WHY FULL PRETERISM CANNOT POSSIBLY BE RIGHT — IN MY JUDGMENT
I want to begin carefully—and honestly. Some of my close friends are full preterists. They love the Lord Jesus Christ; they read the Scriptures reverently; they pray, worship, and seek holiness. This is not an attack on their sincerity, nor a questioning of their devotion. Error can coexist with earnest faith; Peter himself erred at Antioch while still belonging to Christ. The issue before us, then, is not motive—but truth.
Full preterism claims that all biblical prophecy, including the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, and the coming of Christ, was fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. It presents itself as a bold consistency—but consistency achieved by force rather than fidelity. When the Scriptures are allowed to speak plainly, patiently, and canonically, the system collapses.
First, full preterism fails at the resurrection—fatally so.
The apostle Paul anchors Christian hope not in symbolism, but in reality. “If the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:16-17). Paul does not argue for a merely covenantal resurrection, nor a metaphorical rising of Israel’s fortunes. He ties the believer’s future resurrection directly to Christ’s bodily resurrection—one tomb, one body, one victory over death.
Paul presses the point further: “For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:52). This is not the language of Jerusalem’s fall; it is the language of mortality swallowed up by life. Death itself is the enemy to be destroyed—not Rome, not the Temple, not Judaism’s age—but death (1 Corinthians 15:26). Death still reigns. Graves still fill. The enemy remains. Therefore the event has not yet occurred.
Second, full preterism empties Christian hope of its future substance.
The New Testament consistently points believers forward. We “wait for His Son from heaven” (1 Thessalonians 1:10). We “eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body” (Philippians 3:20-21). Hope, in Scripture, is not nostalgia for something already completed; it is expectation anchored in promise.
Peter writes decades after the cross that believers are looking for “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13). This is not merely covenantal rearrangement; it is cosmic renewal. Fire, dissolution, restoration—language far too large to be confined to one city’s judgment. Jerusalem’s destruction was severe; it was not the end of the created order.
Third, full preterism redefines the coming of Christ beyond recognition.
The angels at the ascension did not say Jesus would return invisibly, spiritually, or metaphorically through Roman armies. They said, “This same Jesus whom you have seen depart into heaven will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). He ascended visibly, bodily, historically. The promise is symmetrical. To flatten this into a providential judgment event is not interpretation—it is reduction.
John reinforces this clarity: “Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him” (Revelation 1:7). Not every eye in Judea. Not every eye within a generation. Every eye. The text resists confinement.
Fourth, full preterism fractures the unity of the Church across time.
If the resurrection is past, then the apostles spoke falsely to generations who lived—and died—expecting it. If the Parousia is over, then the Church has been mistaken for nearly two millennia, confessing, “He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead.” The faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3) becomes a historical misunderstanding corrected only by modern insight. That is not reformation; it is revision.
Even the earliest post-apostolic Christians—those closest to the language, culture, and context—expected a future resurrection and judgment. Full preterism requires us to believe the Church immediately lost the very hope it was born proclaiming.
Finally, full preterism misunderstands judgment itself.
Yes—Jerusalem’s fall was judgment. Jesus said it would happen, and it did (Matthew 24:34). Partial preterism rightly sees this. But Scripture distinguishes between a judgment and the judgment. The latter is universal, final, and irrevocable. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:10). Not merely first-century Jews. All.
History still groans. Creation still waits. The Church still prays, “Come, Lord Jesus.” And Christ Himself teaches us to live watchfully—not because everything is finished, but because everything is moving toward its appointed end.
So I say this with conviction and love: full preterism cannot possibly be right—not because it lacks cleverness, but because it lacks room. Room for resurrection bodies; room for restored creation; room for the visible return of the King; room for the long hope of the saints. It compresses eternity into a moment and calls the silence afterward fulfillment.
Christ has come—gloriously, savingly, decisively. And Christ will come again—visibly, bodily, finally. Between those two comings, the Church lives, suffers, hopes, and waits.
BDD
