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Gary responds to a critic accusing him of nefarious Bible study tactics, including “cherry picking” select commentaries and tools.
Jesus clearly specified that their generation would not pass away before His promised coming (e.g., Matt. 24:34), but He did not know the day and hour. He was not referring to His so-called Second Coming but a definitive time within that generation when that judgment would happen. Luke’s version reinforces the idea of specificity by stating, “when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that her desolation is near” (21:20). Mounce admits that “the apparent meaning of these verses [Matt. 16:27-28] is that the second advent will occur during the lifetime of the disciples. History has demonstrated that this interpretation is inadequate.” But that’s what Jesus said would take place!
Gentry, like Bruner and other commentators, contend that parousia refers to Jesus’ second physical coming. For example, as Gentry now believes, the use of parousia in Matthew 24:27 refers to the Second Coming and not the coming of Jesus in judgment in AD 70. But here’s what he wrote in 1999 in his published debate with Thomas Ice: “Jesus warns His followers that He will not appear bodily in the first-century judgment (vv. 23, 25-26). Nevertheless, He will ‘come’ in judgment like a destructive lightning bolt against Jerusalem (v. 27). This coming, however, is a providential judgment coming, a Christ-directed, rather than a miraculous, visible, bodily coming.”[1]
Gentry changed his position in his 2010 book The Olivet Discourse Made Easy.[2] He now argues that Matthew 24:27 refers to another coming in addition to the coming that took place before that Apostolic generation passed away. But other partial preterist commentators disagree. For example, John Gill states in his comments on Matthew 24:27 that it “must be understood not of his last coming to judgment … but of his coming in his wrath and vengeance to destroy that people, their nation, city, and temple.”
Adam Clarke also interprets Matthew 24:3 and 27 as describing Jesus’ coming to that generation related to a judgment coming that took place in AD 70: “What shall be the sign of thy coming [parousia]? viz. to execute these judgments upon them [the destruction of the city, temple, and Jewish state]…. It is worthy of remark that our Lord, in the most particular manner, points out the very march of the Roman army: they entered into Judea on the EAST, and carried on their conquest WESTWARD, as if not only the extensiveness of the ruin, but the very route which the army would take, were intended in the comparison of the lightning issuing from the east, and shining to the west.”
Prophecy Wars: The Biblical Battle Over the End Times
There is a long history of skeptics turning to Bible prophecy to claim that Jesus was wrong about the timing of His coming at “the end of the age” (Matt. 24:3) and the signs associated with it. Noted atheist Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) is one of them and Bart Ehrman is a modern example. It’s obvious that neither Russell or Ehrman are aware of or are ignoring the mountain of scholarship that was available to them that showed that the prophecy given by Jesus was fulfilled in great detail just as He said it would be before the generation of His day passed away.
Buy NowGary responds to a critic accusing him of nefarious Bible study tactics, including “cherry picking” select commentaries and tools. While “cherry-picking” does indeed sound bad and something one should never do, the question must be asked: How else would you do it? If we cannot select sources that help bolster our own views or reveal the weakness of opposing views for fear of being a “cherry-picker,” how then should we do scholarship.
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[1] Gentry spends nearly two pages making his AD 70 judgment argument coming by Jesus in The Great Tribulation: Past or Future? (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1999), 53-55. He says something similar in his book Perilous Times: A Study in Eschatological Evil (1999).
[2] (Draper, VA: Apologetics Group Media, 2010), 102 and note 27.