My Eschatology: From Agnosticism to Preterism

One of the many benefits of teaching theology is that I am paid to continually learn about my faith.  Eschatology, the study of final things, has never been a big interest of mine.  In the early years of my Christian life, I remember watching John Hagee and Jack Van Impe interpret obscure biblical texts and current events and thinking how strange they were as bible teachers.  I also remember watching Christian films which focused on the rapture– such as Left Behind– and being terrified that I would miss being taken up by the Lord and what would become of me as a Christian thereafter.  When I went to seminary, I remember the rapture being mocked as a naive view but I was not clear on the alternatives.  Occasionally, I'd hear discussions on the end times and hear terms such as the millennium, the tribulation, the 7 years of Daniel, etc that I did not understand. So, without intending to do so, I resigned myself to being agnostic on these matters and the end times positions.

However, when I began teaching Bible doctrines, I began reading my primary teaching text and gained some understanding.  I supplemented this with other readings and a ton of YouTube videos on the subject and I came to orient myself to the general discussion and the three most prominent views: Premillennialism, Amillennialism, and Postmillennialism.  I then became familiar with terms I had never heard before, such as: Futurism and Preterism.  Like many Christians, my experiences caused me to assume that all interpretations of eschatological bible prophecy were in the future, but I now know that some believe that many prophecies have actually occurred in the past.  Preterism holds that many of the prophecies associated with the end of the world (such as Jesus' words in Matthew 24) actually refer to an end of the Jewish age in judgment and the being of the church age.  Arguments are made, in part, from looking at similar language of judgment in the Old testament that signaled divine judgment and the destruction of nations.  Additionally, Preterists argue that Jesus' promise to come "soon" or within "this generation" fit with their belief that the coming of the Lord was the temporal judgment of the Jewish nation in the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. 

After considering this new view (that is new to me), I find it very convincing.  However, it is still unclear to me how and why certain transitions from past to future are made in places such as Revelation 19 and 21-22.  I would like to do more study in these areas.