Four Approaches to Prophetic Interpretation
Adapted from an article by William H. Shea in the Review and from the web site http://www.historicist.com/articles/historicism.htm
Students of prophecy generally fall into four interpretive schools of thought: historicists, preterists, futurists, and dualists.
1. The historicist interpretation sees apocalyptic prophecies as revealing human history in a continuous fashion. They believe, for example, that the prophecies in Daniel and Revelation present the great sweep of the future from the prophet’s time to Christ’s coming kingdom. Strong evidence for this can be found in the major series of symbols extending through the centuries, in both Daniel and Revelation. Daniel 2 and 7, for instance, present a series of metal and animal figures that symbolize kingdoms that will succeed one another until the eternal kingdom of God is set up (the stone of Daniel 2) or until the time when the saints of the Most High enter the eternal kingdom of God (in Daniel 7). Daniel 11 and 12 repeat the pattern, describing the actions of individual rulers along the way. Thus there is strong internal evidence from the book of Daniel (and also from Revelation) that these prophecies were intended to give their hearers and readers a view of the sweep of history from God’s vantage point. However, there are those who have denied this historic point of view, applying the fulfillment of events mostly in the past (preterist), or mostly in the future (futurist).
2. Preterists, applying the book of Daniel in the past, for example, see its prophecies ending in the second century B.C.—in the time of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, a Greek king who ruled in Syria. Since he was a cruel king who did evil things to the Jews, preterists see him as the fulfillment of the bad things that were to happen to God’s people. From this point of view, the book of Daniel was not written in the sixth century B.C. as future prophecy. Instead, they believe, it was written in the second century B.C. while these events were happening. So the conclusion is that the book of Daniel is not prophecy, but rather history—written up as prophecy by an unknown author.
3. For futurists, the prophecies did begin during the prophet’s own time. But then the great prophetic clock stopped. There was a gap, and major segments of human history—such as Christ’s earthly ministry and the early Christian church—have simply not been addressed by prophecy. Futurists subscribing to the dispensationalist position are waiting for the prophetic clock to start up again. When it does, they will count down the final seven years of earth’s history (the seventieth week of Daniel 9), during which, they believe, there will be a final (literal and personal) antichrist who will appear in Israel and persecute the Jews for three and one-half years. Meanwhile, the church, having been raptured out of the world, will have left the Jews to be persecuted by this antichrist and his followers. These final seven years will end with the second coming of Christ—actually the third coming for them. Thus for the futurists, the great sweep of the Christian Age is represented only by a gap. Prophecy did not address it at all.
4. Dualists want to take a “both and” approach. Dualism entered Catholicism in the sixteenth century and Protestantism in the nineteenth century. Under the label of “dual interpretation of prophecy,” people were told they could keep their historicist view, “adding” preterism to it. Under these conditions, however, true historicism fades away.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Which of these interpretations is right? The preterist’s position leaves the impression that God has been quite uninterested in us since the second century B.C. (when, they claim, Daniel was written) or since the first century A.D. (when Revelation was written). For since then, according to them, God has really not spoken. It’s a truncated view of God’s activity in history. The futurist faces the same problem, but claims that all these prophecies relate to our time alone. The dual approach seems to want the best of both worlds.
For the historicist, God’s prophetic voice has continued to speak to all ages. Just as the Old Testament has provided us with a history from Creation to the end of the Old Testament Era, so these apocalyptic books provide us a panoramic view of our Christian Era in advance.
Hippolytus, Joachim, Wyclif, Luther, Knox, Newton, and Wesley are examples of the prominent people who believed in and used historicist method of prophetic interpretation. Also, the Waldenses, Hussites, Wyclif, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Melanchthon, John Gill, and the martyrs Cranmer, Tyndale, Latimer, and Ridley accepted this view. The Protestant Reformers were distinctly historicist. One of the events they observed was the activity of the “little horn” of Daniel 7:7-26, which they identified with the Papacy in Rome. The historicist view was for example adopted by the chief Protestant reformers, German, Swiss, French and English, of the 16th century, and transmitted downwards uninterruptedly, even to the nineteenth century.
Preterism and futurism were developed during the Roman Catholic Counter Reformation in the latter half of the sixteenth century to oppose the historicist's interpretation that the Antichrist was the Roman Catholic church. The virtually unanimous interpretation of the papacy as the Antichrist of prophecy and the beast of Revelation 13 by all Protestant groups in all lands, led Roman Catholic leaders to attempt to divert the accusing finger and to direct Protestant attention away from the medieval Catholic system. Francisco Ribera and Luis de Alcazar, both 16th-century Spanish Jesuits, introduced counterinterpretations of prophecy. In1590 Francisco Ribera of Spain published a lengthy commentary on Revelation in which he applied the prophecies of Revelation to the future, while Alcazar (1554-1613) introduced the preterist interpretation into Catholic circles.
Similar developments did not occur in Protestantism until considerably later. The first preterist approach to the book of Daniel in Protestant circles came with Anthony Collins’ commentary published in 1726. Up to this time almost all prominent Protestant interpreters were historicists. With the inroads of rationalism, humanism, and liberal thought in the nineteenth century, however, many mainline Protestant denominations drifted toward preterism.
Futurist interpretation of apocalyptic prophecy was introduced by an Englishman named John Darby in the 1820s, at the time William Miller was preaching the prophecies of Jesus coming from a strongly historicist point of view.
At present, preterist views are held mostly by the liberal mainline Protestant denominations, while futurist views are found especially among conservative evangelicals. The historicist interpretation of prophecy has continued, however, through the teaching and preaching of Seventh-day Adventists. In a sense, the Adventist church stands virtually alone as the heir of the Reformers’ interpretation of Bible prophecy.