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.

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 Latest Date for The Book of Revelation

I am about to settle the matter of a late date for the writing of Revelation in a way that even my fellow Futurists might not like since I now believe it was even later then the reign of Domitian.  But this view could be compatible with Preterism if you left the 70 AD obsession in favor of the real Desolation of Classical Israel.

Objectors may object that I'm making it too late to be legitimately Apostolic.  I don't see it that way of course.  Quadratus of Athens in his apology to Hadrian written for Hadrian's visit to Athens in 124 or 125 AD says that some of those healed and risen from the dead by Jesus were still alive at that time.  Today it is verified as being possible to live to 122, and I as a Creationist believes what humans can live to has deteriorated not increased over the millennia.  Pliny using documents related to a Roman Census of 74 AD says in one region of Italy there were many people who were over 100, 4 were 130 and some up to 140.  So I have no doubt that in Judea some people born BC lived through the Bar Kochba Revolt and that some people who were healed by Jesus and then witnessed Him Risen made it even into the reign of Antonius Pius.

The responsibility for keeping the Canon pure is The Holy Spirit's not Man's, it would not have been allowed to become universally accepted by Churches in every region if it wasn't the True Word of God.  Eusebius of Caesarea had to acknowledge that it was universally accepted even though he was personally biased against it.

The oldest reference to the existence of Revelation is Justin Martyr.

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."

Why does this quote make me think he's referring to something still very recent?  Because he's not even aware of there being a book, just that the vision happened, as if the text of the book proper still hadn't left the region of those seven cities but the gist of the message had spread by word of mouth.

The Message to Pergamon refers to a Martyr there named Antipas.  The traditions about Antipas say he was cooked alive in the Red Bull of the Serapion.  The Serapion of Pergamon was a second century structure, like the Temple to Trajan it was a project probably started during Trajan's reign but finished under Hadrian.  Now in a prior post about Pergamon I simply considered this a reason that detail of the tradition must be wrong, since I as this post itself shows don't inherently trust traditions.  However there is another factor to consider.

As I pointed out in the post on The Roma Cult it is not a coincidence both references to Martyrdom in Revelation 2-3 are the two cities that were centers of the imperial cult in the province.  In those cities everyone was required to offer sacrifices to the Emperor, nothing else about the religious views of an individual mattered.  Jews were exempted because the Romans recognized them as an ancient religion, and during the first century Christianity was still a sect of Judaism.

Even if you believe the mythology about the Neornian Persecution that was a brief persecution that didn't effect people outside Rome.  The Policy that lead to the systemic Christian Martyrdoms alluded to in Revelation 2-3 didn't begin till during the reign of Trajan, that's what the correspondence with Pliny The Younger was all about.  But Pliny was governor in Bithynia, our oldest confirmation this was going on in the province of Asia was during the reign of Hadrian when Gaius Minicis Fundanus was governor there.

In Polycarp's letter to the Philippians he seems to claim Smyrna didn't have a Christian community during the lifetime of Paul. Preterists have attempted to explain this as only meaning not when Paul was in Philippi.  But what I find interesting is the inclusion of Polycarp in the letter Polycrates of Ephesus wrote to Bishop Victor of Rome. His intention in the letter is to claim that these communities had been practicing Passover how they currently were from the beginning, so I feel it's logical to deduce that at least the first name associated with each city was a founder of that Christian community.  Meaning Polycarp himself may have founded the Church in Smyrna, and his birth is popularly estimated to have been 69 AD.

"But we know Ephesus wasn't founded by the people Polycrates associated with it because of Acts 18-20" you may object.  That original Ephesian Christian community I think was driven out of the city and dwelt in Melitos and Polycrates was citing the origins of the second Ephesian church.  I think Paulian communities generally took the opposing position on Passover because of how Paul stressed the Resurrection's link to First Fruits, hence Rome being who Polycrates was trying to convince.  That's also why he couldn't cite Pergamon/Troy and Thyatira as being with them on this, they were also Paulian.

Neither Smyrna, Sardis or Philadelphia are mentioned by name anywhere in Acts or in the letters of Paul, technically neither is Pergamon but I suspect Pergamon could have been the place Paul and Luke called Troy.  Meanwhile Laodicea and Hierapolis are mentioned by Paul only in letters I personally believe he wrote after the point when traditionalists claim he died.  Basically the letters Secular Scholars think Paul didn't write I think were written between 70-100 AD.

In the ongoing debate between if Revelation was written during Domitian or Nero's reign.  The Nero proponents may have numbers on their side, yes seemingly more sources said it was Nero (and some Claudius).  But Domitian advocates have antiquity on their side, Irenaeus is the first person to ever directly say anything about the when of Revelation's writing at all.

Thing is Irenaeus and Tertullian are already of the era when John son of Zebedee, the John who wrote Revelation, John the Presbyter, and the Beloved Disciple were all being conflated together by "patristic" tradition, I'm convinced those are 4 separate individuals one of whom was not named John, so by this point the "Early Church Fathers" are already fundamentally untrustworthy to me on this issue.  

Regardless it is of note that Irenaeus also said this John lived into the reign of Trajan.  And given the argument Preterists make about Irenaeus saying John being "last seen" during the reign of Domitian, he could have meant it was then he left for "Patmos" and the vision happened later.  Indeed his point in context is the recentness of the vision, so Domitian as the bare earliest date is in fact what makes most sense.

I think there was inevitably a desire of some to make Revelation older then it was, partly for concern that it's actual date was too young to be valid.  And in time as Origenists and Augustinians wanted to promote Post-Millennial and Prerterist interpretations of the book to force it back to the time of Nero.  So there is not a single "patristic" source I will consider a pure unbiased witness here.

I also currently believe the Nicolaitans were those promoting the Monarchical Church structure first truly popularized by "Ignatius".  I do not view it as a First Century problem at all.  Nothing the "Patristics" say on the Nicolaitans can be trusted because they WERE the Nicolaitans but in denial of that fact.

I would not consider it impossible that "The Tyrant" in some references might have originally been not a Roman Emperor at all but Simon Bar-Kochba who's persecution of Christians is witnessed in a contemporary source, Justin Martyr's apology to Hadrian.  Thing is I'm not convinced the reference to "Patmos" in chapter 1 is claiming a legal "exile" at all.

Futurists cite Cassius Dio as secular evidence Domitian was exiling people to Islands.  But this was for enemies who were Roman Aristocrats or at least citizens.  Of course if my theory that John Mark was John of Patmos is true then the name Marcus implies he was a Roman citizen.  While people exiled by Domitian were allowed to return as soon as he died, John may have chosen to continue witnessing Jesus to the natives of this island.  My hunch is John Mark was in Jerusalem for the spring feasts of 30 AD but probably not (by modern standards at least) an adult yet and so born between 10 and 20 AD.

In conclusion I think The Revelation was written down sometime in the reign of Hadrian.  If you still think the Sixth King of chapter 11 has contemporary with when John had the vision then Hadrian can be consider a 6th Emperor if you consider Vespasian's rise in the Year of the Four Emperors a sort of reboot.

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.

Was Bible Prophecy fulfilled around 500 AD?

A few 2nd/Early 3rd Century AD Church Writers predicted that the Millenium would begin about 500 AD [Strandberg, Todd; James, Terry (June 2003). Are You Rapture Ready. New York City: Dutton.].  I don't think that happened, but I am open to unconventional understandings of how Daniel 2 and 7 relate to Revelation which could include more quasi Preterist/Historicist interpretations of those Chapters.

The basis for Irenaeus, Hippolytus of Rome and Julius Africanus predicting around 500 AD was that for reasons based on Septuagint chronology they felt the time of Christ was 5500 years from Creation and that the Seventh Millennium would begin about 500 years later.  So I’m going to allow a range here.  It’s interesting that all three had passed away before 250 AD and so were not making predictions based on a bias for wanting it to happen in their lifetimes.

The earliest possible date for The Birth of Jesus is 25 BC, 500 years from which would be 476 AD, but more popular dates are about 5-4 BC which takes us to the 490s AD.  From here on the start date is already AD so just put a 5 in-front of it to get the end date.

I place The Crucifixion, Resurrection and Pentecost in the Spring of 30 AD.  Others have proposed dates all over the time Pilate was Governor (26-36 AD).  The latest possible date is 37 AD, which year is also when I place the end of the 70 Weeks of Daniel so definitely an important year.  But there is also room to argue the history of the First Advent isn’t fully done till we reach the end of the narrative of Acts (62-64 AD), or the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD in the midst of the Jewish Revolt that spanned from 66-73 AD.

So what was the End Time scenario predicted by our 500 AD date setters?  Irenaeus and Hippolytus wrote in depth on Bible Prophecy more then any other Pre-Nicene writers.  Their model predicted that the Roman Empire would collapse, than 10 Kingdoms would arise in its place, and then after that would come The Little Horn commonly identified with The Antichrist. 

This was a pretty standard view of Bible Prophecy prior to Nicaea.  But when Constantine happened things changed, many started thinking Rome’s fall wasn’t something to look forward to anymore, and so Amillennial and Post-Millennial interpretations rose in popularity, and then the Last Roman Emperor tradition developed, which turned the one who would restore Rome after it’s collapse into a Hero rather then a Villain.

So it’s Ironic that even though the Church stopped believing in what those early Eschatology teachers predicted, what they predicted at least partially did happen pretty much exactly when they predicted it would.  Basically everything but The Second Coming itself.

476 AD is one of the dates commonly cited as when the Western Empire fell, along with 480 and 488 AD.  Chris White talked about how Daniel 2 can be viewed as being fulfilled in the late 400s AD, which I talked about when critiquing his very different view of Daniel 7.

Much of the 500s were dominated by the reign of Justinian, an emperor popular with History YouTubers like Extra Credits.  Seventh Day Adventists and other Protestant Historicists have a long history of viewing Daniel 7 as being fulfilled in the time of Justinian, with the 10 Horns being the Barbarian Kingdoms that rose to power in the West as Rome Fell.  I’m going to link to a Playlist that is mostly videos an Atheist YouTuber called NumberOneSon made critiquing various SDA teachers on what they get wrong about Justinian’s history.
History Versus Playlist.  Note, There is at least one video on the Playlist not about this subject.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL95E6667F8E19F8B0

His critiques are mostly correct. (He does confuse Monophysite and Miasphyte theology by calling Theodora a Monophysite, she was a Miasphyte and so did believe Jesus was both Fully Human and Fully Divine, and it was only Miasyphtes not proper Monophysites Justinian wanted to make peace with, but that confusion is common.)  However the details these SDAs get wrong don’t change that, yes, what happened then looks an awful lot like what Daniel 7 predicted as it was interpreted by pre-Nicene Christians.

I'm willing to consider the Prophetic use of the round number 10 a detail that doesn’t need to be fulfilled exactly literally.  You can say that’s convenient, but I say it’s just the nature of the number 10.  But still there are ways to justify making it exactly 10 kingdoms if you wanted to. And I lean towards viewing the three Kingdoms Justinian uprooted as being the Vandals, Alans and Ostrogoths.  I know the Alans and Vandals are technically viewed as being the same kingdom by this point, but I still think it's valid to view them as separate in the context of fulfilling this prophecy.

Also I’m not a Historicist (not properly anyway) so don’t accept any Day=Year arguments and therefore won't turn around and make this about Napoleon and The Roman Question.

But the big difference between what I’m considering possible here and the SDAs is I don’t make the Little Horn into The Pope.  Instead I think the Little Horn is basically the Eastern Empire.

Some Prophecy teachers will try to say the Ten Toes need to be 5 on each Leg, thus 5 for the Eastern Empire.  The problem is in the context of Daniel 7 the Eastern Empire is the land of the first three Beasts (Mainly the Leopard).  Making it the Eastern Empire can make the Little Horn of Daniel 7 the same as the Little Horn of Daniel 8 without rejecting that the Fourth Beast is Rome.  I have already argued in an early Seleucid Dynasty post that the Daniel 8 Little Horn can be viewed as the Seleucid Empire as a whole, and the Ptolemaic Kingdom is the horn it grew out of.  The legacy of the Seleucid Empire, both genealogically and culturally, was absorbed into the Eastern Roman Empire.  If the Eastern Empire had a Capital prior to Constantinople being founded it was Antioch, that’s where Germanicus operated from when he was placed in charge of the East.  And it remained important after, with Constantius Gallus operating there when he was the number 2 man in the Empire, and the Bishop of Antioch always being one of the top Bishops in the Imperial Church.

So when the Eastern Empire is uprooting certain Barbarian Kingdoms during the 6th Century AD, that could be the Little Horn uprooting three of the ten.  Also in Daniel 7 the "Little Horn" is never directly called a King, that could be relevant here since in Jsuitnian's time the Roman Emperors were still officially claiming they weren't kings.

Chris White argued The Stone from Daniel 2 is The Church being established.  Given my argument that Daniel 2 and 7 should be understood in the geographical context of Mesopotamia, the Assyrian Church would fit best as being that Stone.  And the Nestorians were the branch of Christianity Justinian was pushing out.

And because I've considered more complicated nuanced views of how Daniel and Revelation relate to each other, the 3 uprooted horns may not be permanently uprooted, or since 10 is a symbolic number they get replaced once the Little Horn's role is over.  And so the Barbarian Kingdoms have become the WEU nations or something like that.

The Eight King of Revelation 17 can be viewed as different from the Little Horn, the Little Horn uproots three horns, but the Eight King is someone the Ten Horns more willingly give their power to.  Maybe you can still make that the Papacy, but then comes the other problems traditional Historicism has. 

Dispensations and Dispensationalism

Dispensationalism has become a name for a very particular view on Biblical History/Prophecy in terms of God's Covenants with humanity, that is virtually inseparable from the Pre-Trib Rapture (and to an extent political Zionism).

I ultimately am not a Dispensationalist, even though I may agree with them on a few things over those who insist NOTHING changed at The Cross or Pentecost.

The word Dispensation does appear in the Bible, in Ephesians 3:2 for example.  But often words like Age, Eon, Aion, or Olam might better fit what people mean by Dispensation.

Other Eschatological models involve God dividing history into different Ages as well.  All of them to some degree really.

Conventional Preterism's problem is that it's largely based on saying the Age of the Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets, didn't end till 70 AD.  So they can make the "Church Age" synonymous with the Millennium and/or New Jerusalem. But Paul taught in places like Ephesians 3 and Galatians 3 that the age of The Law was already past and we were already in the next Age, the Age of Grace, and did so in letters known to be written well before 66 AD.

Likewise Jesus said the Law and the Prophets were until John (The Baptist).  Now I've seen some Preterists respond to that by acting like the Old Covenant can't end till the Blood of the New Covenant was shed, but that is silly.  The age of the Israelites being slaves in Egypt ended a few months before the Mosaic Covenant was made at Sinai.  A new Covenant can't be made till the old one is severed.  And I believe John died six or seven months before Jesus, probably in Tishri, around the same time of year he was conceived.  Just as John's birth and conception were six months before Jesus.

The Temple rituals were still being carried out for 40 years after the deaths of Jesus and John.  But the Talmud records that those offerings were no longer being accepted for 40 years before The Temple was destroyed.

We read in the Jerusalem Talmud:

"Forty years before the destruction of the Temple, the western light went out, the crimson thread remained crimson, and the lot for the Lord always came up in the left hand. They would close the gates of the Temple by night and get up in the morning and find them wide open" (Jacob Neusner, The Yerushalmi, p.156-157). [the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE]
A similar passage in the Babylonian Talmud states:
"Our rabbis taught: During the last forty years before the destruction of the Temple the lot ['For the Lord'] did not come up in the right hand; nor did the crimson-colored strap become white; nor did the western most light shine; and the doors of the Hekel [Temple] would open by themselves" (Soncino version, Yoma 39b).

And I know the Talmud gives it's own reason for this not making it about Jesus, but it's still there, exactly the right time frame. 

Josephus in Wars of the Jews also records the Divine Presence leaving The Temple before 70 AD, but I think it was longer before then Josephus and his interpreters realized, Josephus didn't witness it directly.  Some of what Josephus describes happening in the Nisan before that fit what the above Talmud passage places 40 years before, mainly the not being able to keep doors shut.  Something similar is also placed on the day Jesus died in one of those alternate Hebrew versions of Matthew the early church fathers quoted.

Now for those Torah centric Hebrew Roots people who are offended by suggesting The Law will end. The Torah never said it would be forever, that is a translation error.

The word translated "Everlasting" or "Forever' or "Eternal" when referring to things like the Levitical Priesthood, The Sabbath and the Holy Days is Olam, which means age or eon, it does not actually mean forever. Whether it's Exodus 40:15, or Leviticus 16:34, or Leviticus 24:8, or Numbers 25:13.  Same with Exo 21:6, Exo 27:21, Exo 28:43, Exo 29:28, Lev 6:18, Lev 6:22.

In Deuteronomy 33:27, Olam is used of the "everlasting arms" but a different word is used to directly call God Eternal.

 Likewise the phrase "all the days", which is introduced about time periods that have an end in Genesis 3:14-17.  And again in Genesis 5.  And it's also used of the Nazarite vow in Numbers 6.  If "all the days" is being used of something that is also defined as an Olam, an Age, then it clearly means all the days of that age, just as it can also mean all the days of someone's life.  Taking the phrase to inherently mean all the days of eternity, it completely illogical.

Exodus 19:5-6 foretells there will be a time when all of the Nation will be Yahuah's Priests. The temporariness of The Torah is implied in The Torah.