Andrew,

I guess I am confused now. I apologise if I frustrating you. Perhaps you are simply too intelligent for me and I miss some of your points.

What I heard you saying was the following:

Joel, you write: ‘So while many of the eschatological concepts were indeed applied to the Roman situation, these were never intended to be the ultimate fulfillment.’ But my question then is: How do you do know that? What are the (biblical) criteria in any particular instance for thinking that a prophecy has more than one fulfilment?

I guess I understand the above to be inferring that you didn’t see any prophecy as speaking to anything beyond the Roman Empire. Thus, I used not only the 70 A.D. date but also the 130 A.D. date to refer to the Bar-Kochba rebellion and the subsequent exile of Jerusalem’s Jewish inhabitants. I assumed that you saw that.

You also said that:

Jesus could warn his disciples that something like the descration of the temple by Antiochus Epiphanes would happen again within a generation, but do we really have the prophetic authority to do the same thing? Or to put it another way, why shouldn’t Jesus speak only about AD 70, or Paul only about the confrontation with anti-Christian Rome? On what grounds do you make the rather Platonic claim that these are only shadows of things to come?

I guess in these comments I heard you arguing for th 70 A.D. date, specifically when you said “why shouldn’t Jesus be speaking only about 70A.D.?”. But then agian, as I said, I’m not as sharp as you and my misundertsnading is more than liklely my fault here.

So agin, I defer to you. I apologise for misunderstanding you.

You did ask me the question however:

how do we decide which (passages) are still open and which are closed? What in principle is wrong with leaving these things in the past? The Old Testament prophets foresaw exile to Babylon. The exile happened. The prophecies proved correct. End of story.

Basically to answer you question Andrew, my answer would be history is the standard. So when Jesus said:

“So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’spoken of through the prophet Daniel – let the reader understand – 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let no one on the roof of his house go down to take anything out of the house. 18 Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. 19 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 20 Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. 21 For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now – and never to be equaled again.

There is no reason to see this as having been accomplished by Titus. Titus never set up an Abomination in the temple. To force Titus as being the fulfillment of such is to force a sqaure peg into a round hole.

History is the thorn in the side of your hermenuetic. At leat it is for me, when I try to look at the passsges side by side with history honestly.

Likewise, I mentioned Gog below. Ezekiel 38. This list of nations has never attacked Jeruslame before. There is no historical equivalent that one could point to to try to say that this already took place. Which is why i asked what your opinion was regarding it.

Again, my point was simply that the actual passages are the problem. The concept seems good, but it cannot be supported by the actual Biblical texts and history. Likewise the fathers looked beyond Rome. I will not flood your blog here with a thousnad citations but certainly you wouldn’t want to try to argue that the fathers support your view and do so honestly. Its really not possible.