Preterism, The Shiny Object

Section IThe Sermon and the Phrase

On April 19, 2026, Berean Bible Church livestreamed a sermon by Bob Cook titled "Why Is Preterism So Important (Matthew 24:29–35)." Cook argues that preterism is essential to Christian faith, that every serious believer must embrace it, and that those who still expect a future fulfillment of Bible prophecy are — in his own words — "caught up, no pun intended, in the hype of thinking we're living in the last days." He presents his system as a bold recovery of old truth and dresses it in Spurgeon quotes and pre-dispensational apologetics.

He does not tell his hearers where preterism actually came from. He either does not know, or he knows and will not say. Either way, believers deserve the truth.

Preterism is not new. Preterism is a 410-year-old weapon, forged by a Jesuit priest in Spain in 1614 for the specific purpose of defending the Pope against the Reformation. It was Rome's first counter-weapon, but it has become something far more dangerous than that. A doctrine that abolishes God's future physical promises clears ground. And cleared ground can grow any religion a man pleases. Rome used it first. The New Age movement is using it now. That is the shiny object, and that is what is at stake.

Section IIWhere Preterism Actually Comes From

Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the door at Wittenberg in 1517. Within a generation, the leading Reformers — Luther, Tyndale, Calvin, Knox, and later Isaac Newton — had done something together that shook Europe. They read the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation carefully, and they concluded that the Pope was the Antichrist, that Rome was the Harlot of Revelation 17, and that the Papacy was the beast system the prophets had warned about. That conclusion was the fire at the heart of the Reformation. It is what made Luther a marked man. It is why Tyndale was strangled and burned. It is why millions walked out of Rome.

Rome had to answer that charge or lose Europe. So from 1545 to 1563 the Roman Catholic Church convened the Council of Trent, and Trent assigned the Jesuit order — a secret society founded in 1534 by Ignatius Loyola and sworn to absolute obedience to the Pope — the task of producing new interpretations of prophecy that would clear the Papacy of the Antichrist charge.

Two Jesuits took up that assignment, and they attacked from opposite directions.

Francisco Ribera — the Futurist Flank

The first was Francisco Ribera. In 1590 he published a commentary on Revelation that pushed the Antichrist into the distant future — one man, a literal three-and-a-half-year tribulation, at the very end of history. If the Antichrist is still to come, he cannot be the sitting Pope. That is futurism. That is the same system that was carried forward by Manuel Lacunza in 1812, picked up by John Nelson Darby in the 1830s, published in the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909, and sold to the American public in Left Behind. Every rapture chart and every end-times prophecy conference in modern America runs on Ribera's Jesuit tracks.

Luis de Alcázar — the Preterist Flank

The second Jesuit was Luis de Alcázar of Seville. Alcázar worked for forty years on a massive commentary on Revelation, and it was published one year after his death, in 1614. His method was the mirror image of Ribera's. Where Ribera pushed everything into the future, Alcázar pushed everything into the past. He taught that every prophecy in Revelation chapters 1 through 19 was already fulfilled by the sixth century — the first half by the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE, the second half by the fall of pagan Rome. Same goal, opposite direction. If every prophecy was already fulfilled, the Pope cannot be the Antichrist, because the Antichrist came and went before the Papacy even existed.

Bob Cook is preaching Alcázar. He either does not know it, or he does and will not say. When a man stands in a pulpit and tells believers that every last prophecy was fulfilled in 70 CE, they ought to ask who first put that sentence together and why. The answer is a Jesuit priest who wrote it to save the Pope.

Section IIIWhat Preterism Does to God

Once a teacher has collapsed the whole Canon into a forty-year window that ended in 70 CE, he has a problem. A large portion of what Scripture plainly promises did not happen in that window. So the preterist must reach for a second tool. He must spiritualize the texts. He must tell believers that these promises were fulfilled, just not in the way any normal reader of the words would understand them.

Consider seven plain promises of God.

1. Damascus. Isaiah says Damascus will become a ruinous heap, no longer a city (Isaiah 17:1). The preterist says this already happened spiritually. Damascus is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on earth. It stands today.
2. Death. Paul says the last enemy to be destroyed is death (1 Corinthians 15:26). The preterist says death was destroyed spiritually at the Cross. Every funeral since then says otherwise.
3. The Tombs. Yeshua says the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs shall hear His voice and come forth (John 5:28–29). The preterist says this happened invisibly in 70 CE. No tomb has emptied.
4. Sukkot. Zechariah says every nation that came against Jerusalem will go up year by year to keep the Feast of Tabernacles, and any nation that refuses will get no rain (Zechariah 14:16–19). The preterist says this is now fulfilled in the Church. No nation on earth keeps Sukkot, and no such drought has ever fallen.
5. The Wolf and the Lamb. Isaiah says the wolf will dwell with the lamb (Isaiah 11:6–9). The preterist says this is fulfilled in the peace of the Gospel. The wolf still eats the lamb in every pasture on earth.
6. Gog's Weapons. Ezekiel says Israel will burn the weapons of Gog for seven years (Ezekiel 39:9). The preterist says this was symbolic of the early Church. No such burning has ever happened.
7. The Sea. John sees a bowl poured out on the sea, and every living soul in the sea dies (Revelation 16:3). The preterist says this was fulfilled in the Jewish war. The sea teems with life to this hour.

Seven places where the preterist must tell believers that the plain words of Scripture do not mean what they say. Seven places where he must, in order to save his system, make God a liar. Either God meant what He promised — in which case the preterist is wrong — or God did not mean what He promised, in which case God cannot be trusted. There is no third option.

This is no small thing. The Ten Words condemn it twice. The Third Word forbids taking the Name of the LORD in vain, and there is no greater vanity than putting God's Name on promises He never meant to keep. The Ninth Word forbids false witness, and there is no worse false witness than telling believers that a broken-looking Canon is actually a fulfilled one if they will only squint the right way.

Section IVRome Was Only the First Tenant

A doctrine forged to protect the Pope protects the Pope. That is what tools do. Alcázar's own commentary says it plainly. The New Jerusalem of Revelation 21 is the Roman Catholic Church. The thousand-year reign is the peaceful age of the Catholic religion. Christ rules from Rome through His Vicar on the throne of Saint Peter.

Every preterist who does not end at that throne owes his hearers an explanation of where he plans to get off the train. Because that is where the track terminates. That is the station the engineer built it to reach. A man can climb aboard at 70 CE and swear he is only a "partial" preterist, that he will not ride all the way to Rome. But he is on Alcázar's track, pulling Alcázar's lever, and the locomotive does not stop at his preferred station just because he asks it to.

But Rome, it turns out, was only the first tenant to move onto the cleared ground. The real reason this matters in 2026 is not the Vatican.

Section VThe True Agenda — the New Age Payload

Here is what preterism actually accomplishes, whether any individual preterist teacher intends it or not.

Now ask the hard question. Who in our current moment wants exactly those promises abolished?

The New Age movement does. The New Age teachers have been preparing the ground for this for a century and a half. Helena Blavatsky in the 1880s taught that Christ is not a person but a cosmic principle, a "Christ-consciousness" that anyone can awaken into. Alice Bailey in the 1930s and 1940s wrote volume after volume about the ascended masters, a hierarchy of evolved spiritual beings who she claimed included Jesus as one member among many. The Theosophists, the Unity movement, Science of Mind, A Course in Miracles, the whole human potential wave of the 1960s and 1970s — every one of them teaches that "the Christ" is an energy, a state of consciousness, a vibration, a principle, never a risen Man returning in the clouds with a physical body to judge the living and the dead.

In the last twenty years, this has escaped its New Age ghetto and has gone mainstream. It is preached in yoga studios, in corporate wellness retreats, in bestselling books by Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, and Marianne Williamson. It is the default spirituality of Silicon Valley. It is what Oprah promoted for two decades. It is preached from half the pulpits now flying a rainbow flag. The message is the same: Christ is not a person. Christ is a principle. Heaven is not a place. Heaven is a state. The Kingdom is not coming. The Kingdom is within you. The resurrection is not physical. The resurrection is spiritual awakening. The second coming is not an event. The second coming is an inner realization.

Notice what that requires. Every one of those claims requires Bible prophecy to be already fulfilled, because as long as believers are still expecting a literal Man to come in the clouds and raise literal bodies from literal graves, New Age teaching cannot land. The literal expectation is the immovable obstacle to the whole ascended-masters project. That expectation has to be cleared away first. And preterism is the teaching that clears it.

Preterism tells believers that Yeshua already came — in 70 CE, invisibly, in the clouds of judgment. Preterism tells believers the resurrection already happened — spiritually, in those who believed. Preterism tells believers the Kingdom has already come — now, in the Church, fully, completely. Preterism tells believers the watch is over, the expectation is outdated, the "hype" about last days is embarrassing.

"You were right to let go of the literal expectations. Now let me show you what Christ really meant. He meant the Christ within. He meant the awakening. He meant that you, too, can ascend."

The New Age teacher · walking through the door preterism propped open

That is the true agenda of these times. The Jesuit weapon of 1614 has been picked up by hands Alcázar never imagined, and the same doctrine that first cleared the ground for Rome now clears the ground for a false religion that has no Rome, no Pope, no sacraments, and no God at all — only "consciousness" and the self ascending. This is why every honest preterist teacher should stop and look around at who his loudest friends actually are. They are not the fathers of the Reformation. They are the heirs of Blavatsky.

Section VIWhat Paul Called It

A teacher who stands before believers and preaches Alcázar's system as the faith once delivered to the saints — who collapses the whole Canon into forty years, who spiritualizes seven physical promises of God into invisible fulfillments, who mocks the discernment of those who still watch and wait — is not a brother in the middle of an honest correction.

The Canon has a name for that teacher. Paul wrote to Timothy about two men, Hymenaeus and Philetus, who were teaching "that the resurrection is past already," and Paul said they were overthrowing the faith of some. He called their teaching a gangrene. He did not call it a correction in need of gentle pastoring. He named the men, he named the disease, and he warned Timothy to stay clear of it.

That is the exact shape of preterism. The resurrection is past. The judgment is past. The Kingdom has come in full. The watch is over. The only difference between Hymenaeus and Alcázar is fifteen hundred years and a Jesuit collar. And the only difference between Alcázar and a New Age guru is four hundred years and a different clothing choice. The error is the same error, mutating through every century to meet whatever religion wants the cleared ground next. Paul's verdict on that error does not expire.

Section VIIThe Answer

Believers do not need a better timeline. They need to read the Bible the way the prophets wrote it.

The prophets write in layers. A single prophecy can have a near fulfillment and a far fulfillment, and both are true, and neither cancels the other. Daniel's abomination of desolation happened under Antiochus in 167 BC, happened again when the Roman legions desecrated the Temple in 70 CE, and Yeshua Himself said it will happen yet again at the end (Matthew 24:15). Three fulfillments, one prophecy, and every one of them a real event in history.

That is how the whole Bible works. 70 CE was real. It happened. It vindicated Messiah as a true prophet, exactly as Yeshua said on Olivet. But it was the near fulfillment, not the final one. The final fulfillment is still ahead — the bodily return of Messiah, the resurrection of the dead, the binding of Satan, the thousand-year reign, the marriage of the Lamb, the new heavens and the new earth in which righteousness dwells.

The God who promised these things does not lie. Every word will stand, because the God who spoke them keeps His covenant to a thousand generations.

Ten Words Press

The Damascus He promised to ruin will be ruined. The death He promised to destroy will be destroyed. The tombs He promised to empty will be emptied. The wolf and the lamb will lie down together. The nations will keep Sukkot. Gog's weapons will burn seven years. The sea will die and be remade. Every word will stand.

Preterism denies Him that. Preterism makes God a liar — first to save a Pope, and now to usher in an inner "Christ" who never came in flesh and will never come in glory. Believers should know the weapon when they see it. They should ask who benefits when the future promises of God are abolished. They should ask who stands ready, right now, to walk through the door that preterism has been propping open for four hundred years.

Keep the lamp lit. Keep the oil. The Bridegroom is coming in a body that was crucified and raised, and He has not yet come.