SOMETHING HAPPENNED in 70 AD that is/was SIGNIFICANT - it was a PAROUSIA; a coming, a judgement on Israel, a presence - it need not be the final one - if I believed that I would be a Full Preterist, but I don't and I am not.
From the time of the RENT VEIL at the Cross to the destruction in 70 AD - what if anything worthwhile occurred at the Temple? Paul shaving his head and taking a vow - paying for 4 other guys to do the same? IMO, just something he was talked into doing by James - just Judaizing hooplah...
It was NOT the parousia of Jesus. Peter speaking to the religious Jews in Acts 3:19-21 confirms the concluding nature of the Second Advent, saying,
“Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; And he (God)
shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution (
apokatastasis or reconstitution)
of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.”
The whole sense and meaning of the word
apocatastasis here is ‘a restoration of things to its first state’ (or ‘to return to its former state’). Webster's 1828 Dictionary says, “’Restitution’ means ‘The act of recovering a former state or posture, the putting the world in a holy and happy state’.”
In everyday language it refers to a return to the original place. For example, the return of a ship to its home port; in astronomy it meant the cyclical return of a planet to the point where it was found earlier; in medicine it meant the return of a patient to health.
Whilst the Greek word
apokatastasis is only found in Acts 3:21, the root word
apokathistemi is found 8 times in Scripture. We see the restorative sense of the word in the story of the man with the withered hand in Matthew 12:13, where it says, “it was restored (
apokathistemi) whole, like as the other.” Likewise in Mark 8:25 the blind man received his sight it says, “he was restored (
apokathistemi), and saw every man clearly.”
All of the prophets spoke about a time when there would be a renewal of all things. They look forward with expectancy to a time when the curse would be finally removed from creation. This reading locates the time of the fulfilment of the “restitution of all things” as occurring at the Second Advent. This glorious final event sees the elimination of the old temporal degenerate state, and the introducing of the new perfect one. It is not merely the restitution of some things or even most things as some would have us believe, but (in complete agreement with the previous passage we looked at in 1 Peter 4:3-7), of “all things.”
This passage is clear in its instruction: “the heaven must
receive (or
dechomai, or detain)” Jesus Christ “until the times of restitution of all things.” Just like heaven “received him” (Acts 1:9) nearly 2,000 years ago; it will continue to detain Christ until the “the times of restitution of all things.” Interestingly, the word
until used here is the Greek word
achri (Strong's 891), which carries the idea of
a terminus of time and meaning of
up until or
up to. It is variously interpreted in the King James Version
as far as, for, into, till, even unto, even until.
The termination of this prolonged period – namely the climactic Second Advent – corresponds with the “reconstitution of all things” – thus the introducing of the “new heavens and a new earth” and the eternal state. Christ, therefore, will not appear until the consummation of all things, which is the time when every enemy of Christ and His kingdom are finally destroyed, when this sin-cursed world is destroyed, and the time when the kingdom of God will be finally revealed in all its glory.
