John MacArthur on the fallacy of“Preterism”:
Preterism is a view of prophecy that says it's already been fulfilled. In fact, both Webster and the Oxford Dictionary under the word preterist say this, "In theology, a preterist is someone who believes the prophecies in Revelation have already been fulfilled." This is not new. But it is on the rise today. It is on the ascent. Hyper-preterism takes everything that is prophetic and pushes it into the past. It is all called realized eschatology; that is everything that's connected to the eschaton, which is the Greek word for the last things. All eschatology has already been realized.
You say, "Well what do they mean by that?' Well they mean this, Christ is not coming, He already came. There will be no Rapture. There will be no Tribulation. There will be no abomination of desolations. There will be no trumpet judgments. There will be no seal judgments. There will be no bowl judgments. There will be no earthly millennium. There will be no Armageddon. There will be no resurrection and there will be no Great White Throne. That is to say, that's all already past. This amazing view means that we are now living somewhere in the concordance, or the maps. Or just maybe in the blank pages behind the maps.
You say, "How could anyone come to such a conclusion reading the Bible?" Well you can't. You have to be taught this by somebody who doesn't want to take the Bible at what it says. But what they are saying is, all of this was fulfilled in 70 A.D. when the Roman General Titus came in and destroyed Jerusalem and the following destruction of the land of Israel. They say that was the return of Jesus Christ. That was the Second Coming. And, of course, anybody who is thinking at all would immediately ask the question, "I fail to see how Christ received glory in that occasion." And they also say, "We are now living in the new heavens and the new earth." Frankly, that's a hard sell since clearly things seem to be getting worse.
You say, "Well this is bizarre. Is this new?" No. Paul wrote Timothy in 2 Timothy 2, he said there are some men named Hymenaeus and Philetus, men who have gone astray from the truth saying the resurrection has already taken place. Wow! They were preterists. They said the resurrection already was in the past. And that was contrary to the truth.
Now, these people are very studious about this. They write tomes about this. And it's amazing how they take the book of Revelation, the book of Daniel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, the Olivet Discourse of Jesus and try to find something that happened in the history around the destruction of Jerusalem that connects with all those biblical texts. And, of course, no two preterists agree because if the Bible doesn't mean what it says, then what it means is completely open to personal opinion, and so no two agree, which is usually a dead giveaway that they're wrong. And it's actually in some ways almost humorous to read the various writings of preterists who are trying to connect biblical prophecy about the coming of Jesus Christ with the history around 70 A.D. and how they endeavor to do that.
https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/42-175/waiting-for-the-masters-return-part-1