Pantelism is the universalist version of full preterism. Those who hold this view see all the prophecies of the Old and New Testaments fulfilled in the events surrounding the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. They fail to consider that even if the thousand years spoken of by John in the 20th chapter of Revelation were to be taken symbolically, such a figure would only be used to symbolize a very long time, not a mere 40 years (a single generation) following the destruction of Jerusalem (as they imagine the millennium to have followed the destruction of Jerusalem.) They insist we've been living in the New Heaven and Earth since around 110 A.D. Peter spoke of the new heaven and earth as an age characterized by righteousness (2Peter 3:13.) John spoke of it as a time when God would dwell with men, wipe away all their tears, and put an end to mourning and death (Rev. 21:3-4.) By what stretch of the imagination can such words apply to the last 1,905 years? In that time the Huns, Visigoths, and Vandals burned, raped, and pillaged their way through Europe, the lands of the Bible fell to Islam, the Mongols invaded, the Black Death took the lives of millions, there were inquisitions and crusades, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, the Bolshevik Revolution, World War I, World War II, the Nazi Holocaust, Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. To Fellow Universalists, I would point out the following facts (which they should already be aware of):
1.) A Biblical view of universal salvation is based on the understanding that the Greek adjective (and its cognates) that our English Bibles translate as eternal, or everlasting (and their cognates), literally means age-enduring, or pertaining to an age. http://pantheon.yale.edu/~kd47/univ.html
2.) Pantelists (or Full Preterists) therefore have no basis for saying that all ages are past, or that the present age is endless.
3.) Eph. 3:21 should not be translated world "without end," but "to all the generations of the age of ages." (Young's Literal Translation.)
There was a reason Shakespear called this world a vale of tears, does it really honor God to say that this is the best He can do? Is this the new heaven and earth that John foresaw? Pantelists and preterists never address this. Our children shoot each other in their schools, and they close their eyes and chant "it's all spiritual, and it's all here now." What it is is delusional. It's a lie, and no lie is of the truth. If you've been brainwashed by this new teaching, you have to unlearn some of the lies you've been told. First of all, futurism was not invented by Darby, or a Jesuit Priest named Lacunza. Not only were some of the earliest Church Fathers futurists, but a universalist by the name of Elhanan Winchester was teaching dispensational pre-millennialism at least a year before Lacunza wrote his book (and a century before John Nelson Darby--see "The Prophecies that Remain to be fulfilled.") Secondly, the Greek word genea (translated generation) does not always mean the body of people living at a given time, and is not always used in that way in the New Testament. It cannot bear that meaning in Luke 16:8, where Jesus said "The children of this age are wiser in their own generation (Grk. genea) than the children of light." This is the same word Christ used in Matt. 24:34*. (also see "The Olivet Discourse Transition," by Daroll Evans.) Genea cannot merely refer to the body of people living at the time of Christ in Luke 16, because there were children of this age before His birth, and there are today. They were (and are) "wiser in their own generation then the children of light." May God grant those who read these pages to be children of light, and may we join together in our Lord's prayer "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done--On Earth, as it is in heaven."
Amen.
* Note: [From John Darby's Synopsis of the New Testament, Matt. 24] The Lord gives the history of the testimony in Israel, and that of the people themselves, from the moment of His departure until His return; but the length of time, during which there should be neither people nor temple nor city, is not specified. It is this which gives importance to the capture of Jerusalem. It is not here spoken of in direct terms-the Lord does not describe it; but it put an end to that order of things to which His discourse applies, and this application is not resumed until Jerusalem and the Jews are again brought forward. The Lord announced it at the beginning. The disciples thought that His coming would take place at the same time. He answers them in such a manner that His discourse should be of use to them until the capture of Jerusalem. But when once the abomination of desolation is mentioned, we find ourselves carried on into the last days.
The disciples were to understand the signs He gave them. I have already said that the destruction of Jerusalem, by the fact itself, interrupted the application of His discourse. The Jewish nation was set aside; but verse 34 has a much wider sense, and one more really proper to it. Unbelieving Jews should exist, as such, until all was accomplished. Compare Deuteronomy 32:5, 20, where this judgment on Israel is specially in view. God hides His face from them until He shall see what their end will be, for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith. This has taken place. They are a distinct race of people unto this day. That generation exists in the same condition-a monument of the abiding certainty of God's dealings, and of the Lord's words.
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Universalism:
Universal
Salvation as taught in the Greek Text of the N.T.