Hey Steve(Gregg)...

[smcllr3]

I'm "anyone". Hope my comment counts.
I'll paraphrase what I understand you to be saying;

We speculate that Christ did live and die in order to confirm in our mind that there is a God and that we can trust the written witness of the Bible and that that info is necessary to whether or not we live and work in the way we do. But when we speculate about eschatology we never conclude anything different about the way we should live and work.

So your question is, what do we achieve with the different conclusions we arrive at in our speculation on eschatology? Or what is the point?

If I am understanding the question correctly, I would say that the archer with one arrow and one significant target among many would have to use intuition and any info he had to plan his trajectory. What I mean is that whether we should be sending money to Israel, or contributing to those around us who "gather little", will give us two different targets. Whether we should be giving up on the state of those still in darkness for the hopelessness of shedding any light and making our life our own, or joyfully pressing forward with love knowing that the knowledge of the Glory of the Lord will fill the whole earth by the body of Christ working together in unity and maturity, can be decided on the info we have and our intuition about Christ's purpose. And whether Christ is able to perform his glorious word versus Christ, taking what he can get in a less than glorious way, will change the trajectory of our arrow though we are aiming in the same direction as everyone else. I would argue that the one who doesn't speculate is one who would just shoot in the general direction without considering any of the information he has in front of him.

I believe that whether a person puts his money in the bank and draws the interest, or invests all he has is based on his hope for the future and just how glorious the body of Christ will be. The person drawing interest is merely hoping to save himself. The person having his hope on the fact that Christ is able to perform his glorious purpose, in my opinion, has "aimed at the right target".

Faith, hope and Love remain. It seems hope is not fully realized when we don't speculate about what the end times or the future holds. It definitely makes a difference in what we are working toward though it may never seem to be in a different direction than the those around us.

Now whether Partial or full Preterism is correct is definitely speculation but maybe not if we are making full use of all of the material that we have been given. But I'm not bold enough to just start shooting at anything when "pressing in" was also open to speculation.

God Bless, Sam

[RV]

Thanks for the comment.

No, that's not what I'm saying. Christian living, being a follower of Christ isn't what I'm referring to.

We DO NOT need to speculate whether or not Christ died on a cross.

Jesus' death is a well documented historical event.

Opposite of Eschatology (at least some aspects of it).

Let me ask my question like this: Does anyone REALLY have Eschatology nailed down?

Can we say with confidence we know what is going to happen/what did happen? Or better yet, that what did happen meant what some say it did. Take it to the other end, can know what did happen didn't mean what some say it did.

My thoughts at this time, and I'd love for someone to prove me wrong... is NO!

Partial Pret. say one thing, Full say another and Futurist are in left field somewhere making great money on fiction.

So again... with Eschatology, can we do anything other than speculate.

No... with Jesus' life and death, we do not need to speculate. It's a fact.

Were the events in Matt 24 completed in A.D. 70? Some say yes and some say no.

Who is right and can we really know?

If we could, my hunch is, this subject would be sparse.