What do you think?
Rate this book
Final Decade Before the End: Jewish & Christian History Just Before the Jewish Revolt
This is the latest and greatest historical material that covers in great detail all the fulfillments of end-time Bible prophecy during those last ten years just before the Jewish War. Carefully documented from Josephus, Tacitus, Yosippon, Hegesippus, Eusebius, and other historians. Our previous book, First Century Events, only briefly surveyed some of these events (73 pages). This has been greatly expanded and put into this new book (244 pages). If you want to see how all the end-time Bible prophecies were fulfilled historically, this is the book for you!
- GenresChurch History
244 pages, Spiral-bound
First published December 1, 2014
1 person is currently reading
32 people want to read
About the author
Edward E. Stevens
11 books5 followersEd Stevens is the founder and President of the “International Preterist Association,” (www.preterist.org). The IPA’s primary purpose is to distribute information and media, to hold and participate in conferences and seminars, and to educate the world about the Fulfilled Gospel message of Preterism and New Covenant Theology. Ed has spoken in many conferences and seminars and has written hundreds of articles, he maintains a blog, and he is a regular speaker on Preterist Radio. Ed’s primary contributions in the field of eschatology include his incredible knowledge and record keeping of early church events, especially those prior to the first century, and he has written one book, and is currently working on another.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 16, 2026
One thing is certain: Ed Stevens is an important voice in modern day full preterism. Other important voices that I have read are Don K. Preston and Max King. I don’t know whether anyone else rises to the level of these three gentlemen (although Google AI mentions Jay Currie, James Jordan, Michael Sullivan, Samuel Frost, and David Green as important full preterists). I should note that Sam Frost is no longer a full preterist.
According to Sam Frost, Max King was the first full preterist, although King had important forerunners such as J. Stuart Russell, Moses Stuart, Milton Terry, and John Humphrey Noyes.
This book is the third book I have read by Ed Stevens, the first two being Expectations Demand a First Century Rapture, and What Happened in A.D. 70? (really more of a booklet than a book). All three of these books were sent to me free of charge by Beth Stevens, the author's wife. Both Beth and Ed have been very generous, Ed having sent me his essay on Eschatology Ethics, material related to his early dating of Barnabas, and his masters thesis on proposed early dates for the authorship of the books of the New Testament.
Other full preterist books I have read are Irrevocable, The Spirit of Prophecy, and The Cross and the Parousia of Christ (my favorite full preterist book) by Max King; and Who Is This Babylon? (another excellent book) and We Shall Met Him in the Air( which I am currently rereading) by Don K. Preston. Of the three authors, King, Preston, and Stevens, I prefer King's writing style the most, with Stevens coming in a close second. Preston's style is a bit too "preachy" for my tastes.
An important controversy within the full preterism camp is whether the resurrection (which all full preterists agree was a past event) was a resurrection of individual bodies (the IBV), or somehow they were resurrected as a corporate body (the CBV). Stevens advocates for the IBV: "If Paul was thinking about a collective body of Jewish believers being raised out of covenantally dead Judaism, why would he mention "both the righteous and the wicked [Acts 24.15]" being raised?" Good question!
Preston and King, however, advocate for the corporate body view, which doesn’t make much sense to me. Max King is not much help, either: "if, therefore, biblical resurrection does not pertain to a recovery of a decomposed physical body in some form or other, what, then, is the actual state or form of man from biological demise onward? … Even those who hold to a resurrection from physical death have no clear-cut answer to this question." The Cross and the Parousia of Christ, p. 666. To me, this sounds like, "I don’t know how it worked and neither do you!"
The first part of this book was an attempt to date the letters of Paul by the information in Acts. I only half paid attention to this, in the main because I am unfamiliar with the proposed dates for Paul's missionary journeys. Before I reread The Final Decade, I should probably read a book on Acts with a focus on these journeys. (Update: I just ordered a book on Paul's missionary journeys off of Amazon and requested one from my library). Another problem is that I question the historical reliability of Acts.
I also question the assumptions Stevens employs in getting his very early dates of Matthew (31-38) and Mark (38-44). I accept the common assumption that Matthew used Mark and not the other way around because it seems that Mark (and Luke) smoothed out Mark's rougher Greek. If Mark used Matthew as a source it is hard to explain why Mark's Greek is rougher than Matthew’s. It’s also hard to explain why Mark would leave out so much of the material that Matthew includes but is absent in Mark. Surely it makes more sense to say that Matthew use Mark as a source and then added material from elsewhere. As far as I can tell, Stevens never addresses this linguistic argument, nor does he address other linguistic arguments.
For example, it is commonly argued that the gospel of John and Revelation could not have been written by the same person because the Greek is so different. Some have argued that this is because Revelation was written in the mid 60s (which Stevens agrees with) when his Greek was poor, but by the time John wrote his gospel in the 90s his Greek had improved. Stevens disagrees with this entirely, actually arguing that John's gospel was written *before* Revelation.
One argument that Stevens uses for an early dating of the gospel of John is the use of the present tense in John 5.2: "Now there *is* in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, etc.," suggesting a date before the destruction of Jerusalem. However this only demonstrates that John 5.2 was written before 70 A.D., not that the entire gospel was written before that date. Many critical scholars believe that the gospel of John was compiled from many sources by a final editor, who completed his work late in the first century. Stevens, as a conservative scholar would no doubt reject this view. I myself see no particular reason to reject it, even from a conservative standpoint, unless you stand by the church tradition that John the Apostle wrote the fourth gospel. Stevens is a great fan of early church tradition, rarely finding a tradition that he rejects (although he rejects the tradition that the Apostle John died of old age based on statements by Papias and Matthew 20.20-28 and Mark 10.35-45).
One tradition that Stevens accepts and that he devotes a fair amount of space to is described by Google AI this way: "The grandsons of Jude (brother of Jesus) were Zoker and James, who were brought before Emperor Domitian (reigned 81-96 AD) as potential messianic threats due to their Davidic lineage but were dismissed as humble farmers after showing calloused hands and minimal property, proving they weren't rivals to Roman power."
The problem for preterism in this story is that in the account the grandsons say that the kingdom of God will appear (future) when they testified before Domitian. Stevens handled this problem neatly by pointing out that perhaps the Emperor Domitian was not the one who reigned 81-96 A.D., but rather was the emperor Nero (Nero's name was Domitius). I was skeptical of this. Could Jude have grown grandsons at the time of Nero? As it turns out, yes, easily. Jude could have been born shortly after Jesus (shortly after 7-6 B.C., had children before 20 A.D. (Jewish men married between age 18-20) and grandchildren before 40 A.D.
Certainly the most interesting argument Stevens uses for an early date for the gospels is the linkage between Matthew 24 and 1 Thessalonians 4-5. All commentators are agreed that 1 Thessalonians was written by Paul before 70 A.D. If it could be demonstrated that Paul relied on Matthew, then Matthew must have been written even earlier. Stevens refers us to Don K. Preston's book We Shall Meet Him in the Air pp 72-80, 171 for an impressive list of parallels between Matthew 24 and the Thessalonians letters. An even more impressive list of 35 parallels can be found in Steven's masters thesis on the dating of the N.T. (written after this book). Stevens notes, "the above comparison shows far more parallelism than can be explained by coincidence or a similar direct revelation to Paul."
This is an interesting admission, because Stevens never mentions a similar parallelism between Jude and 2 Peter, books which scholars have long noted share similar features. Most scholars posit some sort of dependence between the two (British evangelical scholar Richard Bauckham believes the author of 2 Peter relied on Jude), but Stevens seems to believe that these two letters were written independently at about the same time. Were they written by similar direct revelation to their respective authors?
Whenever we see parallelisms of this sort, we can posit three reasonable hypotheses. One document may be relying on the other, or both may be relying on a previous source. Most critical scholars believe that when there are parallels between Paul and the gospels, the gospels are relying on Paul rather than the other way around. This is because if Paul had the gospels available to him, he likely would have made more use of them in his letters. However, in the case of Matthew 24 and 1 Thessalonians 4-5, I don’t think the parallels are impressive enough to posit direct dependence. I think rather that both documents are relying on a shared tradition.
Another surprising date is Stevens's dating of the epistle of Barnabas to 56-57. Contrary to nearly all scholars Stevens accepts the tradition that this anonymous letter was written by the Barnabas of the Bible, and also that it was written prior to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D. Most scholars believe that Barnabas mentions the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., but Stevens argues that Barnabas was actually referencing the destruction of the *First* Temple in 586 B.C. Unfortunately I do not have access to the entirety of Stevens's unpublished essay, Redating the epistle of Barnabas, only his conclusions. So I don’t know his reasoning. For me, the following two verses of Barnabas point to a 70 A.D. destruction: 16.4 "Because of their war (τὸ πολεμεῖν αὐτοὺς), it was destroyed by their enemies." This indicates that the Temple was destroyed because of a Jewish war. And 16.6 "Let us inquire if a temple of God still exists," which would be a strange thing to say if the Second Temple was still standing.
I could say a lot more about the dating of the N.T., but the last comment I’m going to make about this is concerning Don K. Preston's argument that the seven letters to the churches in Revelation must have been penned before 70 A.D. because "Josephus tells us that most of the Greek and Roman cities outside Palestine expelled their Jewish residents, or killed them and confiscated their property, once the Jewish war began. (quoted by Stevens). This would be a good argument if it held up. However Google AI says, "Josephus did not make a general statement that 'most' Greek and Roman cities outside of Palestine universally expelled or killed their Jewish residents and confiscated their property once the Jewish war began. Instead, Josephus details a varied and localized response, often dependent on pre-existing tensions, the specific actions of Jewish rebels, and the local Roman authorities."
While AI says that Josephus cites certain cities, like Caesarea and Damascus, as having expelled their Jews, he doesn’t cite any of the cities in Revelation as having had a general expulsion of their Jewish populations. In addition to that, demonstrating that the letters to the churches were written before A.D. 70 doesn’t demonstrate that the entirety of Revelation was written before A.D. 70. David Aune, in his brilliant commentary on Revelation, posits two editions of Revelation, the second one written after A.D. 70 and based on an earlier one. When first confronted with this idea I thought it was pretty crazy, but it actually makes a lot of sense.
I must comment on the doctrine that Babylon the Great from Revelation was Jerusalem (a common, but not universal teaching in full preterism). This is based largely on a comparison between Revelation 18.24: "In her [Babylon the Great] was found the blood of prophets and of God’s holy people, of all who have been slaughtered on the earth," and Matthew 23:35-37 (upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth) and Luke 11:49-51 (I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute).
Nonetheless, outside of preterism, the large majority of commentators have believed that Babylon the Great was Rome (this statement based on my remembrance of a comment in Aune, although I can’t find it now). This is based on the general belief that Revelation was written after A.D. 70, and after that date Rome was often compared to Babylon because they both destroyed Jewish Temples. Thus Google AI says, "Jerusalem is often compared to Babylon, but as *opposites*." and "In 4 Ezra (also called 2 Esdras), Babylon is mentioned as a symbolic name for Rome, the oppressive empire oppressing God's people, appearing primarily in visions (like 4 Ezra 10:57-58, 11:1, 13:3, 13:23) where Jerusalem or Zion is contrasted with the powerful, corrupt 'Babylon,' representing Rome's world power and idolatry, a common apocalyptic theme.
So we know that comparisons of Rome to Babylon go back at least to shortly after 70 A. D. (but see the reference to Babylon 1 Peter 5.13, which most scholars think is a reference to Rome. However many scholars think 1 Peter was written pseudonymously after A. D. 70). I think it would be a fun project to trace the first time anybody compared Jerusalem to Babylon. The earliest I could find was J. Stuart Russell, The Parousia: A Critical Inquiry into the New Testament Doctrine of Our Lord's Second Coming (London: Unwin, 1887). Admittedly I have not looked very hard.
As a disclaimer, I am an unbeliever who just happens to have an interest in the Bible as literature, in particular the book of Revelation. I became particularly interested in preterism when my friend Barry Isaacs invited me to his preterist discussion group on Facebook. If you are interested in full preterism, Ed Stevens's The Final Decade is an absolute must-read. I would prefer a print version in order to better read the charts, but a pdf version is available at https://www.preterist.org/products/2371/
According to Sam Frost, Max King was the first full preterist, although King had important forerunners such as J. Stuart Russell, Moses Stuart, Milton Terry, and John Humphrey Noyes.
This book is the third book I have read by Ed Stevens, the first two being Expectations Demand a First Century Rapture, and What Happened in A.D. 70? (really more of a booklet than a book). All three of these books were sent to me free of charge by Beth Stevens, the author's wife. Both Beth and Ed have been very generous, Ed having sent me his essay on Eschatology Ethics, material related to his early dating of Barnabas, and his masters thesis on proposed early dates for the authorship of the books of the New Testament.
Other full preterist books I have read are Irrevocable, The Spirit of Prophecy, and The Cross and the Parousia of Christ (my favorite full preterist book) by Max King; and Who Is This Babylon? (another excellent book) and We Shall Met Him in the Air( which I am currently rereading) by Don K. Preston. Of the three authors, King, Preston, and Stevens, I prefer King's writing style the most, with Stevens coming in a close second. Preston's style is a bit too "preachy" for my tastes.
An important controversy within the full preterism camp is whether the resurrection (which all full preterists agree was a past event) was a resurrection of individual bodies (the IBV), or somehow they were resurrected as a corporate body (the CBV). Stevens advocates for the IBV: "If Paul was thinking about a collective body of Jewish believers being raised out of covenantally dead Judaism, why would he mention "both the righteous and the wicked [Acts 24.15]" being raised?" Good question!
Preston and King, however, advocate for the corporate body view, which doesn’t make much sense to me. Max King is not much help, either: "if, therefore, biblical resurrection does not pertain to a recovery of a decomposed physical body in some form or other, what, then, is the actual state or form of man from biological demise onward? … Even those who hold to a resurrection from physical death have no clear-cut answer to this question." The Cross and the Parousia of Christ, p. 666. To me, this sounds like, "I don’t know how it worked and neither do you!"
The first part of this book was an attempt to date the letters of Paul by the information in Acts. I only half paid attention to this, in the main because I am unfamiliar with the proposed dates for Paul's missionary journeys. Before I reread The Final Decade, I should probably read a book on Acts with a focus on these journeys. (Update: I just ordered a book on Paul's missionary journeys off of Amazon and requested one from my library). Another problem is that I question the historical reliability of Acts.
I also question the assumptions Stevens employs in getting his very early dates of Matthew (31-38) and Mark (38-44). I accept the common assumption that Matthew used Mark and not the other way around because it seems that Mark (and Luke) smoothed out Mark's rougher Greek. If Mark used Matthew as a source it is hard to explain why Mark's Greek is rougher than Matthew’s. It’s also hard to explain why Mark would leave out so much of the material that Matthew includes but is absent in Mark. Surely it makes more sense to say that Matthew use Mark as a source and then added material from elsewhere. As far as I can tell, Stevens never addresses this linguistic argument, nor does he address other linguistic arguments.
For example, it is commonly argued that the gospel of John and Revelation could not have been written by the same person because the Greek is so different. Some have argued that this is because Revelation was written in the mid 60s (which Stevens agrees with) when his Greek was poor, but by the time John wrote his gospel in the 90s his Greek had improved. Stevens disagrees with this entirely, actually arguing that John's gospel was written *before* Revelation.
One argument that Stevens uses for an early dating of the gospel of John is the use of the present tense in John 5.2: "Now there *is* in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, etc.," suggesting a date before the destruction of Jerusalem. However this only demonstrates that John 5.2 was written before 70 A.D., not that the entire gospel was written before that date. Many critical scholars believe that the gospel of John was compiled from many sources by a final editor, who completed his work late in the first century. Stevens, as a conservative scholar would no doubt reject this view. I myself see no particular reason to reject it, even from a conservative standpoint, unless you stand by the church tradition that John the Apostle wrote the fourth gospel. Stevens is a great fan of early church tradition, rarely finding a tradition that he rejects (although he rejects the tradition that the Apostle John died of old age based on statements by Papias and Matthew 20.20-28 and Mark 10.35-45).
One tradition that Stevens accepts and that he devotes a fair amount of space to is described by Google AI this way: "The grandsons of Jude (brother of Jesus) were Zoker and James, who were brought before Emperor Domitian (reigned 81-96 AD) as potential messianic threats due to their Davidic lineage but were dismissed as humble farmers after showing calloused hands and minimal property, proving they weren't rivals to Roman power."
The problem for preterism in this story is that in the account the grandsons say that the kingdom of God will appear (future) when they testified before Domitian. Stevens handled this problem neatly by pointing out that perhaps the Emperor Domitian was not the one who reigned 81-96 A.D., but rather was the emperor Nero (Nero's name was Domitius). I was skeptical of this. Could Jude have grown grandsons at the time of Nero? As it turns out, yes, easily. Jude could have been born shortly after Jesus (shortly after 7-6 B.C., had children before 20 A.D. (Jewish men married between age 18-20) and grandchildren before 40 A.D.
Certainly the most interesting argument Stevens uses for an early date for the gospels is the linkage between Matthew 24 and 1 Thessalonians 4-5. All commentators are agreed that 1 Thessalonians was written by Paul before 70 A.D. If it could be demonstrated that Paul relied on Matthew, then Matthew must have been written even earlier. Stevens refers us to Don K. Preston's book We Shall Meet Him in the Air pp 72-80, 171 for an impressive list of parallels between Matthew 24 and the Thessalonians letters. An even more impressive list of 35 parallels can be found in Steven's masters thesis on the dating of the N.T. (written after this book). Stevens notes, "the above comparison shows far more parallelism than can be explained by coincidence or a similar direct revelation to Paul."
This is an interesting admission, because Stevens never mentions a similar parallelism between Jude and 2 Peter, books which scholars have long noted share similar features. Most scholars posit some sort of dependence between the two (British evangelical scholar Richard Bauckham believes the author of 2 Peter relied on Jude), but Stevens seems to believe that these two letters were written independently at about the same time. Were they written by similar direct revelation to their respective authors?
Whenever we see parallelisms of this sort, we can posit three reasonable hypotheses. One document may be relying on the other, or both may be relying on a previous source. Most critical scholars believe that when there are parallels between Paul and the gospels, the gospels are relying on Paul rather than the other way around. This is because if Paul had the gospels available to him, he likely would have made more use of them in his letters. However, in the case of Matthew 24 and 1 Thessalonians 4-5, I don’t think the parallels are impressive enough to posit direct dependence. I think rather that both documents are relying on a shared tradition.
Another surprising date is Stevens's dating of the epistle of Barnabas to 56-57. Contrary to nearly all scholars Stevens accepts the tradition that this anonymous letter was written by the Barnabas of the Bible, and also that it was written prior to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D. Most scholars believe that Barnabas mentions the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., but Stevens argues that Barnabas was actually referencing the destruction of the *First* Temple in 586 B.C. Unfortunately I do not have access to the entirety of Stevens's unpublished essay, Redating the epistle of Barnabas, only his conclusions. So I don’t know his reasoning. For me, the following two verses of Barnabas point to a 70 A.D. destruction: 16.4 "Because of their war (τὸ πολεμεῖν αὐτοὺς), it was destroyed by their enemies." This indicates that the Temple was destroyed because of a Jewish war. And 16.6 "Let us inquire if a temple of God still exists," which would be a strange thing to say if the Second Temple was still standing.
I could say a lot more about the dating of the N.T., but the last comment I’m going to make about this is concerning Don K. Preston's argument that the seven letters to the churches in Revelation must have been penned before 70 A.D. because "Josephus tells us that most of the Greek and Roman cities outside Palestine expelled their Jewish residents, or killed them and confiscated their property, once the Jewish war began. (quoted by Stevens). This would be a good argument if it held up. However Google AI says, "Josephus did not make a general statement that 'most' Greek and Roman cities outside of Palestine universally expelled or killed their Jewish residents and confiscated their property once the Jewish war began. Instead, Josephus details a varied and localized response, often dependent on pre-existing tensions, the specific actions of Jewish rebels, and the local Roman authorities."
While AI says that Josephus cites certain cities, like Caesarea and Damascus, as having expelled their Jews, he doesn’t cite any of the cities in Revelation as having had a general expulsion of their Jewish populations. In addition to that, demonstrating that the letters to the churches were written before A.D. 70 doesn’t demonstrate that the entirety of Revelation was written before A.D. 70. David Aune, in his brilliant commentary on Revelation, posits two editions of Revelation, the second one written after A.D. 70 and based on an earlier one. When first confronted with this idea I thought it was pretty crazy, but it actually makes a lot of sense.
I must comment on the doctrine that Babylon the Great from Revelation was Jerusalem (a common, but not universal teaching in full preterism). This is based largely on a comparison between Revelation 18.24: "In her [Babylon the Great] was found the blood of prophets and of God’s holy people, of all who have been slaughtered on the earth," and Matthew 23:35-37 (upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth) and Luke 11:49-51 (I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute).
Nonetheless, outside of preterism, the large majority of commentators have believed that Babylon the Great was Rome (this statement based on my remembrance of a comment in Aune, although I can’t find it now). This is based on the general belief that Revelation was written after A.D. 70, and after that date Rome was often compared to Babylon because they both destroyed Jewish Temples. Thus Google AI says, "Jerusalem is often compared to Babylon, but as *opposites*." and "In 4 Ezra (also called 2 Esdras), Babylon is mentioned as a symbolic name for Rome, the oppressive empire oppressing God's people, appearing primarily in visions (like 4 Ezra 10:57-58, 11:1, 13:3, 13:23) where Jerusalem or Zion is contrasted with the powerful, corrupt 'Babylon,' representing Rome's world power and idolatry, a common apocalyptic theme.
So we know that comparisons of Rome to Babylon go back at least to shortly after 70 A. D. (but see the reference to Babylon 1 Peter 5.13, which most scholars think is a reference to Rome. However many scholars think 1 Peter was written pseudonymously after A. D. 70). I think it would be a fun project to trace the first time anybody compared Jerusalem to Babylon. The earliest I could find was J. Stuart Russell, The Parousia: A Critical Inquiry into the New Testament Doctrine of Our Lord's Second Coming (London: Unwin, 1887). Admittedly I have not looked very hard.
As a disclaimer, I am an unbeliever who just happens to have an interest in the Bible as literature, in particular the book of Revelation. I became particularly interested in preterism when my friend Barry Isaacs invited me to his preterist discussion group on Facebook. If you are interested in full preterism, Ed Stevens's The Final Decade is an absolute must-read. I would prefer a print version in order to better read the charts, but a pdf version is available at https://www.preterist.org/products/2371/
Displaying 1 of 1 review