Day-Year theory Debunked

 This theory is pretty much vital to Historicism as traditionally understood, that model largely can't work without it.

The cited Biblical precedent comes from Numbers 14:34 and Ezekiel 4:6.  In both cases a literal period of days did happen.  Numbers connected the 40 days of spying to the 40 years in the wilderness.  And Ezekiel is told to do something for a period of days to represent a period of years.

This is not consistent with how the theory gets applied to the numbers in Daniel and Revelation.  Neither verse justifies saying when God predicts a period of days will happen it really means years.

And it is 42 Months that Revelation 13 defines the reign of The Beast as lasting, as well as the Holy City trodden under foot of The Gentiles in Revelation 11.

There is a third precedent some will embarrass themselves by citing and that's Daniel 9.  No concept of Days as Symbolic of Years has anything to do with there 70 Weeks of Daniel 9.  

In the Hebrew mind Weeks came in more then just days, Exodus 23:10-11 and Leviticus 25-27 lays out that there also Weeks of Years, Nehemiah 10:31 shows they were on people's minds at the time of the return from Captivity.  

The 70 Weeks Prophecy says nothing in it's context about days but a lot about years.  It's starts with Daniel noticing that the 70 years of Captivity will be ending soon.  Jeremiah 34:13-14 suggests part of the reason the captivity was 70 years was because for 70 Weeks of years they failed to keep the Sabbatical Year, and Daniel 9:2 tells us Jeremiah is the Prophet Daniel had just been reading.

Partial Preterism?

Eschatological positions like Partial Preterism have a branding problem in terms of what they are called. It’s very easy for a Full Preterists to just off Vibes convince people that the only true Preterism is Full Preterism and the Partial position is just a fence sitting compromise.

However if you take the Chronology of The Book of Revelation even mildly at face value there is going to be a period of at least a Thousand Years where much of it is already fulfilled but not the very end of it yet.  And with the Help of IP’s explanation of Biblical Time I can argue more time separates the end of the Millennium from the Final Resurrection then you would at first assume. 

The desire of Full Preterists to say you’re a Futurist so long as you believe any Prophecy is still yet future, especially the Parousia itself, sounds reasonable on paper.  But speaking as a former Futurist, what Futurism is as an ideology, what drives the Futurist mind isn’t the Parousia itself, it is about obsessing over everything that’s supposed to happen before the Parousia, before The Millennium starts, and looking for signs of those things preparing to happen in the near future rather than the distant past. 

In a way it’s parallel to the branding issue Mid-Trib has, the Rapture timing position I held when I was a Futurist.  It’s easy to dismiss that as a mere compromise and see the real Debate as between Pre and Post.  But I wasn't’ Mid-Trib' because I desired to compromise on anything, I took that position because of my very strong positive conclusions about what certain Scriptures said.  

Actually a lot of what I’m struggling with while forming my new Post-Millennial Eschatology is how I still see a lot of the language of key Parousia passages outside Revelation happening within Revelation in Chapters 11-14 before the Bowls of Wrath.  The Last Trumpet, the Rapture of the Man-Child and the Son of Man on a Cloud.  The word Parousia doesn’t appear in Revelation at all but those context clues are how we refute Pretibbers on their claims that the Parousia of Matthew 25 and 1 Thessalonians 4 aren’t the same event, I believe Paul was basically quoting the Olivet Discourse in that chapter.

A core aspect of my rejection of Post-Trib is something still important to my new Non-Premillennial Eschatology, and that is how I don't view the actions of the Rider on the White Horse in Revelation 19 as the Parousia.  But when I was a Futurist I was at least still open to that Rider being Jesus because I viewed the Parousia as having happened earlier.  Now I’m firmly viewing him as being the Church and the same White Horseman as Revelation 6.

I’m different from most Partial Preterists in that my view is not focused on AD 70 at all.  I view Revelation 13-19 as having happened over a thousand years ago but the writing of Revelation I place in the time of Hadrian.

Some might say that makes me more Historicist then Preterist.  But I reject the Day=Year theory, so each reference to 1260 Days or 42 Months I believe refers to about 3 and Half years not over a Thousand and that Revelation 13-19 happens over the course of a few decades.  I just haven’t made up my mind exactly when to place them yet.

I do lean towards a very Historicist Understanding of the Four Horsemen and maybe even the rest of the Seals and Trumpets.  And I agree with the Historicist position that the Temple of God in II Thessalonians 2 is The Church, but I generally don’t see that as about just The Pope but all Episcopal Polity and Christian Monarchy.

Don’t attack Pretribulationism if you aren’t even a Futurist

Because the Pre-Trib Rapture has become very much the face of Futurism as a whole, you’ll see a lot of people who aren't Futurists mock it in the same way Posttribulationists do.

An internal debate among Futurists technically shouldn’t concern us at all.  But the thing I noticed back when I was still a Mid-Trib Futurist and still observe today is that when you break down the specific matters of Scriptural Interpretation that Pre-Trib and Post-Trib (and Mid-Trib) Futurists disagree on, all non Futurists are in agreement with the Pre-Tribbers over Post-Tribbers on something.

The reason Pre-Trib is the worst position to take within the framework of Premillennial Futurism is because of the things that Matthew 25 and II Thessalonians 2 clearly and unambiguously place before The Parousia/Rapture. 

However if you are a Premillennial Historicist or Post Millennial of either the Partial Preterist or Historicist variety then you probably believe all of those things have already happened.  (I believe the Great Tribulation was various Persecutions the Church has already endured, the Abomination of Desolation was Hadrian’s Idol, there has been more than one Apostasy and the “Man of Sin in the Temple of God” is Monarchy within The Church.) 

So we very much can be and sometimes are functionally in agreement with Pre-Tribbers on Imminence. However I definitely agree with Post-Tribbers over Pre-Tribbers on what the Parousia/Rapture is and will look like. It’s not going to look to non Believers like just a bunch of people vanishing, everyone will see The Son of Man coming in The Clouds.

Full Preterists (and often Partial Preterists who focus on AD 70) however are more like Pre-Tribbers in what they think The Rapture is, they very much believe in a Secret Rapture, that Jesus returned but every eye did NOT see Him.

The AD 70 fixation also creates agreement with the strictest definition of what Pre-Trib means, the events in Josephus Wars Book 6 Chapter 5, The Yossipon and Tacitus that they identify with being the fulfilment of 1 Thessalonians 4 happened in 66 or 67 AD, before or at the start of the 7 year period, 3 to 4 years before any of the events they consider identifying with The Abomination of Desolation.  All the events that the above cited chapters place before the Parousia they place after it just like Pre-Tribbers do.

Google’s annoying AI Review doesn't know this though, I google “Rapture AD 67” and it says no one places The Rapture that year but Preterists places it in 70.  It shows how stupid Generative AI is, it’s incapable of investigating the details of what it’s talking about beyond the surface level.  I discovered this when I was trying to refined websites where Full Preterists try to identify The Rapture Trumpet with what happened when Nero tried to cut through the Isthmus in Achaia.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen any belief Strawmanned by people who claim to have actually held it at one time more than the Pre-Trib Rapture.  When I see someone say things like “I didn’t make plans for the future” I don’t believe them, either they never really understood the Eschatology they claimed to uphold or they are lying now.  I have known lots of serious Pre-Trib believers, none of them act like that.  Being prepared for it to happen at any moment doesn't mean being unprepared for it not happen, the smart thing is objectively to be prepared for either.  Just like being prepared in case you Die unexpectedly.

But it’s the former Pre-Tribbers who are now no longer Believers at all who most annoy me, because they talk about being scared of it.  Not scared of being “Left Behind”, scared of being Raptured. If you were thinking of The Rapture as basically the same thing as dying then you never understood The Gospel, The Rapture is The Resurrection, it’s Salvation from Death, it’s not an End but a New Beginning.. If you didn’t view The Rapture definitionally as a Happy Ending you didn’t truly Believe in It, you only believed certain things about it.

But given how these bad understandings of The Rapture were held by people raised in the Belief, the blame I would say goes to their parents who clearly taught it badly.

Update: And no the Great Commission does NOT say "Make disciples of all Nations" that's a Mistranslation.  The Gospel has been published in every Nations.  Revelation 20 depicts the Kingdom as still a Set Apart Camp when the final Resurrection happens.

The Author of the book Victorious Eschatology in the YT videos from him I watched years ago very explicitly agrees with Imminence in his discussion of Revelation 20.  There are several aspects to his approach I disagree with however.

InspiringPhilosphy's video on Time in The Bible

I don't agree with everything IP teaches but he's a fellow PostMillennial and this video is pretty insightful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDCmfuQXBaU&pp=ygUXSW5zcGlyaW5nUGhpbG9zcGh5IHRpbWU%3D