Peter’s Preterism

In a recent sermon I asserted a preteristic interpretation of 1 Peter 3:21 (along with an abiding interpretation with baptism as a means of grace). I would like to follow up on that here, as well as point you to this article by the Bible Matrix guy, Michael Bull. I will seek to address preterism in the wider context of the New Testament, and then narrow in on preterism in Peter’s epistles, to show the context in which I understand 1 Peter 3:21.

First, I should state that preterism is simply an understanding that certain prophecies are in our past, meaning they have already been fulfilled. Many biblical prophecies will read as future to the original audience, but will be past to us. Every Christian has to believe certain prophecies are preteristic, otherwise you are not a Christian. Case in point would be the many prophecies about the coming Messiah in the Old Testament. Those prophecies were future to the original audience, but if you don’t believe that those Messianic prophecies have been fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth, you are not a Christian. Certainly we still await the second coming of our Lord when history ends and we enter in to the eternal state. Someone who denies the second coming of Christ via preterism, is a hyper-preterist and a heretic. The earliest creeds of the Christian faith have always affirmed the second coming of our Lord and the New Testament teaches it clearly.

With that said, I believe the entire New Testament is filled with what should be preteristic readings to us. Most modern evangelicals will consider any mention of coming judgment, or coming wrath, or a coming “day of the Lord,” or the “end of the age,” as always and only about the second coming. But I believe that many of those references refer to the judgment coming of Christ that took place on Jerusalem and the temple in the first century.

I believe there are two main reasons that modern evangelicals miss this. One is a misunderstanding of the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21. The other is a lack of understanding of covenants.

In the Olivet discourse Jesus prophesies the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. He says that it would come upon “this generation” – meaning the generation of apostate Jewish leaders that He was speaking to, you know, the ones whom He just finished delivering the woes upon in Matthew 23, and the ones who hated Him, and delivered Him up to be crucified and said “let His blood be upon us and our children.” I don’t have the time to explain all of the Olivet Discourse here, but I would recommend searching for “Ken Gentry on the Olivet Discourse,” if you are not familiar with it.

This prophecy was a big deal, and the disciples were very concerned about it. As modern readers we often miss the significance of the land and of the temple. In Jesus’ prophecy of this judgment, He gave instructions to the believers who would be in Jerusalem during this time. He told them the signs to expect, and when they saw them to flee. For every first century follower of Christ, this promise of judgment and great tribulation would have been on the forefront of their minds, as they would be eager to escape when Jesus instructed them to. I’ll show my cards here and say that I believe the entire New Testament was completed before 70 A.D., the year the temple was destroyed (this does not mean I take every New Testament prophecy to be about 70 A. D., I do not). I believe that this coming judgment, the one that would take place in the lifetime of this first generation of believers, is a major preoccupation of the New Testament. It makes sense that if the new baby Christians were about to go through a tribulation like the world had never seen, then the Apostolic writers of the New Testament would spend much time preparing their hearers for it. (This of course does not mean such prophecies and instruction do not have application to us and are not profitable for teaching and training in righteousness. They do). It just makes sense that much effort would be spent preparing the original audience for the tribulation that would come in their lifetime more so (not exclusively) than a second coming of Christ sometime at least a couple thousand years in the future that they would not be here for. This coming judgment was truly imminent upon them, and you feel it throughout the New Testament.

As I mentioned, I believe modern readers also fail to grasp the significance of covenants. When God made a covenant with Israel in the Old Testament, there were blessings and curses promises for obedience or disobedience. There were major penalties and sanctions for covenant breakers. Israel had broken covenant. They crucified their Messiah. If the Bible does not include the ending of that Old Covenant with the judgment coming upon the covenant breakers, then it is an incomplete story. But this is what the Olivet Discourse and much of the book of Revelation is all about. They are about the covenant sanctions being put upon the covenant breakers and the Old Covenant being put away with. Proper worship of God is no longer tied to land location or the temple sacrificial system, but now it can be over the whole earth through the blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God. Israel was the unfaithful, adulterous, covenant-breaking wife, that had to be put away, so that a true bride, adorned for her husband, the Church would come. The judgment of Israel in the first century was a completing of judgment. It brought in a new age and a new order to the world. This is a major theme and piece of the biblical story that many modern Christians do not have. It would be a lot better if they did.

Being a major preoccupation of the New Testament, I now want to show some preterism in Peter.

Peter opens his first epistle addressing the “elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia…” The Dispersion was Jews who were scattered outside the land of Israel. These were not Judaizers, but Jewish Christians. Currently occupying prominence and control in Jerusalem were the apostate Jewish leaders who rejected Christ and persecuted His followers. Typologically, this period of dispersion corresponds to the wilderness wandering of Israel in the Old Testament. During the time of Israel’s wilderness wandering (40 years, which happens to be about the same amount of time from Jesus’ ministry to 70 A.D., a biblical generation), the ungodly occupied the promised land. We know that beginning with Joshua, God drove out the ungodly from the land and gave it to Israel. Now Israel had become the ungodly in the land. Christians were dispersed and waiting on God to save them from this persecution and drive the ungodly out of the land. Of course after the apostate Jewish leaders were judged and removed from the land, the land promises go from a little plot of land in Jerusalem, to the whole earth. The whole earth is now where Christians can go to truly worship God.

Following this, in the opening chapter Peter mentions an imminent event. In verse 5 it is called a “salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” Then in verse 7 and 13 it is called the “revelation of Jesus Christ.” First let us note that whatever this salvation was, it was ready to be revealed in the last time. This was something at hand. You’ll have to grant me a point here, for time and space purposes, but phrases such as “last time,” “last days,” and “end of the age,” are used at certain places in the Bible to describe the closing of the Old Covenant/Old World age, or the last days of this Old Covenant/New Covenant overlap period (about A. D. 30 – A. D. 70). So this salvation was ready to be revealed in that time.

But what about this term, the “revelation of Jesus Christ?” The modern evangelical will almost always assume this is referring to the physical appearance of Jesus at the second coming. However, a key principle to a proper hermeneutic is using Scripture to interpret Scripture. This means we can’t assume meanings on the text based on how the language sounds to our modern ears. We need to have the eyes and ears of the Biblical language. Where else do we see this term, or very similar terminology, as “the revelation of Jesus Christ?”

One place that talks in very similar language is the Olivet Discourse. Jesus says in Matthew 24:30, “Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” As I stated before, Jesus grounds this discourse in the fact that all these things will come upon “this generation,” and is in response to the disciples’ question about the destruction of the temple, not about the second coming. This language does not require a physical appearance of Jesus. It is judgment language, when Jesus Christ will be revealed to the blind and hard hearted Jews as their Messiah whom they rejected, and is now judging them and taking out their light. Since the language Jesus uses about this first century event is very similar to that of Peter, we can make a legitimate argument that Peter has in mind the same event. After all, Peter was present for the Olivet Discourse.

Another place, that uses the exact same language as 1 Peter is the book of Revelation. Revelation 1:1 opens thus, “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place.” So when is this “revelation of Jesus Christ?” John said in the first century that it concerned things that “must soon take place.” When John wrote this things to his first century audience, I don’t think he was pulling their leg. He wasn’t writing to them about things that would take place over two thousand years later, but things that were actually soon to take place to them. There are multiple other time indicators in the book of Revelation that tie the timetable to the first century. And I will just state here, the contents of the book of Revelation largely concern the covenant sanctions that were soon coming upon the adulterous Israel, culminating in the destruction of the temple in A. D. 70.

So if we find the same or very similar language to what Peter uses being used to describe the judgment coming upon Jerusalem in the first century, it is a legitimate argument to say that Peter is writing about the same thing. Unless you are familiar with orthodox preterism, I am sure that this may raise more questions, but I hope you see how I made a preteristic (though not exclusively) interpretation of 1 Peter 3:21. I believe there are other preteristic elements in Peter’s two epistles, but as 1 Peter 1 sets the table, this will do for now.