I am not a preterist, but I know enough about it to know that you have, unfortunately, bought into the lie spread by the dual-covenant crowd. The only reason I believe in a pre-70 A.D. date is this: I can read English. Same for preterists. The many new converts to postmillennialism and preterism, as I understand it, can best be explained by those disillusioned with the many false prophets that have sprung up within the dispensational ranks. After leaving them behind in a search for greener pastures, some begin to take a literal approach to the New Testament, rather than the old, and their eyes are opened. It is really as simple as that. I would not read too much into it.
" And Jesus answering said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. And as he sat upon the mount of Olives over against the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled? And Jesus answering them began to say, Take heed lest any man deceive you:" (Mark 13:2-5)
"Verily I say unto you [, my disciples,] that this [your] generation shall not pass, till all these things be done." (Mark 13:30)
It either means Jesus was prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem during the lifetime of his disciples, or it means anything and everything. The Evangelical Industrial Complex prefers the latter because, without it, and some wildly imaginative authors, their book sales would be in the toilet. So do the mega-church and TV evangelists. Postmillennial preaching is rather dull, and under that doctrine it hard to scare the old ladies into giving up their last mite.
>>>As for the Gentiles killed throughout WWII and its aftermath, the numbers were horrible but the prophecy in question was for Israel. <<<
I don't recall mentioning them. I was referring to all the murders by the Bolsheviks and Mao.
>>>I'm sure many thought WWII and the Holocaust of the Jews, 6 million or more systematically slaughtered just for being physically descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, including Jewish Christians like yourself, was the worst so far, but the end was not yet.<<<
Yet, Hitler's driver was half-Jewish. As a World War II buff for forty years, the internet proved to be a real eye-opener. Admittedly, I was a Pacific War fanatic for most of that time, since I served in the Pacific; so I was late to the European theatre. But since the internet came along, I have ran across some remarkable video series, including one on his personal assistants. There is also this one titled, "Nazi Collaborators - the Jews Who Fought for Hitler:"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l379T4484jY
Some things do not make any sense, do they?
>>>Does it really make sense to you that schismatics who rebelled against the Catholic Church in the 16th Century to reform or "redo" the faith once delivered to the saints would then produce a Reformed Theology than keeps reforming itself with new "doctors" into a Preterist Theology that says "I used to love her, but it's all over now, over now?"<<<
The word "Reformed" is best defined as, "those who broke the chains of the catholic tyrants."
>>>At least Calvin and Gentry have not called themselves Prophet like Joseph Smith, and their books are not yet treated as scripture although I wonder sometimes.<<<
You can primarily thank the Jesuit Emmanuel Lacunza, a Francisco Ribera protégé, for that. John Nelson Darby was a Lacunza protégé, as was William Miller, the founder of the Millerites, which later branched into the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Seventh-Day Adventists. Of course, Darby is credited with being the founder of Dispensationalism, which has similar end-times doctrine to that of the Millerites because of Lacunza. Francisco Ribera, the originator, was a Jesuit and counter-reformer, who tricked many into accepting his new, non-biblical doctrine, thus taking the heat off the pope.
It is all a big scam.
Philip