Dead End Road
A.D. 70: Preterism’s Prophetic Dead End is the title of an article posted January/February 2005 by: Randall Price. Website: The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, Inc. Israel My Glory. Pictured at the top of this article is a dead end road sign on a post by a road heading off into the woods. I plan to read this article and interact with some of the main contentions made by Randall Price. As an apologetic Christian I desire to do so. Who wants to be unreasonable in defense of the wrong way? Especially if my view really is a dead end view as Randall Price claims it is. I don’t want my thoughts to lead to an impasse. One of us is probably wrong and if it’s me I can correct it.
Randall Price contends that if the prophecies of Jesus’ first advent required a literal fulfillment in the first century then His second advent must also be literal and thus did not happen in the first century aka “this generation”. Thus the Olivet Discourse and the Revelation will find a ‘literal’ fulfillment sometime in a future “this generation”. Of course by literal professor Price means concretely or woodenly or scientifically. He does not mean literaturely; as if to consider the type of literature. If when Jesus spoke of “this generation” He was actually talking to the generation He called “this generation” then the apocalyptic literature describing the second advent must be a different type of literature. All literature is meant to be taken literally. I wan’t to interpret the whole Bible according to its various forms of literature. I don’t want to take it literally only when possible. Literaturely is always the proper way to interpret it.
Jesus first advent wasn’t very apocalyptic, not in the modern sense of the word, meaning destruction of the planet. But it was revelatory, which is the biblical meaning of the word apocalyptic. Jesus was born in Bethlehem in order to start His new covenant before He ended His old covenant. Who can argue with that now that it has literally happened? Jesus came to save his chosen people from the natural fulfillment of their old covenant at the arrival of their millennial Jubilee, which was scheduled to arrive during that generation. Those who didn’t reign in their 1000 years in the land with Christ didn’t arrive alive to the eternal new covenant, in my thoughtful opinion. Here is what Randal Price thinks:
Preterists contend that Jesus’ use of the phrase this generation in His Olivet Discourse requires fulfillment in the first century; R. C. Sproul, in particular, argues that Christ’s words failed unless this interpretation is adopted.
By contrast, Futurism (what we believe) maintains that the literal fulfillment of Messianic prophecy in Christ’s First Advent confirms that His prophetic teaching must also be interpreted literally. Thus the Olivet Discourse and the Revelation will find fulfillment in the future, particularly during the Tribulation and Christ’s Millennial reign.
Tribulation certainly came upon God’s chosen Jews and firstly at the very hands of the not chosen ones. The first martyred Jew died by way of stones from the hands of the unbelieving Jews. Heaven opened and Jesus stood for the first martyr at the beginning of the Jewish church tribulation: the old church Jew turned against the new church Jew. Paul was still fighting alongside the old church to stop the new from arriving alive. And Jesus was certainly reining in the imminent millennium from heaven. At the right hand of the Father can’t be beat as the place to reign from. I mean that in every literal way. He was reserving the greatest tribulation for the unbelievers who refused to reign in the new covenant with their messiah.
Randal Price rightly states my belief: that I have (or will have when I biologically die) a spirit realm body with eternal life, like the angels’ bodies. But he basically says nobody believed that until recently. I thought Jesus clearly said we would be like the angels in heaven. Angels on earth sometimes took on a flesh and blood body for appearance sake and functionality sake and usually for our sake. Heaven is in a realm that we in our flesh bodies can’t currently see with our naked earthly eyes. Jesus said so. The subject here is people who will physically die. Either they will go to Hades to wait for a future resurrection or they will go to heaven in their heavenly realm body. They are certainly not coming back to earth in heavenly bodies as men and woman who can still marry and procreate. They will be resurrected to be like the family of angels according to Jesus. They will neither marry nor procreate with their new bodies.
Though I have been spiritually reborn into the family of heaven, I am still on earth in my body of flesh and blood that will no doubt die someday and be removed from me, or I from it. I am looking forward to being exclusively in an angel-like body that lives in the heavenly realm and will never die. Maybe I will be like an angel who can choose to appear in an earthly body without giving up my eternal heavenly body.
Even before Jesus’ resurrection started the new covenant body, God was already the God of the living and not the God of the dead. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were all still alive. But they were all living in the realm of Hades, which was only the temporary place of the physically dead ones who weren’t yet resurrected to never die again. Flesh and blood death naturally followed their first death and took them to Hades to wait. Their final spirit realm death would be their second and antitypical death. Dead here must mean the second death, which wasn’t just a spirit realm relational or positional death but a spirit realm destruction. God was not the God of those who no longer existed. All were still existing in Hades which was their temporary life in the spirit realm. But they didn’t exist in the spirit realm like the angels yet because they weren’t in heaven and they could still die.
The second death did not even harm those who joined Jesus in His resurrection. Hades wasn’t thrown into the lake of fire until the wait was over. It was not much longer needed after Jesus personally opened the gates of Hades for His humanity to exit. He chose 12 apostles in Jerusalem to lay the foundation of the new Jerusalem and the 12 tribes in diaspora were sent out to open the gates to the nations. To the Jew first and also to the nations was the call to enter heavenly Jerusalem.
Mark 12:23-25
LITV 23 Then in the resurrection, when they rise again, of which of them will she be the wife? For the seven had her as wife. 24 And answering, Jesus said to them, Do you not err because of this, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God? 25 For when they rise again from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as angels in Heaven. [He didn’t say they are like angels in heaven in earthly bodies that are no longer flesh and blood and no longer able to procreate] 26 But concerning the dead, that they are raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, as God spoke to him at the Bush, saying, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? Ex. 3:6 27 He is not the God of the dead, but God of the living. Therefore, you greatly err.
Randal Price said:
Full Preterism maintains that believers have been spiritually resurrected and the creation spiritually restored, so the church presently exists in the eternal state of the new heavens and new earth.
According to Thomas Ice, executive director of the Pre-Trib Research Center and one of the foremost experts on Preterism, there is no evidence of any preterist interpretation in the history of the early church through the Reformation.
I do think the New Jerusalem is the church in the eternal state kept incorruptible in heaven by the incorruptible firstborn of humanity, yet extending to our realm to take others into the eternal family. If the increase of His kingdom has no end then where does procreation take place? if not in heavenly bodies then maybe first birth and second birth still happens in our earthly bodies. So in the Randall Price view, where will births take place after the resurrection when we become like the angels and no longer procreate?
Being born again from above into the spirit realm family assumes a first birth on earth into a natural family. Flesh and blood birth is not enough to inherit the kingdom no matter what you do. After our second birth on earth we become like the angels in heaven. Angels have supernatural bodies. We belong to a family that does not procreate with each other in order to make more eternal family members. Eternal bodies come from God alone. God gave the angels their eternal bodies. They didn’t procreate with each other. Neither does flesh and blood procreation inherit the eternal kingdom. Spirit realm birth by the Holy Spirit does. When the angels left their spirit realm and took on flesh and blood bodies so they could procreate, their crossover offspring were destined for destruction. None were born again. They were seeking a corruptible flesh and blood body to live in till there time reached a dead end.
The only begotten by God was born into the old testament. He gave up His life in that body to gift His rebirth to God’s chosen people in His new testament. He was spiritually born again into the new covenant realm. Being born again into the spirit realm church family is the only road that is not a dead end road. Flesh and blood birth is always a dead end road. Unless one is born again into the spiritual realm you can’t enter the gates of Jerusalem. That is why the gates are never shut. Flesh and blood can’t enter that realm.