Futurism
This is probably the most well known being popularized by Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth in the 1970s, and the more recent novels and movies of the Left Behind series.
Some notable aspects of this line of interpretation:
- Fulfillment of much of end times prophecies are in our future.
- Some prohecies may have dual fulfilment - both in the past and in our future
- These adherents diverge into various camps depending on when they believe the Rapture and the Millenium occur.
- Biggest pro - this seems to work if taking history as 7 thousand years for the 7 days of creation putting the end at around 2030ish.
- Biggest con - ignores Jesus' statement (Matthew 24:34) and roughly 100 other NT verses that indicated these things would happen soon.
- Fairly big con - tends towards 'headlines theology' and 'provincial generationalism' where many generations since have believed the prophecies refer to their times when the audience was only the Jews in that time.
- Most notable failed end-of-the-world predictions - Napoleon's time, Hitler's time, and 1980.
- Biggest intuitive problem for me - in both the OT's book of Daniel and John's book of Revelation in the NT, an angel is giving them the prophetic revelations. Because Daniel's are of the empires coming that will rise and fall, the angel tells Daniel to seal the prophecies because they would take 500-600 years to happen. Yet at the end of Revelation the angel tells John not to seal them because they would come about soon - that was 2000 years ago.
Preterism
This may be the second most well known theory. Preterism suggest either much or all of prophecy was already fulfilled by AD 70, taking into account a lot of prophecy which was fulfilled by the destruction of Jerusalem then.
Adherents of this are in two groups - partial preterists believing some prophecies have yet to be fulfilled in our time, and full preterists believing all the prophecies have been fufilled already.
Some notable aspects of preterism:
- Jews are the audience, and ones referred to for punishment in prophecies.
- The end of times refers to the end of the Jewish temple and sacrifice system which was ended in AD 70.
- 'Heaven' and 'earth' were destroyed then as they were names for parts of the temple area.
- A vision seen by many, recorded by Josephus and Tacitus, of a heavenly host army occured in AD 66 - thought to be the 'second coming'
- Big pro(s) - fits well with events of AD 66-70 - tribulation for Christians, Roman world in turmoil, local major famine, others
- Another pro - Doesn't have intuitive problem I mentioned for futurism.
- Biggest con - they consider different things symbolically so put the millenium as actually between 30ish AD and 70 AD.
- Another possibly big con - full preterism is accused of ending up being the same as universalism because judgements would have already occurred and not in our future. However I believe this is not necessarily the case as there might still be judgement for individuals to come.
Historicism
This may be the least known interpretation, but one that at least generally seems to make the most sense to me. Like preterism it sees most prophecy up til Revelation as fulfilled by 70 AD. But while partial preterism sees only the latter chapters of Revelation as coming in the future, historicism sees most of Revelation as concerning both church and world history that has occured between then and now.
Some notable aspects of historicism:
- This site explains their positions and differences with futurism and preterism.
- Revelation chapters 2-3 reflect stages of church history from first century to now.
- Revelation 6-8 refers to the falls of the parts of the Roman empire - also the 144,000.
- Revelation 9, 11, 13 refer to Islam, Dark Ages, and Holy Roman Empire.
- Revelation 16 - 19th and 20th century events.
- Revelation 17-18 - leading to World War 3.
- Revelation 19 on - final End times events.
- Biggest pro - seems to fit very well with both church and world history since the first century.
- Another pro - seems to avoid a number of pitfalls and extremes of futurism and preterism.
- Biggest con - It does seem to have the same intuitive problem I mentioned in the futurism section.
- Minor con - little known today so not as much on it - however it does have a book, but by the same person as runs the site.
- Another site gives some more info on its historical link to Protestantism.