Walt Hibbard Replies to Sam Frost’s Analysis and Critique of Taken to Heaven in A.D. 70: Blessings Expected at the Parousia by Ian D. Harding

It was not long after the publication of Ian D. Harding’s monumental in-depth study of what actually happened at the Second Coming of Christ in AD 70, that the eminent preterist scholar, Rev. Samuel M. Frost, wrote an extended review of the book.  As I would expect, Sam (as I shall refer to him) does his best to balance his review with some high praise of Mr. Harding’s efforts, but levels most of his comments on where he and Mr. Harding disagree. This is of course to be expected since Sam is known to affirm the “corporate body” or “remained on earth” view of the rapture and resurrection events.  In this reply to Sam, I will attempt to point out where I believe he misunderstands or misinterprets the clear meaning of the biblical text, and as a result teaches a contrived view much like that of the well-known author, Max King.  Sam, in fact, admits to following Mr. King’s hermeneutical model.

Sam does not hesitate to employ the term “heaven now” to describe his own ultimate fulfillment conclusions, in contrast to author Ian Harding’s term “taken to heaven” to describe the actual manifestation of God’s glory for believers in heaven. To say it another way, Sam teaches that the AD 70 scenario found complete fulfillment by the changing of the covenants, from Old Covenant to New, in that first century.

 In fact, Sam would have us believe that the living pre-Parousia saints received everything promised to them in glorification without the need of being raptured to heaven out of this wicked world.  But I would counter by suggesting that those saints would not have known, nor could they have been expected to know, that they had been delivered from every infirmity, nor given rest from persecution, nor had seen the face of Jesus Christ, all according to promise!  Their living experience would have told them just the opposite!  It would have seemed to these Christians that the great expectations promised to them had not been fulfilled at all!  It would have been a time of severe faith-testing and disappointment as they continued under persecution from Rome and the Jews and were still waiting to behold their Savior face to face.  Thankfully, this is not what happened!

Sam apparently believes that these first century Christians, scarred by sin and corruption, and living in a fallen world inherited from Adam, would experience everything promised in the Bible as the clock struck 12 midnight on that momentous and glorious Day of our Lord’s Second Coming.  Yet, apparently they would not be aware that anything happened as they remained on earth, one by one, to live out their days and die of old age, or succumb to persecution by the sword.  Sam believes that they received complete fulfillment of all of the promises, not by experiencing them in a way that would bring rejoicing and relief from suffering as promised, but rather accepting it all by faith!  It remains a mystery, as one attempts to comprehend what Sam is teaching, how any pre-Parousia saint would believe that the long-promised fulfillment had come and that it applied to himself as an individual person.  His life would have remained the same as if no Parousia had happened, no fulfillment of promises had taken place!

It was interesting to have Sam express a difficulty with Mr. Harding’s use of the word “experiential” in relation to raptured believers who were the recipients of the fulfilled promises.  To him, such an event or process as glorification would not require an experiential fulfillment at all.  Rather, it should be accepted by faith, believed that it happened, and not to be expecting to see any outward or perceived effect of this kind of spiritual fulfillment.  How likely was it that those earliest Christians would have been so eager to hope for the Parousia to arrive as Scripture teaches, along with all that was promised to them, and yet find that there was really no change in their daily experience, just more of the same suffering that they were already well acquainted with.  Where was the deliverance promised at the Parousia?  What happened to these promises?  Did not Jesus fulfill His Word? 

In earlier correspondence that I had with Sam Frost, I discovered that he does not hold to “progressive sanctification” in the life of the believer.  It is all “positional” and takes place once and for all at the time a person is saved.  This is hardly what one would expect from one professing the Reformed faith, as evidenced by the great body of Puritan writings heavily loaded with book after book dealing with progressive sanctification or growth in grace.  I fear that these long-dead Puritans would never have recognized Sam as one of their number, at least in the area of sanctification.

To Sam, the implications of what happened to the pre-Parousia believers at the time of the Second Coming is shrouded in mystery or at least not discussed at any great length in his review of the Harding book.  Apparently what did happen to give these persecuted saints “relief and deliverance,” according to Sam, was nothing intrinsically different from what they as pre-Parousia believers already had received when they first believed.  In effect, they received nothing more experientially than what they already had!  Yet the N. T. is full of glorious “expectation statements” suggesting a magnanimous and amazing time of ultimate fulfillment when Jesus Himself would return at His Parousia.

It should be evident to the reader by now that there is a major watershed contrast between this “change of covenants” or “corporate” or “heaven now” view, compared to what is known as the  “literal rapture “ or “taken to heaven in A.D. 70” view.  It serves as a study in bold contrasts!  An overview of each view appears below:

(1)  One view holds that what first century, pre-Parousia believers received when they first believed was an “already and not yet” experience, followed by the Parousia event where it became to them a “consummated and fulfilled” prophecy received by faith, namely, the fullness of the New Covenant as it replaced the Old Covenant, but with no actual experiential fulfillment like they were promised in terms of their daily struggle with persecution, indwelling sin, and earthly conditions.  In brief, a real letdown!

(2)  On the other hand, the view taught by Ian Harding demonstrates that the pre-Parousia believers, when they received Jesus as Lord and Savior, experienced a “firstfruit/deposit” share of the great promises of expectancy in the New Testament, and then, when the New Covenant came into its fullness with the return of Jesus Christ, these believers were caught up to heaven along with those saints raised out of hades, and the combined group taken to heaven to be with Jesus, experiencing the “full harvest” of all that was promised to them on earth, including deliverance and relief from suffering and persecution, and glorious, incorruptible, immortal, spiritual bodies, suitable for heaven for all eternity.

Now, it may be helpful to list succinctly the major problems with this “Max King view” that Sam Frost has picked up and is determined to run with it into the end zone.  I see these differences as major, not trivial, and as Scripture-denying dangers, not as unimportant exercises in hermeneutic gymnastics. 

            1.   Sam’s interpretative system fails to recognize the “gathering together” of the dead pre-Parousia believers raised out of hades (the Resurrection of the Dead) along with the living pre-Parousia believers which Paul in I Thess. 4:17 predicted “will be caught up together” at the Parousia. The author of Hebrews wrote that the O. T. saints, like Abraham, “would not be made perfect apart from us – God having provided something better for us” (11:39-40).  Sam’s view, which denies a “caught up gathering” hardly does justice to the inspired language.

            2.   His view downplays the scores of N. T. expectation statements from the lips of the Lord Jesus and from the inspired apostolic writings.  These living saints would be changed and transformed, would bypass physical death, would be glorified in their heavenly, spiritual bodies (I Cor. 15:51-54;  Phil. 3:21) and be joined with the deceased  and risen saints out of hades, and together would enter into the presence of the Lord.  It was at the Parousia that this was predicted to happen, not at some point following their physical death.  Sam says little about these expectation statements, of course, and in effect denies or explains away the “real life experience” of those anxiously-awaiting, promise-expecting, living N. T. saints in A.D. 70 at the Parousia.

            3.    Sam Frost also seems to miss the high level to which Ian Harding carries the hermeneutical principle of “audience relevancy.”  To minimize or deny the distinction between the living, pre-Parousia N. T. saints and the post-Parousia saints living beyond that vitally important A.D. 70 watershed mark is devastating to sound exegesis.  There are two distinct groups here.  It was to the first group, the first century group, that the promises of a literal rapture were made.  These saints were the ones who were an exception to the general rule that “it is appointed unto man once to die…” (Heb. 9:27).  These same living saints were the only believers promised to be “caught up… to a meeting with the Lord in the air (Thess. 4:15-17).  Those who lived after the Parousia would experience physical death followed by receiving their glorified spiritual bodies and all that the “harvest of fulfillment” would entitle them to receive in heaven.

            4.   Building upon 3. above, in order for post-Parousia Christians to experience the culminative fulfillment of those magnanimous heavenly promises that only the pre-Parousia believers actually experienced at the Parousia, they, too, would later be transported into the heavenly realm at the time of physical death, receiving their glorious spiritual bodies just as the pre-Parousia believers already had.  Ian Harding devotes a major portion of his book in showing from the Scripture how the ultimate fulfillment promises could only be experienced outside of this sin-cursed world in which we live.  In spite of this seemingly so obvious fact, Sam Frost charges that Mr. Harding only asserts this opinion and does not prove it from Scripture.  In my opinion, there can be no doubt that Harding proves his case conclusively, leaving the attentive reader thoroughly convinced.

            5.   Working from the position of denial of the truths expressed in 4. above, Sam may need to be reminded that Abraham of old actually “looked forward to a city having the foundations of which the builder and maker is God” and “embraced and confessed that they are aliens and tenants on the earth” (Heb. 11:10,13).  That city is the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city, to which Mr. Harding devotes some 27 pages of exposition.  All of the promises of “the Garden of Eden restoration” are heavenly promises that could never be fulfilled on this sin-infected earth, but only in heaven itself.

            6.   Sam Frost is allergic to anything that smacks of futurism.  He faults Harding for ending up with a “futurist eschatology” which of course is a false charge.  Ian, on the other hand, is humble enough to admit that many futurist scholars of past and present generations have done some excellent exegetical work in many areas of eschatology, even as they completely missed the timing and nature of the consummative fulfillment that Jesus and His followers recorded in the N. T.  I fear that Sam is “throwing out the baby with the bathwater,” thus robbing both himself and his readers of some valuable biblical insights.  And worse yet, by doing that, he completely misses the grand glory and tremendous splendor associated with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, which fulfilled the promises delivered to both O. T. and N. T. believers.  Sam seems to explain away that unique, once and for all, Parousia event, as a mere positional or transitional change in covenants, something where “experiential events” are ruled out as being “less spiritual” than what he considers the “heaven now” view to set forth.

            7.   I was surprised to discover in Sam’s review almost no space devoted to the study of prime Scripture passages in Harding’s book, such as John 14:2, 3 and I Thess. 4:13-17.  These are pivotal passages and much support for Harding’s viewpoint comes from a careful study of these great truths.  The first passage tells us that Jesus would depart at the Ascension to heaven where he would prepare a place for those first century believers, and that He would return and receive them to Himself in that place.  And the second passage uses the Greek word “harpazo” (caught away) to describe what would happen when the Lord returned.  It is the same Greek word, as Sam well knows, that was used in Acts 8:39 to describe Philip’s experience of being “caught away” and found later at Azotus, and when Paul was “caught up” to the third heaven (2 Cor. 12:2) and in Rev. 12:5 where the man-child was “caught away” out of the devil’s reach.  Yet Sam is not alone in passing over lightly these vital passages which teach a literal rapture at A.D. 70.  All preterists who hold to a “heaven now” or “covenantal change” view of the end-time events suffer under the same unwillingness to accept at face value these passages that clearly teach this great removal of living saints from the earth in about A.D. 70.

            8.   To this reviewer (and I suspect to others as well), it is almost unbelievable that any serious student of the Holy Scriptures could adopt the “heaven now” position.  Some have gone even further than Sam Frost in speculative thinking, such as Ward Fenley, who teaches that believers today have two bodies, a physical body and a spiritual body, both at the same time.  One body that you can touch and see and the other spiritually present also!  At this point I think it is only fair, open and honest to urge the “heaven now” preterists to return to sanity in their eschatological studies.  If they choose not to do so, they are laying themselves wide open for ridicule and laughter from the entire futurist community and many preterists as well – and even worse will do insurmountable damage to the preterist cause, and to the credibility and honor of the Lord Jesus Christ, the very One whom preterists strive to honor in virtue of their adopting the preterist viewpoint! 

            9.   In reference to 3. above, Sam’s chief interest, like that of Max King’s, seems to be in discussing the corporate body that present day 21^st century believers dwell in here and now, namely, the New Covenant.   In fact, in earlier years of email correspondence with Mr. King, there has been, not surprisingly, a reported denial of any actual individual body resurrection.  Of course it is understandable from reading his books that his entire rapture/resurrection paradigm involves the corporate idea alone.  Sam Frost seems to actually believe that this is what the Scripture teaches.  Ian Harding, however, convincingly demonstrates something quite to the contrary – a more simple, believable, and sane view of the first century resurrection and rapture events.  Many preterists have held to the corporate view, more or less, during the past 35 years – a view that is likely to soon pass into the realm of out-dated preterist fantasies – especially after one has taken the time to thoroughly digest Mr. Harding’s masterful treatment of the subject.  The companion book by Edward E. Stevens, Expectations Demand a First Century Rapture, has already placed this view in the public eye, giving the serious preterist scholar and student ample material supporting this viewpoint.

            10.  In considering the spiritual level of both the pre-Parousia N. T. saints and the post-Parousia saints living today, we need to ask ourselves as modern-day Christians, just how do we measure up today to the spiritual level of consummate blessings that Mr. Harding spells out in his book?  How do we today compare to the Apostles Paul, John and Peter who admit that they were, in effect, experiencing only the “deposit/firstfruits” stage of their Christian experience (I Cor. 13:9-12), and looking forward to the Parousia for the “harvest” consummation of that fulfillment?  Can any of us 21^st century Christians make the claim that we have attained to a higher spiritual level than the pre-Parousia Apostle Paul?  Mr. Harding asks this question in several places throughout his book, yet Sam chooses to ignore the question and offers no answer.  This question alone, all by itself, would seem to be sufficient to refute this strange and unrealistic “remained on earth” view that Sam espouses.  So where are the post-Parousia living Christians today who are supposedly bearing a higher level of spirituality than the pre-Parousia Apostle Paul?  One would expect, given Sam’s position, that all of us should be able to identify more with the first century post-Parousia believers than with the pre-Parousia believers who were still waiting for the promises to be fulfilled, if Sam's view is correct. Yet just the opposite is true!  Why is this?

Before I conclude this article, I must point out a few other errors or false assumptions that Sam commits against Mr. Harding’s position.  He tries to tell us that Harding is forced by his arguments to deny “justification by faith” in its fullest sense today because we are still living on the earth.  Nonsense!  Justification is a forensic term that is applied to the account of the Christian at the moment he truly believes and it doesn’t grow or progress, which Harding affirms, and in no sense is incomplete, unlike sanctification which does progress.  There is, however, the fullness of application of every aspect of salvation which finds its consummation only after we die and are taken to heaven.

Sam Frost in several places in his review asks the questions, “Must one experience full salvation in order to say that he has it?  What prevents one from believing that he has it regardless of his experience?  Isn’t this faith?”  Perhaps Sam should devise a “time machine” and return to that first century A. D. world and put that question to the suffering first century pre-Parousia saints!  Would they not rebel against such a notion?  “You mean to say, brother Sam, that we are not going to actually receive relief or deliverance that we have been promised in II Thess. 1:7-10?  Nor that we will receive transformed bodies (Phil. 3:21) just like Jesus has, when He returns?  Nor be clothed with a building from God at the time of His Parousia (II Cor. 5:1-4)?  Nor receive rewards (Matt. 16:27; Rev. 22:12) that He promised to us?  And do you mean we will not see Jesus when He is revealed (I John 3:2).  Hey, Sam, you don’t talk much like what all of us have been told!  We don’t believe you because you are trying to take away our hope of glorious fulfilled salvation that we were promised at the Parousia!”  Then Sam replies, “Let not your hearts be troubled, just accept it all by faith, brothers, and don’t expect to be raptured and gathered with the saints of old because it just isn’t going to happen at the Parousia, so get ready to die of old age or by the sword!”  Sounds like one big cruel joke, doesn’t it?

When Sam quotes Ian Harding from pg. 157 of his book that believers at the Parousia receive a “body of incorruption, of glory, of power, of spiritual life – just like Jesus’ heavenly body,” Sam objects that this body is not like Jesus’ heavenly body because Jesus was raised in the same body he had in the tomb, while believers, according to Ian, receive a new body even as the corpse is laid to rest in the ground.  Sam believes that Harding has fallen into the common “resurrection body trap” that Reformed theologians are quick to recognize.  Actually, however, the glorious heavenly body that Ian speaks of was acquired by Jesus after the Ascension, not at the Resurrection or while He remained on the earth as Sam suggests.  Jesus’ resurrected body was not identical to His glorified heavenly body!  We need to remember that when Jesus appeared after the Ascension to Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road, He was not in the form of a body like He had at His resurrection, but it had been transformed into a glorious, incorruptible, immortal, spiritual body suitable for heaven, just like the new bodies that believers at the Parousia would later receive.  Sam’s objections therefore are not valid and Ian Harding’s statement that the new bodies of believers were actually “just like Jesus’ heavenly body” is affirmed!

(At this point the readers of this review may find my article helpful that is entitled, The Resurrected Body of Jesus Christ, which appears on my Preterist Viewpoint website.  The web address is: www.preteristviewpoint.com)

Preterists who believe in the “remained on earth” view of the rapture need to make some close distinctions that can quite often get lost in the shuffle.  When this subject arises, it is essential to remember that we are discussing three separate groups of believers. 

The first group are the O. T. saints who “believed God and it was accounted unto them for righteousness,” such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Esther, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Joel and many others.  In addition, there were N. T. believers who died or were martyred before the Parousia took place.  Among these were John the Baptist, Stephen, and likely Peter and Paul as well, who died with the hope of being alive when the Lord Jesus would return a second time as He Himself promised (Heb. 9:28).  All of this combined group of believers, at the time of physical death, were consigned to hades in the bosom of Abraham (Luke 16:19-31), and at peace, awaiting their long-promised resurrection and assurance of one day being in heaven with Jesus.

These departed saints were the only people who could accurately be described as participating in a “Resurrection of the Dead.”  This was to occur at the sound of an archangel’s voice and a trumpet (I Thess. 4:13-17) when Jesus would be revealed at His Second Coming.  These people were to be raised out of hades, caught up to be with Jesus along with those first century living saints, who constitute our second group.

The second group includes all of the living believers who were present at the time of Christ’s Parousia.  This group could possibly be described as few in number (Matt. 7:14; Luke 18:8) or possibly as some (Matt. 16:28), but likely much fewer than the 144,000 that Sam (turned literalist!) suggests as a minimum number.  The apostles often considered themselves to be among this number of survivors left on the earth at the Second Coming, but even many of these godly men died before that great Day arrived. There were also Christians in the churches throughout Asia who were outside of Jerusalem, but nevertheless were included in the number of believers on earth when Christ returned.  Note carefully that only this group, plus a few from among the first group, were actually the only believers to whom the words of the N. T. promises were written!  And of those who heard the promises first hand, only those who remained alive at the Parousia were the ones who became the sole exceptions to the Hebrews 9:27 verse “And as it is reserved to men once to die, and after this, Judgment” or John 17:15 “I do not pray that You take them out of the world, but that You keep them from the evil.”

It was both of these first two groups of believers who were “caught up together…in the clouds to a meeting with the Lord in the air (I Thess. 4:17).  The first group was resurrected out of hades and was joined with the living believers on the earth at that glorious and never-to-be-repeated event where the Lord Jesus caught them up to be with Him forever in heaven, the place that He had prepared for them following His Ascension!

This combined group of believers was the first group of human beings who ever entered into heaven!  Peter tells us that “the prophets sought out and searched out, prophesying concerning the grace for you, searching for what, or what sort of time the Spirit of Christ made clear within them; testifying beforehand of the sufferings belonging to Christ, and the glories after these ( I Pet. 1:10-11).  The fulfillment of those long-sought-after promises was being fulfilled right before their very eyes.  It was the wonderful and glorious consummation of the salvation promises, and it all happened at circa A.D. 70.

The third group constitutes all true believers who were converted to Christ after the Parousia had occurred.  This includes late first century, second century, third century and those believers living even today and those born into each generation of the future and throughout this never-ending world (Eccl. 1:4; Ps. 78:69; 89:36-37; 148:4, 6; Eph. 3:21).  It includes you and me, being among those trusting in Christ alone for salvation.  No rapture for any of these people!  The rapture event was fulfilled in that first century.  The place in heaven has been prepared and the gates are wide open!  As believers in Christ from those earliest post-Parousia Christians to this present day who have died, one by one, they have entered into heaven.  It was the “consummation of salvation,” “the fulfillment of all that Jesus Christ prepared for His people,” for each one as they were united with loved ones and enabled to behold the face of Jesus Christ in their glorified, immortal, incorruptible, spiritual  bodies, like His glorious body, so different and so exalted above what their earth-dwelling bodies were like.  And the wonderful, wonderful part of it all – it lasts forever and sin and its effects shall never enter that place.  Neither will anything enter that is abominable or hateful and every curse will no longer be (ref. Rev. 21-22).

A major mistake that the “remained on earth” preterists make is that they have gone overboard with the idea that A.D. 70 was the fulfillment time for every aspect of the prophetic events.  Indeed, A.D. 70 was the date when all prophecy was fulfilled in terms of the prophetic events themselves, but we must constantly keep in mind that along with the actual Parousia, the Resurrection of the Dead, and the Judgment, there still remained the need to apply the benefits to God’s people throughout history itself!  Life would continue on, year after year, generation after generation and in that sense the actual fulfillment to those people would coincide with their conversion date and date of their death – the “firstfruits/deposit” stage and the “harvest” or “fullness” stage.

Preterists have been accused, and sometimes justly, for “crowding everything into that first century period” and assuming that every aspect of fulfillment or application thereof must needs be confined to, and completed within, that narrow timeframe.  So our friends, the “remained on earth” folks, like Max King and Sam Frost, demand that even in the cases where Scripture speaks of a “never-to-be-repeated” method of dealing in a special way with a special people, such as the A.D. 70 Rapture of living believers, they “leap forward” and reckon all the heavenly rewards in their fullness as applying immediately to themselves; even to believers who have not yet entered into the heavenly realm.  So the church today witnesses the likes of which are people who will tell you that they are even now in heaven!   Strange smiles on many faces follow, and why not?  These preterists either do not know what heaven will be like, and thus deceive themselves into thinking they are already there, or hold to a view of heaven that is a “condition of the mind,” where the imagination itself is the ultimate fulfillment, and which may never be within the realm of human experience.  In either case, they are not willing to allow history to unfold, whether it is in the form of a Rapture that would be experiential, or to force an immediate and final fulfillment now upon people living today who are awaiting their physical death to realize God’s ultimate and heavenly fulfillment promises.  Waiting out our days on earth until God calls us Home seems to be the normal plan for the experiential and ultimate fulfillment of those precious promises that initially were bestowed only upon the first two groups of saints in that amazing first century A. D.

Ian Harding has written a masterpiece of prophetic literature.  His critics may come and go, but it remains the challenge of every preterist Christian today to slowly and prayerfully read this earthshaking book!  Especially consider the Scripture passages that Mr. Harding takes the time to print out in full (a real time saver!) and then place yourself in the shoes of those first century Christians.  Behold the promises – all of them!  See for yourself if you can envision these promises being fully realized on this sin-filled earth.  See how much more reasonable it is to understand them as fulfilled in heaven, where sin, corruption, mortality and death, in every sense, can not enter in! 

THE END