Andrew - with regard to your comments 2, 4 and 5:

2. I agree with you that Psalm 110’s ‘Sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool.’ can be related to A.D.70 and the (ultimate) demise of Rome. But I would have thought that the complete fulfilment of the promise is still to come - there are still plenty of ‘enemies’ needing to be become the messiah’s ‘footstool’. In that sense, the reign of Jesus began with his ascension, continued through the overthrow of 1st century Judaism and Rome, and continues to this day. However, I can see we are not going to agree on this one.

4. Final return of Christ - again, I doubt if we are going to agree. But I wonder how you take 1 Thessanonians 4:13-17? The problem as I see it with attaching these references to a ‘return’ of Christ in A.D.70 is that there is a threefold event: return, rapture and resurrection. A great deal in your approach is made to hinge on the appearance of Christ, the rapture of the living and the resurrection of the dead being invisible, or purely spiritual events. This is why I can’t see that all the references to Christ’s return can be collapsed into the destruction of the temple/Jerusalem in A.D.70, and that (unexcitingly for the theory) I do see Matthew 24 as being indicative of a final ‘end’ of all the ages, as well as an ‘end of the age’ which the temple’s loss would have indicated.

5. Tom Wright also argues strongly for the parables of Matthew 24 and following having the destruction of the temple as their end-point. But I wonder if the promise of Matthew 25:34 can also be fully said to have been fulfilled at that time: the promise of entry into "the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world."

Also, I’d be interested if you would comment further on your view of ‘the kingdom’ (as promised by Jesus). Am I right in thinking you relate this also to the destruction of Jerusalem/Rome, and that thereafter it ceases to be of on-going significance? (In other words, the ‘kingdom’ was an eschatological event related purely to the fulfilment of the destruction of Jerusalem/Rome).

I’d also be interested to know what others think of these issues.