterism.  I had been struggling to even find information on Partial Preterism even though one Futurist website I visited said most preterists are partial preterists.

Then I heard about the book Victorious Eschatology and found some YouTube videos from one of it's authors.  This form of Partial Preterism is, as I expected, basically Post Millennialism in terms of Revelation, but with an odd detail I'll get to later.

On Matthew 24, verse 34 is his cut off point, by 70 AD the first 34 verses are fulfilled and what's after is yet future.  This is a nonsensical cut off point, it is obvious to any unbiased observer that what follows this verse is about the same thing that proceeded it.  In fact after verse 34 it's mostly poetic idioms and parables.

When talking about "this generation shall not pass" he mentioned some futurists argue "generation" means "race" or "tribe".  I kind of assumed that was a straw man especially as he refuted it with how this Greek word is never used that way.  I've generally gone with how the Greek Grammar of "this" is clearly meant to be understood in the context of those who see the signs he just talked about.  But then I noticed how the Aramaic Peshita says Sharbtha, a word that absolutely means tribe or family and only very rarely means "generation".  I am possibly going to make a post on my other blog where I'll argue for Peshita Primacy for Matthew.  But what Jesus was actually speaking was certainly a Semitic language not Greek.  Now the ecclesialogical implications of what "tribe" is meant I don't wanna get into here, but either way it hasn't passed away yet.

Back on topic.  Preterists and Futurists both like to talk about the "three fold question" of Matthew 24:3.  Thing is the grammatical structure of that verse is clearly presenting it as only two questions, so yes the Disciples may have had what Jesus recently said about The Temple in their mind when they said "Tell us when these things will be", but when they said "and what is the sign of Your coming, and the end of the age", the Parusia and the end of the age are clearly the same thing, the expression is one sign or set of signs that herald both.  The Parusia is by definition the end of the Age of Grace.  The Age of the Law had already ended with John The Baptist.

So if you're going to hinge your "partial" Preterism on saying two of these happen at the same time but the other is separated, those two are the inseparable ones.

Now what I think in regards to Matthew's Olvite Discourse is that the Disciples were assuming all of this will happen at the same time when they asked this question, or at least hoping they will.  The "beginning of sorrows" comment is not in Luke 21's discourse (which wasn't on the mount of olives) even though it describes the circumstances associated with that term.

So the Beginnings of Sorrows are events that can be associated with 66-73 AD (though not unique to then), but Jesus is saying that when that happens the end is not yet.  Matthew 24 talks about persecutions that are not Jewish in origin and clearly says not till The Gospel is proclaimed to the whole world.  This author abuses verses from Romans and Colossians to say Paul was saying the Gospel had reached the entire world, Paul's intent in each of those (however flawed the translation) is about this being a process he is a part of.

They have a tendency to act like Futurists don't think 70 AD was predicted at all.  I indeed see 70 AD in more Prophecies then most Futurists do, Luke in particular records multiple prophecies Jesus made on that destruction.

Now we get to the clincher, which is the real divergence from Full Preterism.  He says Matthew 24 isn't about the Second Coming, as in it isn't the same thing as the Parusia of 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4.  This is the Pre-Tribulationist argument all over again.  Everything Paul says about eschatology in the Thessalonian Epistles is his commentary on the Olivite Discourse, Matthew's Gospel was the first written down and I believe it and Mark's were both written down before the events of Acts 13.

When Paul is talking about Him Coming in the Clouds and Gathering His people after a heavenly Trumpet sounds, he is referring back to this teaching of Jesus that every Christian knew about whether it was written down already or not.  Matthew 24 seemingly doesn't explicitly refer to the Resurrection of the dead, but Jesus is basically quoting Old Testament passages about the in-gathering of the Tribes of Israel and Ezekiel 37 already told us to associate that with the Bodily Resurrection of dead Israelites, and Isaiah 26 told us to associate The Resurrection with The Rapture.

I then watched another Partial Preterist talk about Revelation 20.  He says that John didn't mention The Rapture, but if he did it would have to happen before fire comes down from Heaven.  He believes we're currently between verses 6 and 7 and that what first starts happening in verse 7 is mostly spiritual realm stuff not noticeable on Earth.  This makes them functionally the same as the Pre-Trib Imminence Doctrine, no prophesied events between now and The Rapture.

A Post Millennial Rapture is just as incompatible with that nonsense as a Pre Millennial one.  If it's in Revelation 20 but Post-Mil then it obviously happens at the Bodily Resurrection of The Dead.  I made a post before about how Full Preterists are like Pre-Trib in terms of it being a Secret Rapture.  But this Patrial Preterism is what's truly teaching literally the same idea in terms of what The Church should expect to happen next.

Now back to the Author of Victorious Eschatology, the title of the book reflects how he really wants to promote this as an Optimistic view.  Yes all Christians think Jesus wins in the end but since he isn't predicting things to get worse before Jesus comes back he's telling believers to stop being so fearful.  He seems to not know Pre-Trib exists and that most American Futurists are Pre-Trib.

I don't want Christians to live in constant fear, but Jesus warns us to be prepared for tribulation, we still live a fallen world and sometimes things will go bad whether it's a specific fulfillment of Bible Prophecy or not.  What I as a Mid-Tirbber think must happen before the Parousia/Rapture may not from a secular material point of view need to even be that much worse then right now, the point is something very specific has to happen first.  Great Tribulation as a technical term I view as referring to what's been going on since Stephen was stoned, most of the Body of Christ is living in countries where they are not the mainstream majority religion.  And the "Falling away" is arguably similarly already covered.

The "Antichrist" will become the worst tyrant ever, but the phase of his career that precedes the Abomination will I think possibly be beneficial to "The Church" from terrestrial eyes.  And what happens in Revelation 9 believers are promised protection from.

I'm promising neither the worst or the best in terms of what will happen between now and the Parousia, my advice is to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

Believe it or not I try not to get into my Soterology too much on this blog, I want what I talk about here to be potentially appealing to people who will never agree with it.  I mentioned it perhaps unnecessarily in "why was Jesus rejected" and on one Facebook group that indeed became a distraction from the post's main point.

But if the Optimism of your view is the selling point, and you're repeatedly criticizing Futurism as inherently Pessimistic.  Then with me you don't have a leg to stand on if in your view Death and Hades win even one single soul.

Why was Jesus rejected?

An argument sometimes made by Preterists, Amillennials and Post-Millennials against Futurists and Premillenialism that isn't based on interpreting Prophecy but more as a moral argument.  Is that Jesus was rejected by the Jews of His time because they expected a violent warrior Messiah who'd overthrow Rome not a Suffering Servant, and now we Premillenals have become exactly like them.

First of all I believe in Universal Salvation, so yes mainstream Futurism's desire to see the End Times as Jesus coming back to finally lay the smack down on the heathen and reward us I don't consider appropriate.  However literal the Violence of the Second Coming is, it's ultimately for the benefit of those being judged, and in many cases the harshest judgments will be for those who thought they were righteous believers.

Preterists still think Jesus came back to carry out wrathful vengeance on the heathen, they just think He did it indirectly, using Roman armies to burn Jerusalem and a Roman Emperor to burn Rome.

Secondly, this narrative about why Jesus was rejected isn't Biblical, it isn't even really traditional, it has it's roots in Hollywood fiction of the last 100 years, from Ben-Hur to the 60s King of Kings remake to Jesus Christ Superstar all wanting to depict Jesus as a Gahndi or Martin Luther King Jr figure.  Because it suites those in power to promote a narrative that the peaceful strictly non violent revolutionaries are the ones to be praised and idealized, because when the people actually start breaking things is when regimes get overthrown.  The fact is the narrative that Gahndi's efforts are why Britain left India is itself a product of British propaganda, there were violent rebellions which they couldn't handle anymore, but they didn't want to admit to being beaten so instead want us to believe they just listened to Gahndi's peaceful rational plea for Independence and left willingly.

Now Jesus did teach a peaceful message, to turn the other cheek and love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.  But plenty of Christians throughout history have taken part in violent Revolutions and didn't see a conflict.  I'm not making this post to pass judgment on if they were right or not.

But in John 11:43-56 we see that the Priests and leaders of the Pharisees were the ones who thought He was too provocative, not that He wasn't violent enough.  They were the stability obsessed Centrists of their time, comfortable with the status quo and didn't want anyone rocking the boat.  In fact they boldly proclaimed "we have no King but Caesar", they declared their loyalty to Rome.

The only people really expecting Jesus to overthrow Rome at first were His own disciples who still needed things clarified for them at the Ascension in Acts 1.

Also if you read what Josephus said about the Zealots as a sect, you'll find they weren't a particularly Millenarian movement at all, they were political Anarchists in modern terminology and absolutely did NOT want to restore the Davidic Monarchy.  So these scenes in modern works of fiction of the Zealots going to Jesus trying to ask Him to be their Earl of Richmond or Duke d'Orleans are not even remotely plausible.

Some specific rebels here and there did proclaim themselves King.  But even they weren't claiming to be the Messiah or to fulfill any prophecies.  What most people keep saying about there being "Many Messianic claimants in the first century" is actually false, no one was claiming to be The Messiah but Jesus.  Josephus uses that word only of what Jesus was believed by his followers to be.

It wasn't till Bar-Kochba that Jewish Anti-Roman Rebels started claiming religious Messianic Mojo for themselves.  There is plenty of TNAK basis for the Messiah as a Warrior King, but they (when interpreted at face value) depict a conqueror expanding Israel's Empire, not a rebel agaisnt Imperialism.

Jesus' Message was popular with the masses, it was those in power who didn't like it, the "crowd" at the trial before Pilate was a planted crowd.

And what the Pharisees especially really didn't like about Jesus' message was the inclusion of the Gentiles and Samaritans.  Jesus was not a nationalist saying that in His kingdom the Goyim will at best be second class citizens.  He said many of them will get in before some of the Children of the Kingdom.

So yes, I am a Futurist because I take seriously that Jesus has promised to return to the Earth, overthrow the present world order and create a Communist Utopia.  

Now some radical Leftists often don't like Futurism because they feel it neuters Christians from taking action to make any actual progress now by telling us to just wait for Jesus to come back.  But Jesus told us to be the Salt and Light of the Earth, we are to be making an effort to improve things now as much as we can no matter what Eschatology is true.  However a notion that we're already in the Millennium or New Jerusalem encourages Christians to think we're supposed to rule the Earth, which is why that interpretation first emerged the same year Christianity became Rome's state religion.

Modern Futurists are frequently not immune to trying to create a theocracy either, but that's a product of over a thousand years of Christianity being the imperial religion of the West.  My point is there are really no Futurists staying out of politics because they're just waiting for Jesus to come back, the problem is too many Christians regardless of their Eschatology have an inverted concept of what our values should be.

Actually the Christians most inclined to go for being complete separatists staying out of politics tend to also have a "we're already in the Millennium" viewpoint, simply interpreting Revelation 20's picture as the Camp of the Saints being a set apart people and the resurrected Martyrs ruling spiritually in Heaven.  That's the gist of Revivalist Post-Millenialism.

But as for Reconstructionist Post-Millennials.  If to you the Prophecies of the Coming Kingdom are simply fulfilled by Christianity being the Politically dominant religion of The World.  Then it's pretty easy to look at the last 17 Centuries and consider the Status Quo to be Mission Accomplished, or see conquering Heathen nations as how one continues the mission.  And most Reconstructionists in America are just as Conservative as the Premillenials, maybe often more so.

Almillenialism and Full Preterism meanwhile tend to disagree with this world being where The Kingdom will ever manifest at all.  To them New Jerusalem is "Heaven" and the Material world is a Prison they can't wait to escape from.  

It is Premillenialism that naturally leads to seeing ourselves as currently emissaries representing God in a World that still needs fixing.