Preterism (AD70 Doctrine)
Preterism (AD70 Doctrine)
Those who hold to the "AD70 doctrine" may claim that the end of the world, prophesied in the Bible, was the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the Jewish religious system.
Judaism today is one of the great world religions. We know it as one of the three main religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) that recognise the one true God to the exclusion of all "other gods" (Exo 20:1-3).
Although it took until the 20th century, the Jews regained a portion of their homeland and again became a nation. Whilst they cannot yet call Jerusalem entirely their own, nor yet rebuild and worship in their temple, the fact remains that Jews and Judaism survive. There have been many efforts to destroy the Jews, both in Bible times and since. The Jews have withstood and remained.
The destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in AD70 was a great setback, yet may have been a great step forward. Why would Judaism not receive an impetus from their persecution, as Christianity did some years earlier? Certain aspects of the Jewish religion depended on the temple in the holy city. But just as Daniel had remained a true Jew in exile, so could the Jews after AD70 — more so because they had already migrated and settled in many parts of the world. The Jewish "world" was by no means limited to Jerusalem, nor was the Jewish heart.
If the New Testament's teaching about the end of the world refers to the end of the Jewish system of things, then the New Testament was wrong. The Jewish way continued to have enormous influence and power in the world, as it does even today. The Roman siege and attack on Jerusalem in AD70, however terrible, was a local holocaust. The great city, its temple, and its citizens were destroyed. But many Jews of the diaspora and their synagogues in other cities survived.
Some oppose Jews today by claiming that the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70 was the last Jewish holocaust, and it exterminated the Jews. The Jews today are called impostors in whom there is no seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob at all. In spite of all this, the Jews have sustained their cultural and religious "world". It was not destroyed, nor is it ever likely to be while the earth remains.
According to the theories of Preterism (the AD70 Doctrine), we should identify this Jewish system as the "world" whose destruction is foretold in the Bible —not planet Earth or the world sometime in the future, but rather the "world" of Judaism supposedly abolished when the Roman armies destroyed Jerusalem in AD70 about forty years after Christ died.
In our previous lesson we have already considered the question, What World Would God Destroy? Now in this lesson we point out that, whilst the Roman armies destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in AD70, and this fulfilled certain prophecies in the Bible, it was by no means the end either of Jerusalem or Jewry or Judaism. Jewish life, religion, and culture survived, and even thrived.
When we examine certain strong elements of the Jewish nature and system of things, we find that the Jewish "world" was not really destroyed at all. Let's look at three such elements which are still alive and well among Jews today.
A key element of Judaism is the "blood" or ancestry going back to Jacob (Israel). We are not here talking about pure blood, for even David and Jesus had in them the Moabite blood of Ruth who became a Jew.
Jews have been persecuted beyond measure, including attempts at genocide. This has caused them to be scattered everywhere in the world (diaspora), as indeed they were in the time of Christ (Acts 2:5,9-11).
Although many scattered Jews intermarried, and they have some irreparable gaps in their genealogies, one could hardly view them as an endangered species, or aver as some do that all who claim to be ancestral Jews today are impostors.
True descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob abound according to God's promises to those patriarchs, "Your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth... the stars of the heavens... the sand on the seashore... too many to count" (Gen 13:16, Gen 22:17, Gen 28:14 etc).
It was never God's intention that the Jewish people become extinct, or even indistinct. On the contrary, God's desire is that "all Israel will be saved" (Rom 11:26) by believing in one of their own, Jesus of Nazareth, as the Christ the Son of God.
(2) The Jewish Scriptures and (3) the Jewish Synagogue