I named this page The Heretical Horseman on purpose. Both words. Let me explain.
Tennessee. Horseback is where I do my best thinking.
The heretic part
I believe every prophecy the Bible made, and every prophecy Jesus made, was fulfilled exactly when He said it would be: within one final generation of Old Covenant Israel, the "latter days" Moses sang about.
Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.Matthew 24:34, KJV
Say that out loud in most churches today and you will be called a heretic before you finish the sentence. I know. It has happened to me.
Paul heard the same charge.
But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets.Acts 24:14, KJV
They called Paul's way heresy. His answer was that he believed all things which are written. That is my answer too. The latter days were not about modern times. Read Deuteronomy 31:28 through 32:43 and see whose latter days Moses was describing. Then try to find one place where the Bible speaks of an end to the New Covenant age. I could not find one either.
Heresy has always been the majority's word for the minority report. Luther was declared a heretic. Tyndale was executed as one, for putting the Bible in English. Every reformation in church history was called heresy first.
Let's be clear about what this page is and is not. Heretical, by today's majority view? Sure. I will own that. Blasphemous? Never. Jesus is Lord. Scripture is the word of God, every word of it true. I simply believe Jesus meant what He said about when. There is a difference between heretical and blasphemous. A system that requires a third temple, and a fourth, with a fully restored sacrificial system after the cross, is a good example of the second.
The horseman part
That one is not a metaphor. I own and train horses on our place in Tennessee, and horseback is where I do my best thinking. A few short years around horses taught me something about reading Scripture: a horse does not care what you wish he would do. You work with the horse in front of you, not the one in your head. The Bible is the same. You read the text in front of you, not the one tradition tells you should be there.
Here is what you will get on this page. One passage at a time. Who it was written to. What it meant to the people who first heard it. When it said it would happen. What actually happened in history. Sometimes taught from the saddle, the barn, the shop, or the middle of ranch chores.
I am not asking you to agree with me. I am asking you to read the texts with me and see what they say. Disagreement is welcome here. Bring your Bible.
The questions that would not go away.
I held the pre-tribulation futurist view for thirty-eight years. I did not know anything else existed. I had questions nobody could answer, and questions I was discouraged from asking.
Eventually I had to stop asking how these passages fit the system I had been taught and ask what they would have meant to the people who first heard them. If you have wrestled with the same verses, here is the list that did it to me.
John the Baptist
"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 3:2). "Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees" (3:10). "His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor" (3:12). The kingdom was at hand. The axe was already at the root. The fork was already in His hand. That is an approaching judgment, not one thousands of years away.
Jesus
"There are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom" (Matthew 16:28). "This generation will not pass away until all these things take place" (24:34). To Caiaphas and the men judging Him: "From now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven" (26:64). That last one mattered most to me, because it is Daniel 7 language, the passage about the Son of Man coming, receiving the kingdom, and the court sitting in judgment.
The chief priests and Pharisees "perceived that he was speaking about them" (21:45). Jesus said of that judgment, "Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation" (23:36). Days later the crowd said, "His blood be on us and on our children!" (27:25). That audience became harder and harder to ignore.
Peter
"This is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: 'And in the last days it shall be...'" (Acts 2:16-17). "The end of all things is at hand" (1 Peter 4:7). Peter did not say the last days would begin thousands of years later. He said this is that, and later he told his own readers the end of all things was at hand.
James
"The coming of the Lord is at hand" (James 5:8). "Behold, the Judge is standing at the door" (5:9). How could the coming be at hand and the Judge be standing at the door if the fulfillment was two thousand years off?
Paul
"These things... were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come" (1 Corinthians 10:11). "The night is far gone; the day is at hand" (Romans 13:12). On the resurrection and the coming: "We who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord..." (1 Thessalonians 4:15). That one became a real problem for me as a partial preterist. I could accept a first-century coming in Matthew 24, and then I had to explain why the coming, judgment, and resurrection passages that read exactly like it belonged to a different event thousands of years later.
Hebrews
"In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son" (1:2). Of the old covenant: "What is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away" (8:13). "Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay" (10:37). Real words, written to real people living through the final days of that covenant.
John
"Little children, it is the last hour" (1 John 2:18). Not the last days. The last hour.
Revelation
"The revelation of Jesus Christ... to show to his servants the things that must soon take place" (1:1). "For the time is near" (1:3). "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near" (22:10). "Behold, I am coming soon" (22:12). "Surely I am coming soon" (22:20). The 22:10 statement was huge for me. Daniel was told to seal his prophecy until the time of the end (Daniel 12:4, 9). John was told the opposite: do not seal it, because the time is near.
At some point I could not keep explaining these away one at a time. At hand did not mean at hand, until now. Soon did not mean soon, until now. This generation did not mean this generation, until now. The last hour could apparently run another two thousand years, and the Judge could stand at the door for millennia. I finally asked myself why I was working so hard to make the inspired writers sound like they were talking to somebody other than the people in front of them.
I did not become a full preterist overnight. I went partial first, until I was asked to leave a church for asking the obvious questions. The hardest part for me was the resurrection. In the end I could not find a biblical reason to split the coming and judgment of Daniel 7 and 12, Matthew 24 and 25, 1 Thessalonians 4, and Revelation 20 into separate events thousands of years apart. That was the turning point. I stopped protecting the system I had inherited and let the time statements and the original audience set the boundaries.
I spent years warning people about the rapture. Then I read Revelation.
Last September I was a lifelong dispensationalist. Pre-trib rapture, seven-year tribulation, at least one more temple, a physical earthly reign, eternity in heavenly bodies on a new earth. I bought all of it.
I had already started to lose my grip on the rapture after years of being the guy who warned people they needed to be saved so they would not be left behind. One day, scrolling X, I ran across a link to a commentary on Revelation called The Days of Vengeance, by David Chilton. I had always been curious about Revelation because I could not figure it out. Everyone had different answers, nobody agreed, and it was treated as a gigantic mystery.
I picked up the 750-page book and within a few pages I was changed. In the twinkling of an eye. I had never heard anyone talk about AD 70. It was the first book I had ever read that walked through Revelation verse by verse instead of newspaper by newspaper, and about two hundred pages in, the system I had inherited started coming apart. By the end I felt free.
By January I had landed where most people land first: partial preterist. Matthew 24 fulfilled, Revelation mostly fulfilled, with a future bodily return, a future resurrection, and a future judgment held in reserve. I found Gary DeMar and Kenneth Gentry, and I was careful. I had looked up the other guys. "Full preterist." "Hyper-preterist." "Heretic." I wanted nothing to do with that label. I stayed on the safe side of the line and told myself I had to hold the creedal position no matter what the text did.
Then I sat down with my pastor for a seven-hour Bible study. Seven hours, and he never opened his Bible once. He quoted resurrection passages to prove a rapture. He put Zechariah 14 in the millennium, complete with a restored sacrificial system and an altar. He stacked verses together that had nothing to do with each other. I pushed with everything I had learned, and by the end he conceded that AD 70 was critical and that Matthew 24, all of it, was fulfilled. Looking back, that was a stunning admission.
A few weeks later the relationship went cold. The last thing I was told on the way out the door of that church was that partial preterism is a slippery slope to full preterism. He had conceded the text. He looked up what this "new" way of thinking was called, and he walked away over the label. He was right about the slope, by the way. Just not for the reason he thought.
A few weeks after that I watched Gary DeMar and Robert Cruickshank speak at a conference, and on the same stage, Mike Sullivan, a full preterist, teaching Daniel 7 and Daniel 12. I almost did not watch. Two men I trusted were sharing a platform with him, so I did. Then I did what I should have done from the beginning. I opened my own Bible and read it myself, the way a Berean is supposed to. Daniel 7 and 12. Matthew 10, 16, and 25. 1 Corinthians 15. 1 Thessalonians 4. It all started to come into focus.
Here is what I could not get past. Jesus says the Son of Man "is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done," and in the same breath, "Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom" (Matthew 16:27-28). Daniel puts the resurrection "at that time" (12:1-2), when "the shattering of the power of the holy people comes to an end" (12:7). Paul says the resurrection happens "at his coming" (1 Corinthians 15:23). The same coming. The same judgment. The same resurrection. I had been reading Matthew 21 through 24 as one discourse and slamming the brakes at chapter 25, exactly the way the dispensationalist slams them at 23. The disciples who heard it did not have a brake pedal. They heard one event.
Then I studied Deuteronomy 31:28 through 32:43, the Song of Moses, and found the whole thing laid out centuries early: judgment, consummation, and a new covenant world arriving "in the days to come" (31:29), the latter days of Israel. The New Testament writers were not inventing an eschatology. They were finishing Moses' song.
I wanted to keep the traditional view. I tried. I could not make the text say it, no matter how hard I worked at it, and at real risk of being labeled something I never wanted to be.
Long story short: I am a full preterist, I believe in covenant eschatology, and I am still searching Scripture every day, because that is the only thing I ever actually wanted. I lost a church over this. I would do it again, because the alternative was pretending I had not read what I read. The alternative was believing the Jesus I was after did not accomplish what He said He would.
If you are where I was a year ago, afraid of a label, here is what I wish someone had told me. Labels do not get a vote. The text does. Open it and let it talk.
This page is not here to fight. Nobody gets banned. Bring your Bible, bring your questions, and let's sharpen each other on what His Word says instead of what we inherited. I owe a debt to Don K. Preston for the work he continues to do, and to Steve Magua, Tim Martin, Jack Scott, and others who put on the conferences I sat in this past summer. You are in the right place. Keep learning and stay humble. The questions you have will not be answered here with "because I told you so."
