The Preterist Blog ~ 100% Hyperpreterist Free|we can haz rezurekshun?

In my travels I ran across a very dispensational futurist article which was speaking aganst preterism but seemed to have some essential facts out of order, i.e. the difference between orthodox and heretical preterism. I simply assumed the most charitable thing and that was the author was simply ignorant that there was a difference, so I wrote said individual to clear up their apparent confusion only to be told:

I realize Sproul and Hannegraaff are not full Preterists but Hannegraaff has so confused good Christians with his nonsense it really doesn’t matter.

IOW, it is okay to publish knowingly misleading information when the author doesn’t like someone else’s point of view. Frankly I was shocked. I wrote back”

Hello ***, I understand that you have strong feeling against the view. That, however, does not justify mispresention either overtly or implicitly. I am asking you to be factual, not to agree with anybody. If one cannot trust a Christian article to present the facts as they are who can we trust? You cannot tell the “truth” by being unfactual.

I am asking that you correct your article to be factually correct, not to agree with these men. If you want to stand by your article as it stands, I am asking that you give me permission to publish our emails so that I can make a public comment against the inaccuracy of your comments. I am praying that we two can privately come to a factual point - not to agree with each others doctrines. Personally I find your dispensationalism just as horrid as you find my view, but I would never purposefully mispresent you or your view, and if I inadvertantly did, and someone (no matter what their doctrine was) presented me with facts that were verifiable I would immediately correct what I wrote since above all we serve He who is the Truth. You can tell what you believe is the truth about Israel without committing untruths against those who disagree, don’t you agree with that?

To which I got no response other than an assertion that the author stands by truth though said author admitted that the article’s comments were misleading but it didn’t matter.

Thankfully, this is not typical within the futurist camp, but should be a lesson for us all. Although my policy is that I have zero issue with publishing emails without consent when there is an untruth being perpetrated, it wasn’t necessary in this case to make my point, and I leave this individual to God’s examination.

In a heretical preterist chat room, Thomas Newton was invoked with the extraordinary claim that Newton claimed that “there was NO distant event to take place.” The context of the claim was that this was strong support that their heretical preterizing of the “Second Coming” with NO future coming had historical and reputable support. However…..

….that is not what Newton said….

“Commentators generally understand this, and what follows, of the end of the world, and of Christs coming to judgment; but the words immediately after the tribulation of those days, show, evidently, that he is not speaking of any distant but of something immediately consequent upon the tribulation before mentioned, and that must be the destruction of Jerusalem.”(from Newton’s Dissertions on the Prophecies)

This caused me to look a bit further into representations made concerning Newton, and I note that on a major heretical preterist site there is published a debate between Thomas Newton and N.A. Nisbett which is falsely billed as “EARLIEST KNOWN PARTIAL PRETERIST / PRETERIST DEBATE !” translation: EARLIEST KNOWN ORTHODOX PRETERIST VERSUS FULL PRETERIST DEBATE!

Is that true? No. Nisbett (as later acknowledged by the owner of said site within the text itself) was not a full preterist. The bone of contention between Newton and Nisbett was whether or not this statement of Newton’s was correct:

“The consistence and connectionof the discourse oblige us to understand it, as spoken of the time of the destruction of Jerusalem; but in a higher sense, it may be true also of the time of the end of the world, and the general judgment. All the subsequent discourse too, we may observe, doth not relate so properly to the destruction of Jerusalem, as to the end of the world, and the general judgment. Our Saviour loseth sight, as it were, of his former subject, and adapts his discourse more to the latter.”

Nisbett WAS not a “full preterist.” He merely didn’t regard any of the Discourse to be relating in any shape or manner to the Second Coming and Final Judgment. I believe he is wrong in that, but may have been goaded by some unfortunate wording by Newton. Nisbett said, for example:

“They had not only an hope of an ample recompence of reward for all that they suffered, when Jesus should come to judge all mankind at the last day; but they had a near prospect of deliverance from their present troubles, when they would enjoy all the comfort and all the advantage of their unshaken fidelity and perseverance. The Apostle adds, as he had done before in the last verse of the preceding chapter, concerning the resurrection of the dead at the last day…”

He multiple times confessed belief in the future coming and future resurrection.

So here are the questions: why was Newton misrepresented without correction in the heretical chat room? why is the Newton-Nisbett disagreement billed as a debate between a “partial preterist” and a “full preterist.” Will that be corrected?

This is similar to a complaint that I had last year regarding a banner ad that stated “Theologians Who Believe the Second Coming is Past” which led to a listing that included persons who did not deny a future bodily return of Christ.

There was another incident in which a heretical preterist claimed that “Hank Hannegraaff writes full preterist books and then runs in the closet and hides.” Really? Pray tell what “full preterist” book that Hank wrote. I have the answer. Ready? None.

A while back when Hank first “came out” of the eschatological closet, there was a flurry of hyperpreterist (NeoHymenaean) spin that perhaps Hank was in actuality embracing that view. I made extensive commentary at that time at the irresponsibility of these actions and the blindness to obvious reality. However, part of the issue was an article in The Dallas Morning News in which Hank was credited as saying that the rapture was past. Now really, if anyone thinks about this, Hank is not going to casually reveal in such a manner that he has now rejected the hallmark of his ministry - orthodoxy. An odd smell from Denmark is readily apparent to anyone at all familiar with Hank. But a lot of people are not that familiar with Hank, and this article was picked up by numerous other papers.

At that time I had a conversation with the religion editor for the original paper (who by the way was very helpful) and was the catalyst for The Dallas Morning News to contact Hank’s ministry for a clarification. The result is what follows which is published as well here by permission.

Clarifying his views: Re: “New take on Rapture puts authors in apocalyptic feud”

appearing 12/10/04 in The Dallas Morning News (reprinted by permission)

Letters to the Religion editor

05:51 PM CST on Friday, December 10, 2004

Nov. 6

Just a note to clarify some misconceptions concerning my view of biblical eschatology communicated in the article.

First, Tim LaHaye’s assertion that I subscribe to the “nonsense that Christ came back in 68 A.D.” is surely one of his more creative works of fiction. Such a notion is not even hinted at in my book, The Last Disciple, nor have I made such a statement in any forum. Dr. LaHaye simply manufactured this assertion out of whole cloth.

Furthermore, I have never suggested that the Rapture has already taken place. Thus, the article’s opening sentence, “What if the Rapture has already happened?” is misleading. In fact, unlike the “Left Behind” series which is based on the pre-Tribulational Rapture theory posited and popularized in the 19th century by John Nelson Darby, “The Last Disciple” series is centered on the great and glorious truth of Resurrection.

Finally, nowhere in “The Last Disciple” is there any suggestion that in order “to survive, early Christians must decipher a mysterious code.” While deciphering the symbols of Revelation is often difficult for 21st-century Christians addicted to “newspaper theology,” John’s coded letter would have been substantially clear to first-century believers.

Thank you for the opportunity to make the above clarifications and to affirm that I hold to what is taught in Scripture and codified in the creeds: Jesus is coming again; the dead will be resurrected; and the problem of sin will be fully and finally resolved.

Hank Hanegraaff, president, Christian Research Institute, Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif.