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But here's first what I see for TBN. You're going to have people raised from the dead watching this network. You're going to have people raised from the dead watching TBN.
-- Benny Hinn, Praise The Lord, Trinity Broadcasting Network, October 19, 1999
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Preterism: The Great Tribulation: Local or Global?
Posted on Thursday, October 19 @ 17:54:56 PDT by JVHSA |
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by Gary DeMar
One of the arguments used by dispensationalists against a first-century fulfillment of the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24) is their claim that only a worldwide tribulation can give meaning to prophetic events. For example, Larry Spargimino argues that “preterists feel scripturally justified in concluding that nothing more than a first-century disaster upon Jerusalem is needed to satisfy the requirements of these predictions.”1 Spargimino is assuming the validity of his futurist position and then using it as his interpretive paradigm.
Has Spargimino considered that Jesus’ first coming took place in the first century in the very small country of Israel? Jesus wasn’t even born in the nation’s capital but in the small town of Bethlehem (Matt. 2:6). Following Spargimino’s interpretive logic, Jesus should have been born in Rome, the center of the known world in the first century. Jesus’ birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension were local events. His birth was witnessed by some unnamed shepherds who happened to be in the fields that night (Luke 2:8). Only Simeon met Jesus and His parents in the temple and acknowledged Him as God's promised savior (2:25–32). After this, Jesus appears for a fleeting moment in the temple when He is twelve years old (2:41–52). We don’t see Him again until He’s about thirty (3:1–22). In terms of a world-wide audience, only a few people saw Jesus’ crucifixion. His own disciples deserted Him (Matt. 26:56). No human being witnessed His resurrection. The apostles, not a world-wide television audience, saw Jesus “lifted up” at His ascension (Acts 1:9). Even so, all of these local events had cosmic significance: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). A localized first-century event had world-wide implications. The local nature of an event does not obscure its importance. We know more about the destruction of Jerusalem in the works of Josephus than we do of Jesus.
Spargimino wants us to believe that only a world-wide conflagration, a global tribulation, satisfies the demands of the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 21) and Revelation. Nonsense. In fact, it makes more sense to believe, coupled with what we know about those first-century Jews who conspired to have Jesus put to death (Acts 2:23), that only a first-century, pre-A.D. 70, event is in view. Why punish the world for what only one generation of Jews did?
In my debate with Thomas Ice at American Vision’s Worldview Super Conference in May of 2006, he attempted the same type of logic in his closing statement. He tried to make the case that since the Great Tribulation is compared to the flood, and the flood is global, then the Tribulation must be global as well. First, the text of Matthew 24 tells us the event was local not global. It was confined to Judea (Matt. 24:16). The people could escape the conflagration by fleeing to the mountains on foot. This is hardly a description of a world-wide event. Second, there are a number of people who do not believe in a global flood but who hold to a future global Great Tribulation. Apparently they don’t see the logic of Tommy’s position. Third, the Bible compares a local fiery conflagration to the time of “the days of the Son of Man” (Luke 17:26), which I believe is a reference to the judgment coming of Jesus in the destruction of the Temple and the city of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
“And He said to the disciples, ‘The days will come when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. They will say to you, “Look there! Look here!” [Matt. 24:26]. Do not go away, and do not run after them. For just like the lightning, when it flashes out of one part of the sky, shines to the other part of the sky, so will the Son of Man be in His day [Matt. 24:27]. But first He must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation [Matt. 23:36; 24:34]. And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all [Matt. 24:37–39]. It was the same as happened in the days of Lot: they were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were building; but on the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just the same on the day that the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, the one who is on the housetop and whose goods are in the house must not go down to take them out; and likewise the one who is in the field must not turn back [Matt. 24:16–20]. Remember Lot’s wife’” (17:22–32).
The parallels with Matthew 24 are noted. Notice that two OT stories are used: Noah’s flood that “came and destroyed them all” 17:27) and the day that Lot went out from Sodom and “it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all” (17:29). The destruction of Sodom was local, and yet it is used to describe the Great Tribulation. Notice the comprehensive language: “and destroyed them all,” that is, all those in Sodom, not everyone in the world.
1. Larry Spargimino, The Anti-Prophets: The Challenge of Preterism (Oklahoma City, OK: Hearthstone Publishing, 2000), 126.
From: http://www.americanvision.org
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Average Score: 5
Votes: 4
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Re: The Great Tribulation: Local or Global? (Score: 1)
 by Virgil on Thursday, October 19 @ 18:14:47 PDT
(User Info | Send a Message) | All I can say is "Wow!" - I applaud Gary for this article and I hope that he continues his pursuit for biblical consistency. I realize that Gary would likely pay a heavy price should he pursue full-preterism even in the slightest; he is already taking heat for "cavorting" with heretics like us, but many of us understand the corner Gary is in, so I encourage everyone to show Gary generosity and patience, much in the way he has shown us.
Again, thanks for an awesome article Gary! I especially appreciate the reference to the flood and Sodom in the last paragraph! |
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Re: The Great Tribulation: Local or Global? (Score: 1)
 by large-hammer on Saturday, October 21 @ 18:52:54 PDT
(User Info | Send a Message) | | Dispensationalist Consistency: "Hey...maybe Sodom was global!" |
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- by Virgil on Saturday, October 21 @ 19:05:38 PDT
- by MiddleKnowledge on Sunday, October 22 @ 08:41:00 PDT
- by MiddleKnowledge on Sunday, October 22 @ 10:46:29 PDT
Re: The Great Tribulation: Local or Global? (Score: 1)
by Ivan on Sunday, October 22 @ 21:11:58 PDT
(User Info | Send a Message) | Gary says, "In my debate with Thomas Ice at American Vision’s Worldview Super Conference in May of 2006, he attempted the same type of logic in his closing statement. He tried to make the case that since the Great Tribulation is compared to the flood, and the flood is global, then the Tribulation must be global as well."
Our response to Thomas Ice should not be in terms of whether or not the flood was global or local. Jesus is not compariing the tribulation to the flood: he is comparing the unexpectedness of the flood to the unexpectedness of his return. In both cases, people were going about their everyday lives as if it were business as usual when suddenly they were taken by surprise. The same point is made with respect to the people of Sodom. |
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Re: The Great Tribulation: Local or Global? (Score: 1)
 by Windpressor (Giddi_one) on Monday, October 23 @ 02:57:02 PDT
(User Info | Send a Message) | ****************
Whatever the global reach and/or cosmological implications, the contextual worldview is regional to the Mideast. The general scope of scripture from Genesis to Revelation is from the viewpoint of a regional populous. Universals may apply. They are nevertheless rooted in the regionality of the scriptural account.
Scripture does not give detail of any thing past the horizon of a local land mass edged by waters under the sky-lid which had windows that opened for rain storms or visions. No planet view by Google. No report from the Andes or the Aussie continent. Nothing about the non visible portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. Nothing about essential microbes and insects which sustain all life processes. The Bible does not inform about western continents, indigenous cultures, an expanding universe in a space vacuum, glacial ice layers and a host of other matters of a global reality. The perspective of scripture is located regionally. Allusions to matters beyond are vague in reference, visionary or attributable to divine management.
Reading too much of global science or politics into the story-telling narratives hinders rational inquiry. The Biblical account forces us to grapple with the dilemma of whether scripture is naught but the recorded myths and superstitions of local yokels or if it is indeed the credible testimony of Divine encounter at the personal level. Credibility suffers under the exegetical stretch of globalized interpretation as justification for universal application where the hermeneutic is first clearly regional.
Audience relevance is local.
Should not an honest faith be sufficient to acknowledge the parochial nature of the overall scriptural account?
G1
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