AN EXEGETICAL BASIS FOR A PRETERIST-IDEALIST UNDERSTANDING OF THE BOOK OF REVELATION

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Dec 2006 by Noe, John

When attempting to arrive at a proper understanding of the Bible's last book, four foundational questions must be addressed: (1) When was this book most likely written? (2) How do we handle its time statements? (3) When was or will it be fulfilled? (4) What is its relevance for us today? Over the course of church history, four major evangelical eschatological views have evolved. Each answers these four questions differently.

In Part I of this article I will present each view, along with some criticism from proponents of the other views. The four views are the preterist view, the premillennial view, the amillennial view, and the postmillennial view. In Part II, I will evaluate their different understandings and conclude by offering a synthesis.

I. A PRESENTATION OF VIEWS

1. The preterist view. Most preterists1 believe that the Book of Revelation speaks to particular circumstances and events that were fulfilled within the lifetime of the book's original first-century audience and that there is nothing in it about our future. Rather, it was concerned fully and exclusively with the first century and not with subsequent periods. This view places its date of writing prior to AD 70-most likely, between AD 63 and 68-and its soon-fulfillment in AD 70 in conjunction with Christ's divine visitation, coming, and return in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.

J. Stuart Russell, a nineteenth-century preterist author, portrayed the Book of Revelation as being concerned "primarily and principally with events with which its first readers only were immediately interested . . . events all shortly to come to pass."2 He believed that "the Apocalypse is nothing else than a transfigured form of the prophecy on the Mount of Olives. . . . expanded, allegorised, and . . . dramatised. . . . First and chiefly the Parousia. . . ."3 In other words, and in the opinion of most preterists, the Book of Revelation is only another version of Christ's Olivet Discourse, since "the subject of both is the same great catastrophe, viz. The Parousia, and the events accompanying it4. . . . an event which He [Jesus] declared would happen before the passing away of the existing generation, and which some of the disciples would live to witness."5

Preterists further point out that Revelation's 3 ½-year period ("42 months," "1,260 days," and "time, times, half time"; Rev 11:2, 3; 12:6, 14; 13:5) corresponds with the exact time frame of the worst tribulation in Jewish history, the AD 66-70 Jewish-Roman War. It culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and forever ended biblical Judaism and the old covenant, animal sacrifice system-just as Christ had perfectly predicted (Matthew 23-24).

Another tie-in is the symbol of Babylon in Revelation 18. Preterists maintain that this Babylon represents first-century Jerusalem and is not a symbol for Rome, New York City, or any city anywhere, as is commonly assumed. They believe its identity can be clearly seen by the hermeneutical principle of letting "Scripture interpret Scripture" and can be aptly demonstrated with four simple syllogisms:6

Major premise #1: Three times this Babylon is called "O great city" (Rev 18:9, 16, 19)

Minor premise #1: "The great city" is "where also their Lord was crucified" (Rev 11:8)

Conclusion: Jerusalem is Revelation's Babylon

Major premise #2: Babylon was guilty of "the blood of the prophets" (Rev 17:6; 18:24)

Minor premise #2: According to Jesus and Paul, only Jerusalem killed the prophets (Matt 23:34-35; Luke 13:33; 1 Thess 2:15-16)

Conclusion: Jerusalem is Revelation's Babylon

Major premise #3: John's people are commanded, "Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues" (Rev 18:4)

Minor premise #3: The only city Jesus ever commanded his followers to flee from is Jerusalem-when they saw two specific signs (Matt 24:15-16; Luke 21:20-21). Eusebius recorded that this departure happened and no Christians were trapped and destroyed in the siege and destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70(7)

Conclusion: Jerusalem is Revelation's Babylon

Major premise #4: This Babylon would be destroyed (Rev 18:2, 8, 10, 11, 17, 19-23)

Minor premise #4: The only city Jesus said would be destroyed was Jerusalem-it would be "left to you desolate" (Matt 23:38) with "not one stone . . . left on another" (Matt 24:2)

Conclusion: Jerusalem is Revelation's Babylon

Amillennialist Donald Guthrie suggests that "the symbol of Babylon was chosen because it stood for the oppressors of God's people."8 In first-century Jerusalem, apostate Judaism was persecuting God's emerging church.

But amillennialist Stanley W. Paher protests that "this conclusion suffers on many grounds."9 First, he accuses preterists of "play[ing] down the importance of historical backgrounds, such as Jewish writings contemporary with and immediately previous" to John's writing that "with one accord" see "Babylon as . . . Rome."10 Second, he reports that "all church writers," including Tertullian, Jerome, and Augustine, "associated Babylon with Rome," and that this belief was "the unchallenged position of the ekklesia for the next twelve centuries."11 Third, he stipulates that Rome was "the hub of the world's economic systems" of that day and only this Rome meets Revelation 18's commercial and luxury descriptions.12 Fourth, while he recognizes that Revelation 11:8-9 "is the trump card for early date advocates,"13 he labels as an "inconsistent hermeneutic" the taking of Sodom and Egypt figuratively, as the text says, but then "shift[ing] gears to make the 'great city . . . where also their Lord was crucified' refer to a literal location, historic Jerusalem."14 Fifth, regarding "the blood of the prophets," he claims that "this proof . . . is inconclusive" and that this blood "was the blood of New Testament prophets"15-i.e. "beginning in AD 64, Babylon-Rome also was a city of [this] bloodshed."16 He concludes that a "reinvented Babylon as Jerusalem" is "a conclusion obviously historically unjustifiable." Yet Paher does not explain how Rome might fit the above third and fourth syllogisms. He also seems to equivocate by saying that "the 'great city' is worldwide in scope, and not confined to one locality."17