Recently, I attended this year’s Truth Lectures, which had as their theme eschatology, the study of the end times. Many of the lectures addressed preterism, the belief that the prophecies of the Bible all already have happened. In particular, preterists claim that the prophecies about the final judgment, the resurrection of the dead, and the dissolution of the physical universe were fulfilled (in a figurative sense) during the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.
I believe that preterists are correct to recognize the importance of the first-century destruction of the temple and the downfall of the Jewish nation. In many ways,…