Ex-Church of Christ Support Board

Preterism is the belief that many of the prophecies of the NT have already happened, like Revelation has already happened. I have heard that some CoC's are leaning in this direction. Does anyone else here have knowledge of this, it is quite interesting.

It certainly stops people from going nuts over signs of the end times and making theories about Armageddon out of Revelation.

longdistancerunner wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2024 9:01 am Preterism is the belief that many of the prophecies of the NT have already happened, like Revelation has already happened. I have heard that some CoC's are leaning in this direction. Does anyone else here have knowledge of this, it is quite interesting.

Yes, I believe the cofcs of my early life did lean that way. All of the scary things had already happened, except Jesus returning, raising all the dead, taking up all the cofc people into the clouds, final judgment, and the earth burning up.
Wait...come to think of it...the earth burning.

agricola wrote: ↑Sat Dec 07, 2024 9:21 pm It certainly stops people from going nuts over signs of the end times and making theories about Armageddon out of Revelation.

Right. They didn't believe in a "rapture" as it's being taught today by a lot of churches.

I have a relative who got deeply into Preterism, but later he changed his mind. He wrote a lengthly series of Facebook posts about why it was/was not true. So I don’t know if I really understand the doctrine. But it was clear to me that quite a few COC people came to believe this.

The full preterists want to say the second coming of Christ happened in a spiritual sense in AD 70 when the temple was destroyed.

i technically have no dog in the fight but dont think that is right. other verses seem to imply a literall return .

but my religion teaches the Bible has been corrupted so what do i know for sure.

Preterism is another example of the CoC coming up with their own vocabulary. In CoC parlance, it's the AD 70 doctrine. It was usually railed against but no one seemed to have an understanding of what it really was. There are relatively few full preterists in the theological world but a permutation of the idea called Partial Preterism is more popular.