Someone on Facebook asking the following question: “Can one be … Postmillennial while rejecting partial preterism?” For a robust postmillennialism (a moniker I do not like), a person needs to be a preterist, even if it’s an inconsistent preterism. Revelation 20 should not be used in defense of what is labeled “postmillennialism” since there’s little in the chapter that describes what postmillennialists believe.
My friend Bob Cruickshank responded with this:
I do not believe Rushdoony was Pret at all — if his book on Daniel and Revelation is any indication. Gary DeMar would know better about this. I don’t think Andrew Sandlin is any sort of a Preterist. So, it does seem possible.
Everyone is to some degree a preterist. All Christians are preterist because they believe OT prophecies about the coming of the Messiah were fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Those prophecies have been fulfilled; thus, their fulfillment is in the past, the definition of preterist. Even dispensationalists are preterists when it comes to some NT prophecies since what Jesus describes in Luke 21 refers to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. The following is from Darrell L. Bock who is a Progressive Dispensationalist:
Luke emphasizes the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 in a way the other Gospels do not. All the Synoptics anticipate the fall of Jerusalem in the way they introduce the discourse, but Luke focuses on the short-term event in a way Matthew and Mark do not. His temporal indicators (vv. 9, 12) draw the reader back toward the present before really focusing on the end in verses 25–28. A transition begins to appear in verses 20–24, but until verse 19 the focus is still on events before the judgment of the capital in A.D. 70, which is not yet the end.[1]
In his two-volume commentary on Luke, Bock writes, “Matthew 24:6 appears to suggest that these calamities are in the near future by noting that the disciples ‘are about’ μελλήσετε (mellēsete) to hear of wars and rumors of wars.”[2] If this is true, and it is, then even futurists are somewhat preterist on Matthew 24.
Rousas J. Rushdoony is a postmillennialist, but he takes a mixed approach to prophecy when it comes to some major prophecy passages. His brief commentaries on Daniel and Revelation in his book Thy Kingdom Come, published in 1970, takes an idealist approach even though there are examples of preterism. On Daniel 9, Rushdoony comments that the “last period, a single seven, shall cover the life and work of the Messiah.” He quotes E. J. Young’s The Messianic Prophecies of Daniel (74): “It is the Temple itself, which is here mentioned as an abomination. Once the true Sacrifice of Calvary had been offered, the Temple no longer was the temple of God but an abominable place.”[3] This is a preterist interpretation since he like Young believed the 70 weeks of years were fulfilled.
Rushdoony takes a semi-preterist position on Matthew 24: “The first major section, verses 4-28, deals with the fall of Jerusalem and the coming of Christ in judgment upon Israel in that destruction.” He doesn’t mention the use of oikoumenē (see Luke 2:1; Acts 11:28) in Matthew 24:14 but applies it to the yet-to-be-fulfilled Great Commission (Matt. 28). Even so, he references Colossians 1:6 and 23 where he comments, “we see the extent to which the early church witnessed to the civilized world of its day.” (238). That’s a preterist interpretation.
Rushdoony’s section on Matthew 24:29-35 is preterist, including verse 30 where Jesus’ “coming on clouds, are often spoken of in the OT as a very real coming, and as distinct from the end and yet a part of it and a forerunner of it.” (238). Rushdoony’s position is like Ken Gentry’s that it’s a “type” of the so-called Second Coming. Gentry does the same thing with Revelation 1:7. He mentions “the Jewish War, under the instance of the Zealots themselves, as Josephus makes clear.” (238) His preterism continues with the following:
Matthew 24:29-35 forms a commonly misunderstood passage, interpreted without reference to the OT symbolism and its biblical meaning. Isaiah 13:10 and 34:4, 5 must be read in this connection, as well as Ezekiel 32:7, 8.
Like J. Marcellus Kik does in his commentary on Matthew 24, Rushdoony argues that verse 36 serves as a transition text that jumps to the end of the world: “Now He makes equally clear that there is NO SIGN of the nearness of the end of the world.” (242) Rushdoony’s brief commentary on 1 and 2 Thessalonians in his Thy Kingdom Come is not preterist.
In 1971, Rushdoony wrote the Introduction to Kik’s An Eschatology of Victory that includes reprints of his books Matthew 24 and Revelation 20 and “a series of lectures … on ‘Historic Reformed Eschatology.’” (iii). Kik mentions Robert L. Dabney’s 1878 work Syllabus of Systematic Theology from page 837 where we find,
Before the second Advent, the following events must have occurred. The development and secular overthrow of Antichrist (2 Thess. 2:3-9; Dan. 7:24-26; Rev. 17, 18), which is the Papacy. The proclamation of the Gospel to all nations, and the general triumph of Christianity over all false religions, in all nations (Ps. 72:8-11; Isa. 2:2-4; Dan. 2:44, 45; 7:14; Matt. 28:19, 20; Rom. 11:12, 15, 25; Mark 12:10; Matt. 24:14). The general and national return of the jews to the Christian Church (Rom. 11:25, 26). And then a partial relapse from this state of high prosperity, into unbelief and sin (Rev. 20:7, 8).
A preterist interpretation of these mostly futurized passages would clear up a great deal of confusion, and Dabney was confused like many of today’s non-preterist postmillennialists. Postmillennialists have not adequately explained the end-time apostasy in Revelation 20 after “this state of high prosperity, into unbelief and sin.”
Rushdoony’s very worthwhile booklet God’s Plan for Victory: The Meaning of Post Millennialism, published in 1980, is not an exegetical work. For that, he mentions O.T. Allis’ Prophecy and the Church (1945) and Loraine Boettner’s The Millennium first published in 1957 and later revised in 1984. God’s Plan for Victory deals with the “theological implications” of the three major millennial positions. A postmillennial book that’s filled with preterist arguments that does not get much attention is Roderick Campbell’s Israel and the New Covenant published in 1954 that includes a Foreword by Oswald T. Allis. Greg Bahnsen’s “The Prima Facie Acceptability of Postmillennialism” does not make preterist arguments for the position. John Jefferson Davis’s Christ’s Victorious Kingdom: Postmillennialism Reconsidered offers only moderate preterist arguments from Matthew 24, otherwise it’s a non-preterist defense of postmillennialism. The same is true of Iain Murray’s 1971 book The Puritan Hope: A Study in Revival and the Interpretation of Prophecy.
A consistent preterism position mitigates against arguments debunking postmillennialism because the passages used to attack the position have a fulfilled solution.
[1] Darrell L. Bock, Luke, The IVP New Testament Commentary Series (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), Luke 21:5-38.
[2] Darrell L. Bock, Luke: 9:51–24:53, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1996), 2:1666.
[3] Rushdoony, Thy Kingdom Come: Studies in Daniel and Revelation (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1970), 66.