I wrote:
Am I to understand that you think the Thessalonians were rescued by Jesus from the wrath that came on Jerusalem in AD 70? In what sense did that wrath ever endanger the people in Greece? And in what way did Christ rescue them from it?
To which, you replied:
Evidently you felt that they were not in danger of God's wrath. What other way should I have taken it? So I ask again, define the kind of wrath of God you feel Paul was warning them about.
You are not reading, Allyn, which is why none of your responses have been germane to the challenges presented. It is why I said your answers are nonsensical. In my last post, I said there is no use in us trying to communicate further, and I fear that I am totally right in this assessment. However, I will give it one more try, because I am an eternal optimist, and always (sometimes foolishly) give others the benefit of the doubt...
Let me spell this out real simply:
1. I said that Christians in Greece, who obviously were nowhere near Jerusalem, were not in danger of experiencing the wrath of God—
IF that wrath refers to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, as you believe. It is this latter point that is obviously at issue here.
2. Since you know that I am not a full-preterist, it should have been obvious that I was challenging your identification of the "wrath to come" with the destruction of Jerusalem.
3. Nothing in my statement says that the Thessalonians had not been saved from God's wrath. I said they were never in danger of, nor rescued from,
"the wrath that came on Jerusalem in AD 70" (didn't you read be for you replied?). In fact, I explained in an earlier post (which you cut and pasted into one of your posts) that the wrath that they had been saved from by Christ (as have we all) is the wrath at the final day of judgment—that is, at the end of the present cosmos.
4. For you to misrepresent my comment, as you certainly must have done deliberately (I give you credit for at least average, if not better, intelligence), so as to represent me as not believing the Thessalonians were saved from
any wrath, was to ignore the obvious: i.e., what is at dispute here is whether "the wrath to come", 1 Thes.1:10, is referring to AD 70 or to the end of the cosmos. I have to assume that your failure to note this is either due to astonishing inattention on your part as to the identity of the topic that you introduced, or else that you are simply trying to be provocative. A third alternative cannot be imagined.
5. My point has been clear from the beginning, and you have never answered it. I will spell it out so that you can no longer claim to have misunderstood:
The Thessalonians had been saved from the wrath of God (as all Christians have been). This is not the wrath poured out on Jerusalem, since...
a) the Thessalonians had no connection with Jerusalem nor its sins, and so were never the proper objects of that particular wrath; and
b) the invasion of Jerusalem did not involve the Romans inflicting mahem or slaughter upon the citizens of Greece, so that there was never any danger to the Thessalonians from that particular judgment; and
c) in any case, if the Romans had (for some inexplicable reason) decided to attack Thessalonika in connection with their invasion of Palestine, the inhabitants of Thessalonika would not have been spared on account of their being Christians, so that Paul would not have any reason to speak of their being delivered from such a situation by their devotion to Christ. Therefore, the "wrath to come," in 1 Thessalonians 1:10, is not a reference to the fall of Jerusalem, but to some other day of judgment that ordinarily would affect the Thessalonians (and perhaps all other nations), and from which people are saved by being Christians. Clearly, the judgment of the world at the end of the cosmos is the only known event mentioned in scripture which fits these criteria.
The fact that you do not believe that such a final day of judgment is predicted in scripture does not exempt you from considering that the very passage you brought up points strongly toward such an event as orthodox Christianity has always anticipated, and does not apply in any sense to the event to which you are linking it.
I find it inconceivable that you did not know that this was my meaning, unless you have entirely forgotten the Christian view that you yourself (in company with all Christians throughout history) held until a few years ago. You ask how I could possibly understand the "wrath to come" as referring to anything other than AD 70? How would
you have understood "the wrath to come" before you became convinced of full-preterism? Have you already forgotten? Or are you just being coy and pretending to be ignorant of the almost universal view of the Church? This is what elicited my remarks concerning the honesty of your responses.
In an earlier post, you asked me to give an example of full-preterists' inability to take passages about divine judgments on a case-by-case basis, but only to shoe-horn every judgment passage into a single event. You have provided an excellent example of this very thing in your present post:
You point out that John the Baptist's reference "the wrath to come" upon his listeners (Palestinian Jews) was fulfilled in AD 70. This I accept. Then you leap to the assumption that the "wrath to come" upon the Thessalonians (a wrath from which the Christians there had been delivered by Christ) must refer to the same event, even though such an identification makes no sense at all. The only thing the two passages have in common is their use of the common word "wrath," and its being referred to as "coming." The possibility that God's wrath on Jerusalem might take place on a different occasion than His wrath on others (e.g., on Sodom, the antediluvian world, ancient Babylon, modern America or the whole world) does not seem to find a place in the full-preterist's thinking. This is the example you requested.
Consider these two passages:
Leviticus 10:6
And Moses said to Aaron, and to Eleazar and Ithamar, his sons, "Do not uncover your heads nor tear your clothes, lest you die, and
wrath come upon all the people. But let your brethren, the whole house of Israel, bewail the burning which the LORD has kindled.
2 Chronicles 19:10
Whatever case comes to you from your brethren who dwell in their cities, whether of bloodshed or offenses against law or commandment, against statutes or ordinances, you shall warn them, lest they trespass against the LORD and
wrath come upon you and your brethren. Do this, and you will not be guilty.
In these passages, the coming of wrath cannot be identified with AD 70, nor with any event elsewhere referenced in the same language. If we are to insist that John the Baptist's reference to wrath coming on Jerusalem must be the same as wrath that had once threatened the Thessalonians, then sheer consistency would demand that we apply these two passages that use identical language to the same event as well. This would not only be consistent. It would also be foolish.
Consider also Paul's frequent use of "wrath" in contexts where it could hardly refer to AD 70 (Romans 4:15; 5:9; 13:4-5/Ephesians 2:3; 5:6/ Col.3:6).
