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Friday, May 14, 2021

Preterism

Preterism is a Christian eschatological view.[i] One definition of preterism is “a belief that interprets biblical prophecies as events which have already happened in the first century A.D. (as opposed to remaining to be fulfilled in the future).” The view roughly divides into partial preterism or full preterism. Effectively, most or all prophecies of the Bible become history instead. In eschatological terms, preterism is the opposite of futurism. Preterism means past in fulfillment, and futurism means future in fulfillment.[ii]
 
Full preterism holds that all eschatological events (what many Christian consider future “end-time events”) were fulfilled at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Preterists usually replace the idea of a future second coming and resurrection with a sort of metaphorical and/or positional change.
 
Partial preterism, on the other hand, holds that most but not all of the eschatological events have been fulfilled, and that the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 fulfilled most of Jesus’s Olivet Discourse (the prophetic teachings on the Mount of Olives recorded in Matthew 24-25, as well as Mark and Luke).
 
I recently discovered there is a “Preterist Bible.” Originally called the Fulfilled Covenant Bible (FCB), it is now titled The Kingdom Bible (TKB). According to information about the Bible, it is a revision based on testaments from two public domain Bible – the World English Old Testament and the King James Clarified New Testament. It is a collaboration of the work of many Preterists, with Michael E. Day serving as editor. “The fog of futurist translation bias has been thoroughly dissipated,” they say – and replaced, of course, by preterist translation bias.


[i] Eschatology is any system of doctrines or branch of theology concerning last, or final, matters, such as death, resurrection, judgment, the afterlife, etc. 
[ii] The English term preterism comes from the Latin word praeter. Praeter is a prefix meaning “past.” Those who hold the belief of preterism are known as preterists.

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