Friday, June 7, 2024

When was Jesus's Not One Stone Prophecy fully fulfilled?

You might think the answer to that is obvious and well known, but you'd be surprised.  First I'm going to quote the account of the Prophecy from Mark 13:1-2 since I think it's the most complete account of exactly what Jesus in this case.
And as he went out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto him, "Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!" And Jesus answering said unto him, "Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down".
Notice that it isn't JUST about The Temple, it's about all the buildings, plural.  

While Matthew and Luke's account of this in their main Olivet Discourse chapters downplay the inclusion of other buildings, Luke 19:44 also refers to not one stone being left, with The Temple not even being the focus, that Prophecy is about the entirety of Jerusalem.

The 9th of Av in AD 70 (presumed to be August 4th on the Roman Calendar) as recorded in Josephus Wars of The Jews Book VI Chapters 4-5 is the day The Temple was destroyed in the sense of not being able to be used as a Temple anymore.  Remember what happened to the Notre Dame Cathedral a few years ago?  The worst case scenario people were fearing that day is basically what happened to The Temple on the 9th of Av.  The next day however as recorded by Josephus in Wars Book VI Chapter 6 there are clearly still standing ruins.  

The beginning of Book VII is when Titus demolishes even those ruins and thus this is where most Christians talking about AD 70 via Josephus (both Preterists and Futurists) say the Not One Stone Prophecy was fulfilled.  Except Josephus tells us there were three towers that Titus left standing, in my view as long as those three towers were still standing this Prophecy of Jesus was incomplete.

In AD 131 Emperor Hadrian while visiting Jerusalem after ending his extended stay in Egypt announced his plans to rebuilt Jerusalem as a Greco-Roman City with a Temple to Zeus being built over the former site of The Temple.  I think the early stages of that project is when even those three remaining towers were torn down.  

Then after Hadrian left the Near East for Asia Minor in 132 the Bar Kokchba Revolt broke out.  That probably stalled the reconstruction project even though the Rebels never held Jerusalem during that war.  Then after the revolt was put down in 135 the project restarted.

Saturday, June 1, 2024

Thousand Years as a Day

The hyper literal face value understanding of the "surely I come quickly" verses that Full Preterism is built on is naturally incompatible with taking the Thousand Years of Revelation 20 at equally face value.  If EVEYTHING in the book must surely happen quickly, then clearly two of those events can't be separated by a full Millennium.

I specify Full Preterist here because Partial Preterist and Post Millenialists tend to make the Thousand years longer not shorter.  I have become a believer in those as a opposed to the Futurist Pre-Millennial I was when I wrote the first version of this on a different Blog..

The problem with the Full Preterist understanding of the Millennium is that even a not exactly literal use of "Thousand years" is still clearly meant to imply a long time, it's meant to imply we shouldn't expect it to end within a mortal lifetime.  

So Full Preterists cling to the "Thousand years as a day and a day as a thousand years" verses.  When you engage in very unscholarly proof texting yeah those seem like they give you the excuse they need to make a Thousand utterly meaningless.  

But when you read them in context, when you read the entirety of Psalm 90 and 2 Peter 3, the point being made, the Impression being given, is clearly all about how what can seem like endless ages to humans is nothing to God.  They are clearly conveying the opposite of what Full Preterists want, they give us every reason not to take "surely I come quickly" at face value and no reason to think a promised Earthly Millennium will end in a day.

2 Peter 3 is especially clear on this, because earlier that chapter is foretelling how people in the future will lose faith in the promised Coming because the "fathers fell asleep" and nothing has changed.  The whole point of the passage is specifically that Jesus did not "surely come quickly" by a mortal understanding of time, but we should none the less have faith that God is not slacking off but delaying only to give the heathens more time to repent.

1 Peter may have been written before 70 AD, but 2 Peter certainly came after, Peter never went to Rome and the Neronian persecution didn't happen.

Even without this understanding of the "Thousand Years as a Day" verses, Greek scholars understand that this kind of language used in Revelation 22 was often used euphemistically to mean "certainly will come to pass" and are not inherently meant to be literally taken as timing statements.  Hebrews 10:36-37 is similar, on the one hand it seems to say "soon" but also says "awhile" and tells us to be patient.

Honestly part of the problem with preterist interpretations of passages like Hebrew 10:36-37 is modern individualism which runs contrary the the more collectivist thinking of all first century people Pagan, Jewish and Christian.  They are speaking as if the audience reading this will be there when it happens because they are speaking to the Church and/or Israel (depending on how you prefer to look at it) as a collective not the specific individuals who were the very first to ever read it.

The "this Generation" statement of Matthew 24 exists in the context of what Jesus said before, "this" is grammatically applied to the generation that sees the signs.  Now understand that I am not a conventional Futurist, I have my doubts "this Generation" began when most Dispensationalists currently think it did.  I think the key sign to look for is The Abomination of Desolation.

And it doesn't matter how many other times "this generation" means the people listening to Jesus right now, "this generation" is a phrase that doesn't automatically always mean the same generation every time it appears, the context of where it's said determines it.

And the "there be some standing here" verses always directly proceeds the Transfiguration for a reason.  The "Son of man coming in his kingdom" wording of Mathew 16:28 is in fact peculiar and in my opinion should not be interpreted as specifically about the Parousia, not even just because that word itself isn't used in the Greek, it's about Him glorified having the qualities of the Kingdom.  But if you aren't satisfied by it being fulfilled just by the Transfiguration then it could also apply to just seeing the risen Jesus which all but one of the 12 got to.

Also "some" is a misleading translation, the YLT says "certain" instead and other versions don't feature an equivalent word there at all which actually does better match the Greek.  So no the text of this verse does not imply inherently a minority of the audience being referred to.

The Churches of Asia

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