Preterism and the Date of Revelation

 

Angels, Demons, and Christus Victor: The Theology Pugcast

Prewrath's Great Tribulation

In a previous post I commented on an individual's confident assertion that the posttrib rapture is explicitly mentioned in Matt 24. At the time I noted: 

This person's expectation (among other things) is that the gathering is the rapture, and that the elect is the church. His "context" is derived from superimposing a prewrath-posttrib assumption onto the text. One might just as easily (even more so) make a case that this passage refers to Israel's final gathering. 

Long before I started this blog I became fascinated with the earnest statements of ex-pretribbers who read Rosenthal's book and jumped on the PW wagon. I had blogger friends who adamantly quoted the PW catechism—a progressive chain of verses purporting to support their view. I clearly recall the face of an avuncular-looking former pretrib pastor podcasting on why he'd converted to PW. 

But what he and my PW friends didn't do (in my opinion), was make a compelling case for their switch. In fact, many of the verses they cited were open to different understandings. Worse, the entire structure hung from the chain of a highly questionable interpretation of Matt 24:21-22. 

A major part of their PW apologetics rested on the supposed errors of the pretrib rapture. Hence, if pretrib is false, then prewrath is true. You might say they were Prewrath Presuppositionalists. 

The biggest problem with the view is that Scripture is consistently explicit regarding the length the Great Tribulation. It is not less than three-and-a-half-years (for the church) as its proponents would have it. Moreover, the PW reason for the "shortening" doesn't make sense under examination. I briefly explore the issues HERE.

The weakest tenet of the prewrath system is the very thing which defines it.

The Return of the Old Gods: The Theology Pugcast