Astronomy's Mass Confusion (Short Version)

The Missing Mass Problem & Dark Matter

The core challenge in modern astronomy, often called the "missing mass" problem, arose when observations showed that the visible matter in the universe--stars, gas, and dust--couldn't account for the observed gravitational effects. Early studies by Jan Oort and Fritz Zwicky in the 1930s indicated that galaxies and galaxy clusters required significantly more mass than could be seen to prevent them from flying apart. This discrepancy was dramatically confirmed by Vera Rubin and Kent Ford in the 1960s and 70s, whose detailed plots of galactic rotation curves showed that stars on the outer edges of galaxies were orbiting unexpectedly fast.

The Dark Matter Hypothesis & Its Critics

To reconcile these observations with the established laws of gravity (Newton's and Einstein's), astronomers postulated the existence of dark matter--a hypothetical, invisible substance with gravitational force but no electromagnetic interaction. This became a mathematical "fudge factor" to make the equations match the observations. The current consensus holds that approximately 96% of the universe is composed of unseen components (dark matter and dark energy), with ordinary atomic matter making up only about 4%. However, despite decades of searching, scientists have found no direct evidence for the exotic particles required by the dark matter hypothesis, leading critics to view it as an unproven, ad hoc solution.

The Alternative: Plasma Cosmology

The root of this "mass confusion" is a scientific blind spot: the reliance on a gravity-only paradigm. An alternative approach, plasma cosmology, acknowledges that over 99.9% of the universe is plasma, a highly electrically charged state of matter. The universe's large-scale structure and dynamics, including the fast-moving outer parts of galaxies, are driven not solely by gravity but by powerful electromagnetic forces like electric currents and fields. The rotational anomalies attributed to dark matter are naturally explained by plasma dynamics, offering a testable physical solution without resorting to imaginary mass.

Full article here.

Astronomy's Mass Confusion

The Plasma Blindspot

Astronomers have long struggled with a huge discrepancy. That is, the universe's visible components (i.e. stars, gas, dust, galaxies) do not provide enough gravitational pull to explain the observed motions of individual galaxies or vast clusters of galaxies. On a scale as small as the Solar System, no problem. The long-proven math of gravity's equations is sufficient, trustworthy, and accurate. But at the larger scales, the gravity-only ideal begins to fall apart. Since the force of gravity accompanies mass, then this discrepancy is perceived as a "missing mass" problem. In other words, there seems to be a lot of mass that is undetectable, yet providing gravity. At first this was thought to be objects (e.g. like planets) that don't produce their own light. 

The motions observed infer this "missing mass." This anomaly was first quantified in the 1930s and led to the hypothesis of dark matter. Today, dark matter remains an ad hoc "fudge factor" and purely a mathematical construct added to Isaac Newton's or Albert Einstein's gravity equations just so the results of the math match the observed motions. But there is still yet no direct detection of such matter despite decades of relentless search and billions of dollars worth of research grants and equipment thrown at it! It is truly still yet... "dark."

Critics of dark matter argue this kind of "scientific" (mathematical) approach piles hypothetical objects on top unproven assumptions. What assumptions? Mainly that gravity is the only force shaping our universe. But any alternative explanations or hypotheses are usually "filtered out" by the adherents to the consensus Standard Model of the Big Bang, whether actual scientists or science news writers. Some of the critics, even though they are PhD scientists and astronomers, have even been black-balled from scientific journals and/or from using the big telescopes (see particularly, Dr. Halton Arp in his books, Quasars, Redshifts, and Controversies and Seeing Red). But one particular alternate theory that is like the elephant in the living room is electromagnetic plasma dynamics (i.e. plasma cosmology). It offers a testable resolution without invoking exotic make-believe dark matter. But it does question the prevailing underlying assumptions of a gravity-only universe.

Early Hints: Redshift, Jan Oort, & the Milky Way's Disc (1930s)

Dutch astronomer, Jan Oort pioneered the issue while studying stars near the Sun. He used stellar spectra to measure the velocities of stars perpendicular to the galactic plane. What, you say?! Yeah, that sounds like a foreign language to most people. But it actually can be understood easily enough. Bear with me and you'll see.

You already know when you feed a light beam from your window through a prism you get rainbows on the wall; a spectrum of colors ranging from deep red to violet. However, this rainbow, if it is sharply focused, is crossed by many thin, dark lines known as "absorption lines." These occur because atoms in the Sun's cooler outer layers "absorb" specific wavelengths (colors) of light coming from the hotter interior. These lines directly correspond to the energy levels of electrons in particular elements. This is a really amazing thing! A gift, you might even say. Why? Well, have you ever wondered how scientists know what the Sun is made of? This is how. Each element listed in the Periodic Table of Elements leaves a unique set of absorption lines, acting like a fingerprint. Also, by contrast, if those same elements are heated up in the lab until they emit light themselves, and we pass that light through a prism, they produce bright "emission lines" at the very same wavelengths as the dark absorption lines.

So, by recognizing these absorption lines unique to  hydrogen, we know that there is hydrogen in the Sun's atmosphere absorbing some of the Sun's light before it reaches us. With this understanding, astronomers then turned their prisms (spectrometers) to starlight, and discovered the same kind of thing. The stars are not all like the Sun. There are different kinds, emitting and absorbing different elements in different quantities.

But there's a bit more. You have experienced how when a police car goes by you with siren blaring, how the sound of the siren changes from a high pitch to a low pitch, right? This effect is called the Doppler shift (named after Christian Doppler, who proposed it in 1842). Because the siren is moving relative to you, the sound wave coming from the siren is getting crunched together as it approaches, so it is a higher pitch. As it passes by, the sound wave coming from the siren is getting stretched out, so it is a lower pitch. 

The same thing can happen to light. For instance, a common absorption line of hydrogen occurs at 656.3 nanometers (don't worry about it). This line is called the "hydrogen alpha" line, or H-alpha. If we see this line, we know we are looking at hydrogen. However, if the object in space emitting this light is moving away from us at a high speed, this hydrogen line might be measured to be 660 nanometers instead (stretched). This is a longer wavelength, or a slower frequency, like the siren moving away from us. And since the redder light in the rainbow is a longer wavelength, we say the H-alpha line is "redshifted" (i.e. stretched). If the object emitting the light was coming toward us, it would be shifted toward the bluer colors. Thus it would be said to be "blue shifted" (i.e. crunched together).

Armed with this, you are now ready to understand how Jan Oort made his measurements. He measuring the Doppler shifts (redshifts) in star light spectra. This gave him the implied velocities of stars. He was particularly interested in the ones that were moving perpendicular (90°) to the Milky Way's galactic plane (i.e. its disc shape). Think of the galaxy as a pancake with a slightly thicker middle. He then calculated the mass density needed to keep those stars from escaping the Milky Way. Kind of like figuring out how thick a trampoline surface must be for you to jump as high as you just did. After doing the math, he discovered the visible matter only adds up to about half of what is needed to keep the stars from escaping. And since we don't see stars escaping he concluded the disk of the Milky Way must contain twice as much mass as we are able to see.

This local "missing mass" in the Milky Way disc became known as the Oort Limit.

Fritz Zwicky & the Coma Cluster of Galaxies (1933)

Independently, Fritz Zwicky applied what is called "the virial theorem" to the Coma Cluster of galaxies, measuring high relative velocities of its 1000+ galaxies via their redshifts.

The virial theorem was developed in 1870 by Rudolf Clausius. It is a simple but powerful idea in physics and astronomy. It says that for any group of things (like stars or galaxies) held together by gravity and not flying apart or collapsing, there's a balance between how fast everything is moving and how strong gravity is pulling. In other words, it states that when a system is stable, the total kinetic energy (energy of motion) is equal to half the gravitational potential energy, but with the opposite sign. Basically, that means if gravity is pulling everything in very strongly, then the objects in question must be moving very fast to keep the system from collapsing. If the gravity is too weak, or the objects are too fast, then the system would fly apart.

Imagine a swarm of bees. If they're buzzing fast but not escaping the swarm, something strong must be holding them close. That swarm is the Coma Cluster, and the individual bees are the galaxies.

So, Zwicky's data showed that the Coma Cluster of galaxies should be flying apart or have already flown apart eons ago, unless something exerting far more gravitational force is at work than visible mass could account for. In fact, 400x more! He proposed "Dunkle Materie" ("dark matter" in German). He proposed that these were unseen bodies too dim to detect but still yet gravitationally potent. Using Newton's laws, astronomers could compute the required mass of the new "dark matter" distribution.

Vera Rubin & Kent Ford's Rotation Curves: A Decisive Anomaly (1960s-1970s)

Advances in spectroscopy allowed Vera Rubin (the person, not the new telescope) and Kent Ford to plot precise rotation curves for galaxies, starting with the Andromeda Galaxy (M31). This graph shows orbital velocity on the y-axis, and radial distance from the galaxy's center on the x-axis. Kepler's motion laws and Newton's gravitational laws predict the velocity of the objects orbiting the center of the galaxy should decline as distance increases away from the center of the galaxy. Just like the Solar System planets; close-by Mercury zips around the Sun fast (47.9 km/s), while distant Neptune is much slower (5.4 km/s). But instead of finding this as expected, Rubin and Ford discovered the velocity curves were flat! In other words, the stars at the edge of the visible galaxy were moving at nearly the same speed as the stars near the center of the galaxy! This made no sense. Visibly, we see that most of the stars are near the center, and as you travel outward, there are fewer and fewer stars near the edge. So how could she explain this? It contradicted the well-established equations of Newton (and Einstein) and violated Kepler's laws of orbital motion. This discovery shook the very foundations of astronomy and cosmology.

This discrepancy she discovered demanded 5 to 10x more mass in extended invisible halo far beyond the apparent edge of the galaxy. She argued, it was either that, or a breakdown of Newtonian gravity and Kepler's laws at galactic scales! Astronomers chose to keep gravity and propose a missing mass.

Dark Matter: A Purely Mathematical Solution

Astronomers preserved Newton's laws by postulating this dark matter. This matter had to be non-baryonic (i.e. not made of normal atomic matter). Why? Because it wasn't emitting an type of radiation. It must be electromagnetically inert because it didn't reveal its presence in this manner. They proposed imaginary particles or objects, and the candidates multiplied:

• MACHOs (Massive Compact Halo Objects): brown dwarfs? neutron stars? black holes?
• WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles): non-baryonic exotic particles.
• Variants: Hot (HDM, e.g., neutrinos), Cold (CDM), Warm (WDM), Self-Interacting (SIDM), Fuzzy (FDM), etc.
• FAIRIE DUST (Fabricated Ad hoc Inventions Repeatedly Invoked in Efforts to Defend Untenable Scientific Theories).

OK, that last one is made up to exaggerate a point regarding the rest of the list. Thank you, Dr. Donald E. Scott, an electrical engineer from his book, The Electric Sky. But after nearly 60 years, searches yield no definitive proof. MACHOs, which are deemed to be real baryonic objects (made of atoms), account for less than 5% of the required (inferred) mass. WIMPs remain undetected and only imaginary. Princeton cosmologist Jim Peebles called this situation an embarrassment, referring to the fact that the most dominant matter in the universe are merely hypothetical and not real. 

And if you accept Big Bang cosmology, which requires a flat geometry and structured formation, things get worse! You then have to believe about 23% of the universe is dark matter, 73% dark energy (more ad hoc not covered in this article; even weirder; don't ask), leaving ordinary atomic matter at about 4% of the entire universe! Fully 96% of the universe is said to be unseen and unmeasured! This is what the gravity-only model gives you. Shocking, yes? It should be. Instead, it is touted as "scientific," and you will be labeled a kook if you doubt it. For, it is reasoned, how could the majority of all those astronomers, astrophysicists, cosmologists, and mathematicians be wrong? They're smarter than you!

But seriously folks, is gravity the only tool in the astrophysics toolbox? In modern astronomy, apparently so. But is that the only tool in the real world's toolbox? Resoundingly no! One particular tool is being grossly neglected.

Mordechai Milgrom & MOND

The reliance on invisible made-up dark matter prompted scrutiny from many scientists. MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics, proposed by Mordechai Milgrom in 1983, tweaks Newton's equations in order to fit the rotation curves without the use of dark matter. Though empirically successful for galaxies, his theory struggles with clusters and the rest of large-scale motions in cosmology.

An Alternative: Plasma

But what if the underlying assumptions were insufficient? In other words, what if gravity wasn't the only major force shaping the universe. A deeper critique targets the gravity-only paradigm and for a good reason. For instance, we know the universe is about 99.9% plasma; even gravity-only scientists say this. But what is plasma? Well, in this case, it's not the stuff in your blood. It was, however, named after that very thing by Irving Langmuir in 1928. But glad you asked about plasma. This might take a minute. Hang in there. You've made it this far!

Plasma is sometimes said to be the fourth state of matter. The other three you are very familiar with here on Earth. They are, of course, solid, liquid, and gas. Think of H₂O in its states, ice, water, steam, and you have a good picture. But the fourth state is plasma. There may even be a fifth one at extremely cold temperatures called the Bose-Einstein condensate. Yeah, that's another story. But here on Earth, the three states are common, and the fourth state is indeed, rare. It's not unknown, however. For example, lightning is plasma. Welding arcs are plasma. The aurorae are plasma. Even neon signs and fluorescent light tubes are lit up with plasma. Or, you might be thinking of the toy we all love to play with... the plasma globe (see pic at the top of this article). When you touch the glass, the electrical plasma filament currents find easier paths to ground from the high voltage ball in the middle of the globe to your fingers. And if you hold your fingers on it, they snake around like they are alive!

What is this stuff really? Well, first off, the Sun is entirely a plasma ball. So, if someone asks you what plasma is, you can just point to the Sun. Every star you see at night... fully plasma. I know you've always heard the stars and the Sun were "balls of gas" but this is not accurate no matter what Pumbaa says to Timon. In The Lion King, after Timon tells Pumbaa that the stars are fireflies, Pumbaa responds, "Oh, gee. I always thought they were balls of gas burning billions of miles away." But this is not true. They are not gas (third state), they are plasma (fourth state). Would you point to an ice cube and say it is water? No. So, it is not entirely accurate. There's much more.

But in fact, more than 99.9% of everything you see in space is plasma. Every time you read "gas" or "dust" in articles on astronomy, I want you to understand, this is not accurate. It is not gas. It is not dust. It is plasma. Nebulae are not "gas clouds"; they're "plasma clouds." Some are in "glow mode" and some are in "dark mode," but they are still plasma. More on that mode stuff later.

Plasma may start out as a mere gas, just like steam may start out as water. And just like ice, water, and steam have extremely different properties, so plasma as compared to gas. But as voltage is applied to a gas and increased, the atoms of the gas get excited, bump into each other harder and harder, until they can no longer hold onto their electrons. This is called "ionization." When this happens, electrical current begin to flow through the gas. When this happens, the "gas" no longer acts like a gas, but something else. If it lights up, it looks like it's alive.

Plasma has three distinct modes: dark mode (current is flowing but it doesn't glow), glow mode (current is sufficient enough to cause it to light up), and arc mode (current is so high that the plasma becomes an extremely fantastic conductor of electricity). In arc mode, things get super weird and unpredictable. That's lightning. How unpredictable is it? Plasma plays by a different set of rules that are nothing like a gas, a liquid, or a solid. So, it is definitely wrong to refer to it as simply "an ionized gas." It's no longer gas. You wouldn't refer to ice as "hard water" would you? No.

Another weird characteristic of plasma is called the pinch affect. This occurs because the current flow through the plasma creates magnetic fields that squeeze the filament of current inward. Because the magnetic field circles around the current, the plasma's own magnetism exerts an inward force, compressing the charged particles toward the center of the filament. This self-constriction increases the plasma's density and temperature, sometimes forming bright, narrow strands of arcs. In the lab and in cosmic plasmas alike, this process (sometimes called the Z-pinch) helps explain the thin, rope-like structures seen in lightning bolts, solar flares, and interstellar filaments. This pinch can become so intense, it crushes even metal together! Some lightning rods, after being hit, show this crushed characteristic. And if there happens to be more than one current filament to form in the plasma, those filaments attract one another and draw inward and can start rotate around each other. We can even see this filament twisting in space, in plasmas like the "Veil Nebula."

In this nebula, those plasma filaments twirl around each other and stretch about 110 light-years! And believe it or not, though it is extremely faint, this famous nebula stretches about 3° across the sky. That's about 6x the size of the Moon in the sky!

Plasma & Electromagnetism

Maybe you remember in your physics class, that when electrical current flows through a conductor (e.g. a wire), it produces this magnetic field. And perhaps your class made small electromagnets as an experiment. And the opposite is also true. When a conductor is passed through a magnetic field, it produces a current flow in that conductor.

Now here's the kicker, and one of the main points of this article. You cannot have a magnetic field without electricity. But modern-day astronomy does. And you can't have electricity without a magnetic field. Modern-day astronomy hardly takes electricity into account at all. But because you cannot have one without the other, this is why this force was named "electromagnetism." It was once thought they were separate forces (magnetism vs electricity), but we now know they are one and the same force. You might be saying, "Yeah, but I have a natural permanent magnet that doesn't produce electricity!" But in reality, that magnet you have was magnetized by the flow of electricity somewhere in the Earth at one time in its history. The magnet just "remembers" it.

Think of speakers and mics. Believe it or not they are the same device! In one, you force current an audio signal (electrical) through the speaker wires and this causes the diaphragm of the speaker to move back and forth because it has a magnet attached to it). This produces the sound waves you enjoy. But mics are the opposite. You speak, making sounds waves, that hit the mic's diaphragm, which is attached to a magnet surrounded by a coil of wires. The movement of the magnet through the wires, produces electric current in them. In fact, you can use a speaker as a mic, and a mic as a speaker; old intercom systems did just that. They're physically the same thing. One is just made to do its job a little better than the other. 

The same holds true for motors and generators. They are physically the same. If you put current in the wires, the motor will rotate. Or if you manually rotate it the wires will produce a current.

I said all that to say this: The amazing blind spot of astronomy is plasma's electromagnetism, which, by definition, is in all plasma. And since plasma makes up 99.9% of every thing in space, surely it plays a more than vital role in the way things work. By the way, electromagnetism is 1000 trillion trillion trillion times more powerful than gravity! That's a 1 followed by 39 zeros! It looks like this:

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

So, do you think it is possible for the electromagnetism of plasma to have any say in the way things operate in space? Well, duh, yes. But you know what? Modern-day astronomy and astrophysics do not give it even a hair of consideration, almost to the point of completely ignoring it. How did this happen? It's quite a tale, and certainly unbelievable.

Kristian Birkeland & the Aurorae

You might be told, "But space is a vacuum, and vacuums are insulators, and therefore electricity cannot flow through the vacuum of space." This is false because its first premise is false. Space is certainly not a vacuum. It is a very thin plasma.

In the early 1900s, Norwegian scientist Kristian Birkeland (1867-1917) proposed that the aurora borealis (the "Northern Lights") was caused by electric currents flowing from the Sun into Earth's magnetic field. His story/adventure is fantastically told in the book, The Northern Lights by Lucy Jago. Birkeland first made this link between the Sun and Earth because he noticed when sunspots were abundant and/or large on the Sun, Earth's aurorae were especially active. This was a very bold idea at the time when most scientists dismissed space as an empty vacuum. His experiments with magnetized spheres, or terrellas, recreated auroral patterns in miniature form in his lab. But his electric-space theory was widely ridiculed, mainly by Sydney Chapman, a highly respected British geophysicist and mathematician. Chapman, one of the leading authorities on Earth's upper atmosphere and magnetic phenomena, rejected Birkeland's proposal. Instead, he argued that the aurorae were produced entirely by processes within Earth's atmosphere even though Birkeland's data showed the undeniable correlation between the Sun's activity and the Earth's aurorae. But Chapman's popularity caused Birkeland's work to be marginalized and widely ridiculed for the entirety of his life. Then, fifty years after Birkeland's death, the U.S. satellite Triad, in 1967, accidentally confirmed Birkeland's hypothesis by detecting huge electric currents flowing along the direction of Earth's magnetic field. These currents were later named Birkeland currents, finally validating his once-mocked vision of an electrically connected Sun and Earth!

But did the scientists say it was an electrical current that connected them? Nope. Instead, even today, they call it "the solar wind," when it is not a wind at all! And notice, it was not "bad science" or "pseudo-science" that caused Birkeland to be ridiculed his whole life. Instead, "consensus science" was the critic.

Hannes Alfven & MHD

Hannes Alfven (1908-1995) is known as "the father of modern plasma physics," and rightly so. He was a Swedish physicist who won the 1970 Nobel Prize for his work with MHD (magnetohydrodynamics). I know! I can't pronounce it either. He was the pioneer who revealed electromagnetism as the dominant force in the cosmos. His work transformed our understanding of space, stars, and the universe. There is also a plasma phenomena that bears his name; Alfven Waves, which he discovered in 1942. In the 1940s, he invented his MHD theory that eventually won him the Nobel Prize. In the 1950s he developed cosmical electrodynamics describing plasma in space. In 1958 he explained that auroras were indeed caused by electrical currents coming from the Sun, even though they were still not confirmed or named, Birkeland currents at the time. By the 1960s he had discovered another odd characteristic of plasma called "double layers," and proposed that this should even be classified as an astronomical object. Then, the latter part of his life he spent critiquing the Big Bang, the imaginary dark matter, and cautioning against the misuse of his MHD as a full description of what plasma does in space.

But his warnings were ignored.

Alfven would roll over in his grave if he saw how MHD is still being used today. In his lifetime, he regretted its widespread misuse because it ignores key features in real plasmas. In his 1977 paper, "Electric currents in the solar atmosphere" and following lectures, he emphasized that MHD is valid only under specific and ideal conditions, but that a full description of plasma's behavior must incorporate full electrodynamics. He taught that MHD was a tool, not the whole toolbox, lest physicists miss the electric currents driving the universe.

But today, they still miss it!

You can see how Alfven's cautions and ideas have been ignored in every single article about space news. You will never hear plasma mentioned. Instead, you will only hear the words, "gravity," "gas," "dust," and "magnetic fields." Yet today's astrophysics has magnetic fields without electricity, something that is impossible in the real world. The list of abuse can be shown to include:

• Treating all cosmic plasma as a perfectly conducting fluid with "frozen-in" magnetic fields (something Alfven himself said he regretted coming up with). Alfven intended MHD to merely approximate large-scale magnetic behavior in conducting fluids, not space plasmas, which are fundamentally different!
• Applying MHD to collisionless space plasma (99.9% of the universe!) when MHD is valid only when collisions dominate, like in space plasma.
• Erasing electric fields completely, treating them as negligible, or screening them out, when MHD's electric fields were explicitly included in the full theory.
• Smoothing over plasma's double-layers, currents, particle acceleration, as being central to plasma's behavior in space, and treating it as a mere "inert gas" with "frozen-in" magnetic fields.

By being blind to the electromagnetism shaping the universe, astronomers exclude it in simulating galaxy formation, star birth, black hole jets, and cosmic filaments. They further assume infinite conductivity (another misuse of MHD), ignore electric fields (despite plasma being made of charged particles!), and treat plasma like a "neutral gas" with some kind of magnetic garnish applied for flavor.

What they are missing because of this blind spot:

• Birkeland currents are what power galactic rotation & form spiral arms, all without dark matter.
• Double layers which accelerate particles & explode in solar/stellar flares.
• Pinch instabilities, which can form stars, jets, and dense cores. No need for the physical impossibility of "collapsing gas" to form stars.
• Electric fields along B-lines, which drive aurorae and cosmic rays
• Collisionless shocks which can shape supernova remnants, and the heliospheres of stars.

The things in the above list are not exotic (like dark matter). They are observed in labs here on Earth, seen in space, and reproduced in simulations that take electromagnetism and plasma's nature into consideration.

Alfven even said, "The difference between a plasma and a gas is as great as between a conductor and an insulator."  He also said, "The use of MHD to describe cosmic plasmas must be done with great caution, because real plasmas are not continuous fluids, but collections of charged particles whose behavior can differ fundamentally from that predicted by fluid equations."

Star Formation

Consider a practical application. We are told by the current theory of stellar evolution that the interstellar medium is "gas." We are constantly being told that stars form from "gravitational collapse of molecular gas clouds." But this is impossible physically. First of all, if space is a vacuum, as they insist, then how is it that gas collapses on itself? This violates the most fundamental law of physics regarding gas. that is, Graham's Law of Effusion. This law states simply is a statement of why different gases spread out naturally at different rates; but nevertheless, they naturally spread out unless they are confined in a container. So in a vacuum, gas spreads out.

Also, if a gas is compressed as they say, by gravity, it heats up. This is the first law of thermodynamics. And as it heats up, it expands further.. spreads out more and faster. If you could somehow keep forcibly collapsing it, it will explode (think diesel)... which is a catastrophic "spreading out."

So, how can gases collapse to form stars? They can't. There are too many real physical impediments to this story. 

But what about plasma? Remember the Z-pinch thing? Rather than relying solely on imaginary gravitational collapse of a gas in a vacuum, cosmic electric currents flowing through filamentary plasma in the interstellar medium generate powerful self-constricting magnetic fields. These Z-pinches rapidly compress plasma and embedded dust into dense, hot cores along current axes which could achieve incredible fusion-high temperatures, and could easily trigger star formation. In space, observed protostellar jets, hourglass nebulae, and filamentary structures in star-forming regions align with laboratory Z-pinch dynamics, suggesting electromagnetism, not gravity, is the driving force of star birth. Many nebulae in space show this hourglass shape that most likely is a Z-pinch.

Timeline of the Missing Mass Saga

Year	Astronomer/Development	Key Observation	Response
1930s	Jan Oort	Stellar motions in Milky Way require 2x visible mass	Local disk discrepancy
1933	Fritz Zwicky	Coma Cluster velocities demand 400x visible mass	"Dark matter" coined
1960s-1970s	Rotation curves (e.g., Rubin & Ford)	Flat velocities in spirals	Massive dark halos
1983	Mordechai Milgrom	Proposes MOND	Modify gravity
Ongoing	Plasma models (Peratt et al.)	Electromagnetic forces fit data	No dark matter needed

Galaxy Rotation Considering Plasma

Now, back to the original problem of galaxy rotation and dark matter. Anthony Peratt, a plasma physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, employed three-dimensional, fully electromagnetic particle-in-cell simulations in the 1980s to model galaxy formation and dynamics within a plasma universe framework. By simulating interactions between massive, current-carrying Birkeland filaments (which are twisted plasma structures with currents up to 10¹⁸ amps!) these computations demonstrated how electromagnetic forces compress and reconfigure the plasma, forging elliptical, barred, and spiral galaxies without invoking dark matter. The pinch effect from self-generating magnetic fields not only produced observed morphologies of galaxies, synchrotron emissions, and HI distributions, but also yielded flat rotation curves, where orbital velocities remain constant with radius due to the filaments' azimuthal magnetic confinement, offering an electromagnetism-drive alternative to the gravity-only models.

Conclusion: Nothing Is Missing

Dark matter began as a fix for Newtonian discrepancies and evolved into cosmology's dominant component--all without tangible evidence. It safeguards gravity but at the cost of fabricating unobservable and exotic entities. Electromagnetic plasma dynamics, grounded in laboratory-tested physics, resolves galaxy rotation and structure formation straightforwardly. Newton's gravity works where applicable. But in plasma-dominated space, Maxwell, Lorentz, and Alfven reign. The "case of the missing matter" closes not with invisible gnomes and fairy tales, but by recognizing the right forces at play. Just plasma doing what plasma does and modern-day astronomy blind to it.

Dark matter isn't missing mass. It's the mass of evidence for electromagnetism that astronomy has chosen to ignore. Alfven didn't just predict it, he lived it. And the universe, glowing in plasma from auroras to quasars, is still trying to tell us:

It's electric.

David's Prayer & God's Humorous Deliverance

After David killed Goliath, King Saul loved him, for a great deliverance was won for the nation of Israel that day. But his admiration was short-lived. As soon as the maidens began singing of the victory and attributing to King Saul mere 1000s of dead enemy soldiers while crediting David with 10,000s, Saul became unreasonably jealous. No doubt this was due to his fear of losing his throne, for Yahweh had already rejected him and told him He was choosing someone better than him.

A number of events, in which Saul attempted to murder David himself, or put him in a precarious position such as to cause his death, had happened which, despite Saul's evil plans, ironically exalted David in the eyes of all Israel and Judah, and which stoked the fires of Saul's jealousy even more.

Finally, one night, Saul stationed men outside David's house to murder him in the morning, but Michal, David's wife and Saul's daughter, helped David escape through a window, even though she falsely blamed David to keep herself out of trouble with her dad. 

David fled to the prophet Samuel. Sometime during all this David wrote Psalm 59, for the title of the psalm reads, "For the choir director: A psalm of David, regarding the time Saul sent soldiers to watch David's house in order to kill him. To be sung to the tune 'Do Not Destroy!'"

The first 4 verses match the stated title's context perfectly: 

1 Rescue me from my enemies, O God. Protect me from those who have come to destroy me. 

2 Rescue me from these criminals; save me from these murderers. 

3 They have set an ambush for me. Fierce enemies are out there waiting, Lord, though I have not sinned or offended them. 

4 I have done nothing wrong, yet they prepare to attack me. Wake up! See what is happening and help me!

In that psalm, David prays something very interesting that gets fulfilled in a curiously strange and quite humerous way. He prays against his pursuers, saying in verse 11:

"Don't kill them, for my people soon forget such lessons; stagger them with your power, and bring them to their knees, O Lord our shield."

The answer to this prayer happens while David is with the prophet Samuel. For while he is safely there, Saul finds out and sends soldiers to arrest David but let's see what happens by reading 1Samuel 19:19-24:

19 When the report reached Saul that David was at Naioth in Ramah, 20 he sent troops to capture him. But when they arrived and saw Samuel leading a group of prophets who were prophesying, the Spirit of God came upon Saul’s men, and they also began to prophesy. 21 When Saul heard what had happened, he sent other troops, but they, too, prophesied! The same thing happened a third time. 22 Finally, Saul himself went to Ramah and arrived at the great well in Secu. "Where are Samuel and David?" he demanded. "They are at Naioth in Ramah," someone told him. 23 But on the way to Naioth in Ramah the Spirit of God came even upon Saul, and he, too, began to prophesy all the way to Naioth! 24 He tore off his clothes and lay naked on the ground all day and all night, prophesying in the presence of Samuel.

Thus, quite literally, God protected David from the murderous rage of King Saul by fulfilling David's words: "[not] kill[ing] them... [but by]... stagger[ing] them with [His] power, and bring[ing] them to their knees..."

Even in such life-threatening circumstances, the Lord is not without a sense of humor in His means of faithfully answering and delivering His own. 

Is Christianity Hard or Easy?

Who hasn't read these words from our Savior and not rejoiced especially during stressful times?

"Come here to Me, all who are growing weary to the point of exhaustion, and who have been loaded with burdens and are bending beneath their weight, and I alone will cause you to cease from your labor and take away your burdens and thus refresh you with rest. Take at once My yoke upon you and learn from Me, because I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find cessation from labor and refreshment for your souls, for My yoke is mild and pleasant, and My load is light in weight." (Matthew 11:28-30, WUESTNT)

I love the above expanded translation of the Greek by Kenneth S. Wuest (1893-1961), a Biblical Greek scholar. He really brings out the refreshing points from our Savior here. This passage sounds so pleasant to our ears in times of trouble. I've often turned to it for encouragement as I'm sure you have as well.

So, after reading these gracious words from Jesus' lips, how is it that we then turn around and say that life or Christianity is hard? After all, we also read this from Jesus:

..."If anyone is desiring to come after Me, let him forget self and lose sight of his own interests, and let him pick up his cross and carry it, and let him be taking the same road with Me that I travel, for whoever is desiring to save his soul-life shall ruin it, but whoever will pass a sentence of death upon his soul-life for My sake, shall find it. For what will a man be profited if he gain the whole world but forfeit his soul-life? Or, what shall a man give as an exchange for his soul-life? For the Son of Man is about to be coming in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He shall recompense to each one according to his manner of acting." (Matthew 16:24-27, WUESTNT; see also Mark 8:34-38; Luke 9:23-26)

"Pick up his cross and carry it," and "passing a sentence of death upon his soul-life" sound like contradictions to the previous passage describing Jesus' yoke as, "mild and pleasant... light in weight." In fact, Jesus' cross was too much for Him to bear Himself. He had to have help from a man from Cyrene named Simon (see Matthew 27:32; Mark 15:21; Luke 23:26). Picking up a cross and carrying it doesn't sound mild, pleasant, nor light in weight. How am I to carry this heavy cross on which I was to be crucified, on my own shoulders? How could this cross compare to a yoke of burden spoken of by Jesus that is mild, pleasant, and light? This compelled me to ask the Lord how to handle this seeming contradiction. I basically asked Him, "Is my walk with You supposed to be easy (rest, mild, pleasant, light) or hard (carrying a cross of death)?"

As usual, Jesus often answers a question with a question. It seemed to me He asked in my heart, "Why did I bear My cross?" That was an easy enough question to answer by even the most amateur of Christians, right? We say it all the time. I answered, "Why, You bore the sins of the world, Lord, on Your cross, in Your own body..." I paused, still quite puzzled. But a passage of Scripture quickly came up in my mind, and I found it in my Wuest translation and read it out loud:

"For to this very thing were you called [namely, to patient endurance in the case of unjust punishment], because Christ also suffered on your behalf, leaving behind for you a model to imitate, in order that by close application you might follow in His footprints; who never in a single instance committed a sin, and in whose mouth, after careful scrutiny, there was found not even craftiness; who when His heart was being wounded with an accursed sting, and when He was being made the object of harsh rebuke and biting, never retaliated, and who while suffering never threatened, but rather kept on delivering all into the keeping of the One who judges righteously; who Himself carried upon to the cross our sins in His body and offered Himself there as on an altar, doing this in order that we, having died with respect to our sins, might live with respect to righteousness, by means of whose bleeding stripe you were healed, for you were as sheep that are going astray and are wandering about, but now have been turned back to the Shepherd and [spiritual] Overseer of your souls. (1Peter 2:21-25, WUESTNT)

I hope after reading that your eyes opened to the answer! If not, I'll help you sum it up. Jesus went to the cross for other people's sins. And this is His example for us to follow. Why do I take up the cross of my death? For the same reason as Jesus; for other people's sins. Please don't take that the wrong way! We are not capable of dying in the place of other people's sins to save them like Jesus. That requires sinlessness, which no man or woman has ever had. Only one Man has achieved that, the Man, Jesus Christ. So, what does this mean then? It means that my cross to bear is putting up with other people's sins without offense. This is indeed a very heavy burden! You know this by experience. Most of the time, we put up with our own sins easily enough, justifying our failure or our weakness and depending upon Jesus to understand us when we fail and then depending upon His mercy and grace to put us back in right-standing with Him. But then we will turn around and condemn many other people for their sins, especially if their sin happened to hurt us in some way. Instead of following the road Jesus walked, when our "heart [is] being wounded with an accursed sting," or "when [we are] being made the object of harsh rebuke and biting" we retaliate, or at least threaten to retaliate. And if not that, we gossip to others about how appalling that other person's sins are. We pretend we are shocked that they can call themselves "a Christian" and behave like that! Behind their back we criticize them and make them look bad to other people because of their failure to measure up to our standard.

This is so far from what we are called to! This is indeed hard! Right? Well, hold on. Is it? 

At my workplace, my boss has a saying that he has lived by, and though it has a political overtone, it fits with this situation. He says in not so many words, "The Constitution of the United States does not guarantee freedom from offense. But we can choose to not be offended and then life gets so much easier." Amen. Do you see it now? I'll help you again...

Remember in the Garden of Gethsemane just before Jesus went to the cross? Jesus struggled under the stress of what He was going to do. He even asked God the Father to remove this burden from Him if it were possible. Yet after suffering so hard with this in the garden all night, He arose fully resolved to carry out His ultimate commission; go to the whipping post for our healing, and to the cross for our sins. He knew He was to suffer humiliation and excruciating pain in His physical body, and also the anguish of His soul when the sins of all of humanity were placed on Him on His cross. In other words, He knew He would suffer for other people's sins and it was going to hurt in every way possible. That's hard! But He had resolved to do so anyway. Praise Him!

But get this, dead men don't suffer, do they? Dead men don't get offended either, right? I saw the hard and the easy at the same time!

HARD: The struggle to make that once-and-for-all decision to bear with other people's sins and not be offended, but rather do it freely.

EASY: After that decision is made, it is easy to not take offense. Why? When you are not offended, you circumvent the pain. Instead, you are yoked to Jesus and go about setting the captives free instead of condemning them to hell for what they have done.

So, is Christianity hard or easy? It is hard to make what should be that one-time decision of bearing with other people's sins and offenses. But once you decide to do that, as my boss would say, "life gets so much easier." Indeed! Dead men aren't offended. Those supposed offenses roll off you like water off a duck's back in a rainstorm. You are no longer subject to being manipulated by narcissists or those who would feign emotion in order to control you.

So, stop being offended. Decide once and for all to "forget self and lose sight of [your] own interests." Once that is done (the hard part), then you will find that being yoked to Jesus is, indeed, a "cessation from labor" and "mild and pleasant, ...light in weight" (the easy part). Then in your day-by-day walk with Him, He will "cause you to cease from your labor and take away your burdens and thus refresh you with rest."

Amen!

My Journey In and Out of Darkness

The word “darkness” in the above title is my reference to a form of eschatology called full- or hyper-preterism. This form of eschatology teaches that all Biblical prophecy has been fulfilled in the events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. This includes the entire book of Revelation, the Second Coming of Christ, the Resurrection of the Dead, the Day of Judgement, the Millennium, and even the New Heaven and New Earth. How does one come to believe such a radical idea? I’ll tell you how it happened to me.

The Late Great Planet Earth Delusion

I was raised in a very common American Protestant home. My parents were hard-working and honest. I cannot remember a day in my life that I didn’t know Jesus Christ. I had accepted Him as my Savior at a very young age. I never strayed from belief in Him even as a teenager.

My default form of eschatology (study of the last days) was called premillennial dispensationalism, although I had no idea at the time that was its official name. This is probably the most popular form of eschatology in America. It teaches that we are probably the last generation before Jesus Christ returns to secretly rapture away Christians, and before the rise of the Antichrist, the onset of the 7-year Great Tribulation, the Battle of Armageddon, and the Second Coming, etc.

I particularly became interested in this in high school when I read a book by Hal Lindsey called, The Late Great Planet Earth. The details were further fleshed out by the writings of men such as J.N. Darby, C.I. Scofield, Clarence Larkin, and more Hal Lindsey books. I particularly loved my Scofield Bible with all its footnotes in this regard. But as I grew up, graduated college, got married, started a family, and was working a job, and even led Bible study groups on the subject, I began to become disenchanted with it. There were so many failed predictions made by its proponents. And even though it was (and still is) very popular, its finer points are very complex and difficult to grasp.

Postmillennialism Slide

About this time, I ran into an elderly man at church who happened to no longer believe this way. He called himself a “postmillennial partial preterist.” He believed, unlike me, that Jesus would return after the Millennium (the thousand years of Revelation 20; thus the prefix "post-"). He was a “partial” preterist because he believed Jesus came back in some form in AD 70 to judge Jerusalem but would return in bodily form in the future.

This man introduced me to the “time statements” of Scripture. The “this generation” of Matthew 24:34, the “some of you will not taste death until…” of Matthew 16:27-28, and the “shortly come to pass… the time is at hand” of Revelation 1:1-3 are all startling when you read them together. He pointed out that time statements like these force us to believe that Jesus came back in some form in the first century AD, the time in which the New Testament was being written.

The Internet was just becoming a thing at that time and, being intrigued by this man’s belief, I did some searching and accidentally ran across a full preterist website managed by Edward Stevens. I had no idea he was a "full" preterist but I was interested in buying a book of his called, What Happened in 70 AD? So, I phoned him and ordered the book. I was not ready for his understanding of Luke 21:20-22 which says, “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies… these are the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled.” Stevens emphasized that “all things which are written” meant the entirety of the Bible’s prophecies. I thought he was crazy. How could the Second Coming of Christ, the Resurrection, the Day of Judgment, and the coming of the New Heaven and Earth have already taken place?! Stevens maintained this had all occurred at the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70! I took this to my postmillennial friend at church. He, too, thought Stevens was crazy. But a close friend of mine came to believe Stevens was correct and started arguing Stevens’ points with me.

My first rejection of full preterism was that all my study Bibles showed the book of Revelation to have been written in AD 96, so how could it be a prophecy about the events surrounding AD 70? I even asked Stevens, and he pointed me to a book written by Dr. Kenneth Gentry called, Before Jerusalem Fell. This book argues that Revelation was written before AD 70. At this point, I became seriously intrigued.

Full Preterism Trap

It didn’t take long until every Scripture and every parable Jesus told looked like a reference to AD 70. I joined forums (there was no Facebook at that time) and discovered even more books. Another one that greatly affected me was written in 1878 by James Stuart Russel, called The Parousia. More contemporary authors on this subject were Max King, Don K. Preston, Samuel Frost, Tim King, John Noe, and David Green. I discovered a full-preterist pastor, David Curtis, and was greatly interested in a few active bloggers, Jason Bradfield and Todd Dennis. I even helped Todd Dennis digitize The Parousia for his website (The Preterist Archive). Even books by partial preterists like Gary DeMar helped bolster my newfound belief. I attended a full-preterist conference two years in a row in Sparta, NC, where I met Preston, Frost, DeMar, and Noe.

I, too, like every other full preterist, became enamored with the “time statements.” If you pointed out to me how crazy it was to believe that all Bible prophecy was fulfilled, I would just simply make you read the “time statements.” It is the “time statements” of Scripture that lead every single full preterist into full preterism and it is what keeps them there. I cannot emphasize this enough. I began to interpret (reinterpret) every single doctrine of Christianity through this filter. Every Scripture in the Bible was made to bow its knee to the “time statements.” But eventually, this is what started to bug me because it made me question all the fundamentals. For instance, was I to keep the sacrament of the Lord's Supper? After all, Paul wrote, "for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes" (1Corinthians 11:26). And if Jesus had already come in AD 70, then was there any need to "proclaim the Lord's death" through this sacrament?

I couldn’t find any theologians that were full preterists. I found out that Sam Frost was an up-and-coming theologian who was attempting to systematize full preterism. Being intrigued by this, I bought his book, Misplaced Hope. Frost wrote on page 210, "Modern Christian eschatology is based upon an early church error: assuming the Second Coming was delayed, by misunderstanding its spiritual fulfillment in A.D. 70. We need not remain in this wilderness of misplaced hope. Rather, through sound biblical scholarship, we can recover the transforming hope that the early church embraced. Herein lies our hope for the third Christian millennium." This book bugged me even more. It was arguing how the earliest Christians missed the Second Coming in AD 70 and since it didn't happen, opted to reinterpret the "time statements" to mean imminence for every generation instead of imminence for that first generation of Christians. This forced me to think that in order to maintain my position in full preterism, I was going to have to say all (not some!) the early Christians missed it. I would have to somehow maintain that millions of Christians for 2000 years had all missed Christ’s Second Coming in AD 70 and that the Church for two millennia had “accidentally” propagated a serious lie! Now I was a bit more than just bugged. I was now growing a bit fearful of what I was believing and teaching.

Resurrection Pains

The one thing that kept coming up in my heart was, “How could all Christians have missed the resurrection of the dead until full preterists came along?” This question started my long and very uncomfortable study of resurrection as a full preterist. Most full preterists are too starry-eyed with the “time statements” to even care about the resurrection of the dead. They simply point out that if the “time statements” were true, and they must be, then whatever the resurrection was, it was in the past. Staring me in my full-preterist face were the Apostle Paul’s obvious feelings about getting the timing of the Resurrection wrong. He wrote:

But shun profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness. And their message will spread like cancer. Hymenaeus and Philetus are of this sort, who have strayed concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection is already past; and they overthrow the faith of some. (2Timothy 2:16-18)

This is a sober warning. Full preterists, of course, will answer this passage and say that the Resurrection was future to them when Paul wrote this to Timothy because it was before AD 70. But we live after the Resurrection in AD 70 making this no problem to them. But the point I’m making here is that getting the timing of the Resurrection wrong was a very serious thing in Paul’s mind. This put the fear of God in me. At this point, I stopped teaching full preterism and sought the Lord for the truth and meaning of resurrection.

I began by asking every full preterist I knew exactly what they thought the resurrection was. As it turns out they are wildly divided on the subject. There are two major camps in full preterism. They call themselves CBV or IBV.

Resurrection Divisions In Full Preterism

CBV stands for Collective (or Covenant, or Corporate) Body View. IBV stands for Individual Body View. The originator of CBV is Max King (1930-). It is mainly propagated by Don K. Preston (1949-). The IBV leader seems to be Edward Stevens.

The main difference between CBV and IBV is stated easily enough but the details are complex and vary widely depending on who's interpreting the viewpoint. Both beliefs teach a "resurrection" of sorts occurring in AD 70 when they allege Jesus' Second Coming occurred. CBV teaches a resurrection of a collective kind of body of believers, while IBV teaches that Christians' souls were raised out of Sheol/Hades to put on their new individual spiritual bodies for heaven. In other words, they both redefine resurrection as something different than what happened to Jesus Christ. Studying the data below will help you with the details.

The Resurrected Jesus

I will remind you again that the details of the views of CBV and IBV can vary widely depending on the teacher. But the following data are close. First, lest' look at the various versions of Jesus Himself and what happened to Him compared. The differences from Christianity are highlighted:

• Christianity's Jesus
• Incarnate in a mortal physical body.
• Dies physically on the cross.
• Physically buried in a tomb.
• Physically resurrected into an immortal body.
• Ascends physically to Heaven & is glorified
• Physically descends from Heaven to Earth in the future

• Full Preterism's (CBV) Jesus
• Incarnate in a mortal physical body.
• Dies both spiritually & physically on the cross.
• Physically buried in a tomb. Spiritually descends to Sheol/Hades.
• Physically resurrected into His original mortal body only as a sign.
• Ascends physically to Heaven & is burnt as a whole burn offering on Heaven's altar.
• Spiritually & invisibly comes to destroy Jerusalem in AD 70.

• Full Preterism's (IBV) Jesus
• Incarnate in a mortal physical body.
• Dies physically on the cross.
• Physically buried in a tomb. Spiritually descends to Sheol/Hades.
• Physically resurrected into a spiritual immortal body only as a sign.
• Ascends in His spiritual immortal body to Heaven.
• Spiritually & invisibly comes to destroy Jerusalem in AD 70.

The Resurrection

As it must, full preterism in all its forms redefines resurrection to something other than what the whole world in the first-century AD knew it to be. The definition is not life after death. Rather everyone knew that resurrection was bodily life after a bodily death. It was not ethereal in any way. This is where things get complicated! Observe the complex and bizarre differences between normal definition of the resurrection that has been held by 2000 years of orthodox Christianity, and the redefinition of it offered by full preterism. The differences are so radical it is difficult to highlight them.

• Christian Resurrection
• Before the cross, men were born, lived, & died in physical mortal bodies, & were buried.
• Before the cross, yet after their death, believers' souls "slept" or descended to Sheol.
• Some imagine a "paradise" side of Sheol (see "Abraham's bosom" in Jesus' parable in Luke 16:22).
• Before the cross, yet after their death, unbelievers' souls "slept" or descended to Sheol.
• Some imagine a "torment" side of Sheol (see Jesus' parable in Luke 16:22-24).
• After the cross, men are born, live, and die in physical mortal bodies, and are buried.
• After the cross, and after their death, believers' souls ascend to Christ in Heaven.
• After the cross, and after their death, unbelievers' souls descend to hell.
• When Christ returns in our future, all men (believers & unbelievers) are physically & bodily resurrected & judged.
• The living believers are physically changed to physical immortal bodies
• The dead believers are resurrected into physical immortal bodoes.
• At the judgment, unbelievers are cast into the Lake of Fire in their physical bodies.
• After the judgment, believers live in the New Heavens & New Earth in physical immortal bodies with Christ forever.

• CBV Full Preterism "Resurrection"
Before the cross, men were born, lived, & died in physical mortal bodies, & were buried.
Before the cross, yet after their death, believers' souls descended to Sheol-Paradise (see "Abraham's bosom" in Jesus' parable in Luke 16:22)
Before the cross, yet after their death, unbelievers' souls descended to Sheol-Torment (see Jesus' parable in Luke 16:22-24).
After the cross yet before AD 70, men were born, lived, and died in physical mortal bodies, and were buried.
After the cross yet before AD 70 & after their death, believers' souls still descended to Sheol-Paradise
After the cross yet before AD 70 & after their death, unbelievers' souls still descended to Sheol-Torment
When Christ returned in AD 70, all men's souls (believers & unbelievers) were spiritually removed from Sheol (one of their definitions of "resurrection").
• The status of the living & dead corporate "body" of believers was spiritually changed before God to one that is acceptable by Him (their main definition of "resurrection").
At the judgment in AD 70, unbelievers are said to either have all been saved as well (Universalism), or are lost forever (e.g. annihilated).
After the judgment of AD 70, believers live in the spiritual "New Heavens & New Earth" while in their physical mortal bodies (i.e. we are said to be in Heaven right now).
• At death, believers' souls are taken to Heaven; their mortal physical bodies are buried to rot, never to be resurrected.
• At death, unbelievers' souls are either lost forever or they are also taken to Heaven (Universalism); their mortal physical bodies are buried to rot, never to be resurrected.

• IBV Full Preterism "Resurrection"
• Before the cross, men were born, lived, & died in physical mortal bodies, & were buried.
• Before the cross, yet after their death, believers' souls descended to Sheol-Paradise (see "Abraham's bosom" in Jesus' parable in Luke 16:22).
• Before the cross, yet after their death, unbelievers' souls descended to Sheol-Torment (see Jesus' parable in Luke 16:22-24).
• After the cross yet before AD 70, men were born, lived, and died in physical mortal bodies, and were buried.
• After the cross yet before AD 70 & after their death, believers' souls still descended to Sheol-Paradise.
• After the cross yet before AD 70 & after their death, unbelievers' souls still descend to Sheol-Torment.
• When Christ returned in AD 70, all men's souls (believers & unbelievers) were spiritually removed from Sheol (their definition of "resurrection") & given spiritual bodies & judged.
• The living believers were physically changed to spiritual bodies & taken to Heaven without any extant record, secular or Christian.
• The dead believers were given spiritual bodies & also taken to Heaven without any extant record, secular or Christian.
• At the judgment in AD 70, unbelievers were cast into the Lake of Fire in their spiritual bodies.
• After the judgment in AD 70, believers live in the spiritual "New Heavens & New Earth" while in their physical mortal bodies.
• At death, believers are given spiritual bodies and taken to Heaven; their mortal physical bodies are buried to rot, never to be resurrected.
• At death, unbelievers are thrown into the Lake of Fire; their mortal physical bodies are buried to rot, never to be resurrected.

That's it. Make note that both CBV and IBV teach that your physical body is discarded and is never resurrected like Christ's. Both CBV and IBV have no care for your physical body. It is merely a temporary holding place for your spirit which, they assert, is all that salvation is really about. They also both teach that Christ's physical resurrection was merely a sign for that generation and, otherwise, it has no direct relationship to us today!

Don K. Preston teaches some very bizarre and blasphemous details in his version of CBV. The first weird thing is he teaches Adam was created mortal and that physical death was always part of God's creation, and God never had a plan to deal with that! He also teaches that since salvation is thought to be spiritual-only, then he asserts Adam died spiritually necessitating that Christ die spiritually as well. Most Christians would never say that Jesus died spiritually because it causes a fatal theological problem for the doctrine of the Trinity. To die spiritually, God the Son would have to be separated from God the Father! Preston also teaches that when Jesus was resurrected, He was raised in a mortal body (not an immortal one); the same one He had before the cross! He further maintains that this mortal body ascended to Heaven and was completely incinerated as a whole burnt offering on the altar of the Heavenly Temple and therefore Jesus no longer resides in a physical body, immortal or mortal! This is considered blasphemy of the highest sort in normal Christianity.

Edward Stevens' IBV forces him to teach some very bizarre things as well. By his own admission, because of the "time statements," he must maintain that a rapture of the living Christians occurred in AD 70. That means living Christians were translated bodily without dying leaving no Christians on Earth after AD 70! Of course, there's no historical record, Christian or secular, that tells of any sudden disappearance of thousands if not millions of Christians in AD 70. This further begs the question that if there were no Christians left on Earth after AD 70, how did the gospel get restarted and reach us here 2000 years later?! This view would also have to maintain that Christians who lived through AD 70 (i.e. Clement) missed the rapture or are liars. Did God leave some Christians on Earth after AD 70 so Christianity could get a restart?! Edward Stevens has answered this by saying that God did whatever He wanted to restart Christianity after AD 70, we just don't know.

Needless to say, neither CBV nor IBV give satisfying answers to resurrection. And both add quite a bit of ad hoc and useless speculation as well as denying reality. CBV is blasphemous of Christ's eternal incarnation, and IBV denies actual history for the love of its interpretation of the "time statements"! In other words, true history is sacrificed on the altar of time statements. With no hope of finding any answers from the full preterist camp regarding resurrection, I devoted myself to studying it alone. It was now me and my Bible. This sounds noble. But it is less noble than you might think. I’ll explain in a few minutes.

Resurrection Truth #1 - The Spiritual Body

The first Scripture that made me do a double-take, was one often quoted by full preterists as proof that the resurrection was not supposed to be physical. That passage reads:

So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. (1Corinthians 15:42-44)

That part that reads, "it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body," is used by full preterist to argue, "See? The resurrected body is spiritual, it is not physical." Of course, as anyone can see, there is a problem already with this before we even get to their point. Paul uses "it" as being the thing sown, and the same "it" as being raised. And, of course, this is exactly what happened to Jesus Christ. The tomb was empty. But what about the "spiritual body"? Does this mean spiritual as in ethereal? No, it does not. I didn't know this, but I discovered that Greek scholars know exactly what this means. A great analogy is used by Anglican theologian and Greek scholar, N.T. Wright to describe this meaning:

The first word, 'psychikos,' [he is referring to the word translated "natural"] does not in any case mean anything like 'physical' in our sense. For Greek speakers of Paul's day, the 'psyche,' from which the word derives, means the soul, not the body. But the deeper, underlying point is that adjectives of this type, Greek adjectives ending in '-ikos,' describe not the material out of which things are made but the power or energy that animates them. It is the difference between asking, on the one hand, 'Is this a wooden ship or an iron ship?' (the material from which it is made) and asking, on the other, 'Is this a steamship or a sailing ship?' (the energy that powers it). Paul is talking about the present body, which is animated by the normal human 'psyche' (the life force we all possess here and now, which gets us through the present life but is ultimately powerless against illness, injury, decay, and death), and the future body, which is animated by God's 'pneuma,' God's breath of new life, the energizing power of God's new creation. (Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, pp. 155-156. HarperCollins.)

Thus, Paul is not speaking of the nature of the resurrection body, but of the power that drives the resurrection body. But full preterists are not done distorting the Greek meaning just yet. They will point to this next passage as well:

Now I say this, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. (1Corinthians 15:50)

I believe N.T. Wright explains this well, writing:

This is why, in a further phrase that became controversial as early as the mid-second century, Paul declares that 'flesh and blood cannot inherit God's kingdom.' He doesn't mean that physicality will be abolished. 'Flesh and blood' is a technical term for that which is corruptible, transient, heading for death. The contrast, again, is not between what we call physical and what we call nonphysical but between corruptible physicality, on the one hand, and incorruptible physicality, on the other. (Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, pg. 156. HarperCollins.) 

 And so, after all, this is the contextually correct conclusion because, also in the verses directly following this passage, Paul writes twice that when the resurrection happens, the living saints will be "changed" (1Corinthians 15:51-52). Then further, he writes in Philippians 3:20, that Jesus will "transform the body of our lowly condition into conformity with His glorious body."

So, physicality is not removed by 1Corinthians 15:42-44,50, but even further established by 1Corinthians 15:51-52 and Philippians 3:20, as well as the fact that we know Jesus' tomb was empty!

Resurrection Truth #2 - The Unjust

The second Scriptural passage that dealt a fierce blow to my full preterism is that written by the Apostle John. According to Jesus Himself, the resurrection would include all human beings, righteous and unrighteous, just and unjust. He said, “Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.” (John 5:28-29). The Apostle Paul affirmed as well, saying, “I have hope in God, which they themselves also accept, that there will be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust.” (Acts 24:15). Did you notice that in the explanation of what CBVs believe they did not deal with the “resurrection of condemnation” nor the “resurrection of …the unjust”? Also, did you notice that IBVs merely redefine resurrection as simply the removal of souls out of Sheol/Hades? Thus, when unjust souls are removed, they consider this a fulfillment of the "resurrection of the unjust." But this requires that redefinition of the word resurrection. The first-century people, Greeks, Pharisees, Sadducees, unbelievers, and Christians alike, knew what this word meant. The Greek word means "to be made to stand," as in, you are laying prone when you are dead, and you are made to stand back up after you are dead. They all defined the word as a bodily death followed by a bodily life. This is exactly what happened to Jesus Christ. The tomb was empty. That is most important! It is because of this definition that the Greeks and unbelievers scoffed, the Sadducees didn't believe in it, and the Pharisees and the Christians taught it. IBVs redefine it, as they must, to a very Greek gnostic idea of merely "souls out of Sheol/Hades."

When faced with Acts 24:15 above, most full preterists will just change the subject to their beloved “time statements.” They will point out that the Greek word translated, “shall be” in this verse, is the Greek word, μελλειν (mellein) which, they say, means, “about to.” They will then find every occurrence of this Greek word in the New Testament and substitute their limited definition of “about to” in its place. This allows them to produce even more “time statements” in order to emphasize this resurrection, whatever it is, happened in the first century AD. But you can reference any Greek lexicon and see that the Greek scholars say this word actually means, “a certainty of action,” and the context can cause it to be translated as “about to” only because of certainty.

Resurrection Truth #3 - Our Resurrection Is the Same As Christ's

The third Scriptural blow to my full preterism was the way in which the Apostle Paul argued the resurrection in 1Corinthians 15. It was almost the opposite direction of logic than one would think he would make. Instead of saying our resurrection was based on Christ’s resurrection (which theologically, of course, it is!), Paul argued it in the other direction, writing:

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up—if in fact the dead do not rise. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! (1Corinthians 15:13-17)

Notice Paul says if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not resurrected. He does not say that if Christ is not resurrected, there is no resurrection of the dead. In other words, he’s basing Christ’s resurrection on the fact of our resurrection. You might think this is a moot point, but it is not. The reason is that arguing it this way makes certain of the definition of what resurrection means. Both resurrections (ours and Christ’s) must be of the same type. Whatever definition you give the resurrection of the dead, you must also apply to Christ. And if you maintain Christ’s resurrection was a physical transformation of His mortal human body, then our resurrection must also be a transformation of our mortal human body. This is devastating to full preterism. 

This critical and logical link is further corroborated by the fact that Jesus Christ is called “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1Corinthians 15:20,23) and “the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:18). The Firstfruits (Christ’s resurrection) cannot be different from the harvest (our resurrection). The Firstborn from the dead (Jesus) implies a second-born, a third-born, etc., i.e. us! You don’t gather apples as the firstfruits, and then when harvest comes, discover that you are now gathering oranges. So, staring me in the face at this point was the empty tomb; the 2000-year-old orthodox view of the resurrection of the dead. This was the heaviest blow against my full preterism and the next Scriptural consideration would nudge it nearly off the edge of the cliff toward oblivion.

Resurrection Truth #4 - Bodies Are Transformed Not Discarded

In the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Philippians, he writes:

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself. (Philippians 3:20-21)

Notice that Paul says “our lowly body” would be “transformed” to become like “His glorious body.” The believer's body was to be "transformed," not discarded to rot in the grave while the believer is given a different body. This destroys IBV full preterism. This is exactly what happened to Christ’s mortal body. The tomb was empty. His mortal body was not discarded to obtain His immortal spiritual body. His mortal body was transformed. It still had the scars to remind us of His sacrifice.

Not only this, but you must consider also that when Paul wrote this, both of the bodies he spoke of (“our lowly body” and Christ’s “glorious body”) existed simultaneously. What is the significance of this? It destroys CBV full preterism. How? Because they have a single body being transformed into a different single body. But there wasn't just a single body being changed into a future single body like the CBV folks imagine. Instead, there were already two bodies when Paul wrote. There was the (1) "lowly body" of a believer and (2) the "glorious body" of Christ. But at some point in the future, Paul imagines there would still be two bodies, only they would be (1) the "lowly body" that had been "transformed" and (2) the "glorious body" of Christ. 

Resurrection Truth #5 - Jesus Christ Is Still Incarnate

Furthermore, in corroboration that Jesus was still a physical Man after His ascension and will remain so even unto the Day of Judgment, Paul says, “Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31). Also, Paul writes, “For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus” (1Timothy 2:5). Furthermore, Jesus, after His ascension, is referred to be “the image of God” (2Corinthians 4:4) and “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), and also it is said that “in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). Images are visible. God is not visible, but God the Son, Jesus Christ is. How could He not be? Afterall, He is our Mediator between God (invisible) and man (visible). This is what makes Him our faithful High Priest as the writer of Hebrews says: "Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people" (Hebrews 2:17).

The Apostle John couldn't distill it down any clearer with his statement:

By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world. (1John 4:2-3)

The Greek word translated "has come" is, grammar-wise, a perfect middle participle. The perfect tense indicates an action completed in the past with a continuing result. The Kenneth Wuest Translation captures the deeper meaning of the Greek words and says this:

In this you know experientially the Spirit of God. Every spirit who agrees [to the doctrinal statement] that Jesus Christ has come in the sphere of the flesh [i.e., in incarnation] and still remains incarnate [in human form] is of God; and every spirit who does not confess this aforementioned Jesus [agree to the above teaching concerning Him] is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist which you have heard that it comes, and now is already in the world. (1John 4:2-3; WUEST)

This is very clear and disturbed me greatly as a full preterist. The fallout of Jesus still being a human being is fatal to all forms of full preterism. To deny Jesus Christ is still a human being (albeit, immortal and glorified) is "antichrist"! Think of that! Antichrist?! Those are harsh and sobering words for a full preterist of any kind. I thought, to believe 1John 4:2-3 alone destroys full preterism?

Why? Because the CBV versions of full preterism believe Jesus discarded His human body. And the IBV versions of full preterism, though some of them try to maintain this doctrine of the eternal incarnation of Christ, will say that our bodies, as believers, are indeed discarded when we die. I was of this sort of full preterist. But God had an answer for that too. For Paul writes:

Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. (1Corinthians 6:19-20)

Would God pay such a high price for my body through the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ, just to discard it? If you paid the ultimate price for something is that how you treat it? Throw it in the dirt to rot? The Resurrection Truth #4 above shows us that our bodies are not discarded forever to rot into nothingness but that Jesus will "transform" them, just like God did His. The tomb was empty! God did not discard Jesus' mortal body, but transformed it into a glorious immortal but still human body.

Church History and the Leading of the Holy Spirit

The last straw, the one that broke the full preterist camel’s back for me, was that I saw Jason Bradfield and Samuel Frost leave full preterism expressing their own doubts. I pummeled them both with questions, particularly about resurrection. In one of our discussions online, Jason, nearly exasperated with my questions, said, “Brother, learn some church history and read the early church fathers.” I reluctantly took on his suggestion out of pure respect having little hope that it would do anything for me. I was wrong. I was humbled by the writings of the early Christians as well as those of the reformation. I found a deep appreciation for the early Christians' documents such as the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed. And the later writings of the Protestant reformers such as the Belgic Confession of Faith, and the Heidelberg Catechism were particularly interesting to me. These writings from the earlier and then the later Christians are proof that the Church was not being led astray at all, because though there are more than a thousand years between the early creeds and the later confessions and catechisms, the basic expressions of the faith had not changed. Instead, the Lord had made good on His promise to the original apostles of sending His Holy Spirit to lead His children into all the truth despite the imperfection of the Christians themselves.

Yes, there were many opinions and various interpretations about minute details of doctrines, but the foundational doctrines never changed. One of those was the future resurrection of the dead and the bodily Second Coming of Christ. They have been fought for and maintained solidly for 2000 years. It didn’t matter if those people were Roman Catholics, Protestants, Anglicans, or Eastern Orthodox. The “Spirit of Truth” (John 15:26) had been doing His job the whole time in spite of the human vessels being imperfect. The Holy Spirit had been teaching us all things, and bringing to remembrance all things that Jesus had said to the Apostles (see John 14:26). He had been guiding the Church into all the truth (see John 16:13) and had continued to “convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.” (John 16:8).

I suddenly realized that it was not a matter of the perfectness and maturity of Christians. Instead, it was a matter of the ability of the Holy Spirit to fulfill Jesus’ promise of leading and guiding the Church through history. Was He a good Teacher or not? Christians are imperfect, but the Holy Spirit is not. I could see that to say that Christians had been deceived from the beginning until full preterists came along some 1700 years later was inconceivable and actually an insult to the Spirit of Grace.

Truth Is Understood Communally

Now I will explain why just you and your Bible, though sounding noble, is not as noble as you might think. You see, God never intended for one man to be able to comprehend Him or determine the Truth. The entire time, God purposed that fellowship with Him and other believers would be the way in which we would be able to comprehend God. Paul tells us that it takes all of us to comprehend God. He writes, “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:17-19). He also wrote, “These things I write to you, though I hope to come to you shortly; but if I am delayed, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1Timothy 3:14-15). He also tells us that God gave gifts to His people, “some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head – Christ – from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love” (Ephesians 4:11-16).

Thus, all these things God gave us, knowing we were imperfect. Yet His promise is strong to lead us to the truth. It is clear that the Church has not yet reached this full maturity even 2000 years after AD 70. And if we have not yet reached this maturity, then God is not done with us yet and His gifts are still active, and we still need each other to comprehend Him and be kept in the truth. We can't do it on our own as a single individual with a single Bible. This is why just "you and your Bible" is a recipe for disaster. You need the gifts (men) God gave you, dead and alive. Instead of His Spirit-led congregation being the authority (“pillar and ground of the truth”), you, all by yourself, become the sole authority of what constitutes “truth.” In fact, if you study church history you will see that every heretic in history was a man alone with the Scriptures alone. Peter warns of becoming your own authority in interpreting Scripture. He writes, “And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts; knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit (2Peter 1:19-21).

Many full preterists will respond to this with ad hominems, calling you a "creed worshiper," or something similar. They will tell you that you are "in bondage to the traditions of men," or that you "care more about the opinions of men than you do Scripture," etc. But this is hypocrisy at its finest. For they believe that they themselves are the sole owners of truth, just "me and my Bible." Clearly, they are doing the same thing they accuse you of doing. They care more about their opinion of what the Bible says than anybody else's opinion. They will remind you of the Reformers and tell you how they came up with new doctrines and taught Sola Scriptura, which full preterists will teach means, "just the Scriptures." This is due to their ignorance of Church History. The Reformers did not define Sola Scriptura to mean, "just the Scriptures." Instead, they defined it as, "the Scriptures are the highest authority," not the only authority.

Delivered From Darkness

Thus, it was in one day, that all of this finally came to a head in my life. I’ll never forget that day. It was the most humbling experience of my Christian walk. It was like Jesus had said to me, “When you see Me, I will have hair on my knuckles.” I know how silly that sounds but that is what it felt like. He was telling me that He was still a Man in a physical body and that that was very important to understand. I literally fell to my knees in repentance, asking His forgiveness for my stupidity and pride and for leading so many people astray from the Truth. I felt darkness leave my heart and joy and laughter return. I wept and laughed on and off for quite a while. It had been a long journey lasting 17 years of my life but it was finally over.

Some Implications of Full Preterism

Full preterism will darken your walk with Christ because it is leading you down a road to a different Jesus (see 2Corinthians 11:4); one that is no longer incarnate in human flesh. Full preterism denies and redefines the resurrection of Christ by logical necessity because, again, Paul argued it that way. Remember, he wrote, “if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen.” (1Corinthians 15:13). Full preterists reject the history of the church and have to maintain that the Holy Spirit failed at His job of leading Christians into all the truth. 

And if you’ve ever known any full preterists yourself, you will notice that many of them do not enjoy church gatherings. Instead, some even get involved in gross sin. The reasoning of these certain ones are that since sin and death has been dealt with and the law has passed away, and there supposedly is no Day of Judgment in their future, it generates no fear of God or desire for holiness that governs sinful behavior. Many full preterists I know end up alone, just them and their Bible, and not attending any assembly. They start websites and forums, make videos, write books, and teach nothing but full preterism. Many become obsessed with it. It occupies nearly their every thought. They are constantly trying to evangelize Christians into full preterism and usually lose all concern over the lost sinner and have no desire to preach the gospel. Their “gospel” is full preterism. Their field to harvest is not the world of sinners, but other Christians who are not full preterists.

Sincere belief in full preterism cannot help but redefine every single Christian doctrine and even modify Christian history. It must couch all traditional Christianity into the timeframe of AD 30 (the Cross of Christ) to AD 70 (the supposed time of the Second Coming of Christ). It must maintain the entire historical Church for 2000 years has been wrong about all the fundamentals. It must claim to have things that it obviously does not have yet.

I saw quite a few of my friends who happened to leave full preterism end up leaving church altogether and one or two of them even have become agnostics or self-professing atheists. As an example, here is a quote from one of them whom I was having a discussion with. I withhold his name for his own sake. But he wrote to me the following when I asked him if he had left Christ:

You are correct that I have gone the whole route of departing completely from the historic orthodox Christian faith. I no longer attend church and I certainly no longer consider myself a Christian in either the biblical or traditional historic sense. ...this is the logical and consistent implication of the FP [full preterist] hermeneutic. -J.M. (27-May-2012)

By "hermeneutic," he means the science of interpretation. I checked on his status nowadays, and this particular person finally found repentance for the above stance and is now a member of the Greek Orthodox church. But not all of them find their way back to Jesus.

Several of them end up believing in Universalism, which teaches that everyone is saved and going to heaven no matter what. You don’t even need faith in Christ to get to heaven according to them! The father of the CBV view which I mentioned above, Max King, recently has written a book entitled, Irrevocable: Paul's Radical Vision in Romans 9-11, and Why Christianity Can't Handle It. In this book, King presents his interpretation of the Romans 9-11 passage as teaching that the entire human race is saved, Israelite and Gentile, whether they believe in Christ or not.

And think of it, full preterism teaches that physical death will last forever, sin will last forever, evil will exist forever, and that you are currently living in the New Heaven and New Earth, where everything is still rotting. How much more miserable can a doctrine be? In my opinion, it cannot be darker than full preterism. It is the darkest form of eschatology that has ever been invented by man.

A Final Thought & Question

So, I thank God and my Lord Jesus Christ for utilizing men like Jason Bradfield and Sam Frost to bring me out of that dark eschatology. Now when I encounter a full preterist, I have only one question for them:

Is Jesus Christ still a Man?

1John 4:2-3 reveals He still is and that's why their answer to that single question will reveal how far they will go to deny the Truth and orthodox historic Christianity.