What is full preterism and why is it considered heretical?

Most disagreements about end-times timing are healthy, in-house debates among believers who agree on the essentials. Full preterism is different. It is a teaching that steps outside the boundary lines the historic Christian church has always drawn around the gospel itself, which is why it has been labeled heretical rather than simply a minority view.

Understanding what full preterism actually claims, and why it goes too far, will help you recognize it if you ever run into it, and will strengthen your grip on what the New Testament actually promises about Christ's return.

Full preterism, sometimes called consistent preterism by its advocates, teaches that every end-times prophecy in the New Testament, including Christ's second coming, the resurrection of the dead, and the final judgment, was already fulfilled, spiritually and invisibly, in AD 70 alongside the destruction of Jerusalem. On this view, there is no future bodily return of Christ left to expect at all.

That is a striking claim, because it means full preterists believe we are already living, right now, in the eternal state, the new heavens and new earth, even though nothing about the physical world or human death has visibly changed since AD 70.

The problem is not that full preterists take history seriously; it is that they deny doctrines the New Testament treats as essential and non-negotiable. Scripture is emphatic that Christ's return will be visible and bodily, that every eye shall see him (Revelation 1:7), and the angels at His ascension promised that this same Jesus would return in like manner as He was seen going into heaven (Acts 1:11). No such visible, universal event happened in AD 70.

Even more seriously, full preterism denies a future bodily resurrection of believers, and the apostle Paul confronted exactly this error by name in his own day. He warned Timothy about false teachers, Hymenaeus and Philetus, who erred concerning the truth by saying the resurrection was already past, and who thereby overthrew the faith of some (2 Timothy 2:17-18). Paul does not treat this as a minor interpretive quirk; he treats it as faith-destroying error.

If the resurrection is already entirely past and spiritual, then Paul's whole argument in 1 Corinthians 15 collapses, an argument he builds specifically around a future, bodily, physical resurrection modeled on Christ's own bodily resurrection from the tomb (1 Corinthians 15:20-23). Deny a future bodily resurrection for believers, and you undercut the reality and pattern of Christ's own resurrection, which is the very foundation of the gospel.

This is also why full preterism is different in kind from questions like whether the rapture happens before or after a tribulation period, or whether the millennium is literal or symbolic. Those are disagreements among people who all affirm a real future return of Christ and a real future resurrection. Full preterism removes both.

Full preterists do not build their system on nothing; they lean heavily on Jesus's statement that this generation shall not pass till all these things are fulfilled (Matthew 24:34), and on His promise to His disciples that some standing there would not taste death till they had seen the Son of man coming in his kingdom (Matthew 16:28). These are real texts that deserve a real answer, not dismissal.

The strongest response does not deny that this generation language points to something happening within the first-century audience's lifetime; many conservative, non-preterist scholars agree that AD 70 fulfilled much of what Jesus described in Matthew 24:4-28. Where full preterism goes wrong is extending that same near-term fulfillment to texts that plainly describe a bodily, visible, universal event, every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him (Revelation 1:7), and a resurrection modeled on Christ's own bodily rising from an empty tomb (1 Corinthians 15:12-23), none of which happened, visibly or bodily, in AD 70.

If you encounter full preterism, whether from a well-meaning acquaintance or online, you can engage the historical arguments about AD 70 respectfully, since some of those observations about Luke 21:20-24 are genuinely useful. But hold firm where Scripture holds firm: a bodily, visible, still-future return of Jesus Christ and a still-future bodily resurrection of the dead are not up for negotiation.

Respond the way Paul responded to Hymenaeus and Philetus, with clarity and concern for the person's faith, not with contempt, because the goal is always to protect people's hope in Christ, not merely to win an argument.

Your assurance does not rest on solving every detail of Bible prophecy; it rests on the fact that Jesus rose bodily from an empty tomb and promised to return the same way He left. That promise has not been quietly fulfilled behind history's back; it is still ahead of you, and it is sure.

So keep your eyes on the real hope Scripture gives: Christ is coming again, visibly and bodily, to raise the dead and make all things new (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17; Revelation 21:5).