Theology Category > Doctrinal Discussions

Dr. Desmond Ford a Preterist?

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Battle Creek:
And now we have one more label. . .  Are the definitions of those labels useful in the process of our personal sanctification?

reddogs:

--- Quote from: Battle Creek on June 27, 2014, 10:52:20 AM ---And now we have one more label. . .  Are the definitions of those labels useful in the process of our personal sanctification?

--- End quote ---
Well, lets back up and take a even closer look at the 3 views:

1) The Preterist view of biblical prophecy which sees most of the prophecies being fulfilled in the past in the events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem and the pagan Roman Empire and stops.
2) The Futurist view of biblical prophecy which sees most of the prophecies in Revelation as applying to events yet future.
3) The Historicist view of biblical prophecy which sees the book of Revelation as largely predictive of actual events to occur throughout the history of Christianity from the time of John until the return of Jesus Christ.

The Historicist School contained the viewpoint of almost all Protestant Reformers from the Reformation into the 19th century. It is known both the Preterist and Futurist schools were definitely put out by Jesuits in their attempts to divert the overall Protestant application of Daniel's "little horn" prophecy and Revelation's "beast" prediction to the rise and work of Papal Rome along with being the Antichrist power.

Scholars agree that futurism “argues that Revelation looks beyond the first century to the period immediately before the end times. Thus the book was not written for those who received it, but for those living much later. Jesuit scholars after the Reformation refined this approach to prove that current attempts to identify the Pope as the Antichrist could not possibly be true since the Antichrist will not be revealed until far into the future, just before Christ’s Second Coming.

Preterism sees Revelation only in terms of its immediate historical context and so the prophetic value is discount, Revelation is basically described as a short period of the early Christians in the late first century, and its apocalyptic symbols pointed Rome in the time of the Empire having nothing to do with the Papacy.

With Futurism, the biblical prophecy is pushed to the end time so its useless, and say the Antichrist is still to come. But according to Preterism, the Antichrist was in the past also making biblical prophecy of no effect. However, this is not Biblical, and both of these false systems disagree with the Reformers’ belief that the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy is taking place throughout history.

Throughout the Counter Reformation and through the writings of the Jesuits, Preterism and Futurism diverted attention away from prophecies identifying the Roman Church as Babylon and the papal system as the Antichrist.

We have two Jesuits basically taking apart the Historicist view of biblical prophecy by slowly feeding alternate views which began to erode the Reformers Historicist view of biblical prophecy which clearly showed the Papacy as the Beast of Revelation and Little Horn of Daniel.

Jesuit scholar Francisco Ribera started the futurist interpretation by publishing a 500-page commentary on the book of Revelation. Ribera took the last “week” (seven day-years) of the 70-week prophecy of Daniel 9:25, divided it into two 3 ½ year periods, and applied it to a future Antichrist, while avoiding any application to the papal system.
The Catholic church then had others Robert promoted Ribera’s ideas and publish books promoting his views which became the weapons to use against the Reformers Historicist view of biblical prophecy they held.

Then we have a Spanish Jesuit, Luis de Alcazar who published a work on Revelation to refute the Protestant challenge from which developed Preterism. His thesis was the opposite of Ribera's that all the prophecies of Revelation had been fulfilled in the past so that none applied correctly to the Papacy which even a simple plow boy could see. He asserted that Revelation simply described a two-fold war by the church in its victory over the Jewish synagogue on the one hand and Roman paganism on the other. Alcazar applied to the Roman Catholic Church as the New Jerusalem of Revelation, destroying the unbelievers and triumphant.

Slowly these systems of Counter Reformation interpretations began to penetrate Protestant churches. Preterism began to enter Protestantism in the late eighteenth century. The views of the Catholic Futurism, although refuted at first, eventually began to creep into Protestantism during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and today has overwhelmed them. The false doctrines Futurism brings including that of the Secret Rapture has been picked up and is currently followed in some form by most conservative Protestant bodies.

So centuries after the Reformation, Rome's countermoves to deflect the Reformers' application of the apocalyptic prophecies from Papacy have been successful. The Futurist system of interpretation wipes the Christian era clean of any prophetic significance by removing the whole of the prophecies of Revelation and parts of Daniel to the end of the age for their fulfillment. The Preterist system accomplishes the same objective by relegating the prophecies of both books to the past.

Thus today we see a total lack of understanding of the Biblical prophecies, as for most Protestants and Catholics the Christian era from the sixth century until the end of time stands totally devoid of prophetic significance as far as the books of Daniel and Revelation are concerned.

Seventh-day Adventists still hold to the Reformers historicist view of prophetic interpretation. It is Desmond Ford who has tried to changes our our interpretations of prophecy of the Reformers, not take us back to it or any 'true gospel' but far from it. Adventism has always been committed and held to a historicist system of prophetic interpretation just like the Reformers, which is biblical and it has shown itself to be the correct view if one just takes the time to see what history shows.

Daryl Fawcett:
Very informative.

Must now go and see if you had also posted about this elsewhere, such as also at the Maritime forum.

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