Mounce, Robert H.
(On the Preterist View)
"The great merit of the preterist approach is that it understands and interprets the plight of the first-century church in terms of the crisis that had developed at that particular time. By not relegating the book to some future period the encouragements to the church as well as the warnings to "those who dwell upon the earth" are taken with immediate seriousness" (The Book of Revelation, 1977, 27).
"The major problem with the preterist position is that the decisive victory portrayed in the latter chapters of the Apocalypse was never achieved. It is difficult to believe that John envisioned anything less than the complete overthrow of Satan, the final destruction of evil, and the eternal reign of God. If this is not to be, then either the Seer was essentially wrong in the major thrust of his message or his work was so hopelessly ambiguous that its first recipients were all led astray" (The Book of Revelation, 1977, 27)
(On the Double-Fulfillment Theory)
"It will be better to hold that the predictions of John, while expressed in terms reflecting his own culture, will find their final and complete fulfillment in the last days of history. Although John saw the Roman Empire as the great beast that threatened the extinction of the church, there will be in the last days an eschatalogical beast who will sustain the same relationship with the church of the great tribulation. It is this eschatological beast, portrayed in type by Rome, that the Apocalypse describes. Otto Piper notes that many modern interpreters overlook the distinction between the historical fulfillment of prophecy and its eschatological fulfillment. The pattern of imperceptible transition from type to antitype was already established by the Olivet Discourse, in which the fall of Jerusalem becomes in its complete fulfillment the end of the age." (The Book of Revelation, 1977, p. 30)
(On Early Date of Revelation)
"the Cambridge trio (Westcott, Lightfoot, and Hort) were unanimous in assigning the Apocalypse to the reign of Nero or the years immediately following." And "such a threefold cord of scholarly opinion is not quickly broken" but that he (Swete) is "unable to see that the historical situation presupposed by the Apocalypse contradicts the testimony of Irenaeus which assigns the vision to the end of the reign of Domitian." Mounce seem to agree with Swete on this (p. 21).
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