Quote:
Originally Posted by Apocrypha
Honestly, I have read about it... but how does it work in actual church setting to teach it to normal folks? I would imagine it kills off nearly every EndTime type of teaching with dramatic "You'll miss the rapture" stuff. Help me understand for those who teach it. I am not setting you up for a trap. I am honestly curious.
|
It depends upon whether you mean full preterism or partial preterism. Full preterists teach no future rapture while partial preterists do teach a future rapture. I am a partial preterist.
All the doom and gloom of wrath and death is absent from our teaching and preaching, except for hellfire. But we do not concentrate on hellfire and brimstone. Some full preterists do not believe in hell, though, as well.
What all the doom and gloom from the book of Revelation is to us is past wrath on Israel fro rejecting Christ. So the way we handle Revelation today is showing folks how we are the New Jerusalem now, and are in the "millennium" which is more or less the Church age. We therefore emphasize KINGDOM principles. We are presently ruling with Christ. The seating on thrones and ruling for "one thousand years" is actually occurring right now, and Paul said we are seated together with Christ in heavenly places at His right hand throne (Ep 2:6).
I preach a lot of victory over every enemy through the cross, since the cross caused us to unite to Christ in His death, which leads to co-burial, co-resurrection, co-ascension and co-seating with Him on his throne. Instead of waiting for a literal millennial reign after the rapture, I preach we are supposed to be ruling now IN LIFE'S SITUATIONS. We preach a lot of
Romans 6 truths that say sin should not be ruling over us, but we should be victorious even over sin in our lives.
There are no scare tactics to make people serve God through fear, since that sort of thing fades away and never gets into a person's spirit. The cross is emphasized and Kingdom is stressed. ALL THE TIME, at least in my ministry!
We use Revelation as a historical set of events that stand forevermore as an example of how Christ is on the throne and the church went through the first century ordeal of troubles, showing that every other generation has the same power with Christ on the throne to go through anything!
To us, the destruction of Jerusalem and God's work against Israel who tremendously persecuted the church throughout the book of Acts, stands just as the Red Sea victory over Egypt stood for the Old Testament believers. Over and over you read of how God overthrew Pharaoh's armies in the Red Sea and set Israel free. Then God was able to take them into the promised land 40 years later where they could rule their own land. Israel had a lot of EGYPT in them after they left Egypt.
We look at Revelation as a NEW EXODUS, where God set us free from the bondage of sin and the bondage of the Law by the cross, and took the church through 40 years of preparation after the cross while He led them to all truth while the New Testament was being written. This brought them to a KINGDOM awareness 40 years later after Jerusalem was destroyed.
You get people who see that they have their whole life ahead of them (Lord willing) and plan accordingly. Nobody gonna miss college because the return of the Lord around the corner and ya pastor made ya feel guilty for wantin to move away. 
Hybrid Mode
