PART I, ARTICLE IX: AMILLENNIANISM NO LONGER INCONCEIVABLE, SECTION III

Inducement number two is about the binding of Satan that is spoken of in Revelation 20. The description of this binding begins at verse 2: “And he [the angel of verse 1] laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years.” When I first heard that this binding was symbolic, or figurative, and that it therefore meant that the devil was bound right now and that he had been bound since the first advent, I dismissed the assertion as impossible because of the obvious wickedness going on in the world. The idea seemed like an absurd opinion, not a biblical fact. How could the devil be bound in any sense when evil is so obviously abounding? The answer to this question is in the exposition of verse 3: “And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed for a little season.” The devil is not literally bound because the book of Revelation is emblematic; and neither is he literally cast into a bottomless pit. He is, rather, limited in some way. And verse 3 tells us about this limitation. He is limited in that he can no longer ‘deceive the nations’ like he once did—like he did in Old Testament times. Since the incarnation of the Son of God, what has happened? The use of the word ‘nations’ in other books of the Bible tells us what has happened; and what has happened has been largely fulfilled since the dawn of Christianity. It is true that Christians have been given over to be afflicted and killed and have been hated ‘of all nations’ for the sake of faith in Jesus’ name (Matthew 24.9.) But it is equally true that the gospel has been preached ‘in all the world’ (verse 14; Romans 1.8) and that ‘all nations’ have been taught the gospel and that vast multitudes of persons among the nations have been baptized into Christ (Matthew 28.19.) Outside of Israel, the saved souls that we are told about in the Old Testament are few. There are the Assyrian Ninevites; they repented at the preaching of Jonah. There is Job, the Arab; Rahab, the Canaanite; Uriah, the Hittite; Ruth, the Moabite; Naaman, the Syrian; maybe even King Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian. Others do not easily come to mind. In the time of Jesus’ ministry on earth, we have instances like the faith of a Greek woman (Mark 7) and of a Roman centurion (Matthew 8) as the gospel of the kingdom begins to spread out beyond Israel. (See also Matthew 12.15-21.) But in the book of Acts is recorded the history of the sudden explosion of the gospel to other nations. When the gospel was miraculously preached in tongues to dispersed, devout Jews who were ‘Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites,’ and others; as well as ‘strangers of Rome’ and ‘proselytes,’ the result was that thousands were saved (Acts 2.) This is the evidence of the devil being bound to deceive the nations no more. When the apostle Peter received the revelation that he ‘should not call any man common or unclean’ no matter what nation any man was of, it was because the gospel was going out to the nations and was being extensively embraced (Acts 10.) What is this but the devil, as it says in Revelation 20, not deceiving the nations as in former times? “But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him” (Acts 10.35.) The nation chosen by God to be ‘his peculiar treasure’ and ‘a special people unto himself’ (Psalm 135.4; Deuteronomy 7.6) was destined, through the loins of Abraham and the promise of God, to be the conduit to multitudes from many nations coming to faith. “As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations” (Genesis 17.4.) The Messiah is foretold by the prophet Haggai and is called by him ‘the desire of all nations’ (Haggai 2.7.) He says there that “the desire of all nations shall come.” When did ‘the desire of all nations’ come? The answer is Sunday school level theology wherein the puzzle concerning the binding of Satan is solved. When the Magi came from the east to find ‘he that is born King of the Jews’ (Matthew 2.2), what was happening on the deeper level? “The coming of these Gentiles to Christ indicated that religion was no longer to be restricted to the Holy Land. The swaddling-clothes of Judaism were to be cast aside, and religion to march forth free and unfettered to claim the whole world in the name of the new-born King. The prophetic word had already gone forth: ‘All nations shall call Him blessed.’ And now these Gentiles come from afar to put their appropriating hand on the Holy Child Jesus, and claim Him as the Saviour for the world of Gentiles as well as the world of Jews” (Richard Roberts, My Later Ministry, p. 9.) The chokehold that the devil had on the Gentile nations was about to be broken. What is that but another way of saying what Revelation 20 tells us concerning his binding ‘that he should deceive the nations no more’? The ‘light to the Gentiles,’ foretold by the prophet Isaiah, had come. Why had he come? His coming was for ‘salvation unto the end of the earth’ (Isaiah 49.6.) In other words, it was for the salvation of souls among the nations, for which work, to be effectual, the devil would have to be limited, restricted, prevented, chained, fettered, or bound. There are prophecies like the one in Psalm 22.27 about ‘all the kindreds of the nations’ worshipping before God and the one in Zechariah 2.11 about many nations being joined to the LORD. What is included in all of this but a seal being set on Satan like it says in Revelation 20 ‘that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled’? If these prophecies, and others like them from the Old Testament, are applied by premillennialists to the epoch of a literal future millennium and not before, can we not protest that this process of salvation among the nations began on a large scale two thousand years ago? Has the devil not been restricted from deceiving the nations like he once did in the olden time before the first advent? God used even Caiaphas, the high priest who delivered Jesus to Pilate to be executed, to prophesy the fulfillment of the devil being bound: “…he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation; and not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad” (John 11.51, 52.) This is an unintentional prophecy of the devil being bound; this is a prophecy of his deceptive power over the nations being broken. The apostle Paul could speak, in the early days of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, of ‘obedience to the faith among all nations’ (Romans 1.5) and of heathen being justified through faith (Galatians 3.8.) He could speak like this because the devil was deceiving the nations no more like he once had done. The thousand years of Revelation 20 had begun. Some of what is related in Revelation 20 had not begun. Satan was not ‘loosed out of his prison’ (verse 7) yet; the final judgment (verses 11-15) was not in effect; and no one and nothing was being cast into the fiery lake. (Full preterism is a heresy; not all prophecies are fulfilled yet; that they are not all fulfilled yet is a negotiable article of faith only for persons willing to be damned.)

The report given by the seventy disciples upon their return from preaching substantiates this teaching of the devil’s figurative binding. They exclaimed, “Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name” (Luke 10.17.) Their Lord answered, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven” (verse 18.) Compare this with some of Revelation 20 to see the similarity; indeed, in order to see how what is said in Revelation 20 was fulfilled during Jesus’ ministry: “And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years” (Revelation 20.1, 2.) This is why the devils were now subject to these disciples. It was because of this binding. “And cast him into the bottomless pit” (verse 3): This is the fall of the devil ‘as lightning from heaven’ during the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. In the following words of Jesus, we have this fall associated with nations coming to the Lord because of it: “Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me” (John 12.31, 32.) This goes far to show, also, that the book of Revelation does not present a simple chronological sequence of events. The fulfillment of some of Revelation 20, which is very near to the close of the book, happened way back during the ministry of our Lord. That the book of Revelation is not chronological is the answer as to why the wrath of God closes chapters 11, 14, 16, and 19. It may be progressive in a sense; but it is not strictly chronological. It recapitulates from the incarnation of our Lord (roughly) to the consummation of all things.       

Why could it be sung in heaven of sinners being redeemed to God by the blood of the Lamb ‘out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation’? (Revelation 5.9.) This message could be sung because by this time the devil could deceive the nations no longer. The inhabitants of heaven could sing of the redemption of multitudes among the nations because the thousand years had begun. They could sing in chapter 5 of what is written in chapter 20 because the book of Revelation is not chronological, but a series of parallels. This structure has been called both ‘recapitulation’ and ‘parallelism.’ My two names for it are ‘progressive recapitulation’ and ‘progressive parallelism’ because of the additional revelation that is disclosed, especially in the final chapters. So often was I confused about how the book of Revelation is wont to begin at the beginning again right after a climax. It does this over and over. This riddle is solved once progressive recapitulation is noticed. The end of the age occurs, according to that schema, at the ends of chapters 3, 7, 11, 14, 16, 19, and 22; and each ending is more climactic than the one before it. The choir singing of God’s redemption has multiplied many times since the book of Revelation was written. This has been made possible because of the limitations put upon Satan since then. The proof of this multiplication is written in books on the great revivals that have taken place since the symbolic millennium started so long ago. We have had such outpourings of grace since that spiritual watershed that some of the Gentile nations have been called ‘Christian’ nations. They have not been wholly Christian any more than every member of Israel could be said to have been circumcised in the heart. But any nation has had to have been divinely affected to a large degree for it to be classified by anyone as Christian. The binding of the devil has meant the liberation necessary to souls coming to Christ in droves throughout the centuries among the nations of the earth. The devil’s binding, then, is interpreted for us in many parts of the Bible, both in the Old and New Testaments. Even without this corroborative data, we should know that this binding is figurative because the devil is a spirit, and a spirit cannot be bound by a chain. And if the chain in Revelation 20.1 is figurative, why would the thousand years in verse 2 be literal? 

We know that the binding of Satan has happened because the purpose of his binding has been, and is still being, in some measure, fulfilled. He was bound in order to curb his power over the nations so that multitudes from these various peoples of the earth would receive the good news that salvation from sin may be accessed through faith in Jesus’ name; the devil was constrained so that the ‘fulness of the Gentiles’ could come into God’s kingdom (Romans 11.25.) This is the movement that is spoken of in words like these: ‘out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation’ (Revelation 5.9); and in words like these: ‘a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues’ (7.9); and these: ‘the everlasting gospel…unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people’ (14.6); and these: ‘all nations shall come and worship before thee’ (15.4.) I have not read the works of Tertullian (circa A. D. 160-240.) But Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) had some knowledge of these writings; and he was both a discerning and honest man. In his History of the Work of Redemption, Edwards gives this stunning summary of Tertullian’s testimony concerning the extension of God’s kingdom in his day: “in his day the Christian religion had extended itself to the utmost bounds of the then known world, in which he reckons Britain, the country of our forefathers. He thence demonstrates that the kingdom of Christ was then more extensive than any of the four great monarchies, and moreover says that, though the Christians were as strangers of no long standing, yet they had filled all places of the Roman dominions, their cities, their islands, castles, corporations, councils, armies, tribes, the palace, senate, and courts of judicature; only they had left to the heathen their temples; and that if they should all agree to retire out of the Roman Empire, the world would be amazed at the solitude and desolation that would ensue upon it, there would be so few left; and that the Christians were enough to be able easily to defend themselves, if they were disposed to rise up in arms against the heathen magistrates” (p. 305.) This is the kind of history that informs and confirms the verses quoted above, even by the early date of Tertullian’s life. We are not obliged to believe that each and every professor was more than nominal to assert that the kingdom of Christ, nevertheless, was filling the earth, as prophesied by the prophet Daniel (Daniel 2.35.) Readers of revival history will understand. The propagation of the gospel has at least partially fulfilled the prophecy of swords being beaten into plowshares (Isaiah 2.4.) Consider the startling fact that John Wesley’s (1703-1791) ministerial headquarters in London was a former cannon factory. Isaiah’s prophecy is not about literal swords and literal plowshares. Much more of the Bible has been fulfilled than we have been given, by contemporary Dispensationalists, to think. And much more could be shared about that, even concerning the final chapters of Ezekiel; but this would lead away from the point at issue about the binding of Satan in Revelation 20.              

It can be somewhat traumatizing to discover that some prophecies that we’ve been looking forward to have been fulfilled already. But there are better and greater blessings awaiting us than if we had a millennium on earth to enjoy, or even a thousand of them, before entering in upon our final rest in the eternal state. The moon has a diameter of two thousand miles; that of the earth, about eight thousand; that of Jupiter, about eighty-seven thousand; that of our sun (a yellow dwarf), just under nine hundred thousand; that of Arcturus (an orange giant), about twenty-two million; that of Rigel (a blue supergiant), over sixty-eight million; that of Pistol Star (a blue hypergiant), about two hundred and sixty-five million; that of VY Canis Majoris (a red hypergiant), well over a billion; one light day covers sixteen billion miles; our galaxy (the milky way) covers one hundred thousand light years; and the observable universe encompasses a hundred billion light years. (These numbers vary to some degree among experts in cosmology.) A literal thousand year millennium is a puny thing compared to what a God large enough to create a universe like that has in store. “He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names. Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite” (Psalm 147, 5.) The single act of redemption by ‘the Lord of glory’ being more awesome than the creation of whole worlds, it is no wonder that the word of God says that man has no idea what God has prepared for the recipients of his grace (1 Corinthians 2.8, 9.) This passage goes on to say that saints, in distinction from the ‘princes of this world’ who crucified the Lord, do know something about what God has prepared for them to enjoy. Shelves lined with materialistic ‘end times’ books make it appear as though Christians have received, not the Spirit of God that ‘searcheth all things,’ but ‘the spirit of the world.’ The literal millennium is refuted by the figurative binding of Satan. This fact lifts us up above the spirit of the world that craves the confinement of a three dimensional existence. The binding of the devil is allegorical; so is the thousand years during which he is bound; and these facts are consonant with Christians being spiritually minded. The binding of Satan is in force; the millennium is happening; both are for a thousand figurative years; and recipients of the ‘first resurrection’ become heavenly millenarians as soon as they die.

PART I, ARTICLE IX: AMILLENNIANISM NO LONGER INCONCEIVABLE, SECTION II

Inducement number one concerns ‘the first resurrection’ that is mentioned in Revelation 20.5, 6. The ‘first resurrection’ is mentioned in both verses; and it is the same resurrection that is referred to in each verse. Verse 6: “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.” The generic ‘he’ that has part in this ‘first resurrection’ is the same as ‘the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God’ in verse 4. That is the topic. This is why we have the assertion in verse 5: “This is the first resurrection.” The rest of verse 5 is parenthetical. What the author is saying is: This concerns that: this ‘first resurrection’ in verse 6 has to do with these ‘souls’ in verse 4. He that is ‘beheaded’ (verse 4) is he that is disembodied; it is the author’s way of saying that we have to do with souls here, not bodies. And these beheaded souls—these souls without bodies—they ‘reign with him [Christ] a thousand years’ (verse 6.) Where do souls without their bodies reign with Christ? They reign with Christ in heaven; they reign in heaven with Christ for a thousand years, which is another way, in apocalyptic literature, of saying, a long time. Therefore this ‘first resurrection’ that grants the right of disembodied souls to reign with Christ in heaven must be a spiritual, not a bodily, resurrection. This inference is substantiated by the statement that the second death has no power on persons who have part in the first resurrection: ‘on such the second death hath no power’ (verse 6.) The second death has no power on persons who have part in the first resurrection; that is to say, on persons who have been born again. It is called the ‘first’ resurrection because it happens before the second one; the second one is the resurrection of the body. The first resurrection is of the soul; the second one is of the body. There is a figurative use in the New Testament of the concept of resurrection. This is what is referred to in Revelation 20. Resurrection is sometimes used in a figurative sense. Christians are said to be ‘raised up’ before ‘the ages to come’ (Ephesians 2.6, 7.) This is the ‘quickening’ of verse 5. God ‘hath raised us up,’ it says in verse 6. This is spoken in the past tense to Christians then living. There is a resurrection that happens to sinners to make them Christians; it is the born again experience; it is regeneration. We have the same idea in Colossians 2.12. The Colossian Christians ‘are risen with him [Christ],’ it says there. They are resurrected already; the bodily resurrection comes after. They have, as Jesus puts it in John 5.24, ‘passed from death unto life.’ The ‘second death’ is mentioned in Revelation 20 beside this ‘first resurrection,’ which resurrection is figurative to signify regeneration, something that happens before, not after, bodily death. The ‘second death’ is mentioned in association with something else (in addition to this kind of resurrection) that happens before, not after, bodily death. See the consistency of that. “He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death” (Revelation 2.11.) This is an admonition to Christians yet alive. If they persevere in faith, they will dodge the second death. This is the meaning. The same kind of admonition occurs in Revelation 21.7 to distinguish persevering Christians from varieties of impenitent sinners: ‘the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable,’ and so on (verse 8.) Therefore the teaching is that he upon whom the second death has no power is he that is regenerated before dying the first time, or physically; and he upon whom the second death has no power is he that overcomes in faith all the way to his grave.

If the concept of resurrection, therefore, is used figuratively in other parts of the New Testament, why should it be thought strange that it would be used figuratively in the most figurative book in the Bible? And the figurative use of it in Revelation 20 tells us that it is resurrected souls, not resurrected Christians with their bodies, that reign with Christ for a thousand years; and it tells us that the focal point of these thousand years is heaven, not earth; and this, in turn, tells us that from the perspective of persons on earth, the thousand years are figurative years denoting that period of time in between the first and second advents of Jesus Christ our Lord. That the thousand years has mainly to do with heaven in the present tense would be comforting to first century Christians whose spiritual brothers and sisters were being ‘beheaded,’ or killed for their faith: “Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years” (Revelation 20.6.) There would be little comfort here for first century saints if these thousand years were thousands of years in the future. He that is beheaded for his faith begins immediately to reign with Christ for a thousand years. “Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand” (Revelation 1.3.) The meaning, largely considered, is: Happy is he who hears the words of this prophecy and obeys what is written in it, for if he remains faithful and overcomes, even unto death, he will begin to reap the rewards shortly. This, then, is one inducement to be amillennial instead of millennial. By comparing Scripture with Scripture, and through special care to be congruent with the context, a spiritual resurrection is found in Revelation 20, and this ‘first resurrection’ is the event that guarantees the soul a thousand years with Christ in heaven until he comes back to earth to resurrect the bodies of all and to judge the world. The nearness of the millennium and its extended period of blessedness would be especially relevant for persecuted Christians to whom Jesus the Lord, through his apostle John, addressed his message.

Some writers on this passage of Scripture (Revelation 20) say that the word ‘lived’ in verses 4 and 5 must be identically interpreted. They say that ‘they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years’ must be the same kind of living as in ‘the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished.’ So they contend that both these groups were resurrected physically, or else both these groups were made alive spiritually. My doctrine is that the persons who lived to reign with Christ a thousand years (verse 4) are persons made alive spiritually in their born again experiences; and that the persons who lived not again ‘until’ (verse 5) are persons not resurrected in their bodies until the close of these thousand years. My doctrine, therefore, is that the first ‘lived’ is to be taken figuratively as pertaining to souls, and that the second ‘lived’ is to be taken literally as pertaining to bodies. Technical data are supportive of this duality. Both instances of ‘lived’ are stated in Strong’s as bearing either the literal sense or the figurative sense. And for the second ‘lived,’ the Holy Spirit, through his servant John, goes out of his way to use a different word from the first. The first ‘lived’ is translated from ‘zao’; the second is translated from ‘anazao.’ There is no more trouble believing that these words bear different meanings—the first figurative and the second literal—than believing that the first and second advents of Jesus Christ are predicted in Isaiah 9.6 in the words ‘child’ and ‘son.’ The word ‘zao’ means ‘to live,’ and corresponds neatly with that life which a sinner is infused with upon regeneration. The word ‘anazao’ means ‘to recover life,’ and corresponds nicely with the recovery of life to the body upon resurrection.

C. H. Spurgeon preached a sermon in 1861 called The First Resurrection wherein he asserted that the ‘first resurrection’ in the passage being considered is a bodily one; and he says that this sermon was ‘blessed of God.’ It is fair to admit this information. A sermon by Spurgeon is so full of spirit and meat that it may be blessed in spite of a bone and fault or two.       

While the ‘first resurrection’ in verses 5 and 6 refers to regeneration, bodily resurrection is mentioned in the parenthetical part of verse 5: in the first sentence. Revelation 20.5: “But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.” So there are two kinds of resurrection here. The ‘first resurrection’ is contrasted with another resurrection in the words, ‘the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished.’ The reason why it says, in verse 6, that ‘blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection’ is because this other resurrection must be a negative one. This other resurrection, then, is the one that takes place for persons who are not ‘blessed and holy,’ which must happen at the judgment for unbelievers. The dead who ‘lived not again until the thousand years were finished’ (verse 5) are the same dead mentioned in verse 12 who ‘were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works,’ the ones ‘not found written in the book of life’ (verse 15.) The message, then, is: If you are not raised to newness of life by experiencing this ‘first resurrection’ of your soul, you will not reign with Christ for a thousand years, for you will not have escaped the second death; and persons who have not escaped the second death are doomed to be raised at the last day for the negative purpose of being judged and consigned to the lake of fire for their sins. 

As if to crown my investigation on the meaning of this ‘first resurrection,’ the first part of verse 6 reads like so in Young’s Literal Translation: “Happy and holy is he who is having part in the first rising again.” In other words, the meaning is not: Happy and holy is he who is being resurrected bodily. The meaning is: Happy and holy is he who is being saved. So the sinners being born again in John the apostle’s day and who are obviously going to die before the consummation of all things, happy are they because they will get to reign with Christ in heaven for a thousand years or for however long it takes before Jesus Christ descends with them to judge the world. This is palpable encouragement for persecuted saints of the first century. New Testament letters were written for teaching, correction, and reproof, but also, maybe most of all, for encouragement. “Blessed is he that readeth” (Revelation 1.3.) Blessed is he because for him the one thousand years is near; that time is at the door. The blessing is primarily for the saints to whom the apostle wrote. The Revelation had to be written somewhat cryptically in order to veil it from the Roman government; but it also had to be understood by the persons to whom it was written, at least enough for them to derive a blessing from the disclosure.

PART I, ARTICLE IX: AMILLENNIALISM NO LONGER INCONCEIVABLE, SECTION I

 

Like most new Christians do, I read numerous books on the end times immediately after my born again beginning. Because the popular books on eschatology all leaned in one direction, I inclined that way as well. It took many years before I discovered teachers of a different mold from sensationalist sellers of millenarian books. It took a long time before my application of certain interpretive principles led me out from the cave of misunderstanding on this topic. The propositions in this article started to come together as I became comfortably convinced of how one single subject about the end times ought to be interpreted. The article itself is the outcome of an idea that I had for a hilltop meeting on the subject of the millennium. I don’t remember how it did it (for Jonathan Edwards was postmillennial in his belief), but his book called ‘A History of the Work of Redemption’ is what first made me suspect, twenty years ago in 2004, that premillennialism might be indefensible. I never wanted premillennialism to be unfounded. Because of this, I can honestly say that this article contains the fruits of years of independent education and unbiased investigation. These results, moreover, have not been allowed to stand except after frequent periods of meditation. The acquired input, in the exercise of meditation, has been held loosely aloft to sort itself out before settling into certainty. Note that Premillennialism, Chiliasm, and Millenarianism are terms that are used interchangeably in this article.    

Introduction

As is often the case with controversial subjects or subjects that are more on the margins than mainstream, the proper belief concerning the apocalyptic millennium is, I believe, not the popular one. The popular belief about it has been, since at least WWI, dispensational premillennialism. The premillennial teaching has occupied more shelves in the twentieth century, probably, than any other one found in Christian bookstores. And doubtless it has made its authors more money in the last fifty years of that century than any teaching propounded in all of Christendom. This teaching is the belief that the one thousand years that are mentioned in Revelation 20 are literal years and that Jesus Christ will return bodily to set up a kingdom of peace lasting for that exact amount of time and that he will then rule the world for this duration from Jerusalem with a rod of iron. Christians are united in believing that his second advent will be personal, physical, visible, and sudden. But not all of us believe that he is coming back to set up a paradisiacal thousand years of peace before the final judgment takes place. 

After end times enthusiasts have shamed themselves as deeply as their piles of cash are high from selling melodramatic books, the time has come to look at how amillennialism is shamelessly conceivable. If the end times aficionados would have been correct, each one of us Christians would be under his own fig tree right now with pet lions lying down beside oxen carelessly chewing their cud. This would be our situation because that is how literally most premillennial advocates interpret symbolic language; and this would be our situation right now because they (not all of them) have predicted the time of the rapture, and, consequently, the return of Christ and the start of the millennium, albeit cleverly and not in so many words. Each reader who has read books on the end times, if he has read them critically, has noticed that. Now that these predictions have failed, and because some readers remember their being made, a subset of these readers are reduced to believing that no prophecy whatsoever awaits, which position, of course, is heretical, for the actual in-person second coming of Jesus Christ is a capital doctrine of the Christian Faith. Millenarianism, if it is false, can cause frustration in the person who discovers it to be false, resulting in a recoil and unbelief. There are negative consequences to harping on or hyping up a teaching that might happen to be imaginary. There is an alternative to premillennialism that is more sobering than sensational and that, because of this temper, does not lead to a letdown or to unbelief. This alternative may be drawn straight from the chapter that millenarians depend on the most for the kind of millennium that they espouse. 

First, I will present three inducements from Revelation 20 to disbelieve in millenarianism and to believe in amillennianism instead. Then I will present specimens of millenarian incompetence and underhandedness as two further inducements. Each one of the three inducements collapses the idea of a literal millennium of peace on earth; and the specimens of incompetence and underhandedness reinforce the likelihood that millenarianism is a falsehood.

PART I, ARTICLE VIII: THE PERILOUS FOLLY OF FULL PRETERISM, SECTION V

Conclusion         

As mentioned earlier, in order to learn what the big to-do about full preterism was, I watched several videos about it, both for and against; then I watched a few debates on the subject. David Hester calls full preterism a heresy; but he debates Don K. Preston and even treats him as a brother. As I have shown from Scripture, this is wrong. The apostle Paul did not debate heretics in a forum or manner wherein heretics were treated as brothers. David Hester is Education Director and Involvement Minister for the Eastern Meadows Church of Christ in Montgomery, Alabama. Don K. Preston had his hotel room paid for when he came to town to preach heresy in this church. David Hester complains about division in the Church; but then he invites a heretical divider into his church to preach heresy to his people. 

Because I had to learn about a current heresy to be opposed and refuted, I cannot be held guilty for watching debates that I don’t believe should have happened. I will now share the two most important things I learned from that minor mental exertion. I do not know if David Hester is thoroughly orthodox. I don’t know enough about his ministry in order to judge that. But when he speaks traditional orthodoxy against full preterism, I can easily understand him; I have ‘ears to hear’ what he says. Conversely, even when Don K. Preston says ‘catch the power of this!’ I cannot catch that power no matter how hard I try. I can’t follow him down his winding corridors; I can’t see what he sees; I can’t hear what he hears; I can’t catch the power that he has caught. Either he is blind to the Bible, or I am. I can catch the power of what I believe is faithful exposition; but I can’t catch the power of full preterism. This, I believe, is because full preterism is perilously unorthodox. When a Christian cannot catch light from a speaker, the speaker is likely in darkness. If what he says is as nebulous as the un-deciphered Code of Hammurabi, he, not the Christian listening, should be suspected of cloudiness and confusion. This is the most convincing indicator, I think, of full preterism being unorthodox. Because it is both dark and perilous, the sincere Christian will not be able to catch its alleged light and power. I have ears to hear when Michael Brown debates Preston as well. I even have ears to hear when Jason Wallace debates him. Wallace was so over his head in that debate that he was drowned in it; but because his arguments lined up with Scripture, my Christian spirit recognized that he was right. The most airtight argument for the full preterist being wrong, then, is the revelation in 1 Corinthians 2: “Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given us of God” (verse 12.) The spirit saved by God through Christ can recognize error because the truth has been revealed to him and resides inside him. He has the mind of Christ (verse 16.) Mr. Wallace played the fool in deciding to debate Mr. Preston. “But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty” (1 Corinthians 1.27.) Don Preston, the wise man, was taken in his ‘own craftiness’ (3.19) at least where I was concerned: because I noticed the ‘foolish things of the world’ (1.27) in Mr. Wallace to be the truth. When listening to these two debaters, it was evident that the heretic was whipping the man who leaned orthodox. Still, the Christian is able to judge that the man who lost is the man who was right. The heretic will call this judgment unfair. To the Christian, this doesn’t matter, for he is the spiritual man in the following verse: “But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man” (1 Corinthians 2.15.) The Christian has something akin to a spiritual nerve to distinguish truth from error. Like Spiderman with his spider sense or a woman with her intuition, the Christian’s ‘inner man’ tingles when something’s not right.   

The second most convincing indicator that full preterism is wrong is that it is based on the year A. D. 70. That is its foundation, which foundation is about as stable as the temple was at that time. The full preterist has to wrest the Scriptures in order to make them fit into this ‘time stamp,’ as he calls it. The future of full preterism is like the fate of the temple that was destroyed in A. D. 70. “There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down” (Matthew 24.2.) It is not safe for the soul to be worshipping at the temple of full preterism.         

If full preterism is gaining ground, it may be because multitudes are finally tired of the other extreme: all the hype and false predictions over the last few decades concerning the rapture, the great tribulation, the antichrist, the mark of the beast, the two witnesses, the millennium, and all the other sensational aspects of pre-millennial faith. Tired of all the fanaticism and false predictions, the natural thing is to react all the way to the other extreme where no prophecy whatsoever has to be waited for ever again. But full preterism, because of its denial of fundamental doctrines, is more perilous by far than any brand of pre-millennialism. Full preterists assert that the second coming, the judgment, and the resurrection are all behind us. If their assertion is wrong, they might as well be denying those doctrines and events. I suppose they believe that history on earth will go on indefinitely. This is likely their belief, for full preterism is earthly. “This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish” (James 3.15.)

Is it not true that Christians who end up being babes tossed about by winds of false doctrine for years upon years are fascinated by things less than elementary—much less elementary than the fundamental doctrines of faith, repentance, baptism, laying on of hands, resurrection, and judgment? (Hebrews 6.1-2.) Are so many of these babes not obsessed with things like glossolalia, the location of Noah’s ark, and the nature of pre-diluvium giants? Speak to them on a topic like that, and their eye becomes as focused as the eye of a cat on a nearby bird. Then mention resurrection, and it is not the history or futurity of this that grips them—not the resurrection of Jesus or the general resurrection—but an alleged resurrection by a ‘faith healer.’ These babes are the ones who are most susceptible to believe an idea like ‘the resurrection is past already.’ They are not grounded in basic doctrines; the winds of heresy easily carry them off; and many babes, consequently, are destined to have it discovered at the last day that they were not ‘Fathers in Israel’ like they saw themselves as, and not even ‘newborn babes,’ but deceived unbelievers. Many babes never mature because the fundamentals that lead to childhood are never studied by them, being laid aside for things that titillate more than teach. The first concern of a babe should be to become a child at least. Baby Street, if stayed on, may lead to Heresy Avenue, which in turn opens up to a Broadway leading to Destruction. Warn the stubborn babe of this, and he will be as certain that he is safe as Don K. Preston is of obtaining salvation through his eviscerated system. It is not wrong to seek out mysteries. But there must be order and proportionality to our seeking. A carpenter doesn’t learn to build houses by making hobby horses. A hobby horse Christian is an incorrigible toddler who refuses to be taught. The first principles of religion, what are they? He knows them all. He knows everything about every single one. He must move on to find out how giants were conceived, where the Urim and the Thummim might be discovered, and where the sword of Goliath was last laid down. We don’t need the Urim and the Thummim to divine what happens next. By riding the trails on his hobby horses, without the weight of first principles to keep him grounded, he is blown about, and becomes a full preterist or something just as deadly to his soul. 

One fundamental point gotten wrong has cost many a person so much. A dissertation is lost on account of the wrong button pressed. A rifle fails to fire because the pin was left out. How fundamentally important is the resurrection of the body? Can this teaching be absent from the soul that is saved? An astronomer said that the darkest thing she ever saw was the moon as it covered the sun. The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, if covered by unbelief, will bring about its own eclipse, more dark than any natural one on record, and as stretched out in time as eternity itself. Resurrection, according to my species of synesthesia, is a fiery red word; while unbelief is a black word. This black word is now covering the red one in the lives of many, and it is driven by the impulse of full preterism. We had better die “knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus” (2 Corinthians 4.14.) We had better know this in the reasonable, traditional sense: as Jesus rose from the dead bodily, so will we. Reaching forward into chapter 5, we are reminded of what we all know by observation: that, upon death, a soul becomes absent from its body (5.8.) The prospect, then, is of what must take place thereafter: the rejoining of body and soul. And to what purpose is that? “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (verse 10.) Full preterism is the belief that all prophecies have been fulfilled. Both heaven and hell are prophesied in the Bible. What can the full preterist believe, then, except that hell and heaven are in the past, and are, therefore, allegorical? And what has the full preterist to say about wrongs one day being righted? If all prophecies are in the past, all murderers and rapists and robbers who have gotten away with their sins and crimes will never be finally judged. If all prophecies are in the past, we are told in vain to ‘give place to wrath’ so that God can do the repaying (Romans 12.19.) If all prophecies are in the past, the Lord will not repay criminals with vengeance after all. Therefore, if the plan of the full preterist is correct, present lawlessness will never give way to justice.              

The story of how Don K. Preston became a full preterist is helpful as a warning. This story he gave in a speech called, Testimony Regarding Full Preterism. Freshly graduated from seminary, Don K. Preston decided, not to teach what the Holy Ghost impressed him with, not even to teach what a new minister ought to be paying attention to, but what the women in his Bible class wanted him to teach. What did he study? What did he teach? He studied and taught Matthew 24 and Revelation. Instead of studying and teaching the fundamentals of the faith, which he ought to have done, he studied and taught the subject of end-time prophecy. Besides the fact of his unbelief, is this not the key to how he was led astray? He began with last things instead of first things; and because he was never grounded in first things, his false interpretation of last things led him into fundamental errors. His problems did not start here though. When he was in seminary, two of his professors admitted that they did not believe what they were about to teach. It is not a surprise, then, that Mr. Preston was cast adrift. Not to say that the ‘Church of Christ’ textbook that his professors were teaching from was thoroughly truthful. The point is that the seminary that he went to did him no good. And then he became a minister who didn’t know what to believe. And from all of this we get a man who ends up preaching full preterism. The man began with last things instead of first things; then he interpreted first things according to his theory of last things; and it is no wonder that a Christian can barely understand a thing that he says. When a man begins with last things before he is grounded in first things, he risks ending mixed up about all things. It is not safe to begin your ministry with difficult eschatological texts that masters in the word of God have been doubtful about the interpretation of and have disagreed with each other on. It is not safe; it is not wise; it is not ministerial. Did he teach something other than eschatology after he graduated? I don’t know; but I doubt it. To teach eschatology as a young minister, without the ballast of historical theology, is impetuous, reckless, and hazardous. It is a sure way to shipwreck your faith and the faith of those who listen to you. How did I write this article? Did I rely on my own skill and understanding? Here is how I did it: I looked closely at each passage that seemed to address the subject in question; I compared those passages with others of similar character; I came up with an outline; I took notes; I looked up some key words; I took more notes; I compared all of this with full preterism; I wrote the article; in my revision of it I made sure that I was convinced; I turned to learned Commentators, and received correction from them in places where they convinced me of error; I opened up a Confession or two, and considered them; and during all of these stages I was meditating and praying intermittently. I did not begin with Commentaries and Confessions. I did the work on my own; then I allowed myself to be edified by the body of Christ (Ephesians 4.12) that these Commentators and Confessors are part of (verse 11.) Before all of this, however—years and years before all of this—I had studied to the point of arriving at a considerable share of certainty regarding a system of theology. This does not mean that my system of theology decided anything; I did not adopt the system before I was persuaded, through much hard labor, of its truth. And this system proves itself right again and again by its reasonable interpretations, especially of passages of Scripture that focus on doctrines and events of the first rank. 

A system that purports to solve problems by a great sweep is attractive to persons who like singularity more than complexity, and relaxation more than labor. Imagine: so many prophecies thought unsolvable, redirected through one easy channel! a system with more unifying force in eschatology than the theories of Einstein in science! Its design is to draw prophecies to itself to receive the simple explanation of the year A. D. 70. But lo! “The Guillotine was not originally designed with any view to what turned out to be its most important characteristic—the great numbers of victims that it could dispose of in a short space of time: it is curious, and ought to be to theorists an instructive lesson, that this bloody implement was at first proposed on a combined principle of justice and mercy” (John Wilson Croker, History of the Guillotine, p. 7.) The cure of beheading became worse than the alleged disease of hanging. Similarly, full preterism is worse than what it claims to be a fix for. It may become a convenient mode, not to solve prophetic puzzles, but to smooth the way toward hell for thousands of inconstant professors. It can roll from place to place like a Guillotine could, only faster. It may roll from city to city and from site to site, drawing souls away from the faith without bother of removing heads. Full preterism is no innocuous belief. Prophecy is not a frivolous matter. The second coming of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the judgment of the world are doctrines and events that souls must live on, or else die forever without. To knit and gossip around a Guillotine, as certain women did during the Reign of Terror in France, is no way to stop the blade from falling. Full preterists must be warned before they lose their everlasting souls. It may be, since men choose to trifle instead of learn what they should believe, that the Lord is dispatching a Robespierre or two in the midst, to take multitudes down in their folly. Strong delusions are sent by God to deal with persons who amuse themselves with lies when they should receive the truth; and their false believing issues in damnation (2 Thessalonians 2.) This is not unlike a person who wills to believe, against mounting evidence, that there is a plague when there isn’t one, only to be given over by God to further believe that he needs a vaccine, which vaccine ends up killing him. 

In the French Revolution it was shown that a cheek, when slapped, will blush after its head is severed. In like manner, dead bodies will blush with life when the Lord comes back to resurrect. And what comes after but the final judgment? To have died a full preterist will be to have died in faith that is vain instead of saving. There is a resurrection unto damnation; full preterism is a damnable heresy; many bodies, no doubt, will be raised to be damned because of an allegiance to it. 

Professing Christians who are most in danger of falling for the full preterist heresy are persons who have become exhausted by all the false predictions of prophecy pundits and their pulp prophecy books. This includes, especially, professing Christians who hold Pentecostal beliefs. This kind of professing Christian acts like, even if he does not say so, as if the Bible may be, not only contradicted, but superseded by his subjective connection with the Holy Ghost. That his beliefs may contradict the Bible poses no more problem to his mind than the clash between verses in the Koran troubles the Muslim.        

Full preterism is a foolish, perilous heresy. Those who travel down this road risk losing their path toward heaven. There are certain doctrines and events that we, as professing Christians, are obligated to believe. To not believe that the Lord is coming back to resurrect and to judge is to disbelieve some of the most fundamental matters of religion in the Bible. Resurrection is the completion of redemption. It is called ‘the redemption of the body.’ Can a person be saved while disbelieving in redemption? The notion that one can seems blasphemous. “Where is the promise of his coming?” (2 Peter 3.4.) To the full preterist, the promise has been fulfilled, and we didn’t even know it. But the second coming of Jesus Christ is not in the past. It still stretches out in the future because the Lord “is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (verse 9.) This extension of mercy does not exclude the full preterist, as sacrilegious as his heresies are; any full preterist who is among the elect will, in the fullness of his time on earth, repent and receive correction. The longer he puts repentance and learning off, the more he should suspect that it has not been decreed from eternity that he enter the kingdom of God.

PART I, ARTICLE VIII: THE PERILOUS FOLLY OF FULL PRETERISM, SECTION IV

 An Eradicated Expectancy

Full preterism is eerily similar to a heresy confronted by the apostle Paul in the early Church. It is egregiously dissimilar from the teaching of this apostle and his Lord. And because of its A. D. 70 hermeneutic, its faith is eradicated of all expectancy. When everything is behind, what is there to look forward to? When troubles weigh us down, how is our spirit lifted up? How does the apostle Paul comfort the Christians in Thessalonica who are in sorrow about their brethren who have died? He tells them about how the Lord will come back ‘and the dead in Christ shall rise first’ (1 Thessalonians 4.16.) In what way will they rise? Their souls are already with the Lord. So it must be their bodies that will rise. Their dead bodies will rise up to the clouds ‘to meet the Lord in the air’ (verse 17.) For sure their bodies will not rise in a regenerative way. That kind of rising is for souls, not bodies. And to be ‘dead in Christ’ is to be regenerate persons already; otherwise they could not be spoken of as being ‘dead’ and ‘in Christ’ at the same time. The elect are chosen in Christ ‘before the foundation of the world’ (Ephesians 1.4.) But the Christians spoken of in this epistle to Thessalonica are ‘dead in Christ.’ A person cannot be ‘dead in Christ’ without being regenerate because regeneration is necessary for entry into his kingdom (John 3.3.) Therefore they will rise in some other way than regenerative. Were they to rise in a figurative way in A. D. 70? How would knowledge of that comfort anyone? How would it comfort someone to know that Jerusalem would be wasted, vast multitudes would be killed there or brought into slavery, and that before this some of these persons would be made so desperate by famine that they would give into the temptation to cannibalize their own babies? Jesus wept over what was shortly to happen to Jerusalem. But in the interest of an A. D. 70 model of interpretation, we are supposed to believe that this very same event was the consolation of Thessalonian Christians! “Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (verse 18.) What a ghastly comfort if the carnage of A. D. 70 is meant! And is there anything at all in 1 Thessalonians 4 to make anyone think of A. D. 70? The resurrection in the phrase, ‘the dead in Christ shall rise first,’ is interpreted for us in verse 14: “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again.” This is the kind of resurrection that is preached for the consolation of those who grieve at the graves of beloved brethren. This resurrection will be as actual and physical as the rising of Jesus from the tomb. Jesus rose from the dead bodily; so will the believing dead. This is the teaching; this is the consolation; this is what they and we are given to look forward to. The full preterist has not this expectancy. By indulging his addiction to A. D. 70, he has eradicated it.

What the apostle Paul ‘cried out in the council’ is what our cry should be to each preterist who comes to us with his heresy: “of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called into question” (Acts 23.6.) Our future resurrection is so mystically bound up with the resurrection of Christ that when ours is called into question, so is his. By his resurrection, Christ has become the firstfruits; and Christians are the fruits that are prophesied to follow. This is the teaching and promise in 1 Corinthians 15.20-23. They ‘shall all be made alive.’ If the preterist calls these last fruits into question, he must, of necessity, question the sufficiency of the power behind the resurrection of Christ that makes possible these last fruits. I know that the preterist has a clever interpretation of this passage. I don’t remember what it is because, even when told to catch the power of it, I couldn’t catch it. I can’t catch the power of heretical interpretation. Maybe I saw the gist for a moment, but not enough to catch it and to hold it. I can catch the power and promise of Scripture though because that sinks into my ears and affects my heart. I can see it; I can catch it; I can hold it; and because it holds me more than I hold it, my heart is made hopeful by it. The hope of a preterist is not worthy to be called hope. Though he uses the word, he has no warrant to do so, not in the eschatological sense at least. “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (verse 19.) The context around this verse should terrify the full preterist. His ‘realized eschatology’ makes him ‘of all men most miserable.’ It excludes him from being blessed, for blessedness is somewhat the opposite of misery. Before the verse and after the verse, the subject of resurrection is preached, connecting the resurrection of Christ from the dead with the same kind of resurrection for the faithful. The professing Christian who does not believe in this communication is ‘of all men most miserable.’ The firstfruits represent the whole of the harvest. It sanctifies the harvest. Jesus has a resurrected body; and on the strength of his rising, he has a sanctified harvest in waiting. “For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one” (Hebrews 2.11.) Jesus was received into heaven by God the Father; so will every grain of wheat. Is the full preterist a grain of wheat? He needs to examine himself about as much as he needs to reexamine, with prayer and without bias, the relevant passages of Scripture. The ‘hope in Christ’ in 1 Corinthians 15.19 involves the resurrected body. From verse 12 to verse 23 this hope is expounded relative to the glorious body that the Christian looks forward to put on. It should not surprise us that since Jesus lives forever in a body, we who are transformed into his image will get our bodies back to live forever just like that. The doctrine of the resurrection of our bodies is so vital to the fullness of what we shall be that the apostle wraps our hope up in that shroud. Christians are like men walking around with this hope of resurrection inside their bodies. This hope will one day spring to newness of life. The Holy Spirit is never far from brooding over our bodies in the expectation of what we will become. “For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 5.4, 5.) A heavenly immortality for saints is assured. “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15.53.) So not only does the soul of a saint rise to heaven to be with God immediately upon death, his corrupting body is held in reserve for a glorious revivification. For this reason the death of a saint is called a sleep: “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept” (verse 20.) Jesus carries this idea so far that one time, concerning a damsel who was obviously dead, he says this: “Why make ye this ado, and weep? the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth” (Mark 5.39.) The word ‘sleepeth’ here is a different word than ‘slept’ in 1 Corinthians 15.20. But both words mean ‘sleep,’ though the one in Mark may not be as fluid as the one in 1 Corinthians. So this damsel is dead. This is so certain that they laugh Jesus ‘to scorn’ when he calls her death a sleep; and then, in the teeth of their invective, he raises her from the dead. This example is enough to show how the word ‘sleep’ is sometimes used. 1 Corinthians 15.20: “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.” Follow the logic. Christ is risen from the dead, and we know that this means bodily because he was raised in no other way; he is the firstfruits of them that slept, or were sleeping; they that were sleeping were those that were dead; therefore the harvest must be a rising from the literal dead, just as the firstfruits was, which was a rising from the dead bodily. Does that not make more sense than that this resurrection refers to an allegorical rising that happened somehow in A. D. 70? I think that any believer will be able to catch the power of it. Believe that the resurrection is past (which belief must be against good reason and sound treatment of the Scriptures), and what expectancy do you have? The apostle says that you are too miserable to have one. In 1 Thessalonians 4 the Lord’s chief apostle speaks of Christians believing in the resurrection in distinction from persons ‘which have no hope’ (verses 13, 14.) The person who does not believe that ‘the dead in Christ shall rise’ (verse 16), then, has no hope. The word of God denies hope to persons who disbelieve this doctrine. They might believe that they have hope; they might hope that they have hope; they might even feel that they have hope; but the Bible says that they are hopeless. 

The full preterist doctrine is really a nest of false doctrines. It is similar to a prominent New Testament heresy; it is dissimilar to how resurrection is taught in the New Testament; and, being without hope, must lead to unbelief, despair, and even hell. Yes, we had better believe that it must lead even to hell itself when persisted in even if, and especially since, the full preterist has no reason, from the standpoint of his belief, to believe in hell. If the judgment of A. D. 70 is the last judgment, as the preterist believes, he has no basis for believing that there are rewards and punishments to come. But what is judgment for if not for rewarding and punishing? Multitudes in A. D. 70 were massacred; and multitudes managed, not without harm and loss, to escape. It was a kind of judgment. But that was all temporal. And what about the rest of humanity? “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5.10.) The scope seems to be all encompassing here. No justification can be found in the context for assuming that the scope is narrower than the whole of humanity. Has such a judgment happened yet? What about Revelation 20.13? “And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.” Even if we were to suppose this to be in the past, the scope seems rather greater than the Siege of Jerusalem in A. D. 70. How can this event be squeezed into the narrow compass of A. D. 70 in Jerusalem? Judgment is for everyone, not just for Jews of a certain generation. “Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead” (Acts 17.31.) The ‘men of Nineveh’ and ‘the queen of the south’ shall ‘rise up in judgment’ to condemn the generation of Jesus’ day for not repenting and for not receiving him as their Messiah (Matthew 12.38-42.) Were the men of Nineveh and the queen of the south present at the Siege of Jerusalem in A. D. 70? Not likely; but they will be at the final judgment that full preterists don’t believe in; and full preterists will be there as well. Full preterism leads to unbelief of one cardinal doctrine after another, and goes on toward hopelessness and hell. The second coming of Jesus Christ is so closely associated with resurrection and judgment (the latter two events being the immediate consequence of the first), that the unbelief of one naturally leads to not believing the other two. In this, at least, the full preterist is a ‘consistent preterist.’ He is consistently unbelieving.                                

The future resurrection of the dead is entwined with the coming judgment; and both events together form no small measure of a Christian’s hope.  “And have hope toward God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust” (Acts 24.15.) The apostle’s hope toward God is inseparably connected with the facts that God will resurrect and that God will judge. We know that his hope is enlarged by the contemplation of both events here, for he distinguishes between the just and the unjust. Why mention both the just and the unjust, relative to resurrection, unless judgment is in view? 

Don K. Preston hates it when Creeds or Confessions are cited in support of what the Scriptures teach. But watch how faithful the Belgic Confession is to those words of Paul recorded in Acts: “…And then all men will personally appear before this great Judge…For all the dead shall be raised out of the earth…and the dead judged according to what they shall have done in this world, whether it be good or evil…And, therefore, the consideration of this judgment is justly terrible and dreadful to the wicked and ungodly, but most desirable and comfortable to the righteous and the elect….” Notice that it says ‘the dead shall be raised’ (the ‘resurrection of the dead’ of Acts 24.15), in order to be ‘judged’ for ‘good or evil’ (because ‘just’ or ‘unjust,’ as in Acts 24.15), and that this is ‘most desirable and comfortable to the righteous and the elect’ (an idea corresponding with the ‘hope toward God’ of Acts 24.15.) What do we have here, in both the Confession and Scripture, but hope toward God in light of resurrection and judgment? And this Confession doesn’t look backward as if all of this is an allegory of an event that happened in A. D. 70. When a Confession is this close to Scripture, while an encroaching belief system that looks like a heresy doesn’t bear scrutiny on the very doctrines that the Confession is tight with Scripture on, the encroaching belief system that looks like a heresy is probably a heresy, and the Confession was probably drawn up to protect us from heresies of its ilk. When you examine what you suspect is a heresy under the light of God’s word, and then you discover that a great Confession confirms both your findings and your suspicion, you become quite certain that you have judged the alleged heresy aright. Full preterism is completely disconnected from the hope that a Christian should have toward God.         

This hope, moreover, is not as fully professed by orthodox Christians as it should be. The Christian should be looking forward, not only to the resurrection of the dead, but to the judgment that follows it. That is what, to no little degree, imprecatory passages in the Psalms are about. “Oh let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end; but establish the just: for the righteous God trieth the hearts and reins” (Psalm 7.9.) This is part of the Christian’s hope. God will try the hearts and reins to expose what men are made of; wickedness will come to an end; and the just will be established. “And they cried with a loud voice, saying, how long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?” (Revelation 6.10.) This is part of a Christian’s hope. “Righteous art thou, O LORD, when I plead with thee: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments: wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?” (Jeremiah 12.1.) We know that the judgments that the prophet speaks of here include retribution for evil deeds, for his complaint is that the wicked prosper and that the treacherous are happy. Furthermore, his request becomes explicit in verse 3: ‘prepare them for the day of slaughter.’ If we should not go this far in our request, yet our desire should be for what God will do; and we know that he will judge. Should we not like to talk with the LORD about his judgments? Whether we like the prospect of doing so or not, we should do it. We should not be ashamed that our hope includes the future judgment of the wicked. 

The republication of The Scots Worthies from 1775 is one of the best examples of Christians being ashamed of what they should hope for. The Scots Worthies is a history of preaching, persecution, and perseverance, one mini biography at a time. The author was not ashamed of his hope; but the modern publisher is. The edition of The Scots Worthies that The Banner of Truth Trust chose to reprint is from 1781. John Howie, the author, included, in that edition, an appendix called The JUDGMENT and JUSTICE of GOD EXEMPLIFIED in a Brief Historical Account of the Wicked Lives and Miserable Deaths of some of the most remarkable Apostates and bloody Persecutors in Scotland, from the Reformation till after the Revolution. Collected from Historical Records, Authenticated Writings, &c. &c. The Banner of Truth Trust does not include this appendix in its republication. That is a sad concerning fact, for the Banner is possibly the best current publisher of the best books of days gone by. Notice how John Howie wrote the above title; he used many capital letters and a long line of italics to make his point that he was not ashamed of what he was about to relate. This history of the wicked lives and miserable deaths of persecutors and apostates does not make us hate; it illustrates our hope. We are supposed to look forward to the judgment. Learning about God’s judgments in preliminary form, as they happen on earth, is a consolation that looks to consummation. It is the beginning of God avenging every wrong. The resurrection is to the purpose of living forever, with Christ in bliss, in both body and soul. But the foreground of this eternity is the last judgment. And this event is a holy one that we may see hints of in history—though we must seek out public domain publishers to see those hints because a current publisher like the Banner of Truth won’t give them to us. Thankfully the internet has made access to ancient editions possible. For years I wondered and wanted what it was that this publisher, because of its impudence, thought fit that I should never read. Many times I looked for it; but each time it seemed to have been wiped off the face of the earth. Then, one day, expecting failure once again, I hit on the appendix through Google Books. Then I saw that some editions of Howie’s book included not only one appendix, but eight of them, each one of them more valuable, no doubt, than any book that a Banner Censor would be able to write. Anyway, here is part of what ‘the late Dr. M’Crie’ had to say about the appendix in question, which quotation the Banner solicited to justify the omission of said appendix: “Of course I do not suppose that, in giving a new edition of the ‘Scots Worthies,’ you would think of altering or expunging any part of the volume; for I am a great enemy to garbling the works of deceased authors…I should like that the appendix consisting of an account of the judgments executed on persecutors, were omitted; which, in my opinion, adds neither to the value nor the credibility of the work.” On the one hand, he is an enemy to expunging; on the other hand, he wants to omit. And the gentlemen at the Banner, fearing more than faithful in this instance, acted on the last part of Dr. M’Crie’s contradictory advice. Who has the right to leave out a part of an author’s book that the author felt so strongly about? If a publisher does not find a history wholly acceptable, and cannot, in good conscience, publish it whole, the publisher should leave it entirely alone. That would be far better and safer before the all-seeing God than to ‘garble’ the author’s work by omitting his supplementary material. Why doesn’t the Banner write its own history? It is easier to merchandize a book than to write one; that must be the reason. Has anyone at the Banner even read The Scots Worthies? Has anyone there ever read the execrated appendix? Who are Christian censors but persons who have nominated themselves to dictate what parts of the Bible should be learned and expounded? This accusation is not going too far because by his historical account of wicked lives and miserable deaths, John Howie teaches the Bible. And he is not a lone maverick in this. John Foxe, the historian that Christian historians are indebted to the most and mostly rely on, did the same thing. Here is an instance of that: “Whereupon the said king Sigebert, continuing his cruel conditions, by his subjects conspiring against him was put from his kingly dignity, and brought into such desolation, that, wandering alone in a wood without comfort, he was there slain even by the swineherd of the said earl, whom before he had so wrongfully murdered, as partly above touched; whereby is to be seen the cruel tyranny of princes never to prosper well, without the just revenge both of God and man” (John Foxe, Acts and Monuments, Volume I, p. 1006.) Retribution for evil deeds is a lesson that the Bible often tells us about: through the lives of Haman and Jezebel, and even King David in the Old Testament; and in the New Testament through the lives of King Herod and Judas Iscariot. But post-biblical stories of rewards for evil deeds are not supposed to be told? Who are these Christian censors to decide what we should learn from the Bible through the narration of history? Christian publishers are duty-bound to respect the authors whose works they publish and make money off of; to omit is to disrespect instead. We should leave disrespectful deeds for Popes, Jacobins, Mullahs, and Marxists to perpetrate. If there is an edition of The Scots Worthies, endorsed by John Howie, that does not include the appendix concerning The JUDGMENT and JUSTICE of GOD EXEMPLIFIED, the Banner should have reprinted that one. Reprinting an edition that contains the appendix, without including the appendix, is the slippery slope toward what Dr. M‘Crie called ‘garbling the works of deceased authors.’ It should never have become acceptable to sin against authors just because they are deceased and therefore defenseless.  

Why did John Howie write about judgment on earth in the lives of apostates and persecutors? Here is why, in his own words: “And, in fine, if the following hints shall serve for no other purpose, they will stand for an incontestible evidence of the very first principle of religion, that there is a God to reward the righteous and punish the wicked; so that men shall say, Verily, there is a reward for the righteous; verily, there is a God that judgeth in the earth; verily, the retributive justice of God stands out here in colours so vivid as cannot be mistaken.” By ‘the very first principle of religion’ he alludes to Hebrews 6 where judgment is spoken of as a rudimentary principle that no Christian should be doubtful on. No Christian should be so uneducated and unconvinced as to doubt the traditionally received doctrine of judgment. There will be a second coming of the Lord; he will descend bodily from heaven; he will resurrect every single body; the judgment of each person will happen in both body and soul; and in all of this does the Christian hope consist. All of this is holy to the LORD; it should be holy to us; each component of eschatology is to be hoped for. John Howie’s words above are in perfect conformity with the hope articulated in Acts: “And have hope toward God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust” (Acts 24.15.) His appendix is a historical prelude to the Christian hope that both the just and the unjust will stand before God one day to reap what they have sown. What Christian has the right to omit part of someone else’s book in order to deflect our reading something like that? 

We have to love our enemies in practical ways (Proverbs 25.21.) We should strive to love our enemies with compassion and concern for their lost condition. But on some level—on a higher level—our love for the LORD must be like the experience of the Psalmist: “Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?” (Psalm 139.21.) We are to love our enemies; but our regenerate spirit recoils from those who hate the LORD. There are many paradoxes in the word of God; we need to accept them all, including this love-hate relationship with persons who hate our LORD. The judgment of impenitent sinners is part of what a Christian hopes for. Acts 24.15 is the iteration of Psalm 139.21 in different words. Both the apostle Paul and King David hope for judgment, which is another way of saying: they are hoping for the just to be vindicated and the unjust to be sentenced. “Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?” (1 Corinthians 6.2.) “Know ye not that we shall judge angels?” (verse 3.) If these prophecies are true, shall we not look forward to their accomplishment? Are these verses too hard to interpret? Why not let Scripture interpret Scripture? “Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him” (Jude 14, 15.) It says that the Lord is coming with his saints in order to execute judgment. Why does it say that the saints are coming with the Lord? It says this because the saints are coming with him to participate in the judgment. And a judge looks forward to sentencing a criminal; he may not admit it, but he sometimes does. Shall the saints not look forward to being the Lord’s helpers at the judgment? Right now we might not like the prospect of such work. But after we are entirely conformed to God’s will, what then? We will look back on our timidity with contempt; we will then be anxious to do everything that has been prophesied we must do. We will be entirely conformed to the letter of what our spirits, if not our tongues, have often uttered. “When the wicked perish, there is shouting” (Proverbs 11.10.) What Christian was not quickened with relief at the deaths of Henry Morgentaler and Jack Kevorkian? There is a difference between a reaction like that and being ‘glad at calamities’ (Proverbs 17.5.) When a wicked murderer dies, that is not a calamity. “Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth” (Proverbs 24.17.) We should not be glad in a mocking, clucking, strutting fashion. But we are nevertheless made happy by his fall. Is that wrong? What did Moses and the Israelites do when the Egyptians were drowned in the sea? “Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the LORD, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea” (Exodus 15.1.) We may be glad in a holy way, then. It is a good thing when wicked persons are removed from the earth. Justified spirits cannot help being thankful for God’s providence in restraining evildoers. In Revelation there is even a command to rejoice over the fall of Babylon: “Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her” (18.20.) We learn from Genesis in the slaying of Abel by Cain that spilled blood cries out to God from the ground for justice. The blood of man craves the righting of wrongs, even to the point of crying out for it, and must be blessed at the LORD’s avenging answer. Yea, even the inanimate earth would rather be pure than polluted with blood. How much more must this craving for justice exist among animate creatures whose regenerate spirits are inclined to the righteous ways of God? “Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you” (2 Thessalonians 1.6.) We should all hope for this—for what the preterist has no faith in.

PART I, ARTICLE VIII: THE PERILOUS FOLLY OF FULL PRETERISM, SECTION III

An Egregious Dissimilarity

Full preterism is eerily similar to the unbelief of Sadducees and the heresy of Hymenaeus and Philetus, the two heretics who maintained that the resurrection was past. Full preterism is therefore egregiously dissimilar from the orthodox view. In Philippians 3.11 the apostle Paul speaks of a resurrection that he hopes to attain unto: “If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.” What kind of resurrection is he speaking of? Is he speaking of regeneration—of hoping to be born again? This would not make sense because he was converted, and therefore regenerated, about thirty years before writing this letter. What resurrection is he looking forward to here except an actual resurrection of his body from the dead? The full preterists assert that every prophecy that was not fulfilled up until A. D. 70 was fulfilled in A. D. 70. It is understandable, then, that they would pick the path of least absurdity by stating that the general resurrection of the dead is not a physical one. What that resurrection is, from their viewpoint, it is hard to tell. William Bell’s ‘hope of righteousness’ does not sound like a resurrection, though that is what he says the resurrection is, or was. If we can make resurrection to mean that, we can make it to mean almost anything. I have read elsewhere that to the full preterist, the resurrection of the dead is the resurrection of a cause. But again, if the word resurrection is that malleable, what else could it mean? Are there any limits to its plasticity? The word ‘resurrection’ in Philippians 3.11 means ‘a rising from death.’ The resurrection of a cause would not be a resurrection; it would be a revolution of sorts, or perhaps a reformation. The interpreting of verse 11 is as easy as it gets; and if it is not easy enough on its own, the context makes it even easier. Paul the apostle wants to be found, in the end, in possession of the righteousness of Christ (verse 9.) This is true. But he wants to be found in possession of this that he may know ‘the power of his resurrection.’ There is a hope of righteousness that he looks to; but the end of this desire is to be fully clothed with it and fully changed by it, in both body and soul. We know this because of verse 21: “Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body.” Why speak of a body if what he means is a resurrection that doesn’t involve his body? This ‘body’ is sometimes used as a metaphor to identify the Church body. But usually it means the physical body, as in the ‘body’ of Tabitha, who was raised from the dead. “And turning to the body, said, Tabitha, arise…and he…presented her alive” (Acts 9.40, 41.) This is the kind of body that Paul is talking about in Philippians 3, except that he is hoping for a ‘glorious body’ (verse 21), not one that will be subject to death again, as the body of Tabitha was. It is not impossible to see A. D. 70 in Matthew 24. But he who finds it in Philippians 3 must be looking, not through a glass darkly, but through an A. D. 70 eye-glass. That is what one must do to find a fit for the theory of full preterism; and that is what is being done by an increasing number of misled people. 

Full preterism is A. D. 70-ism. Its mode of interpretation is not unlike what is done by our modern Marxists. Whatever these Marxists look at and whatever they read, they see racism in it. Whatever Bible text the full preterist reads, he sees a time stamp pointing to A. D. 70. If he doesn’t see it, he nevertheless looks for it and hopes to see it. Paul wrote to the Philippians in the early 60s from Rome, about 10 years after that church’s founding and more than two decades after his conversion on the road to Damascus. He no doubt knew about the contents of Matthew 24 by then (the contents of the chapter, not necessarily the book of Matthew.) If he was looking forward to a symbolic resurrection of something other than his body, why did he use plain, rather than apocalyptic, language, to voice his desire? Why lead us to believe that he was looking forward to having his vile body changed if he was really looking forward to an allegorical change that had nothing to do with his body? Resurrection in the mold of A. D. 70-ism is egregiously dissimilar from the kind of resurrection that Paul was hoping for. How say the full preterists, then, that the resurrection is not physical and that it happened in A. D. 70? The apostle Paul looked forward to a physical resurrection that he did not associate with the year A. D. 70 at all. There was no other kind of resurrection for him to look forward to. The resurrection that he hoped for is called ‘the redemption of our body’ (Romans 8.23), not the revolution of a cause that began in A. D. 70.            

The Scriptures, even by nothing less than the preaching of our Lord, teach that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust: “Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5.28, 29.) “Marvel not at this.” In other words, take this communication in the plainest sense. Is what he says allegorical somehow, pointing to A. D. 70? How is this passage different from the passage on the vision of the valley of dry bones, in which resurrection is spoken of in a figurative fashion? The difference is that Ezekiel 37 involves a vision. The prophet is ‘carried out in the spirit of the LORD’ to see what must be shown (verse 1.) The interpretation is given in several verses later, of which here is one: “And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel” (verse 22.) So Israel and Judah will be raised from the dead, as it were, joined, and then gathered ‘into their own land’ (verses 17, 21.) Even in this allegorical vision, though, it seems possible that literal resurrections are prophesied, for the passage alludes to a life of immortality: ‘for evermore’ (verse 26.) Conversely, the passage in John by Jesus has nothing in it of allegory. The resurrection spoken of there is wholly literal. Jesus is not having a vision in John 5. Neither is what he says explained as an allegory there. He is preaching a literal resurrection of dead persons from their graves. So the passage in Ezekiel 37, which is chiefly allegorical, may have a literal aspect. And the passage in John 5, which is literal, has no allegorical aspect. There is an egregious dissimilarity between the resurrection of a full preterist, which is allegorical and past; and the resurrection preached by Jesus in John 5, which is literal and futuristic.  

Both the Lord Jesus and Saint Paul taught the physical resurrection of bodies from their graves. This resurrection is what a Christian hopes to attain unto because it is the miracle that makes him able to enter upon his inheritance of all good things and to enjoy uninterrupted contact with God in the fullness of both body and soul. A resurrection must also happen to the unbeliever, for sins done in the body must be punished in the body (2 Corinthians 5.10.)

PART I, ARTICLE VIII: THE PERILOUS FOLLY OF FULL PRETERISM, SECTION II

An Eerie Similarity

The apostle Paul wrote to Timothy of certain men “who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some” (2 Timothy 2.18.) When we know that this historical warning is recorded in the Bible, and then someone comes to us preaching the exact same thing, we should be instantly stunned at the similarity, not to mention scared of having our faith overthrown. Because of this historical notice, the burden, obviously, is for the full preterist to prove that the resurrection has come to pass since the time that the apostle Paul wrote his second letter to Timothy. But there is no reason to give the full preterist a hearing. Heretics are not supposed to be given hearings. It says that in this very passage from Paul to Timothy. This idea that the resurrection is past is characterized as ‘profane and vain babbling.’ The command is to shun it. “But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness. And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus” (verses 16, 17.) Full preterism is ‘profane’; it is ‘vain babbling.’ It isn’t entitled to a hearing. How does a person shun vain babbling without shunning the vain babbler? It can’t be done. If the vain babbler is in your presence, he will babble. Vain babblers are to be shunned. Their cankerous word must be shunned (verse 17.) This is done by shunning the person uttering the cankerous word. ‘Canker’ means something like ‘ulcer’ or ‘gangrene.’ If we wax colloquial, we may call a canker a cancer. Full preterism is cancerous. The resurrection is not past. Our bodies are not yet redeemed and glorified; this is why we get sick and die. 

“But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness. And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus” (verses 16, 17.) How does a man like Don K. Preston, who seems to be the chief preterist of his kind, ‘increase unto more ungodliness’? He gets his increase because pastors who are more orthodox than him are not orthodox enough to shun him. Instead of shunning him, they agree to debate him; and, because he knows his heretical system as well as, and in some cases, better than, his opponents know the Bible, he increases his renown, sells more books, and gathers more followers. The first mistake that is made is to receive a heretic as one would a brother; the second is to pay for his hotel room; the third is to provide for him a platform; and the fourth is to try to get the better of him in a debate. The children of Israel tried to take the land of Canaan when they were forbidden to make the attempt; and so they were beaten back (Numbers 14.) Proud pastors, likewise, try to take a heretic on when they are told to shun him; and so instead of beating him, they further his ends. We are foolish to expect victory through disobedience. The children of Israel were smitten on account of their disobedient attempt; members of our churches are overthrown when pastors debate heretics. Heretics may be denounced; and their foul ideas must be preached against; but they may not be debated except by coincidence or accident, especially in our churches in front of vulnerable members. To say that the resurrection is past is to not abide in ‘the doctrine of Christ’ (2 John 9.) If a heretic should not be let in our house (verse 10), how much less in our house of God, and how much less in the pulpit there!         

If we are not suspicious of a man who happens to be peddling the very doctrine that Paul calls babbling, we should be suspicious of ourselves. Do we have on the armor of God? A Christian who has put on the armor of God, sketched for us in Ephesians 6, is continually suspicious, and will be especially suspicious of a teacher who says that the resurrection is past. Knowing of the very existence of ‘the wiles of the devil’ (Ephesians 6.11) should make a Christian suspicious of any teaching that goes against, or that does not immediately confirm, a biblical doctrine. What else might help us to judge a teacher, even before we examine his teaching? We have only to look at the titles of Don K. Preston’s books in order to know what mettle he is of. What titles has this man authored? The Existence and Attributes of God? No, not that one. The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended? No, not that one. A Treatise of Afflictions? Not exactly. No, he wrote such books as these: The Last Days Identified, End Times Dilemma, and Elijah has Come. Should we not have become weary by now of seeing titles like these on shelves in Christian bookstores? By such titles, we should suspect Mr. Preston of being a sectarian, a merchandiser, a teacher of novelties, and a teacher of minor things. These idiosyncrasies are those of a vain babbler, are they not? 

Firstly, then, the idea that the resurrection is past sounds like sectarianism. Is it not sectarian to refuse to admit the Lord’s doctrine of resurrection? The Lord’s doctrine is that the general resurrection of the dead has not happened. This verse proves it: “Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6.54.) People are beginning to eat this flesh and drink this blood today, by faith. After this—‘at the last day’—they will be raised up. Therefore the last day when they will be raised up cannot have been yesterday, much less nearly two thousand years ago in 70 A. D. The sectarian, like the scribes and Pharisees, is opinionated more than enlightened. So there are many doctrines that he will not receive. His opinions, not the doctrines of Christ and Paul, are what he is about. Like the scribes and Pharisees, he compasses land and sea to make one deluded proselyte (Matthew 23.15.) Watching Don K. Preston teach reminds me of that. 

Secondly, that the resurrection is past sounds like a lucrative idea to merchandize, especially when professing Christians are as ignorant, gullible, and superstitious as those of our age are. Don K. Preston’s titles appeal to persons like that; and so they watch his videos and buy his books. Might this author not be one of the covetous persons that Peter warns us about in chapter 2, verse 3 of his second letter? “And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.” 

Thirdly, the idea that the resurrection is past sounds like a novelty. It was a new, extra-biblical idea in Paul’s day. And, in its developing form today, it is a novel teaching still. It sounds like a vision of someone’s heart rather than something out of our Lord’s mouth. (Jeremiah 23.16.) 

Fourthly, the idea that the resurrection is past sounds more like a major thing than a minor thing. Well, it is a major error; but it is a minor thing to teach because it is less than a biblical doctrine. Don K. Preston doesn’t seem to be much about ‘the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith’ (Matthew 23.23.) He seems to be about nothing but the ‘mint and anise and cummin’ of eschatology. I would never call eschatological doctrines herbs, except that they are even less than that to Don K. Preston since he falsely teaches that these doctrines are all in the past instead of in the future. That really is a medley of fine herbs when the second coming, the resurrection, and the judgment are said to be bygone events! From a look at his book titles and the material on his videos, it is clear that this man is a vain, small-thinking babbler. I guess it must be tempting to be about nothing but last things when, to you, every prophecy is in the past—when, to you, every prophecy in the Bible has been fulfilled. In The Last Days Identified, Don K. Preston affirms this: “that God has fulfilled all His prophetic Word.” The full preterist’s doctrine of resurrection is eerily similar to the lie that the apostle confronted: that the resurrection is past. Indeed, it is the same one. The titles of Mr. Preston’s books reveal that he is not about the main and plain things of Scripture: the chief doctrines that a sinner must believe in order to be saved. The titles of this man’s books, all by themselves, not to mention his novel doctrine of resurrection, ought to cause a billow of suspicion to well up inside of us. During my research on the subject of full preterism, I often turned to the video bites that he has put up on his channel in order to explain this or that passage of Scripture. Each time I have watched one of those, it seemed as though I were listening to ‘a foolish man, who fritters away the weight of his subject by fine-spun trifling on words.’ And on the strength of ‘fine-spun trifling,’ what does he do but recommend one of his books? Full preterism is sectarian; it is an opportunity to merchandize by teaching novelties; and, to say the least, it diminishes doctrines that souls depend upon for salvation. When you interpret too much into the year A. D. 70, you have to run all over the Bible to block all the holes through which orthodoxy pours. This is what Don K. Preston and William Bell try to do in their videos. The second coming of Jesus Christ, the general resurrection, and the final judgment cannot be contained behind the porous wall of A. D. 70.      

Even before full preterism is proven wrong, its eerie similarity with heresy should make us suspicious. The proof that it is wrong is abundant, and is more easily found in the exposition of truth than in the refutation of heresy. We are not obligated to correct every error that a heretic makes. If we were to try that, there would hardly be an end of it because the heretic makes his theology up as he goes. During a debate with Don K. Preston, David Hester reminded his opponent of his admission that preterism is in the discovery stage. Mr. Preston did not deny that he had said that. If he ever said it, it is an admission that his brand of preterism is not orthodox because that which is orthodox has been established long ago. And even if he never did say it, the truth is that he does, in fact, make his doctrine up as he goes. Straight out of seminary he began to do it. Eschewing Commentators and Commentaries, he went about discovering, for himself, what the meanings of Matthew 24 and Revelation are. He tells us that in his Testimony Regarding Full Preterism. So it would take too much time to correct the point of view of a man who studies as if the Bible was written yesterday and that we’re only starting to figure it out. It is enough to expose heresy by noticing a few cardinal faults; and that is best done by noticing what the truth is. “The Bible has been so often defended, and the defenses are so admirable, that any more outworks would almost seem to be superfluous…There seems to me to have been twice as much done in some ages in defending the Bible as in expounding it, but if the whole of our strength shall henceforth go to the exposition and spreading of it, we may leave it pretty much to defend itself” (C. H. Spurgeon, Speech on ‘the Bible’ in Speeches at Home and Abroad, p. 14.)

The full preterist says that all prophecy is now in the past, and has been in the past since the Siege of Jerusalem in A. D. 70. The scale of the slaughter in that war was large, easily over a million when including noncombatant Jews. And since the date of that significant event is so near to the time that Jesus ministered, it would be no surprise to find that Jesus mentioned it, at least in cryptic form. This Jesus probably did in Matthew 24; for this text contains, it looks like, a blend of prophecy that is both near at hand and a long time hence. But that he spoke of this event in Matthew 23 is even more certain: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold your house is left unto you desolate” (verses 37, 38.) Spurgeon quotes verse 37 in a speech, and remarks about Jesus in the following manner: “He looks down upon the city; he marks the gilded roof of the temple, and the streets, and he weeps. He foresees the total destruction of that city, ‘beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth.’ In vision he marks her streets crimsoned with gore, and her temple already in flames…We believe that Christ knew the destiny of Jerusalem, but he wept over it too” (C. H. Spurgeon, Speech on ‘Earnestness’ in Speeches at Home and Abroad, pp. 35, 36.) It is likely that the Lord alludes to the Siege of Jerusalem in the last third of Luke 17 as well, but not without blending what he says with a prophecy of judgment at the end of the world. C. H. Spurgeon, John Gill, Matthew Poole, and Matthew Henry all observe this blend in the New Testament.  

But to the full preterist all prophecy is fulfilled to the full; the full preterist, therefore, maintains that the second coming of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the last judgment have all occurred. How he can believe in heaven, hell, the Bible, and Jesus after believing all of that I do not know. On some level he must at least suspect that the Lord has not come again; he must suspect that bodies must be raised from the dead; he must suspect that he has not sat beside multitudes before the Lord to receive, either rewards for good works, or stripes for evil deeds and unbelief. Full preterism is the gutting of faith; if the devotee of this belief does not realize that now, he eventually must. The second coming of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the last judgment are among the chief doctrines and events of the Bible. To be wrong on one of these three is to err in the greatest way that one can. I am focusing on one of these, though it is unavoidable to touch on the other two while I do it.           

“Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?” (1 Corinthians 15.12.) There are two resurrections mentioned here: the resurrection of Christ from the dead and resurrection generally. Jesus Christ was raised from the dead bodily. There is no other way that he was raised from the dead except in the bodily sense. For sure, he was never raised in the regenerative sense because he was not a sinner who needed to be saved. Yea, he was raised from the dead for our justification (Romans 4.25); this is the justification of sinners who are themselves regenerated. There is no ground in 1 Corinthians 15.12 to interpret Jesus’ resurrection one way, and the general resurrection in another way. The apostle is speaking there about the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of persons generally. Therefore, the dead will be raised in a physical sense, in addition to the fact that some will have been, before this, raised in the regenerative sense. The full preterist not only interprets resurrection as being in the past; he interprets it as something other than a physical resurrection. Christ was raised physically from the dead; but believers and humanity generally, will not be, says the preterist. Therefore, in his own way, the full preterist maintains what the apostle Paul condemns: the idea that ‘there is no resurrection of the dead.’ Believe like the full preterist on this doctrine—like Don K. Preston or William Bell on this doctrine—and it seems conclusive that your ‘faith is vain; ye are still in your sins’ (verse 17.) Follow the argument made in the following two verses: “For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins” (verse 16, 17.) These two doctrines—the resurrection of Christ and the resurrection of persons generally—seem to stand or fall together. We are not permitted to pick one and not the other. “But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen” (verse 13.) Again: “For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised” (verse 16.) One cannot get away with saying that Christ was raised but that no one else will be raised in that same way. To say that the resurrection happened in some sense other than physically, in A. D. 70, and that that is the end of it, is to deny the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead. And to deny that is to have vain faith and to be in your sins and on the broad way to destruction. It does not matter what the full preterist says about anything else. It does not matter how convincingly he says it. The resurrection of the dead in the literal sense for humanity generally is all tied up with the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave. If the general resurrection is denied, the one denying it should be marked as a heretic; and the Christian, in order to get on with his life and work, should send him away at once, and not without the curse that he is commissioned to dole out: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1.8.) The exception may be—may be—the unstable Christian who is blown about by every wind of doctrine, and who is, therefore, more confused than deceiving. He needs to be corrected. But if he persists in his error, he too must be let go with a curse. The resurrection of the dead is reckoned an elementary principle in Hebrews (5.12-6.2.) The Christian ought to have that doctrine settled to his mind early on. How long should he be allowed to doubt it or deny it before he is counted a heretic? A person who does not believe the doctrine is a danger to those who do. He should not be permitted fellowship indefinitely. He is, in fact and by definition, a heretic. “A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject” (Titus 3.10.) He must be dealt with, or he may not realize the damnability of his heresy; he must be dealt with, or he may be the agent through whom others are damned. “Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven” (1 Corinthians 5.6, 7.)       

Full preterism is eerily similar to the error that Paul warned Timothy to not argue about and to treat as ‘vain babbling’: the foolish notion ‘that the resurrection is past already’ (2 Timothy 2.16-18.) And it is eerily similar to what Paul corrected carnal baby Corinthians on: “how say some of you that there is no resurrection of the dead?” The resurrection of Christ and the general resurrection are inseparably connected. Since Christ was raised physically, everyone else will be too. Belief in the resurrection of Christ from the literal dead seems to stand with, and seems not to stand without, the resurrection of the just and the unjust from the literal dead: “But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen” (1 Corinthians 15.13.) If the resurrection of Christ was literally from the dead, and if the general resurrection were in the past, our souls would be encased, not in mortal bodies, but immortal ones. This goes for believers and unbelievers alike, though in both 2 Timothy and 1 Corinthians 15 the resurrection of the just is the emphasis.   

The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead (Acts 23.8.) Full preterists do, except for almost everyone. They probably believe, to name two instances, that both Tabitha and Lazarus were raised. But see how connected the resurrection of Jesus Christ is with the resurrection of all saints: “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Romans 8.11.) Can the resurrection of Christians, literally and physically from the dead, be stated more clearly and conclusively than this? What can ‘quicken your mortal bodies’ mean but resurrection of bodies from the dead? The ‘quick and the dead’ who will be judged at Jesus’ appearing (2 Timothy 4.1) are alive persons and dead persons. This must be the case because ‘quick’ here means ‘to live,’ which is pretty much the opposite of being dead, and which fulfills the contrast that is being attempted in the verse. And ‘quicken’ in Romans 8.11 means ‘to vitalize.’ So what do we have in Romans 8.11 but bodies that are made alive? As Jesus was raised, even so Christians will be raised. In what manner was Jesus raised? He was raised physically from the dead. Therefore Christians will be raised from the dead in the same way. To say that the resurrection is a past event that happened in some allegorical sense in A. D. 70 is to deny some of the plainest words in all of Scripture. It is a denial of the promise of resurrection. It is a denial of one of the most important doctrines and events in the Bible. The matter of the physical resurrection of the dead is so important that it is doubtful that a person is saved who denies it. For this reason the doctrine was put into the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in…the resurrection of the body.” It is a doctrine that is meant to keep wheat separate from chaff—to keep unbelievers from creeping into fellowship. That’s why it’s in there. “And their word will eat as a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus” (2 Timothy 2.17.) These are the two characters who said that the resurrection was past. Whatever it means that ‘their word will eat as a canker,’ it has something to do with their faith being in tatters. Hymenaeus is mentioned in the first letter too, in verse 20 of chapter 1. Over there his faith is likened to a ‘shipwreck.’ And he is ‘delivered unto Satan’ for his blasphemy; that is, he is treated like an excommunicated infidel for his noxious belief. So this falsehood concerning the resurrection is, to the apostle Paul, as unacceptable and reprehensible as the sin of incest, for the incestuous person is treated in the exact same way: delivered unto Satan also (1 Corinthians 5.) The apostle’s second letter to Timothy was written in A. D. 66. Is it possible that Hymenaeus and Philetus missed the time of the resurrection by just a few years? Maybe they were saying that it happened in the past by two millennia, just as heretics are saying today. Regardless, any professing Christian who says that the resurrection is past needs to set his belief alongside that of Hymenaeus and Philetus; having done that, he should notice an eerie similarity. And then he need not wonder how the apostle would handle his case. The reward for blasphemy is excommunication, canker, and shipwreck. That Jesus came in judgment in a representative, symbolic way in A. D. 70 is, in light of Matthew 23 and 24, a permissible belief. And it does not contradict any doctrine to believe that. But the general resurrection did not happen then. And it is a perilous thing to believe that it did. Getting the nature and time of the resurrection wrong is to err, to not know the Scriptures, and to be ignorant of God’s power (Matthew 22.29.) He who gets this wrong is either a babe, not yet born, or a bold blasphemer.