In Search of a More Consistent Preterist ApproachBy Barry Dupont

Feburary 26, 2010   |   Category: Digging Deeper

The purpose of the old covenant system (even from Adam) was to have an embodied historical time line and reference of religion when people would be stuck in the perception of a perceived independent human potential. Which state of consciousness (or perception), had standing in the absence of a yet to be revealed love without condition. The New Testament is the timeline of the transition toward that completed revelation.

This is the reason why the bible is unrelentingly historical in approach as opposed to being individual toward personal enlightenment.

Meaning that the "enlightenment" process contained therein is inescapably tied to time restraints.

This means that our own personal growth and individual enlightenment experience should not be confused with the Historical meaning of the perfection contained in the writtings of the New Testament.

When we confuse the two we undermine (as a concept) the historical value of the Scriptures.

Such a confusion will aways lead to a concept that the end of the old covenant and all that it stood for, is summed up as a personal experience and so then not historic. For it cannot be both. To the degree that we make it personal is the degree that the historical is subtracted from. It is impossible to have it both ways. One cannot have this "cake and eat it too".

 

Such in no way diminishes the significance of personal growth and the gain of spiritual insight. What one gains however is a realization of what is not a grasping of something you did not have.

The movement of "grasping" or "attaining too" or "being perfected to be in his presence" is the meaning of the old age. The conclusion of this "transition" in AD 70 on a fundamentally historic level is that "grasping" and "attaining to" is egoic in structure. It was this "wisdom of" that "age" which was brought to nothing historically.

 

NKJV

1Cr 1:18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

1Cr 1:19 For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent."

1Cr 1:20 Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

1Cr 1:21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

1Cr 1:22 For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom;

1Cr 1:23 but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness,

1Cr 1:24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

1Cr 1:25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

1Cr 1:26 For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called.

1Cr 1:27 But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty;

1Cr 1:28 and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are,

1Cr 1:29 that no flesh should glory in His presence.

 

The historical significance to this is inescapable. The flesh (the status of the independent human potential of the old order standing in types and figures) as in the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life were all done away with in the destruction of the "old" through a revealing of love.

NKJV
1Jo 2:15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

1Jo 2:16 For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world.

1Jo 2:17 And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.

1Jo 2:18 Little children, it is the last hour;

 

They could make a move from a defined historical status in Adam that we cannot. We can personally and experientially come to the conclusion that such is just wrong thinking.

Christ did not come as a thief in the day. He came as a thief in the night. And then the night ended.

What did he take?
Did he take away your unbelief, your disobedience, your false treasures?
If He did then we are still in the night.
If He did then the old is still here.

There is no way to have this cake and eat it too.

We do not attain to God in any way what so ever. We realize that we are grasped and have always been grasped by Him.
The process of that realization is not religion and it is not us and them.
It is seeing "all in all".

There is no where where you can go to be separate from God and there is nothing you can do to cause him to love you any less or any more. Relationship is not obeyed, it is treasured. Nor is it about "good and evil" on an egoic level. That tree was cut down and thrown into the fire. It's about the simplicity of love and how we are going to deal with the responsibility of our present historical adulthood.

 

We are all in this together.
I hope that there would be more realization of this really soon. :)