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.