About a generation. Exactly the amount of time he spoke of in Matthew 24 and the other gospels. "This generation."
What is this to do with the last days? Nothing!
The 'last days' marked Christ's coming to finalize the old covenant and fulfill it. So he arrived at the time of the 'last days.' He didn't introduce the last days, he arrived in those last days.
I disagree. Where is your evidence? Give me proof of this.
This is your eisegesis. So the NEW thing began near the end of the 'last days'. And in fact God suffered with the Jews for another forty years before he utterly destroyed any possibility they could continue in the old law. The old died forever in AD70. One can't even identify a Levite today because the genealogies were destroyed when the temple was destroyed.
Christ was the embodiment of the new creation. The new covenant was exactly that, it was a covenant. In fact, it was a blood covenant. It was sealed at the cross through the shedding of Christ’s sinless blood.
The beginning of the last days arrived when John the baptist came to prepare the ways of the Lord.
Same thing! When John introduced Him we saw the inauguration of the last days. These run concurrent with the last days. The language of Messianic fulfilment is written throughout the New Testament pages. John the Baptist introduced Christ in John 1:31, as
“he that was to be … made manifest to Israel.” Simeon testified He was the
“consolation of Israel” (Luke 2:25). Paul describes Him in Acts 28:20 as
“the hope of Israel.” He is the eternal fulfilment of the vision and prophecy.
John the Baptist introduced Christ in John 1:29-30:
“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for he was before me.”
John the Baptist was familiar with Old Testament prophecy, as that is all he had. He recognized that animal sacrifices were coming to an end because Jesus Christ, the ultimate and perfect sacrifice, had arrived. He was the desire of every true Israelite from the beginning.
Christ’s focus and His mission were to redeem His people. This was central to His Gospel message. He told the disciples in Mark 8:27-31 (paralleling Matthew 16:21 and Luke 9:22):
“And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
This is why Jesus came. He came to this sinful world on a mission to take away sin. God took on human form and became a man. He came to live the life that man could never live, and pay the debt that man could never pay. He came to take the sinner’s place. He came to live that perfect life and pay that full penalty for sin.
The Messianic era (a man-made term) was the NEW days which began what was ended in the 'last days.'
For your info: Christ means Messiah or anointed one. His arrival fits the description of Messianic era.
I believe the periods overlap a bit. There was a 40 year grace period where the Jews were given every opportunity to obey the gospel before the old covenant's end was finalized and completed. But the new era technically began when Jesus was crucified and resurrected. And he didn't just conquer Roman authority and power but Jewish authorities and principalities as Paul tells us and as the prophecies tell us. It was the priests who were also overthrown and replaced with a single priest. That prophecy was made way back Exodus and later in Samuel.
The new priesthood began. We're all priests of God and our High Priest is Jesus Christ. A new age that began when he became King.
The gospel had to be preached before the old period could be finally closed. In Collosians we read that the task of preaching to all the nations had been accomplished (Collossians 1:23).
He was the fulfilment. He was the reality, He was the substance. All that they signified is of or in Christ. That is all the OT sacrifice serve as in Scripture: pointers to Christ and His new everlasting covenant. They have been rendered redundant. When Christ said "it is finished" that was the end of the old covenant arrangement.
John 19:28-30 reveals the moment when Christ fulfilled the old covenant and introduced the new:
“Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. Now there was set a vessel full of vinegar: and they filled a spunge with vinegar, and put it upon hyssop, and put it to his mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.” Matthew’s version in Matthew 27:50-51 tells us:
“Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent.”
This is all before AD70! The Preterist obsession with the coming of Titus and AD70 is therefore wrong.
God was sending out a message to Israel that the old arrangement had been perfectly fulfilled right down to the very letter by His only begotten Son. God’s elaborate ceremonial atonement program was now complete. Christ was confirming that the old Judaic sacrifice system had been made redundant through the cross. The ripping of the curtain in two rendered the physical temple and their existing sacrifices forever worthless and pointless. But God being a God of grace, gave them 40 years to extract themselves from the old covenant ritualistic system before He tore it down and destroyed it forever.
Hebrews 8:7-8 explains,
“For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.”
This is before AD70! The Preterist obsession with the coming of Titus and AD70 is therefore wrong.
Christ came to replace the broken Sinai covenant with a new covenant that could never be broken. The old covenant was faulty and defective. The enlightened believer will know: anything holy that is dependent upon sinful man fulfilling it is doomed to failure. The Old Hebrew code had many limitations. It therefore had to be replaced. Those who advocate its current or future usefulness fight with repeated New Testament Scripture.
Scripture describes the old covenant sacrificial system as
“that which is done away” (2 Corinthians 3:11) and
“that which is abolished” (2 Corinthians 3:13). It makes clear:
“the old testament … vail is done away in Christ” (2 Corinthians 3:14). Hebrews 10:9 confirms:
“He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.”
This is all before AD70! The Preterist obsession with the coming of Titus and AD70 is therefore wrong.
Paul the Apostle addresses this in Galatians 4:9-10, asking,
“now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.”
This is before AD70! The Preterist obsession with the coming of Titus and AD70 is therefore wrong.
The New Testament writer is referring here to the old covenant ceremonial calendar. His contention is simple: why would a liberated Christian want to go back to the old elaborate abolished Jewish arrangement? This phrase “days, and months, and times, and years” refers to the many holy days, feasts and festivals that Israel had to carefully observe until Jesus died on the cross. All of these were a heavy bondage upon them. Paul despaired because some believers were looking back to the bondage of the old that was gone. This is in such contrast to the freedom that comes in Christ.
The phrase “ye observe” is one Greek word
paratēreō meaning you ‘assiduously observe’ or you ‘painstakingly observe’. The word translated “weak” here (
asthenes) means ‘strengthless or impotent’. The word interpreted “beggarly” in this passage (
ptochos) relates to ‘the condition of a pauper’. It is derived from the original word
ptoeo meaning ‘fallen or flown away’. The word “bondage,” which relates to the old Judaic system, is the word
douleuo, meaning ‘to be a slave’.
As we piece these original Greek words together, we start to get a real sense of how the New Testament viewed the whole Old Testament ceremonial law. The old covenant ritualistic system has been stopped because it is expressly ‘impotent, impoverished and slavish’. The old covenant could not remove sin. It could never eradicate a guilty conscious. It was destitute. It has fallen and flown away. It has been rendered redundant. It is out-of-date! It has no ongoing purpose in the plan of God because of its weakness. It could never secure eternal salvation because it was not an eternal covenant. It had a finishing point. The coming in of the new perfect covenant removed the old imperfect system. When Christ came, He introduced “the everlasting covenant,” thus making the old temporal system useless. The shadow simply pointed to the substance.
Colossians 2:14 plainly declares, speaking of these Old Testament ordinances and what happened at Calvary:
“Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross.”
This is before AD70! The Preterist obsession with the coming of Titus and AD70 is therefore wrong.
Albert Barnes explains: “The word rendered handwriting means something written by the hand, a manuscript; and here, probably, the writings of the Mosaic law, or the law appointing many ordinances or observances in religion.”
The Greek word for “blotting out” here is
exaleiphō meaning: ‘to wipe off, wipe away, to obliterate, erase, wipe out, blot out’
Q. When did/will the “blotting out the handwriting of ordinances” occur?
A. Christ “took it out of the way” by “nailing it to his cross.”
Ephesians 2:12, 19, 3:6:
“For he [Christ]
is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby.”
This is before AD70! The Preterist obsession with the coming of Titus and AD70 is therefore wrong.
The cross specifically invalidated “the law of commandments in ordinances.” According to Thayer’s Definition, this phrase interpreted “having abolished” (
katargeō) means ‘to render idle, unemployed, inactivate, inoperative’. It implies: ‘to cause a person or thing to have no further efficiency’. It signifies ‘to deprive of force, influence, power’. It indicates ‘to cause to cease, put an end to, do away with, annul, abolish’. It suggests ‘to cease, to pass away, be done away’.
We see the destructive power the blood of Jesus had on the old covenant ceremonial system. Christ’s death was the finish for the old arrangement, because it was unnecessary.
Paul ties up his reasoning in Colossians 2:20-22, summing up the new covenant freedom:
“Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why … are ye subject to ordinances, (Touch not; taste not; handle not; Which all are to perish with the using) after the commandments and doctrines of men?”
This is before AD70! The Preterist obsession with the coming of Titus and AD70 is therefore wrong.
The phrase “are ye subject to ordinances” is interpreted from the lone Greek word
dogmatizo, which literally means to submit to ceremonial rule. Christianity took us completely away from the bondage of the old Mosaic ceremonial law. These festivals were filled with numerous ordinances and blood sacrifices that had to be stringently observed. Speaking of these impotent religious ordinances, Scriptures counsels: “Touch not; taste not; handle not.”
The old covenant was merely “a shadow of good things to come” (Hebrews 10:1). Hebrews 9:24 describes them as, “figures of the true.” On the other hand, the new covenant is “the very image” (Hebrews 10:1), it is “a better and an enduring substance” (Hebrews 10:34).
Hebrews 10:1-2 confirms that the ceremonial law served only as a forward pointer. Its rites, traditions and ceremonies were time-limited. They were never designed to be a backward remembrance of Christ’s perfect sacrifice on the cross, in some imaginary future millennium, as Premillennialists propose. It was merely a shadow that was aiming toward the impending arrival of the final sacrifice for sin.
This is all before AD70! The Preterist obsession with the coming of Titus and AD70 is therefore wrong.
