From Amil to Pret

Tony Denton

Well, here goes, Terry. :) I'll try to keep it short. I was raised among the churches of Christ which, as most everyone knows, is of the amillennial persuasion. After high school, instead of going to a seminary, I pulled a Timothy and Titus sort of thing by moving in and traveling with a fella who had been a full-time minister for maybe 40 years by that time (this was 1981). 

I started being supported a little as I began going here and there to preach in 1982. In '83 I was called from the east coast to my first real located work in McAlester, OK. (I was raised in Raleigh.) In 1985 I moved to Durant, OK, to work with another preacher in a mission work. While there, he and I decided to study Mat. 24, pretty much each on our own, then come together to share our conclusions. This is where it all began for me. He and I had both, contrary to the way we were taught, came to the same conclusion that Mat. 24 was ALL about an end-of-judaism scenario, not an end-of-time scenario.

After that, little things here and there began to bother me (though not this other fella) as I went on with my general Bible studies--many things just weren't jivin' fer me; but it wasn't until, I think, '92 or '93 when I met and heard ... yeah ... Don Preston speak at a "unity" meeting in Kentucky (or was it Tennessee?). He spoke, I think it was, for 45 minutes, and piece after piece after piece of the puzzle was easily being put into place. So I attacked him the first chance I had, bombarding him with questions. We began corresponding, and it hasn't stopped since. Now for the rest of the story. Once I began gettin' serious about studying the Bible from this new-to-me preterist perspective, I, as each year came along, had to stop singing certain songs with the congregation and teaching on certain issues, because I never much liked teaching something about which I didn't feel convinced.

As you can imagine, especially being a full-time supported minister for over two decades by this time, things just kept snow-balling to the point that there was nothing I could teach on which didn't somehow reflect my new way of seeing the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. It got to where folks started asking me questions, and all I could do, if they wouldn't let it go, was to sit them down and say, "OK, you asked fer it. How're goin' deal with it?"

Most who asked were, as is often the case (just think of Jesus' disciples) were the type who trusted me and were interested in where I was theologically so they could study it as well. But, finally, the wrong person discovered my heavy preterist leanings in '07 and told the wrong person (someone who isn't of the Berean mind-set, and, sadly, also a honcho who was the only one with his name on the church property and treasury); so half the congregation followed his intimidating lead and refused to study this with me, dropped my support like the proverbial hot-potato, and even the locks on the church building doors were changed. (This guy never did seem to really like me much or want me there [though nearly everyone else did], so it seems he finally found his ace-in-the-hole to destroy my "good" in the brotherhood, leaving us in a lurch, and that after being diagnosed with MS without insurance; thus even benevolence was thrown out once I was labeled a preterist-heretic.)

Yeah, sad story; but my family and I are much, MUCH more spiritually content than we had ever even thought we could be, having been raised so very legalistically. So for a few years now (it was slow partly due to the fact that my family's living depended on it), I've considered myself a full or true preterist, for I'm now convinced that such is exactly what God expects me to believe from my own, personal studies, instead of from what I was taught to believe and teach. THE END. :)