Thomas Ice identifies several important partial preterists. Within Covenant theology men like Jay Adams and J. Marcellus Kik are partial preterists. Ice also identifies Greg L. Bahnsen, who is a Reformed and Reconstructionist preterist who was influential in producing other preterists like David Chilton, Gary DeMar, and Kenneth Gentry.
Ice makes note that the growing popularity of partial preterism today is due in part to “R. C. Sproul’s conversion to partial preterism in the 1990s as expressed through his book The Last Days According to Jesus. In February 1990, Dr. Sproul sponsored a conference on preterism at his annual Ligonier Ministries national conference in Orlando, Florida. About 4,000 people attended, and this exposure did a lot for the spread of preterism, especially in the Reformed community. The speakers at the conference included Dr. Kenneth Gentry and Gary DeMar” (The End Times Controversy, page 62).
Sproul writes in his The Last Days According to Jesus: “While partial preterists acknowledge that in the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 there was a parousia or coming of Christ, they maintain that it was not the parousia. That is, the coming of Christ in A.D. 70 was a coming in judgment on the Jewish nation, indicating the end of the Jewish age and the fulfillment of a day of the Lord. Jesus really did come in judgment at this time, fulfilling his prophecy in the Olivet Discourse. But this was not the final or ultimate coming of Christ. The parousia, in its fullness, will extend far beyond the Jewish nation and will be universal in its scope and significance” (page158)
Partial preterists like Sproul consider full preterism heretical because it denies the future second advent of Christ and the physical resurrection of believers. It is interesting that extreme or full preterism calls themselves “consistent preterism” which is the actual case. Full preterists are consistent in having all prophecies fulfilled at AD 70. And yet partial preterists like Sproul considers “consistent preterists” heretical. Which is inconsistent?
