Orthodox Preterism

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I want to invite you to open your Bibles and turn to Revelation chapter 1 and we're going to read verses 1 to 3 to open our time together.
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What's wrong? It's not coming through for sure.
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Is it not? Is it just not high enough? Test test.
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Whoa.
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Testing 1, 2, 3.
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Yes, and I appreciate that.
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As I said, we're going to open our Bibles and turn to Revelation chapter 1 and we're going to read verses 1 to 3.
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The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants, the things which must soon take place.
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He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.
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Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in them, or in it rather, for the time is near.
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May we pray.
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Father in heaven, I ask by the mercy of God that you would give me your Holy Spirit.
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Father, that when your word is proclaimed, that you would take it not only into our ears, but into our minds and down to our very hearts.
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And Lord, that which I say today, which is correct, I pray that it would be for instruction and that it would be used of you by your Holy Spirit to draw your people closer to you.
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And Father, those things which are incorrect, I pray that you would scrub them from their minds.
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But I do pray for protection from that, Lord, for it is not my goal ever to preach that which is untrue.
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So I pray that you would keep me from error today.
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As your servant, I pray in Christ's name.
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Amen.
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Well, again, I want to thank you all for being here.
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I want to welcome you and I want to begin by sharing just a little bit of my own background in this particular area.
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The seminary which I attended does not and did not teach me the things that I'm going to explain to you today.
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I attended a seminary committed to dispensational premillennialism.
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Jacksonville Baptist Theological Seminary is still committed to that particular doctrine.
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And that would take the futurist view of the book of Revelation which Pastor Paul will be describing to us later this afternoon.
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In fact, I was so ensconced in that particular eschatological position that the first time I ever had a friend that believed another viewpoint and told me that he did, I was astonished.
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I never heard anyone that would take a different perspective than the futurist view, the dispensational premillennial view.
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I even went back to my eschatology professor.
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I said, prof, I said, tell me the scriptures that I can go to and knock this guy out.
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You know, tell me how I can show him the truth because he's so wrong.
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Well, that actually began a journey of discovery for me.
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And as I began to look into the issue, I realized that there were not just different millennial positions.
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I knew that.
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I knew there were people that were amill and premill and postmill.
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But I found out there were entirely different positions on how to even come to understand the book of Revelation.
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How to interpret it from the very foundation of what we're looking at.
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And I came upon a book by a man named Dr.
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R.C.
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Sproul.
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Some of you have probably heard of Dr.
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Sproul who died recently, and he was a man who in very many ways influenced my life, and I counted him as a teacher and a brother in Christ.
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And he wrote a book entitled, The Last Days According to Jesus.
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And it was that book that would challenge me to take a look at Revelation in a way that I had never done so before.
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And what he taught in that book was something called preterism.
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Now I appreciate Mike giving a little introduction, but I'm going to repeat some of what he said simply because I want to make sure that you understand what we mean when we say the word preterism.
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The term preterism does come from the Latin word preter, which means being in the past or from the past, and this view proposes that most of the events of Revelation have already taken place in the past.
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Most of what the book says have already been fulfilled.
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And I know that this is a radical departure from the way many of you have ever looked at the book of Revelation.
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In fact, those who have been reared on books which claim to outline events in the future, like The Late Great Planet Earth or 88 Reasons Jesus is Going to Return in 1988, you know books like that, and Left Behind, people who cut their teeth on Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, will hear what I have to say and immediately dismiss it because it would suggest that we're not looking for something, but we're looking back at something.
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Preterism is most drastically contrasted with futurism.
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The futurists will say the majority of Revelation is yet to come.
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The preterists would say the majority of Revelation has come.
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This leads to a necessary distinction which I must make, and I must say I'm going to really be trying to fit all this into my time today.
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I have so much and so little time, but I do feel like it is necessary to make a distinction, and I know that it was already mentioned, but I want to flesh it out just a little.
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Mike mentioned the difference between partial preterism and full preterism.
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Preterism suggests that the majority of the prophecies were fulfilled, but the question is which ones? Full preterism would say the whole book has been fulfilled.
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Everything in Revelation has already been fulfilled, and it was fulfilled in the first century.
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Full preterism would say, it's also called hyperpreterism as you mentioned, it would say that all of the prophecies, including the resurrection of the dead, has been fulfilled in the first century.
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We have no longer anything to look forward to.
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Partial preterism, the position that I teach, is actually what I would refer to as orthodox preterism.
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Because it would say that while most of what Revelation has to say has been fulfilled, there are still things we have to look forward to which are yet to come.
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And I call this orthodox because I believe full preterism is outside of the scope of Christian orthodoxy.
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From the earliest creeds of the Christian church, there has been a hope for a future return of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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In the Apostles' Creed, he ascended to heaven, he's seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and from there he will come again to judge the living and the dead.
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That is one of the earliest creeds of the Christian church, and it tells us we're looking forward to a coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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The Nicene Creed, he will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will never end.
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So we look forward to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, and if we take these two historic creeds as testimonies to the orthodox faith of the church, we can reasonably deduce that anything that would deny that could be called unorthodox and therefore heresy.
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So I would say that a person who takes a full preterist position, and there are those that do, have not only dipped their toe into the pool of heresy, but they've dived in straight way.
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Therefore I don't consider them orthodox, I consider them heretical preterists.
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So my terms today, rather than partial and full, are orthodox and heretical, and I would hope to propose to you today the concept of orthodox preterism.
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All right, understanding preterism requires that we recognize and understand one historical event that happened in the first century, and that is the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.
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I'm amazed, no, astounded, by how many Christians do not even know what happened in AD 70.
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I ask Christians all the time, because people will say, well what's your view of Revelation? And I'll say, well what's your view of the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70? And they'll say, what happened in AD 70? And I'll say, the book of Revelation.
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That's my view, they'll say, what's your view of the book of Revelation? I'll say, what's your view of AD 70? What happened in AD 70? The book of Revelation.
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It's that simple for me.
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Because let me explain to you what happened in AD 70.
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I want to take you through a simple overview of the events, not only leading up to it, but what happened.
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We know that the Gospels tell us of the life of Jesus Christ.
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And during the life of Jesus Christ, Jerusalem was under Roman occupation.
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You remember this.
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Remember, Matthew was a tax collector, and that's why he was so hated, because he was one who had sided with the Roman oppressors.
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This began in 63 BC, when the Roman general Pompey captured Jerusalem.
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And the Jews despised the Romans for their oppressive taxation and their infernal occupation.
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In AD 66, think in your minds, I don't have a timeline, I didn't bring a board, and I don't have a PowerPoint, but think in your minds, AD 66 is 33 years after the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, if in fact that's the dating.
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We don't know if that's exact, but in AD 66, some three decades after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Jews revolted against their Roman oppressors.
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And the revolt was somewhat successful.
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They established a revolutionary government.
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They even coined their own money.
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No longer did they want to use the Roman money, they wanted their own currency.
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They established their own revolutionary government.
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Rome was displeased.
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And in response, the Emperor Nero sent General Vespasian to meet the Jewish forces.
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And the result was that the majority of the Jewish forces were forced into the city of Jerusalem, where they tried to take their stand behind the walls of the fortified city.
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Vespasian becomes Emperor after the death of Nero, and there were a few interims, but there was… Vespasian becomes Emperor in AD 69.
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In AD 70, April of AD 70, we have this down to the very time that it happened.
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We have great historical evidence, extra-biblical evidence written by Flavius Josephus that gives us down to the minute of what's happening, an eyewitness testimony of what happened in April of AD 70.
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Roman General Titus, the son of the now leader Vespasian, goes and besieges Jerusalem.
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And Josephus, who was a commander in the Jewish army, but yet had been captured and now became sort of a mediator between the two, one who was trying to reconcile and bring peace, tells us what happens.
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The Romans encircled the city.
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They cut off supplies, driving the people within to starvation.
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This was near the time of the Passover, and therefore not only were there the normal people who lived in Jerusalem, not only were there the armies that came to fight and found their way into Jerusalem, but all the pilgrims who had made their way for the Passover celebration were there in Jerusalem, and they were starving to death.
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There's a horrible tale of a woman whose child died in her arms, and they ate the baby to sustain their own life.
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By the month of August, the Romans had breached the outer defenses, had gone through the final battles, and they massacred those who remained.
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And in total, there were over a million killed in the city of Jerusalem.
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They destroyed the second temple, leaving only the western wall as the only trace that there had ever been a temple.
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Josephus tells us about the destruction of the temple.
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I want to quote to you from Josephus.
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This is from his eyewitness account.
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The rebels shortly after attacked the Romans again, and a clash followed between the guards of the sanctuary and the troops who were putting out the fire inside the inner court.
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The latter routed the Jews and followed in hot pursuit right up to the temple itself.
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Then one of the soldiers, without awaiting any orders and with no dread of so monumentous a deed, but urged on by some supernatural force, snatched a blazing piece of wood, climbing another soldier's back.
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He hurled the flaming brand through a low golden window that gave access on the north side to the rooms that surrounded the sanctuary.
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As the flames shot up, the Jews let out a shout of dismay that matched the tragedy.
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They flocked to the rescue with no thought of sparing their lives or husbanding their strength for the sacred structure that had constantly guarded with such devotion was vanishing before their eyes.
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This is Josephus's recounting of the destruction of the temple.
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Here's the amazing reality.
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Thirty years before this, well, 30 and some change.
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Jesus Christ prophesied that this would happen.
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Matthew 24.
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Verses one and two, Jesus left the temple and was going away, and when his disciples came and pointed out to him the buildings of the temple, but he answered them, You see all of these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.
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Almost the same words are given to us in Luke chapter 21, verses five and six.
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Not one stone will be left upon another.
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Father, this event in the history of the church has monumental significance, and it had monumental significance to the Jewish nation.
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They were not without their sacred holy place, or rather they were now without their sacred holy place.
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They had no place to worship.
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They had no place to offer sacrifices, and it would be impossible not to ascribe some special significance to this on God's prophetic calendar.
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So the question becomes, well, how much significance? What significance is to be placed on this event? Preterism teaches that the fall of Jerusalem is the linchpin between the history of the Jews and the history of the church.
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It was God's way of discontinuing the old covenant ceremonies, which were given in shadows and symbols, and giving way to the new covenant reality, what the Apostle says is the substance.
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Those shadows and symbols pointed to a substance which was in Christ.
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We're no longer under the shadows and symbols, we are now under Christ, the substance of those things.
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Therefore, when we read the term last days, this is an important idea, when we read the term last days, that's not always necessarily speaking of the last days of the world, or the last days of the millennium.
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It's speaking of the last days of the Jewish system, which has now been made obsolete.
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I didn't make that word up.
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That comes from Hebrews chapter 8, verse 13.
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In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first covenant obsolete, and what is being obsolete is growing old and is ready to vanish away.
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Notice the writer of Hebrews.
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It is ready to vanish away, because Hebrews is written before AD 70.
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It was still there, it was still present, but it's ready to vanish away.
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When will it vanish? Thanks, baby.
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I get an amen from a five-year-old, that's good.
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It's ready to vanish away, when? When it vanished away.
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This historical incident becomes for the preterist the hermeneutical lens by which to interpret the entire book of Revelation.
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And so, based upon that, I now want to now, that's a little redundant, I would like to now look at the evidence from the book of Revelation and point back to these things and say, here's why we would hold this particular perspective.
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First I want to look at the evidence of what I would call the time-sensitive nature of the book of Revelation.
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The time, I didn't bring you handouts, if you want to take a note, that's a good place to maybe write a note.
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The time-sensitive nature of the book of Revelation.
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If you would, again, looking at verses 1 to 3, you'll notice two references to time.
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First it says, these things must soon take place.
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And then it says in verse 3, the time is near.
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So this must soon take place, and the time is near.
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Now if you go to the end of the book, if you go down to Revelation chapter 22, verse 6, it says again, these things must soon take place.
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And then in Revelation 22.10 it says, for the time is near.
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So we have the word soon, we have the word near, and we have that at the beginning of the book, and we have that at the end of the book, as if it were God placing bookends on both of Revelation's beginning and ending, saying these things must soon take place.
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Right away, we have to consider, what does that mean? What's the intention of the author? We know the book of Revelation, were it not to take place for another 2,000 years plus, and we have no idea how much longer it could be.
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If it were not to take place for another 2,000 years plus, could it really be called soon? Could it really be called near to the hearers that were actually there in the first century? And somebody says, now wait, wait, pastor, I've read 2 Peter 3.8, and I know it says that to the Lord, a year is 1,000 years, and a day is as 1,000 years, sorry, I messed that up, but 1,000 years as a day.
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But let me respond kindly to that objection.
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Number one, there's no indication here that the time frame given is from God's perspective.
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This is from the perspective of the reader.
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Understand, this is soon to take place.
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This is something you need to understand is happening.
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Also, those who claim soon and near are 2,000 and 3,000 years in the future are giving a spiritualized definition of that word, not a literal definition.
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And often, they're the ones who are very quick to say we must always be literal in our interpretation.
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So if we take a literal interpretation of near and a literal interpretation of soon, then we can't rightly say it's 2,000, 3,000 years.
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In fact, I want to quote Dr.
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Ken Gentry.
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Dr.
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Ken Gentry wrote a great book called Revelation.
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Well, now I can't remember exactly the title of the book, but his book is How to Interpret the Book of Revelation.
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It's a preteristic book.
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And he says this, he says, one of the most serious mistakes the interpreter of Revelation makes is overlooking John's clearly stated temporal expectation.
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He expects this to happen soon.
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And by the way, taking this approach also clears up some other issues that we have in the Bible.
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Remember that one phrase Jesus said that seems to always confuse people when he said in Matthew 24, 34, truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place? And somebody says, now, wait a minute, Pastor.
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I know that that word generation doesn't mean the generation of people that are hearing it.
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I say, why not? Jesus talks about the destruction of the temple.
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He talks about those things.
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He talks about himself coming in clouds.
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And people say, oh, well, well, that's the second coming.
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Is it not possible that that coming is his coming in judgment on Jerusalem? Say, I don't like that interpretation.
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Is it not possible that the reason why we don't like that interpretation is because we have a presumption of another interpretation that is being immediately responded to when we say that, and now we have a case of cognitive dissonance? We have something in our brain we don't want, so it's going to bounce back and forth.
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We don't like it.
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You see, here's the thing.
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Liberal theologians use the words of Jesus to attack Jesus himself.
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Because when Jesus said, this generation will not pass away, they'll say, see, Jesus was a liar.
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Jesus was a false prophet.
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In fact, some of the most well-read liberal theologians make the argument, Jesus was a false prophet because he said that something was going to happen in the generation of those who heard him, and it didn't happen.
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I respond and say, it did happen.
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In fact, it happened just as he said it would.
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By the way, you know what a Jewish generation is, right? Forty years.
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How long was it from the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ to the destruction of the temple? About 40 years.
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This generation will not pass away until these things take place.
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If the position of orthodox preterism is correct, it solves the dilemma.
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We don't have to come up with spiritualized definitions of the word generation and say, oh, well, that's a kind of person, or that's a kind of group, or that's the generation Jesus is talking about 3,000 years from now.
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No, it's the generation that was...
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In fact, you can go to all the times Jesus says the word generation.
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You will never find another place where any interpreter will interpret it spiritually except that one because they must find a way to fit it into their futuristic hermeneutic.
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Now, having said this, I want to anticipate some responses.
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And I don't know where my time is.
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Hey, I'm doing good, at least from my clock.
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I have a clock in my pocket.
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I want to anticipate some responses.
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I know some of you are going to ask questions, but I want to go ahead and get a few things out there because at least I will have said what I want to say, and then I can respond if you have further questions.
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Because I realize this is radically different.
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This is the type of thing that people have never heard.
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And as a result, it causes 1,000 different questions.
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So let's begin with the most obvious question.
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Does preterism require abandoning a literal interpretation? Does preterism require abandoning a literal interpretation? Or, another way of asking that same question, are we making overt spiritualizations and allegories rather than simply taking the text for what it says? I want to address that by saying this, and this may shock you, so don't fall out of your chair.
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If someone were to ask me, do you interpret the Bible literally? I would say no.
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I interpret the Bible literarily.
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What does that mean? Well, the reformers had a Latin phrase that they used called the sensus literalis.
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The sensus literalis meant the literal sense.
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The literal sense of something means that you interpret it according to the type of literature that's being written.
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Therefore, anytime I come to a book in the Bible, I have to determine what type of literature I'm reading and read in accordance with that type of literature.
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You realize the Bible is not all the same.
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We have historic narrative.
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We have didactic literature.
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Most of what Paul wrote was clear didactic expository literature.
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We have writing that's poetic.
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We have writing that's parabolic.
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We have writing that's hyperbolic.
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Jesus said, if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off, because it'd be better to go into heaven crippled than it would be to go into hell, right? So, we have these hyperbole.
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But what else do we have? We have something called apocalyptic literature.
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Apocalyptic literature is literature that's written in the form of the revelation or apocalyptic language.
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And apocalyptic literature is understood in terms of signs and symbols.
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And we all understand this and we all apply this.
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I remember the first time I heard somebody say, you have to take the Bible literally.
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So, you see right here where these locusts are? What those are are Apache helicopters.
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I say, slow down.
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If that be an Apache helicopter, that don't be a locust.
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Now, I'm getting a little silly, but you understand.
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If the beast be a man, he don't be a beast.
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You understand what I'm saying? Everybody does it.
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It just depends on how you do it.
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Depends on your rules, depends on what you're willing to take literal and what you're willing to take figuratively.
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Therefore, if the call is for something that is symbolic, we interpret it according to the symbolism.
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I don't think that orthodox preterism requires any more strenuous or overt spiritualization than any other form of biblical hermeneutic.
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I just don't think it does.
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I don't think that it can be proven that we're being any more spiritual or any less literal.
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In fact, I would say this, we take literally the first three verses that say soon and near.
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So we're taking that pretty literal.
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And so, I don't think it's any more spiritual or overtly allegorical than anything else.
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So, the next thing, the next question that often comes up, and I felt like this would probably take the most time, and that is the question of the date of Revelation.
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Because I think personally, this is really the...
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This is the hugest question.
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Because the majority of people who you will read, if you go home and take out your Bible dictionary, or you take out your concordance, or you take out any other useful handbook of Bible knowledge, and you go to the book of Revelation, you will read there that the majority of scholars believe that the book of Revelation was written in the 90s.
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Now, again, think back in your mind, timetable, all right? And if it were written in the 90s, then it certainly was not a prophecy of what happened in the 70s.
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We all can agree with that.
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But I want to challenge you for a moment.
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How did they come to that conclusion? How did you come to that conclusion other than they told you to? I don't mean that to be ugly, but most people just read it and say, oh, that's it.
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We don't know how they came to that conclusion.
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How do you know when any of the books were written? In fact, do you realize there are liberal scholars that say none of the books of the New Testament were written in the first century? They're all pseudepigrapha, meaning false names.
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Paul never wrote any of what was described to him.
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James never wrote his book.
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Peter never wrote.
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In fact, there's a lot of liberal scholars that say Paul didn't write 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, even now.
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Even though we have ample evidence to suggest they were all written before AD 70.
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They'll still come along and say, no, no, no, it's too high a theology.
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It's too high a Christology.
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It's too much second century.
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It can't possibly be written in the first century.
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Hogwash.
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Hogwash.
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There's a Greek word for that.
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It's baloney.
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You can write that one down.
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So what is the evidence? What evidence do we have? Well, the evidence for the later date of the book of Revelation is primarily based on one external source.
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And that is Irenaeus, who wrote these words.
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And I'll read you what he wrote.
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Irenaeus, by the way, lived in the late second century.
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He lived between 130 and 202.
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So this is not something he's writing in his lifetime.
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He's a generation later.
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And Irenaeus wrote this.
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He says, we will not, however, incur the risk of pronouncing positively as to the name of Antichrist, for if it were necessary for his name to be distinctly revealed in this present time, it would have been announced by him who held the prophetic or the apocalyptic vision.
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That's John.
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For that was seen no long time since but almost in our day toward the end of Domitian's reign.
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Now, when did Domitian reign? He reigned in the 90s.
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And so this is Irenaeus, speaking of the writing of John, saying that it happened during the lifetime of Domitian.
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This is where most people get the idea that he wrote in the 90s, because Domitian was living in the 90s, and if John were speaking, or Irenaeus was speaking of John writing in that time, there you have your timetable.
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Well, let me respond to this, because obviously I don't agree.
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I wouldn't be a preterist if I agreed.
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Number one, this quote from Irenaeus is an English translation of a Latin translation of a Greek text that we no longer have.
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The Greek text has been destroyed.
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We no longer have it.
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The Latin text is what we do have, and we have an English translation of it.
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And it's not certain whether or not the writer Irenaeus is talking about the prophecies coming in the reign of Domitian or John himself living in the reign of Domitian.
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So there's not exactly a proof text here.
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All it's simply saying is John lived up to the time of Domitian, and none of us disagree with that.
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We know he lived into the 90s, so we have no problem with that.
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He's not making a distinct claim about when the visions came or when they were written.
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He's simply making a claim about the life of John, which nobody disputes.
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However, I want to point to another early church father, and that is a man named Clement.
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Clement challenges the words of Irenaeus, because Clement, in his writings called the Miscellanies, says this.
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For the teaching of our Lord at his advent, beginning with Augustus and Tiberius, was completed in the middle of the times of Tiberius, and that of the apostles embracing the ministry of Paul ends with Nero.
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That's the end of the quote.
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What is that saying? Clement is saying the whole New Testament is written by the time of Nero's death.
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All the writings of Paul, all the writings of John, all of the apostles, and all the gospels are written before the death of Nero.
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When did Nero die? AD 68.
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Two years before AD 70.
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So we have two external sources.
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They conflict with one another, and here's the interesting part.
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Neither one of them are inspired.
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Only the Bible is inspired by God, so we have two external sources that disagree with one another.
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What are we to do with such evidence? Well, let's look at the internal evidence.
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There's two ways to judge the dating of a book.
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You can judge it by the external evidence, meaning those things which are written outside, but you can also date it by what's inside the book.
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That's called internal evidence.
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We're going to look at the internal evidence.
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I want to propose to you three internal evidences which suggest to me that the book was written before AD 70.
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Number one, the book makes several allusions to a temple, and there is not a hint that the temple was no longer standing.
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It speaks of the temple as having presence, and some would argue that this is because there's another temple coming.
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Somebody said that last night.
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So there's another temple coming.
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Are we sure? Are we sure John is not talking about the temple that was still standing in his own day? In fact, the assumption that another temple is coming kind of proves my point.
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It proves that a temple is necessary for a revelation to be written, and it was necessary because it was still standing.
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It was still there.
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So the book making allusions to the temple is proof to me that the temple is still there, and the temple was still there in AD 70, up until AD 70.
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So I tend to argue that that's reason to believe it was written before AD 70.
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So that's number one.
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Number two, the book never mentions the destruction of the temple.
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In fact, none of the New Testament mentions the destruction of the temple.
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Don't you think, and I want you to put your thinking caps on for a minute, don't you think that if such a massive event in the history of the church happened and somebody was writing scripture after that, this would have been included because it fulfills the promises and prophecies of Jesus and also shows the end of the Jewish system? But it's never mentioned by anyone.
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Paul never mentions it.
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Why? Because he's dead before it happens.
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He was killed under the reign of Nero.
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Peter doesn't mention it happened.
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He was crucified under the reign of Nero.
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Paul was beheaded because he was a Roman citizen.
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You don't crucify Roman citizens.
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Peter wasn't.
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He was crucified.
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All the writings of the New Testament finished before AD 70.
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None of them mentioned the destruction of the temple.
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But the last one is actually a text, and I understand this one might cause some dispute, so I want to be careful with this one.
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But I invite you to open your Bibles, and we'll go to Revelation 17.
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Revelation 17, I think, proves at least a timeframe that's in view.
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Revelation 17, verse 9, this calls for a mind with wisdom.
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The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated.
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They are also seven kings, five of whom have fallen.
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One is, the other has not yet come, and when he does come, he must remain only a little while.
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We'll stop there.
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Now, what's the seven mountains? Well, that's debatable.
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Seven mountains certainly could refer to Rome, the city on seven hills.
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Seven mountains also can refer to Jerusalem.
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There's ancient literature that points to Jerusalem being surrounded by seven mountains, and so the seven mountains could refer to Jerusalem.
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But the point that I want to show you is these kings, because the kings here are certainly the emperors of Rome.
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And you say, but wait a minute, they didn't call them kings, they called them emperors.
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What did the Jews call them? We have no king but Caesar, right? They called them kings, so the language here shouldn't discourage us.
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But notice here there are seven mentioned, five, one falls, and one not yet to come.
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Let us go for a moment into history in our mind.
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Who was the first emperor? Well, Julius Caesar, yes, but we're going to get there in a second, because he was not called emperor.
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He was never given the title emperor.
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However, I do agree that he is the first, but we're going to talk about it, because if you start with the next one, it would have been Tiberius, then Caligula, then Claudius, Nero, and Galba.
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Galba would have been the sixth.
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But if you start with Julius Caesar, who was in fact an emperor, though he didn't receive the title.
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If you start with Julius Caesar, you have Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero is the sixth.
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Nero is the one who is king during the writing of Revelation.
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And the one who would come after him, whose name was Galba, didn't last very long.
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In fact, there were three quick interims, and then Vespasian came in, and he was the one who was the emperor during the destruction of Jerusalem.
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You say, well, what does that make Nero? Well, have you ever heard the beast? You say, oh, no, I don't like that, because the beast, he's still yet to come.
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Are we sure? In fact, the antichrist boy, what a fascinating study.
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And how many people have spent their lives trying to figure out who this guy is? You know, when Ronald Reagan became president, people said he was the antichrist because Ronald Wilson Reagan 666.
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Ronald, R-O-N-A-L-D, six letters.
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Wilson, six letters.
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Reagan, six letters.
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He's the antichrist, 666.
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I'm not making it up.
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Somebody said it.
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Preterism does believe in the beast of Revelation 13, but they believe that the beast himself was the beast Nero.
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Do you know what Nero's nickname was? Beast.
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You know what he would do? He would have himself clothed in the skin of animals, like a lion, and put in a cage, and they would bring prisoners in, and they would tie the prisoners up to a stake, and he would be let loose, and he would be dressed as a lion or a bear, and he would attack the naked prisoner and ravish their genitals and all of their whole body in an attack that was so savage and so severe and so ridiculous that it really just puts to shame any of our modern ideas of what psychosis is.
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Neron, Kaiser is Greek.
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Neron, Kaiser in Hebrew, if you take the Hebrew language, Nun, Resh, Vav, Nun, Neron.
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Kof, Samech, Resh, Kaiser.
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Nun has a value of 50.
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Resh has a value of 200.
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Vav has a value of 6.
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Nun has a value of 50.
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Kof has a value of 100.
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Samech, a value of 60, and Resh, a value of 200.
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Together, they add up to 666.
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Craig Hill makes an even further point.
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What about the mark of the beast? And this may be a place where I may disagree with some of the other speakers, but this is an interesting point.
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The word mark is actually the word that was used for stamping a coin.
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What was on the coin? Nero's head.
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And the coin held in the hand was necessary for transacting business.
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What was the first thing the Jews did when they revolted against Rome? They threw out the Roman coinage, made their own money.
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Again, these are all pictures of what was happening at that time.
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The tribulation? Yes, it occurred.
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How else could you describe such a time, if not great tribulation? And somebody says, well, pastor, do you believe there's more tribulation to come? I have to tell you this.
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I don't know how you can look at our world right now and not see the tribulation that's already here.
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I went to a thing called Tribulation House years ago.
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It was a church put on a play, and they were showing how these American Christians were all being gathered up into concentration camps, and they were all being threatened with death.
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And finally, one of the kids got put into a guillotine and lopped his head right off.
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You know, and it was all a drama, of course, and really cut his head off.
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But it was a big drama on stage.
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And everybody's, oh, how miserable, how scary that that could come to the modern church.
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It's here.
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You look at the church in China, arrested, beaten, tortured for Christ.
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There's a movie on Amazon.
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If you have Amazon, it's called Tortured for Christ.
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It's about what happened in the church in Russia.
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A pastor in a little house church, taken, beaten for 15 years.
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His wife taken, arrested, beaten for...
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We have had so good so long.
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We don't understand what our Christian brothers and sisters live in all the time.
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Tribulation is always around us.
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In this world, you will have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.
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Sorry, I'm a preacher, so I can't help it, but I get to preaching a little.
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The understanding is, though, people talk about a coming tribulation.
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It's here.
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It's here.
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It's always here.
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Just depends on where you are and what time in history.
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But in 8070, a great tribulation fell upon the people of God because they had rejected their Messiah and judgment befell them like had never befallen anyone in history.
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Under the hands of a beast, under the destruction of tyrants, but under the sovereignty of Almighty God.
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There's so much more I could tell you about things that were seen in the sky.
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Josephus talks about actual visions in the sky of chariots being seen in 8070.
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Actual eyewitnesses of amazing celestial events that were happening all around.
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I encourage you, read Josephus' Jewish Wars.
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And read it with the mind of saying, what am I looking at? If not the very promises of John from the Lord Jesus Christ on the people whose Messiah had come, but they received him not.
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I want to end, and I know my time is up, so I'll end with this.
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I want to end with a simple quote.
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It's a writing from a man by the name of Keith Matheson.
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He wrote for Ligonier Ministries, and he said this.
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It's easy to forget when reading the book of Revelation that it is the capstone of the entire narrative of Scripture.
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The bulk of the biblical narrative has concerned the story of Israel leading up to the coming of the promised Messiah.
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We recall that most of the content of the Old Testament prophetic books concern the coming exile of Israel and Judah on account of her rejection of God.
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The prophecies continued right up to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple of the Babylonians in 586 B.C.
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In the first century, Jesus foretold another coming judgment on Israel on account of her rejection of himself, and he connected this judgment with his ascension to the throne of the kingdom of God.
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In light of the history of prophecy in Israel, and in light of the redemptive historical significance Jesus himself places on the first century judgment of Israel, would it be terribly surprising if at the conclusion of the biblical narrative, God once again sent a prophet to declare the impending judgment of Israel as well as the ultimate future restoration? When the genre, the statements of the book itself, and the larger biblical context are taken into consideration, a preteristic approach to the book emerges as the most appropriate approach to take.