27 For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. 28 Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. - Matthew 16:27-28
Note: Don Preston is a full preterist and therefore his teaching cannot receive full or blind acceptance. His many videos on YouTube are worthy of listening and interacting with in a timeline manner.
After handling a false comparison of Matthew 16 and 2 Timothy 4, we get to evaluate a passage in the book of Revelation. Since I enter the Revelation discussion believing it to be fulfilled, my starting point could be significantly different than from most readers. But we'll address the verse and see if we catch any over-generalization from Mr Preston.
@3:50: Yet again because there are similar ideas Mr Preston lumps them into one general event. The validity of Christ's return in judgment to establish His kingdom has never been in doubt. But Mr Preston's move to include the judgment of "the dead" has been the principal point in associating our Matthew text with 2 Timothy and now with this passage in Revelation. But there are some things that just don't fit. I'll quote David Chilton on this passage to begin the discussion,
Thus the nations were enraged, and Thy rage came, and apostate, persecuting Jerusalem suffers the brunt of both; and the time came for the dead to be vindicated, and the time to give their reward to Thy servants the prophets and to the saints and to those who fear Thy name, the small and the great. This is just a rephrasing of Christ’s statement to Jerusalem in His last public discourse: “That upon you may fall all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the Temple and the altar. Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation” (Matt. 23:35-36). God’s servants the prophets (equivalent terms in Revelation: see 1:1; 10:7; 16:6; 18:24; 19:2, 10; cf. Dan. 9:6, 10; Amos 3:7; Zech. 1:6) would be vindicated and rewarded in the coming judgment – not the final judgment at the Last Day, but rather the historical vindication and avenging of the martyred saints, those who had suffered at the hands of ungodly Israel, as Jesus had foretold.
You can see that Chilton and I are not disagreeing with Mr Preston on when this happened. But on the details of what is actually being described as happening. This passage of Revelation simply does not mesh with Revelation 20s description of the judging of the dead. Here it is "the time of the dead". In Revelation 20:5 there is a distinction between the types of the dead. But here Mr Preston is assuming that this is a reference to the full set of the dead. Instead it is quite clear that the word for judgment here can be used to describe the fulfillment of punishment for the persecution of the saints (Rev 6:10; 16:15-16; 18:20) and that would seem to make more sense here since the idea of servants and prophets linked more the temporal retribution within the context of the book of Revelation.
