Chilton, David Foreword to What Happened in A.D. 70?
In this slim volume, Edward E. Stevens clearly and convincingly demonstrates that our Lord Jesus Christ predicted His Return within the lifetime of His first-century hearers. That fact presents Christians with a dilemma: If Jesus was wrong in His prediction (as theological liberals have been saying for many years), we have a much bigger problem than an academic theological issue regarding the doctrine of Eschatology - it means we can't rely on Jesus for salvation, either! If we can't trust Jesus in Matthew 24, we certainly can't trust Him in John 3:16! As a well-known theologian recently said, "If Jesus is a false prophet, my faith is in vain."
But Mr. Stevens shows that Jesus fulfilled His promise, explicitly and to the letter, in the "great tribulation" of A.D.70, in which God unleashed His covenant wrath against Israel, which had been threatened for centuries throughout the Old Testament Law and Prophets, and specifically applied to first-century Israel in the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament.
I am particularly impressed by two arguments: First, Stevens provides a chart showing the harmony of Christ's two separate discourses recorded in Matthew 24 and Luke 17 - demonstrating that any proposed division of Matthew 24 into two different "comings" is illegitimate, nugatory, and gossamer. Scripture foretells a Second Coming (Heb.9:28) - not a third!
Second, Stevens presses Christ's declaration in Luke 21:22 to its limit: "Jesus said that all Old Testament prophecy would be fulfilled by the time Jerusalem was destroyed." The more I pondered the awesome implications of Jesus' words, the more I realized their truly revolutionary significance for eschatology. Without exception, every event foretold by the Biblical prophets was fulfilled within that generation, as Jesus had said (Matt. 16:27-28; 24:34).
Supplementing his Biblical thesis with testimonies from first-century witnesses such as the Jewish historian Josephus, the Roman historian Tacitus, the Talmud, and the fourth-century Christian historian Eusebius, Stevens presents a powerful case that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ occurred in A.D. 70.
David Chilton, M.Div., Ph.D.
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