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Full Preterism: A Better Hope
The promises of God understood as fulfilled covenant realities in Christ rather than promises indefinitely postponed.
God Dwelling With His People
Full Preterism understands the promises of Scripture as covenant promises that reached their fulfillment in Christ and in the events surrounding the end of the old covenant age. Rather than viewing God's people as permanently waiting for promises that remain unfinished, it asks whether the New Testament itself presents those promises as already accomplished.
One of Scripture's central covenant promises is that God would dwell with His people:
"They shall be my people, and I will be their God."
— Jeremiah 31:33
Ezekiel expresses the same promise:
"My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people."
— Ezekiel 37:27
Revelation uses remarkably similar covenant language:
"Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people."
— Revelation 21:3
This is important because Revelation does not introduce a completely new promise. It presents language already found in Israel's prophets and applies it to the consummation of God's covenant purposes.
The question, therefore, is not whether God promised to dwell with His people. He clearly did.
The question is when Scripture says that promise would be fulfilled.
The Marriage Covenant
The same pattern appears in the marriage imagery of Scripture.
God describes His covenant relationship with His people as a marriage:
"I will betroth thee unto me for ever."
— Hosea 2:19
The New Testament identifies Christ as the Bridegroom and His people as His bride. Revelation then announces:
"The marriage of the Lamb is come."
— Revelation 19:7
John is subsequently shown:
"the bride, the Lamb's wife"
and the angel identifies her as:
"that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God."
— Revelation 21:9-10
This creates a significant biblical connection: the covenant relationship, the marriage of the Lamb, the bride, and the New Jerusalem are presented together within the same prophetic narrative.
If the marriage had not yet come, why does Revelation say, "The marriage of the Lamb is come"?
If the bride is identified with the New Jerusalem, then the question of the New Jerusalem's fulfillment must also be considered in that covenant context.
The Timing of the Promises
Revelation repeatedly emphasizes the nearness of the things it describes.
"The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass."
— Revelation 1:1
"For the time is at hand."
— Revelation 1:3
Near the conclusion, Christ says:
"Behold, I come quickly."
— Revelation 22:12
And again:
"Surely I come quickly."
— Revelation 22:20
These statements should be taken seriously when determining the timeframe of Revelation's fulfillment.
Jesus gives a similarly explicit timeframe in the Olivet Discourse:
"This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled."
— Matthew 24:34
Therefore, when we encounter prophetic language in Revelation concerning the coming of Christ, judgment, the end of the old order, the marriage of the Lamb, and the New Jerusalem, we should not automatically move those events thousands of years into the future.
We must first account for the timeframe Scripture itself provides.
The Better Covenant
Hebrews gives us another important piece of the picture.
"The mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises."
— Hebrews 8:6
The writer then contrasts the old covenant with the new covenant and quotes Jeremiah 31 as the promise being fulfilled through Christ.
This matters because Jeremiah's promise was not merely that God would someday make another covenant in an indefinite future. The New Testament explicitly applies Jeremiah's promised new covenant to the work of Christ.
Hebrews then tells believers:
"Ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem."
— Hebrews 12:22
Notice the tense.
It does not say merely, "You will someday come."
It says: "Ye are come."
The believers addressed by Hebrews were already participating in the heavenly covenant reality.
The End of the Old Covenant Age
Jesus' warnings concerning Jerusalem and the Temple must also be considered in their historical setting.
The destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in AD 70 brought the old covenant's visible center to an end. Jesus had repeatedly warned that judgment was coming upon that generation, and Matthew 24 connects the fulfillment of His prophetic discourse with the generation to whom He was speaking.
From a Full Preterist perspective, AD 70 therefore represents not the destruction of God's Kingdom, but the public judgment and removal of the old covenant order that had been passing away.
The new covenant was not destroyed by that judgment.
It was revealed more fully through it.
What, Then, Is Our Hope?
The hope of the Christian is therefore not simply that God will someday begin dwelling with His people.
The New Testament says that God has already drawn near through Christ.
It is not simply that a marriage ceremony will someday make Christ and His people one.
Revelation declares:
"The marriage of the Lamb is come."
It is not simply that believers will someday approach the heavenly Jerusalem.
Hebrews says:
"Ye are come unto… the heavenly Jerusalem."
And it is not simply that God's covenant people will someday become His people.
The new covenant declares:
"I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people."
The Full Preterist hope is therefore a present covenant reality grounded in the finished work of Christ.
We do not have to live as though God's greatest covenant promises remain perpetually postponed.
In Christ, God has made His dwelling with His people.
The Bridegroom has come.
The new covenant has been established.
The heavenly Jerusalem is the covenant reality into which believers have come.
The old covenant age has passed away.
And the life Christ gives is not merely a promise of a distant future— it is a reality experienced now.
That is why Full Preterism can be understood as A Better Hope.
Not because it invents a new hope, but because it takes seriously the New Testament's repeated declarations that Christ's covenant promises were being fulfilled, that the appointed time was near, and that believers had already entered into heavenly realities through Him.