How I came to the Preterist view.

I was brought up in a non believing home, nominally Catholic. When I was 19 the Lord revealed Himself to me through His Word and I believed. That was 1980. I had just moved to Las Vegas, NV from Southern California. I was living with my brother and his wife and he had just gone forward at a Billy Graham crusade a few months earlier.
So I ended up going to his Assembly of God then after meeting a friend and being invited to a great Bible Study I started to attend a Four-Square church. During this time I married Bill , we met at that Bible study called Fish city. We me married in the 1980s and had our first two children.
At the Four-square church a little bit of end times was taught it was not quite dispensational.

The pastor did teach that we are the temple, we are Zion, we are the New Jerusalem. This really stuck out in my mind and later when we attended a Calvary Chapel and were exposed to strong Dispensational teaching for the first time we did question some of the statements. It just didn't line up in my mind. The church age being a parenthesis or hiccup in the true plan of God, etc. But pretty much I remember reading and studying Hal Lindsey, Tex Mars etc. While attending Calvary Chapel we were getting burnt out.

Meeting with friends and fellow believers we are disillusioned with “doing church” at the big buildings and all the trappings of the institutionalized church. So many of us banded together and started a home church. It was the best thing for us because we had hours upon hours each week to study the word and go through it with others. During that time, 15 years ago, one of the members of our Home Church was Amillennial in his eschatology. My husband Bill and I had never heard of that or any other eschatological view other than what we had always been taught – Futurism and Dispensationism. Now of course we didn’t even know those titles. We were just waiting for the rapture and to leave this earth that belonged to the Devil.

Our friend asked us to read a book explaining his view. Well, out of love for our friend and his family, we read Ammillenilism Today and found it intriguing. So we embarked on an intense study of End Times views. The friend that told us about the book and his wife and daughter did the research with us. We read several books and much of the New Testament scrutinizing it with our new found understanding of time statements and audience relevance! During this time we became reformed in our theology. Lots of paradigm shifts were happening.

Eventually we got on the mailing list of a Baptist Preacher named John Bray. We received little booklets in the mail from him quite regularly. They were very informative, thought provoking and interesting. He was first Amillennial then Partial Preterist. This was the first place that we heard the word Preterism.

Well, as we read John Bray his eschatology was changing and he became a Full Preterist and wrote a book called Matthew 24 Fulfilled. This was in 1998. We ordered the book and read it. We really tried to poke holes in the system but came to understand and embrace it.

Through the Internet we found out about David Curtis and Berean Bible Church. We started reading some of his teachings and got on the mailing list for the teaching tapes. We were so blessed and learned and grew tremendously in our understanding of Preterism. By this time we had 6 children and our two oldest listened to the tapes from Berean Bible Church daily as part of their homeschool studies. They are both men now and Preterist too. It was not just David’s teaching on Preterism that we liked we enjoyed many of the topics he taught on. We liked his teachings on many subjects! We did meet some other Preterist through the Internet. Some of the people we met online came to visit and that was quite encouraging. Bill and my oldest son attended a Preterist seminar in California and that was good too.

Eventually we decided to move east to be a part of a Preterist Church. So we visited Virginia in 2004 and moved there in 2005. We did end up moving back to Las Vegas in 2008. While living there we did have our last child #7 and gained a daughter-in-law for our oldest son!! The reason for moving back to Vegas was monetary and longing to be back with family and friends. Our second son Brian still lives there and goes to Berean. My husband still facilitates the pod cast. He also does that for another Preterist church, Messiah Reformed Church in Omaha, Nebraska.
1. I created a Preterist group for women on Yahoo groups now it is a Facebook group it is called Safe Haven for Preterist Women. The mission of the group is a safe place for women to have fellowship and to feel a part. I know that many of us have had to leave various churches or have to be silent. It is nice to have a safe place to go and share.

The church we attend now has a Preterist pastor. Some of the people in the congregation are also. As you can imagine there are many variations in what we all believe. So at times we have differences. I am thankful that the drive that my husband and I have is for love and unity along with the truth. We take it serious to , “as much as possible live at peace with all people”. So I thank God for the church we are in and our dear pastor.

For me being a Preterist is a real blessing because I now look forward to the future. I know that God is faithful and that He is truthful and that Jesus is ruling and reigning.

The New Testament makes so much more sense! I don't have to do mental calisthenics to make the time statements in scripture fit the text.

I believe that God's kingdom here on earth is a glorious reality and it is a privilege to be a part of it.

I don't have to fear the Antichrist, mark of the beast or Armageddon. Jesus is faithful and true to His word! I understand more than ever that Jesus came to give us life and that more abundantly!
So there it is.

In Christ, Tricia Gann, wife to Bill, mother to Jeremy, Brian, Rebecca, Victoria, Steven, Elizabeth and Margaret

Las Vegas, Nevada