Hope and Fulfilled Prophecy
By John Gavazzoni
I've seen it too many times in my 66 plus years of association with various birds-of-a-feather-flock-together groupings of Christians: Each has enjoyed some sliver of truth, from which they extrapolated in such a way as to form a theological box they ignorantly, presumptively, and arrogantly believe contains the whole of God's revelation to man. If one doesn't, as I like to say, stay snuggled up close to Jesus, one could easily succumb to a spirit of cynicism as one after another of such theological mutual admiration societies shoves its poorly thought-out conclusions in one's face.
Studying to show yourself approved of God as a workman who needs not to be ashamed, doesn't mean to merely become biblically literate. It means to give due diligent AND patient attention to what scripture really teaches, and what is coming forth from among the saints as the Living Word of God, our Lord Jesus, continues speaking within, and out from, His body, the ecclesia. It means don't be in a hurry to commit all your brain cells to the latest exegetical fad. Today, to be a preterist is to be with it, cool, and in the know, don't you know. It's the latest fad. The sliver of truth upon which it stands may be a bit bigger than some, but it does not provide a sufficient foundation for the kind of over-the-top conclusions some folks have built upon it.
Just leaning on the structure with any degree of real awareness, reveals it's a wobbly edifice. Its sliver-of-truth base is its understanding of Jesus prophetic message recorded in Luke 21 and Matt. 24. They've got that pretty much right. They've well-challenged the presumptions of the futurists. BUT, to proceed from that base to conclusions such as: all prophecy has been fulfilled, and the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in A.D. 70 amounted to the second coming of Christ. That amounts to cutting the word of truth with a dull axe.
Has all prophecy been fulfilled? The well-considered answer has to be yes and no. The no is called for as long as hope (expectation) has a place in the Christian's life. We hope for that which has not yet existentially come to pass. As long as the resurrection of the dead has a future dimension, then all prophecy has not been, in every sense, fulfilled. But a yes answer is called for also, for the glorification of Jesus Christ, enthroned at the right hand of the majesty on high, is the seminal fulfillment of all "light ahead of time," as Jonathan Mitchell in his translation of the New Testament defines prophecy. All prophecy can be summed up in the perfecting of humanity, and the fulfillment of humanity's destiny in the Christ event.
The Seed of the New Humanity, the Seed of the glorification of all that is earthen has reached full developed in the human experience of the historical Jesus of Nazareth who bore and carried within Himself the whole human race. Oh how I ache for my fellow saints to understand the distinction between the promised and perfected Seed and its full blooming within the eons. Read 1 Cor. 15 on the subject of resurrection. Adam, in union with Christ, was sowed into the earth in weakness and in corruption, to die and rise again in strength and incorruptibility. In Christ, that has been done...the yes to the question.
That's the in-Christ dimension of fulfilled prophecy. But there is also the Christ-in dimension. Christ, the Seed of our final glorification, has been sown into our spirits to come to full blossom in our eonian experience. It's as I wrote in another article, it's completion out from already completedness. Look, get real. All things are not yet existentially what God has purposed for the whole. Death is still at work. We are still being saved by hope. You full preterists are being backed into a corner by actuality, where you'll have to claim that the whole of our existential experience is nothing more than an illusion. Christian Science welcomes you with out-stretched arms.
Now to the matter of Christ returning in, and by, the events of A.D. 70. No, no, no. The truth is that He remained present through those events. He did not need to return by and in those events. He remained present through those events in His body, the ecclesia, and having been rejected already in His individual presence, then to be rejected again in His corporate presence, the destruction of the totally-rejecting system was sealed. The system imploded upon itself. The Roman vultures fell upon the rotting corpse of the old system devouring the flesh from its bones. The old system was never meant to be an end in itself, but one, in all its structures, to point to the arrival and continued presence of the Promised One. Yet they insisted on being their own end.
Having rejected totally their/its own Reality in Him, they/it imploded upon itself/themselves. Whenever earthly existential actuality is confronted by heavenly Reality, with the former sealing its rejection twice-fold, its destruction is inevitable. Rejection of God is always ground to pieces when the Rock of Truth falls upon it. Conversely, when rejection falls upon the Rock of Truth, it is broken to pieces. But this amounts to God mercifully rejecting our rejection of Him. Our rejection is rejected with the Reality of being accepted in the Beloved.
The full truth is that the Promised One has arrived, and continues to come to us in all the newness of His resurrection AS being present, not as One having been absent. I will dare to say that we will experience the power of, and which is, the kingdom of God, when both factors are vitally present: Looking back and looking forward. Standing firmly upon God's completed all-inclusive New Man, Jesus glorified, while looking forward to the knowledge of the glory of the Lord filling all the earth as the waters cover the sea.
