Before Jerusalem Fell

A Res~ome to House and Ice 341
tionist system. They perhaps mean “primary to dispensationalism’s
critique” of the Reconstructionist system.
Second, it is true that R. J. Rushdoony gave an introductory
survey of Revelation in his 1970 work entitled, Thy Kingdom Come:
Studies in Daniel and Revelation. But it needs to be noted that Rushdoony’s
view is decidedly non-preterist. In his first footnote in the
Revelation study, he even discounts the nearness of the events of
Revelation in John’s day, a position which is essential to the preteristic
approach. He does so by favorably quoting premillennialist (nondispensationalist)
Henry Alford. 4
Properly speaking, Rushdoony’s
interpretive approach to Revelation is the idealist view. Is Rushdoony
not a “Reconstructionist” ? 5
Has he no “Reconstructionist agenda” ?G
House and Ice may regard the “Tyler” branch of the Reconstructionist
movement as the more representative branch, as distinguished
from Rushdoony’s “Vallecito” branch, but surely to ignore Thy Kingdom
Come and its non-preterist perspective on the book of Revelation
is misleading.
Third, that which Reconstructionism actually depends upon in
eschatology is not a specifically preteristic approach to the book of
Revelation or Matthew 24. Rather it is a oictoriow eschatology in general
(i.e., postmillennialism), as House and Ice well know. 7
And optimistic
eschatology is found throughout Scripture, irrespective of Revelation.
Actually, dispensationalists are the ones who tend to begin with the
last book of the Bible in the development of their eschatology. Reconstructionists
in particular and postmillennialists in general leave
Revelation as chronologically the last (or perhaps, nearly the last)
book of the Bible, interpreting it on the basis of a biblico-theological
understanding of Scripture from Genesis through the New Testament.
8
4. Rousas John Rushdoony, Thy Kingdom Come: Studzes m Daniel and Rewlation (Nutley,
NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1970), p. 86 n. 1.
5. House and Ice, Dominion Theolo~, p. 45.
6. House and Ice mention him first as one of the three leaders of Reconstructionist
thought (Domimon ThologY, p. 17).
7. Ibid., p. 17. They specifically note that a 1987 meeting of 100 Reconstructionists
“produced a list of ten points of belief ‘which all saw as the fundamentals of the Christian
Reconstruction Movement.’ Point seven insisted on a postmillennial view of the kingdom
of God” (p. 301). Preterism is an interpretive approach to prophecy; eschatology is a
locus of systematic. The two are not interchangeable.
8. “To understand Reconstructionist views of the end, we must go back to the
beginning” (Ibid., p. 47).