preterist view of much of this language—that is, the view that a great deal of the gospels’ talk about a coming tribulation and judgment is most properly understood as referring principally to the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, and therefore to events that are (for us) already long past, even though it is all expressed in the venerable prophetic tropes of a coming epoch of divine wrath and mercy—enjoy an almost unassailable hermeneutical advantage over all other interpreters.
