Parousia, coming, and Jewish judgment

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arapahoepark

Puritan Board Professor
While I consider myself a preterist in many ways (no not full preterist obviously), the more I read the more I wonder how a system can stop from becoming full preterism, especially the American Vision/Gary Demar type. While, he has undeniably been helpful, I keep coming across numerous instances in books from Demar and other partial preterists, where every single sort of "coming" mention is a reference to 70 AD; every parable, every talk of judgment, i.e. Matt 10:23, wheat and tares, sheep and goats, and so on was fulfilled in the abomination of desolation. Though certainly Christ referenced the Pharisees and his current generation many times, I wonder how much of his talk about judgments, moral teachings were more universal than they seem to let on. I wonder where in the world they get the doctrine of hell, intermediate state, etc. Or is that just taking certain doctrines for granted? (For the record, I am not remotely entertaining full preterism. The resurrection, including Jesus' own has been denied in all but name on their side in order to "stay consistent" on the Parousia passages).
While I know that the Gospels should be understood within a specific context and that there are problems of universalizing everything in the Bible, such interpretations seems to strip them of any real positive theology especially for those of us who are Gentiles (and I am still struggling to understand why exactly Jesus seemed to preach to Israel during his first advent if the Mosaic administration was rendered moot with him).
Anyway, what is the proper response or interpretations of such passages traditionally linked to the end of the world considering the context of apostate Judaism? Would the disciples have known enough to ask the question: when will Jesus judge the whole world considering they thought on the terms of an immediate earthly kingdom?
 
It appears that:
(1) The gospel will go into the whole world
(2) There will be some measure of gospel victory (the earth will be filled, i.e., Christianity will become a global religion). The Mustard Seed will become the largest tree.
(3) An apostasy and a turning away will occur.
(4) A Man of sin will appear. A real Antichrist.
(5) Christians will be persecuted.
(6) At some point in all of this the Jews will believe.
(7) Christ will return and destroy the Man of Sin
(8) The End will come and, with it, the Last Judgment.
 
Would the disciples have known enough to ask the question: when will Jesus judge the whole world considering they thought on the terms of an immediate earthly kingdom?

Likely not before Pentecost, in my opinion.

Matthew 24:

34 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

THIS Generation - The one to see the 70AD judgment, the abomination of desolation and all it's accompanying signs...

is compared with...

THAT day or hour - The one known to no one, not even the angels nor the Son; the one that will come suddenly without accompanying signs.

It is a clear divide, a clear shift, it makes no sense to hold that they both point to 70AD.



You could also remind them of the principle of judgment; It starts at the house of God, and goes out from there. When Paul says "what have I to do with judging outsiders?" he goes on to say that God indeed WILL judge them at a future time. I don't know enough Full Preterist folk to know what their response would be.

Judgment starts at the house of God. Israel was God's house, and having failed to recognize God in his house (Christ in their midst) it was left desolate. 70AD is an object lesson, Israel has always been a living object lesson, pointing to spiritual realities. Trample underfoot the blood of the covenant and there is only judgment. God's habitation is now his people, who are carrying God's living presence into every nook and cranny of this earth, and if the World will not recognize God in his house (The body of Christ in the earth) through God's own testimony and presence in his people, then the scene will play again only instead of the four walls of Jerusalem, the siege will be made against the 4 corners of the earth.
 
Full preterism seems to be late stage off-the-deep-end-ism for some otherwise bright people.
 
Hello Trent,

Let me start by attaching a portion of Dean Davis' book, The High King of Heaven, critiquing both Full and Partial Preterism, and I can continue from there, if you wish.
Any stuff on the Olivet Discourse?
I recently came across this from Rev. Winzer,
https://puritanboard.com/threads/pr...rse-1-thess-4-5-2-thess-2.87490/#post-1084114
How big a role does the fall of the temple play? In many preterists, both full and partial it becomes the full inauguration of the new covenant and the destruction of the old. However, was this not already done at the cross?
 
Trent, to answer this in your OP: “I am still struggling to understand why exactly Jesus seemed to preach to Israel during his first advent if the Mosaic administration was rendered moot with him.” “Moot” can be used in different senses . . . did you mean open to doubt and disputable; or did you mean set aside? He preached to Israel is because He first came for the Jew—the children of the covenant made with the patriarchs, and later the door was opened to the Gentiles. He preached to Israel because the Law of God was not to be set aside, but fulfilled.

Matt 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

John Broadus: “This [γίνομαι ginomai] is not at all like the word rendered ‘fulfil’ in v. 17… Not the smallest part of the law shall pass away till everything (i.e., everything it contains) shall come to pass. The things predicted in the law must all occur; the entire substance foreshadowed by any ceremony or type must have come into existence.” Wm. Hendriksen translates it as “shall have taken place.” The ESV NIV NASB all have “accomplished”.

In other words, bringing to realization all the types and prophecies contained therein. This pertains not only to the salvific work of Christ, but the prophecies pertaining to the end of the age, the Judgment, and the New Creation and its paradise New Earth. On His throne in the heavens—the very throne of David (Luke 1:32, 33; Matt 25:31; Rev 3:21; 20:11)—the man Christ Jesus brings to completion the eternal purposes of His heavenly Father. Though I do think that “fulfilled” is the perfect word, allowing for the vast expanse included in what is written, “That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him” (Eph 1:10).

Martyn Lloyd-Jones brings out more aspects of what is included:

We see also that, in a most extraordinary and wonderful manner, by so dying upon the cross and bearing in Himself and upon Himself the punishment due to sin, He has fulfilled all the Old testament types. Go back again and read the books of Leviticus and Numbers; read all about the burnt offerings and sacrifices; read about the tabernacle, and the temple ceremonies, all about the altar and the laver of washing and so on. Go back to those details and ask yourself, “What do all these things mean? What are they for, the shewbread, and the high priest, and the vessels, and all these other things? What are they meant to do?” They are nothing but shadows, types, prophecies of what is going to be done fully and finally by the Lord Jesus Christ. He indeed has literally fulfilled and carried out and brought to pass every single one of those types. Some may be interested in this subject and there are certain books in which you may find out all the details (see, for example, The Typology of Scripture, by P. Fairbairn). But the principle, the great truth, is just this: Jesus Christ, by His death and all He has done, is an absolute fulfilment of all these types and shadows. He is the high priest, He is the offering, He is the sacrifice, and He has presented His blood in heaven so that the whole of the ceremonial law has been fulfilled in Him. “Think not that I am come to destroy, but to fulfil.” By His death and resurrection, and the presentation of Himself in heaven, He has done all this.

But we go a step beyond this and say that He fulfils the law also in us and through us by means of the Holy Spirit. That is the argument of the apostle Paul in romans 8:2-4. He tells us quite clearly that this is one of the explanations of why our Lord died. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit [who enables us to keep the law]” This is most important and significant, for the apostle here links together two things: the way in which our Lord fulfilled the law Himself and the way He fulfils the law in us. That is precisely what our Lord is saying at this point in Matthew 5. He fulfils the righteousness of the law, and we are to do the same. The two go together. He does this by giving us the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit gives us a love of the law and the power to live by it. “The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the low of God, neither indeed can be”, says the apostle Paul in that same eighth chapter of Romans. But we who have received the Spirit are not like that. We are not at enmity with God, and therefore we are also subject to the law. The natural man hates God and is not subject to His law, but the man who has received the Spirit loves God and is subject to the law. He wants to be so and is given power to be so: “that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” Look at it this way. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God made a great promise. He said, in effect, “I am going to make a new covenant, and the difference between the new and the old will be this, that I am going to write My law in your minds and on your hearts. No longer will it be on tables of stone outside you, but on the fleshly tables of the heart.” The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews takes that up in the eighth chapter where he glories in the New Covenant, the new relationship, be-cause under it the law is within us, not outside us. It is because the law has been written in our minds and our hearts that we are anxious to fulfil it, and are enabled to do so.

[End Lloyd-Jones]​

One commentator gives these pertinent quotes concerning the law in the New Covenant believer:

“The law ceases to be a standard external to the individual, it has become an integral part of his personality”, and, “the law…[has been] transformed from a foreign ruler into a native and inward impulse”. –A.S. Peake, cited in W.D. Davies, The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount.​

Till heaven and earth pass signifies all that shall take place until the end of the age when heaven and earth are burned up and replaced with a new heaven and earth. Till this happens not one “jot or tittle”—the tiniest parts of Hebrew letters—shall be removed from the law, or rendered void. In the Westminster Confession of Faith at 1.8 where it is written of the Scriptures, they “being immediately inspired by God, and, by His singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages”, Matt 5:18 is given as a text of proof that the very words cannot pass away, but must be preserved intact and infallible, without error, in all ages.
 
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