Exhibit Booth at the
Evangelical Theological Society Conference
In November every year, IPA sets up its annual exhibit booth at the Evangelical Theological Society conference to promote the preterist view to its two thousand plus attendees. This November (2018) will be our 20th consecutive year to do this, and every year the benefits for the whole Preterist movement keep getting better and better:
• Increases Visibility and Awareness of the Preterist view
• Provides a better understanding of it
• Reduces the Resistance against it
• Promotes more Receptivity toward it
• Positions Preterism as CONSERVATIVE (just by being allowed to exhibit there)
Every year there are lots of positive encounters with the theologians, scholars, and ministry leaders who attend. The last four years there were no negative encounters at all. There were no speeches or paper presentations delivered against Preterism. Plus there were some speeches which used preterist hermeneutical principles on some of the eschatological texts. Our goal every year at ETS is to help those key leaders in conservative Christianity understand the preterist view and see it as a valid option within conservative evangelical Christianity. And it is working!
Attendees at this annual conference are key opinion leaders in conservative Christianity – theologians, seminary professors, writers, publishers, pastors, ministry heads, and media personalities in evangelical circles. We very much appreciate those dear fellow preterists who volunteer at their own expense to work in the booth and interact with the hundreds of attendees who drop by: Edmund Lee, Mathew Dryden, Don West, Parker Voll, Dave & Barb Johnston, and Dave & Jacki Miller.
These efforts at ETS are enabling hundreds of conservative Christian leaders and seminary students to be introduced to the Preterist view every year. The truth marches on! But the costs are challenging. We sell very few books there, and the few we do sell are heavily discounted (in order to get them in the hands of those opinion leaders in the conservative Christian community). In addition to giving away hundreds of Russell’s book and dozens of other individual books, there is the additional cost of renting and furnishing the exhibit booth space (over $2000), shipping the books to the conference ($200), plus my travel, food, and lodging for the five days of the conference trip (over $1,000). This takes a huge bite out of our budget every year, but we believe very strongly that it is worth every penny for the good impact we are having there. Minds are being informed, challenged, and changed. Our work at ETS has planted seed that is already producing good fruit for the cause of Biblical Truth. Every year we exhibit there is cultivating and nurturing those seeds even more. We sincerely appreciate those of you who enable us to do this work by your contributions. We can not do it without you.
