The Argument Full Preterism Leads With, and Where Each Link Breaks (2 of 2)

So apply it. Moses's test asks whether what was spoken came to pass. What Jesus dated came to pass on His date. He told that generation to watch for Jerusalem surrounded by armies (Luke 21:20, NET), and He said that "this generation will not pass away until all these things take place" (Matthew 24:34, NET). The armies came, the city fell, and the generation was still alive. The day He said no one knows, He gave no date for, so there is no date for it to miss. Of that day He said even the Son does not know it (Mark 13:32). A prophet is not caught by a prediction he never made. The chain does not show that Jesus failed Moses's test. It shows that He passed it on the part He dated, and claimed nothing on the part He did not.

The fourth link is the forced choice. It works only because the first link fused two promises into one. Say only that AD 70 came on schedule, and the chain treats that as a refusal to take Jesus at His word about the rest. Separate the promises and the choice disappears. Jesus kept His word to His generation, with its sign and its deadline. The day He said no one knows is a different promise, with no deadline to miss.

Two texts will be raised against this. The first is Matthew 16:

"I tell you the truth, there are some standing here who will not experience death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."

— Matthew 16:28 (NET)

The verse just before it is the half the objection presses: "For the Son of Man will come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done" (Matthew 16:27, NET).⁹⁴ A full preterist will say verses 27 and 28 are one thought, so that the coming and the reward arrive together within the generation, and will add that the Greek verb behind "will come" (mellō) can mean "about to." That is the strongest form of the objection. But "about to" gives a direction, not a deadline, and the only deadline in the passage is the one verse 28 attaches to what "some standing here" will see. Two readings of verse 28 are on the table, and both fit inside the generation. Peter, who was among the disciples, later wrote that they "were eyewitnesses of his grandeur" on "the holy mountain," and he describes what they saw there as "the power and return of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 1:16-18, NET). Other readers, including many partial preterists, take the verse as a promise about AD 70. Either way, the deadline in verse 28 is met within that generation, and verse 27 gives no deadline of its own. The second text is Luke 21:24, taken up in the next section and its note.

The chain was built so that Matthew 24:36 would never need an answer. The verse is still there, and it still divides the speech in two.