What Is Preterism?

What Preterism Means

The word preterism comes from the idea of something being past. In Christian eschatology, it describes an approach that sees prophetic passages commonly placed in our future as having been fulfilled in the past, especially in the events of the first century.

The distinction between partial and full preterism matters. Partial preterists may understand much of the Olivet Discourse and many judgment passages as referring to Jerusalem’s destruction while still expecting a future bodily return of Christ, future resurrection, and final judgment. Full preterism understands those events as belonging to the same first-century fulfillment.

That makes preterism more than a debate over the date AD 70. It is an interpretive question. Do we allow the original audience and the New Testament’s repeated language of nearness to control our reading, or do we assume that the apostles were speaking primarily about events thousands of years beyond their hearers?

Futurism takes the opposite approach by locating major prophetic events in the future. We explore the consequences of that system more fully in Ten Reasons Futurism is Destructive. Here, however, our first task is simply to understand why preterists read the New Testament timeline differently.

Why “This Generation” Matters

Jesus’ words in Matthew 24:34 stand near the center of the discussion:

“Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.” (Matthew 24:34)

The question is not whether Jesus knew the exact day or hour. A few verses later He plainly says that the day and hour were not known. The question is whether He gave His disciples a meaningful generational boundary for the events He had just described.

This is why the original audience matters so much. Jesus was speaking to disciples who had asked about the destruction of the temple they were looking at. Luke’s parallel account makes the historical setting even more concrete by telling them what to do when they saw Jerusalem surrounded by armies (Luke 21:20-22). These were instructions that could be acted upon by people living in Judea.

Other passages carry the same sense of nearness. Jesus told His disciples that some standing with Him would not taste death before seeing the Son of Man coming in His kingdom (Matthew 16:28). He told them they would not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man came (Matthew 10:23). In John 21:20-23, Jesus spoke about the possibility of John remaining until His coming.

These passages do not answer every question by themselves, but together they explain why the timing issue cannot simply be brushed aside. Even C. S. Lewis recognized the difficulty Matthew 24:34 creates for an interpretation that moves the fulfillment far beyond the generation Jesus addressed. In his essay “The World’s Last Night,” later collected in The World’s Last Night and Other Essays (Harcourt, Brace, 1960), Lewis called Matthew 24:34 “the most embarrassing verse in the Bible.” Full preterism takes the time statements seriously and asks whether our understanding of the nature of Christ’s coming needs correction rather than the timing of His words.

AD 70 and the Olivet Discourse

Luke 21 places Jerusalem’s coming desolation directly inside Jesus’ prophetic discourse. He warned His hearers that when they saw Jerusalem surrounded by armies, they were to recognize that its desolation had drawn near. He called those days “days of vengeance” in which what had been written would be fulfilled (Luke 21:20-22).

The passage then continues into cosmic language and the coming of the Son of Man. Jesus speaks of signs in the sun, moon, and stars, distress among the nations, the powers of the heavens being shaken, and the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory (Luke 21:25-28). Immediately after describing these things, He tells His hearers that their redemption was drawing near.

Then Jesus gives the time boundary for the whole sequence:

“Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all has taken place.” (Luke 21:32)

Jesus then places the entire sequence within that generation. After describing Jerusalem’s desolation, the cosmic signs, and the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory, He says that “this generation will not pass away until all has taken place” (Luke 21:32). His coming is not outside the time statement. It is one of the events included within the “all” that He said would take place in that generation.

Full preterism therefore does not separate the destruction of Jerusalem from Christ’s coming in the way many futurist systems do. It understands the Parousia as a coming in judgment and royal vindication within that covenant crisis. That is why the first-century tribulation and judgment of Jerusalem are so important to the fulfilled-prophecy framework.

This also helps explain a question many people immediately ask: if Christ came in the first century, why was it not a globe-ending physical event? The preterist answer is that we have often assumed the nature of the event before asking how Scripture itself uses prophetic language.

What About “A Day Is a Thousand Years”?

One of the most common responses to New Testament words such as “soon,” “near,” and “at hand” comes from 2 Peter 3:8: with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

That verse tells us something wonderful about Yahweh. He is not limited by our experience of time, and He is never late. But Peter was not giving us a formula that turns every prophetic time statement into thousands of years. In the same chapter, he addresses scoffers who were questioning the promise of Christ’s coming and assures his first-century readers that the Lord was not slow concerning what He had promised.

The point is Yahweh’s faithfulness, not the cancellation of ordinary language. If “soon” can routinely mean thousands of years to the audience being warned, then words of urgency stop communicating urgency. Full preterism instead asks us to let the language retain its force for the people to whom it was written.

This is one reason the New Testament’s repeated expectation matters. One passage can be debated. A broad pattern deserves to be heard. For a broader survey, the 101 Timing Passages resource gathers more than one hundred New Testament statements of nearness and expectation in one place. The case does not rest on a single verse. The repeated pattern is part of the argument.

Reading Apocalyptic Language in Its Biblical Context

Many readers accept the first-century time statements until they reach language about the sun being darkened, stars falling, heavens being shaken, or the Son of Man coming on clouds. Then a first-century fulfillment can seem impossible.

But Scripture used this kind of language before the New Testament. Isaiah could speak of establishing the heavens and laying the foundations of the earth in connection with Yahweh establishing His covenant people (Isaiah 51:15-16). Joseph’s dream used the sun, moon, and stars to represent his family, and his father immediately understood the imagery (Genesis 37:9-10). The prophets regularly used cosmic language when describing the judgment of kingdoms and governing powers.

That does not mean the imagery is meaningless or that we can make it say anything we want. It means imagery must be read the way Scripture teaches us to read it. A Hebrew prophetic audience did not necessarily hear “the stars will fall” and imagine the physical destruction of the universe. They knew a prophetic vocabulary that could describe the collapse of a covenant order, rulers, nations, and powers in cosmic terms.

The same is true of cloud-coming language. Throughout the Old Testament, Yahweh’s coming on clouds is associated with divine judgment and royal action. Full preterism reads Jesus’ words against that biblical background rather than beginning with the assumption that His coming must describe a visible human body descending through the modern sky.

When Matthew 24 and Luke 21 are read this way, the time statements and the apocalyptic language no longer have to fight one another. The question becomes whether Jesus was describing the end of the physical planet or the catastrophic end of the covenant world centered on Jerusalem and its temple.

The Kingdom and the Eternal Covenant

This brings the discussion beyond prophecy charts and into the finished work of Christ. Jesus told the chief priests and Pharisees that the kingdom of God would be taken from them and given to a people producing its fruits (Matthew 21:42-45). The leaders understood that He was speaking about them.

The New Testament then presents Christ, not a restored earthly priesthood, as the center of the lasting covenant order. Hebrews describes a change of priesthood and therefore a change of law (Hebrews 7:11-19). It calls the former covenant obsolete (Hebrews 8:13). It presents Christ’s sacrifice as once for all, in contrast with priests who repeatedly stood offering sacrifices that could never complete the work (Hebrews 10:10-14). And Hebrews closes by speaking of the blood of the eternal covenant (Hebrews 13:20).

That matters when modern prophecy systems anticipate a future temple and renewed Levitical service. DNA testing may be interesting for questions of ancient ancestry, but DNA cannot establish the documented Aaronic genealogy Scripture required for priestly service. Ezra 2:61-63 gives us a sobering example: men claiming priestly descent were excluded when their genealogical registration could not be found.

Even that genealogical question, however, is not the deepest issue. Yahweh is able to do whatever He pleases. Our confidence does not rest on saying what He could never do. It rests on what He has promised and accomplished in Christ. Scripture does not present Christ’s priesthood and once-for-all sacrifice as a temporary interruption before the former order returns.

The fulfilled-prophecy argument therefore leads directly into the New Covenant. The question is not whether Yahweh could perform a miracle. The question is whether we should expect Him to reverse the covenant work Scripture calls complete and eternal. We can rest in His faithfulness.

Yahweh Does What He Says

Preterism is not merely a theory about the timing of prophecy. At its best, it is an argument about the faithfulness of God.

Did Jesus mean something when He said “this generation”? Did the apostles mean something when they repeatedly told their hearers that the expected events were near? Did Yahweh accomplish the covenant judgment and redemption He had promised, or are His people still waiting for the prophetic story to reach its conclusion?

Waking Up to Grace answers those questions from a full-preterist perspective: Christ fulfilled the prophetic story in the first century, His Kingdom is present, and we live in the New Covenant age under His reign. That conviction does not require us to force every detail into a simple chart. It invites us to trust the time statements, read prophetic language through Scripture’s own patterns, and see AD 70 within the larger covenant story.

The central conviction is simple: Yahweh does what He says. Christ Yeshua does what He says.

That is where fulfilled prophecy should leave us. Not watching every headline for the next prophetic emergency. Not wondering whether Christ’s finished work is waiting for another covenant system to complete it. We can rest in the eternal covenant, the present reign of Christ, and the assurance that our Lord finishes what He begins.

Redemption is here, not near.