WAS LIGHTFOOT A “PRETERIST”? AGAIN.

PMW 2025-053 by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr.

My mistake
I am returning to a thought that I had written on previously on my Postmillennial blogsite: I am explaining why I no longer hold that John Lightfoot of the Westminster divines was a preterist. I do this because Gary DeMar for some reason rebukes me for changing my understanding of Lightfoot. In a post on the American Vision website, DeMar asks: “Why is Gentry dismissing an author like Lightfoot whose works are filled with preterist arguments?”

I would note in the first place that I am not “dismissing an author like Lightfoot”! I admire and appreciate Lightfoot as a great Reformed scholar and remarkably brilliant Hebraist.

What I am doing, however, is correcting my mistaken view that he should be deemed a “preterist.” I was vigorously challenged by several actual historicists in my assertion that Lightfoot was a “preterist.” Technically, he was an historicist. But being an historicist does not prohibit applying certain prophecies to AD 70. This is because historicism looks at biblical prophecy as speaking of future history all the way to the second coming of Christ. And all future history from John’s time includes AD 70. Even dispensationalists can be preterist in certain portions of Scripture, without being classified as “preterists” (C. Marvin Pate is a very clear example of such).

I made my preterist assertion because of Lightfoot’s interpretation of the Olivet Discourse is strongly preteristic, and his allusion to Revelation 1:7 made in his Olivet study was preteristic.

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by Milton S. Terry
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My correction
But my previous declaration that Lightfoot was a “preterist” cannot be maintained due to his fuller exposition of the Book of Revelation. No “preterist” would hold to views that major portions of Revelation repeatedly speaking of distantly future history — not just one or two times, but repeatedly. But clearly, in Lightfoot’s view the majority of Revelation applies well-beyond the first century, and even beyond the fall of the Roman empire.

Consider the following statements from Lightfoot’s The Whole Works of the Rev. John Lightfoot (vol. 3). You can find Lightfoot’s work and read it at:
https://books.google.com/books?id=wgIUAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA415#v=onepage&q&f=false

There in his Introduction to Revelation (3:331), Lightfoot writes: “Christ [reveals] to ‘John, the beloved disciple,’ the state of the church, and story in brief, of her chief afflicters, from thence to the end of the world.” What “preterist” would make such a statement in introducing Revelation?

Of the trumpets vision he states (pp. 337–38): “the seven trumpets, under the seventh seal, give us a prospect, in general, of the times thenceforward, to the end of all things.”

Revelation 9 contains “a description of the Papacy, under the fifth trumpet” (p. 340).

pp. 341–42 on the sixth trumpet: “The Turks and Mahometans, coming as a plague upon the eastern part of the world, as the Papacy on the western. These hurt with their tails [false doctrine], as well as the other did in the former trumpet…. These hold out another head and saviour, — Mahomet.” Muhammad was not born until about AD 570.

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p. 343 on Revelation 11
“John is commanded to leave out the court, which is without the temple, and not to measure it, ‘Because it was given to the Gentiles, and they should tread the holy city forty-and-two months.’ Not in a hostile was, but as the flock of the Lord tread his courts, there worshipping him; as see the phrase, Isa. 1.12; Psal. cxxii.2: and the meaning seemeth to be this, — ‘Measure not the court of the Gentiles; for their multitudes that come to attend upon the Lord, shall be bo endless and numberless.”

This understanding is the exact opposite of what a preterist would hold. We believe the Apostle John is referring to the destruction of the temple.

p. 346 on Revelation 12
On p. 346 Lightfoot writes regarding Revelation 12: “As Daniel giveth a general view of the times, from his own days, to the coming of Christ. . . so doth our Apocalyptic here, and forward. He hath hitherto given a general survey of the times from his own days to the end.”

p. 348 on Revelation 13
“The Holy Ghost, by Daniel, shows the four monarchies, the afflicters of the church of the Jews till Messias’s first coming, — the Babylonian, the Mede-Persian, the Grecian, and the Syro-Grecian: and John now takes at him and shows a fifth monarchy, the afflicter of the church of Jews and Gentiles till his second coming.”

p. 357 on Revelation 17
“Mystical Babylon” is “Rome [the Roman Catholic Church] so called, as being the mother of idolatry . . . made havoc of the church continually. . . . Rome, under the Papacy, was not the same Rome it had been, — and yet it was: not heathen and imperial Rome, as it had been before; and yet, for all evil, idolatry, persecution, &c, the same Rome to all purposes.”

Conclusion

I am thankful for the several preteristically-helpful passages in Lightfoot. But I can no longer deem him to be classified as a preterist. But he does offer some powerful arguments for Olivet being interpreted preteristically. And for John’s writing Revelation in AD 66. Yet, holding to an early date for Revelation does not make one a preterist either.

P.S.

In my next posting I will interact with other issues DeMar brings up in his critique of my arguments.

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Debate book on the nature and timing of the great tribulation. Both sides thoroughly cover the evidence they deem necessary, then interact with each other.

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