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Date: 06 Apr 2009
Time: 11:30:21Your Comments:
Preterism upends all of scripture, denoting all to mythical mind games, including the glorious second coming of Christ. It is a most heinous doctrine that undermines the faith of believers taking them from hope of the resurrection to a belief much like Jehovah Witnesses who believe that all we see is now on this earth. Where heaven went, I know not, nor the New Jerusalem. All are merely illusions of the mind to the preterist, in my opinion.
Date: 19 Feb 2010
Time: 05:44:26Your Comments:
i would like to read all his writings–he appears to be a first. class scholar–Only today-2010-2-19 I hear about him. I am retired from Long Island . Amityville- Suffolf Cty–but in China at the moment with my wife Evelyn for howlong who knows????I am reading everyday Evangelical thoughts and writings– I cannot afford to pay for books or CDs– hubieram@yahoo.com WE live in Guangdong Province–very much like Florida.I want to read all of Gary De mar’s works–How??
In Him
Hublall Sookram
Date: 24 Jan 2011
Time: 21:30:29Your Comments:
The preterist view is supportable at least to some extent in the bible. I can’t help but feel disappointed in that the full preterist doesn’t believe that physical death will ever be abolished. Although Paul said that our “vile” body would be made like unto his, the Lord’s “glorious” body. Not sure how they reconcile that. Also, in revelation that there’d be no more pain, sorrow or crying. Pretty hard to explain all that away.
Date: 24 May 2013
Time: 18:06:57Your Comments:
Preterists have it mostly right and futurists have it completely wrong because everyone has overlooked something very important. They mistakenly assume that they know how the Bible was inspired and they build their positions on a false premise. The obvious truth is that Jesus did, in a figurative sense, return and he was also resurrected only in a figurative sense. The stories of his physical resurrection were invented by the apostles for the same kind of justifiable reason that Rahab lied to the authorities and was justified in doing so. We tend to forget that good and evil are judged by a person’s motives and not by their actions in isolation as the Pharisees were prone to do.
People who believe in God, having one of the various conflicting ways of identifying God (concepts of God) and hold to one of the several theories of atonement, often talk about “salvation” and disagree on exactly what is meant by it. From the Biblical point of view, salvation has to do with rediscovering or admitting that the golden rule (the true religion) is the only way to live that will save humans from all the problems they cause themselves by ignoring it thinking that a life of selfishness is better. The writers of the Bible also assumed that violating the golden rule was the original cause of physical death and suffering and so assumed that all people sin as proved by the fact that all humans die. Because it’s so obvious that the golden rule is the best way to live and that every normal adult person and even many children can recognize this it means that Jesus’ death was not necessary for people to be saved. Jesus’ death merely demonstrates the lengths to which a person may have to go to be faithful to the golden rule and, at the same time, the seeming determination to deny this truth that most people obviously have and the terrifying things they will do to people who promote it.
According to Jesus, the gospel or good news is the golden rule and the fact that it’s actually easy to live up to it if you understand it correctly. Matt. 11:29-30. What makes it difficult and keeps so many people from taking that path to life is that it obviously makes people vulnerable to those who desire power over others and the fear of abuse, criticism, and even death that usually results from daring to believe it, practice it, and attempting to convert others to it.
The stories of Jesus’ physical resurrection were obviously invented by Jesus’ apostles who admitted to not accurately understanding a lot of what they said Jesus tried to explain to them, and who were still obviously not very clear about some things when they got around to writing the letters of the New Testament, because they needed a way of encouraging converts overwhelmingly immersed in legalism and dualism and dedicated to the necessary use of symbols to remain faithful to what they were teaching. In the case of Paul, he assumed that Jesus’ resurrection was true based on his subjective experience on the way to Damascus caused by a guilty conscience and his own interpretation of the lightening strike that almost killed him and the confirmation of it he got from the other apostles. Although Jesus did not require converts to be baptized as did his cousin John (proving that it isn’t an absolute necessity), his disciples began to require it as a necessity, or so they made it sound, after he died because they still clung to the legalistic and subjective way of thinking that they had grown up with and that was promoted by a leading sect of the Jews of which Paul was among the most educated according to his own description of himself.
“If Jesus’ resurrection is not true, what would motivate anyone to try to convert other people to Jesus and to living according to the golden rule” you might ask? Well, I’ll ask you. What motivated Jesus to endure so much ridicule and even death in trying to convert people to it? Could it have been because he was so concerned about people and the problems they cause themselves by ignoring it? Then, why couldn’t that same kind of concern inspire others to do likewise? When Jesus supposedly said that if he was “lifted up,” referring to crucifixion, people from all walks of life would be inspired to follow or be drawn to him the result was essentially no different from that of an Islamic jihadist who blows himself up in sacrifice to his beliefs. He inspires others to follow his example. See 1 Corinthians 15:1-19 where Paul says that if Jesus was not raised then there’s really nothing to inspire a person to suffer the results of trying to get people to accept the golden rule as “the way of life.” Obviously, Jesus didn’t agree because he taught it and demonstrated it from the beginning of his ministry and obviously expected his disciples as well as all the Jews to understand it and do likewise. Why else would he have ridiculed them accusing them of being willfully blind to it the way he did?
“But Jesus was God,” most of you will exclaim. What you aren’t aware of is that your idea of God means that Jesus wasn’t like God, he was literally God and not a man who was like God in a figurative sense because he accurately portrayed the meaning of “the word” or golden rule which is the highest and most complete expression of love which, as John said, is God (whether he actually understood what he said or not). “No one,” said Jesus, “can express love in a greater way than to give his life for others.” John 15:13. See 1 John also. Yes, I know that the writer of Hebrews plainly said that Jesus was literally God at one time and returned to being God after a time on earth as the human Jesus but that could not be true and God be just at the same time. Such an idea has clear implications that you fail to recognize make God such an unjust manipulating tyrant that no sane and reasonable person could justly be expected to accept it and be inspired to worship “him” of their own free will.
“You’re accusing the writers of the Bible of lying!” you say. In reply, I want to ask you what you think about what Rahab did. She lied to the authorities about which way the ten Israelite spies went out of concern for their welfare and was said to have done the right thing. Do you believe that’s true? See James 2. Why couldn’t Jesus and his apostles have had the same kind of motive and you believe that they did the right thing or do you judge right and wrong based solely on a person’s actions? If so, is that the way you want people to judge you, by your actions alone? It’s clear that the apostles lied about the resurrection of Jesus but just like everyone else, they honestly believed some things and spoke about them as if they were true when they weren’t, at least not literally in the way they put them or the way people typically interpret them.