Post by rgrove on Jun 27, 2005 19:00:18 GMT -5
Early Church and "The End of The World" by Gary DeMar and Francis Gumerlock
This is an excellent little booklet that responds to claims that a preterist understanding of Matthew 24 and Daniel's Seventy Weeks has no basis in church history and is, therefore, a recent innovation not to be trusted. The amusing thing is that the book is written in response to the traditional Dispensationalist Thomas Ice who is making the claim. In case you are not familiar with the history of Dispansational pretrib-rapture theory, it was never seen taught in the church prior to the 1830's. And even then it took until the very late 1800's and early 1900's to make any inroads into evangelical circles. The booklet is an easy read of only about 67 pages of content. There are a lot of notes documenting their sources which account for pages 69-84. I recommend reading them as you go. There's a lot of good historical data that's in the notes. The first few chapters are fairly standard preterist writing by Gary DeMar. They are well written and a good introduction to partial preterist teaching.
Chapter One descibes Ice's tactic of using what DeMar calls "Biblical Minimalism". DeMar states "Biblical Minimalists assume that historical events described in the Bible cannot be cinsidered true history unless there is corroboration from non-biblical sources. (p. 8)" This is actually a tactic that I recall Thomas Ice using in the debate with DeMar that you can find on the American Vision website. Ice went at DeMar on the basis of archeology not matching up with some of the states of the churches in the first few chapters of Revelation. I personally didn't feel that DeMar responded very well to that charge in the debate (I'd have to listen again, but I believe DeMar never answered it), but perhaps this new booklet is the beginnings of a response to that charge for the future. It's my belief that Chapter One adequately answers what's historically been a liberal attack on conservative inerrentists well.
Chapter Two is entitled "Proof of the Gospel" after Eusebius' work by that name. In that work Eusebius claims that the fall of Jerusalem was the fulfillment of Matt 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21 and that this is indeed "Proof of the Gospel" as well as the divinity of Christ. Evidently Ice has been stating that Eusebius wasn't a preterist after all so this chapter is dedicated to quotes from his work that demonstrate otherwise. If Ice has indeed been making these claims this little chapter should be adequate to demonstrate to the reasonable reader that Eusebius did indeed have a preterist view of Matthew 24.
Chapter Three is pretty standard preterist writing on the first century authors. It's a good introduction to dating issues for those not familiar with the controversies surrounding them and also introduces the importance of the dating of these important first century works has for prophecy. From this chapter a person new to the preterist position would be better prepared to read a longer preterist work addressing these issues more in depth. Needless to say I agree with the conclusions, but I'm certain that there's not a deep enough treatment to convince a hardened futurist.
The real meat of the book, for me at least, was Francis X. Gumerlock's contribution in Chapter 4. This is the longest section and gives an historical overview of "The Olivet Discourse in Ancient and Medieval Thought". It was very well balanced in looking at the historical documents. He didn't try to push the preterist agenda by making historical figures say more than they actually said, or give the impression that they did with silence. He's usually pretty specific about how much they said was fulfilled, and what was still to be fulfilled. He acknowledges that very few were as preterist as many are today (such as Matt 25 being fullfilled, 2 Peter 3 being fullfilled, Rev 22 fulfilled, etc). That's fine with me because I don't take those positions either.
But he does establish, in my opinion, that most all of current preterist teaching was taught in the church from the beginning. His cautions to both futurists and preterists in their extreme tendencies to claim early church fathers as their own out of context are excellent. I highly recommend the booklet and look forward to more lengthy books dealing with the teachings of the early church fathers and later in these areas.
Yours In Christ,
Ron
This is an excellent little booklet that responds to claims that a preterist understanding of Matthew 24 and Daniel's Seventy Weeks has no basis in church history and is, therefore, a recent innovation not to be trusted. The amusing thing is that the book is written in response to the traditional Dispensationalist Thomas Ice who is making the claim. In case you are not familiar with the history of Dispansational pretrib-rapture theory, it was never seen taught in the church prior to the 1830's. And even then it took until the very late 1800's and early 1900's to make any inroads into evangelical circles. The booklet is an easy read of only about 67 pages of content. There are a lot of notes documenting their sources which account for pages 69-84. I recommend reading them as you go. There's a lot of good historical data that's in the notes. The first few chapters are fairly standard preterist writing by Gary DeMar. They are well written and a good introduction to partial preterist teaching.
Chapter One descibes Ice's tactic of using what DeMar calls "Biblical Minimalism". DeMar states "Biblical Minimalists assume that historical events described in the Bible cannot be cinsidered true history unless there is corroboration from non-biblical sources. (p. 8)" This is actually a tactic that I recall Thomas Ice using in the debate with DeMar that you can find on the American Vision website. Ice went at DeMar on the basis of archeology not matching up with some of the states of the churches in the first few chapters of Revelation. I personally didn't feel that DeMar responded very well to that charge in the debate (I'd have to listen again, but I believe DeMar never answered it), but perhaps this new booklet is the beginnings of a response to that charge for the future. It's my belief that Chapter One adequately answers what's historically been a liberal attack on conservative inerrentists well.
Chapter Two is entitled "Proof of the Gospel" after Eusebius' work by that name. In that work Eusebius claims that the fall of Jerusalem was the fulfillment of Matt 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21 and that this is indeed "Proof of the Gospel" as well as the divinity of Christ. Evidently Ice has been stating that Eusebius wasn't a preterist after all so this chapter is dedicated to quotes from his work that demonstrate otherwise. If Ice has indeed been making these claims this little chapter should be adequate to demonstrate to the reasonable reader that Eusebius did indeed have a preterist view of Matthew 24.
Chapter Three is pretty standard preterist writing on the first century authors. It's a good introduction to dating issues for those not familiar with the controversies surrounding them and also introduces the importance of the dating of these important first century works has for prophecy. From this chapter a person new to the preterist position would be better prepared to read a longer preterist work addressing these issues more in depth. Needless to say I agree with the conclusions, but I'm certain that there's not a deep enough treatment to convince a hardened futurist.
The real meat of the book, for me at least, was Francis X. Gumerlock's contribution in Chapter 4. This is the longest section and gives an historical overview of "The Olivet Discourse in Ancient and Medieval Thought". It was very well balanced in looking at the historical documents. He didn't try to push the preterist agenda by making historical figures say more than they actually said, or give the impression that they did with silence. He's usually pretty specific about how much they said was fulfilled, and what was still to be fulfilled. He acknowledges that very few were as preterist as many are today (such as Matt 25 being fullfilled, 2 Peter 3 being fullfilled, Rev 22 fulfilled, etc). That's fine with me because I don't take those positions either.
But he does establish, in my opinion, that most all of current preterist teaching was taught in the church from the beginning. His cautions to both futurists and preterists in their extreme tendencies to claim early church fathers as their own out of context are excellent. I highly recommend the booklet and look forward to more lengthy books dealing with the teachings of the early church fathers and later in these areas.Yours In Christ,
Ron
