Your distinction between symbolic entities and literal predicates isn’t biblically or literarily sustainable. Apocalyptic literature frequently employs symbolic agents executing symbolic actions — that’s part of the genre. You’re treating the actions as though they must have a one-to-one historical fulfillment, while still admitting the figures can be symbolic. But that split is artificial.
You admit the merchants could be symbolic, yet demand that their becoming rich must be literal. That’s inconsistent. Symbolic characters performing symbolic actions is basic to the apocalyptic form. Your insistence that the predicate must remain literal while the subject may not be is arbitrary and not reflective of how biblical apocalyptic functions.
What I’m saying is that the symbolism in Revelation communicates real historical fulfillment in an hyperbolic and symbolic format—and that’s exactly what Preterism affirms. But if you reject a Preterist framework, especially the approach of interpreting Revelation through the lens of the Olivet Discourse, then Revelation becomes unanchored. Its prophecies, like revelation 17-18 can be applied to anything, at any time, like Protestant liberalism, or the USA, or Islam, etc…….
As for your use of Britannica’s apocalyptic definition, I agree — the Olivet Discourse contains apocalyptic elements. That’s exactly why we should expect figurative language, visionary symbolism, and stylized exaggeration. The genre allows for literary flexibility because it’s not straightforward historical narrative — it communicates real things through heightened imagery.
I see that you didn’t provide what the merchants represent, other than merchants, and how this flexible symbol, in your estimation, becomes “flexibly” wealthy, which can hardly be promoted as
anchored by any stretch of the imagination. And while you’re at it, tell us why, in preterism, the temple in Revelation 11 doesn’t fall under this “flexible symbolism” with “symbolic action”?
Actually, preterism and futurism are remiss in adhering to one of the most essential
anchors that help us interpret Revelation, namely the truth that the book represents Christ’s mediation of the New Covenant. We are the temple of God in this age (1 Corinthians 3:16). In Chapter 1, Christ is depicted wearing the accouterments of a high priest amid the seven candlesticks, which illustrates the
antitype of the “daily” done under the Old Covenant (Revelation 1:13). We know (or at least Historicists know) that Christ did away with the Old Covenant
when he offered his body as the first fruits and anointed the heavenly sanctuary on the seventieth week, conveyed in Daniel 9. So, even if Revelation was given to John before 70 AD, which the best scholars have debunked, it doesn’t matter because Christ had already done away with the Old Covenant some 40 years before 70 AD (Daniel 9:24; 1 Corinthians 15:23; Hebrews 10:9-10). Consequently, the temple in Chapter 11 cannot be LITERAL as in the renderings of preterism and futurism. It seems preterists only hold to their hyperbolic and symbolic interpretation when it suits their fallacious doctrine. Historicists hold the best hermeneutic insofar as they maintain that Revelation’s prophecies pertain to the New Covenant age, not the past age under the Old Covenant, as preterists hold, or a return to the Old Covenant, as in futurism.
I was contemplating as to what was the best expression to use concerning the revelation of the merchants and you helped. The issue of the merchants is not unlike that of the temple; the merchants are an
anchor that vindicates the Historicist’s hermeneutic and exposes the other eschatological presuppositions as fuel fit for the fire (1 Corinthians 3:13). Sorry, but prominent proponents of preterism like Ken Gentry and creator of the website
Revelation Revolution, Daniel Morais, interpret the “merchants” as
literal merchants and their enrichment as the accumulation of
literal gold and silver.
When confronted with the historical and hermeneutical hurdles of trying to interpret the harlot Babylon as Jerusalem in Christ’s time, Gentry tries to tie the prophecy to the temple wealth and the land of Judah, with his strange interpretation that “the merchants of the earth.” He thinks preterism has a superior understanding of the noun “earth” as being restricted to the land of Judah. (As Paul prophesied, we are living in the land of fables in our time.) However, this is countered by the evidence that the church in Laodicea is condemned for being lukewarm and for thinking they are rich and increased in goods. So, we have the very audience in John’s time informed that the church in Laodicea conveys the very imagery of the prophecy against the harlot, which supports the idea that “earth” in Revelation 18 must be understood the same way it is when Christ says his Father’s will be done on “earth.” They are the same word. And one has to be blind not to see that we live in the zeitgeist of the church in Laodicea, which supports my published work. I guess it takes that same kind of blindness to think Christ is reigning now! It takes the same crazy thinking to believe Christ reigns WITH a fallen Church! The Church is presented without blemish to Christ, undefiled,
2 Corinthians 11:
1 Would to God ye could bear with me a little in my folly: and indeed bear with me.
2 For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
Ephesians 5
27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.
Remember, in Matthew 25 the brides’ maids who have oil went into the marriage supper, at the separation of the wheat from the tares. They meet Christ in the air, separated from the foolish virgins and the goats.
As for the OD, thanks for acknowledging it has apocalyptic tendencies, which allows for
literary flexibility concerning temporal matters, like Daniel 9 and other chapters, as well as the Revelation of Christ.
