Hyperpreterism is the teaching that against all of historic Christian interpretation, that the Second coming of Jesus, the general resurrection of the believers, & the Judgment all occurred in AD70.  Hyperpreterism is often that last stop before the person finally takes the leap of unfaith into atheism.  I know at least 6-7 former hyperpreterists who have become functional atheists & now yet another man has come out & admitted he no longer believes in God.

Jared Coleman, who was a former administrator of the most vocal hyperpreterist website; “Planet Preterist” has come out & revealed:

In almost everybody there is a certain tendency of romanticism. There is this look at a past, where things were better. Maybe it is in one's personal life, or at some point of history where life seems to have been better or more exciting than our daily life right now and here. People reenact the Middle Ages, the renaissance, the Civil War, playfully sometimes, and sometimes out of a deep longing for a golden age.

There is also a variation of this romanticism in Christianity. Christians who see the heroes of the faith in the past and compare them with what appears to them a far less appealing present long for the good old times--it might be the Jerusalem of the apostles, the Wittenberg of Luther and Melanchthon, the St. Louis of C. F. W. Walther and Francis Pieper, or another time and place. But there was never this age where the church was unanimous, where there was no strife and struggle, where everybody lived in peace and harmony. Reading the New Testament shows us congregations loaded with problems. Any study of church history gives us a picture of a church in distress. And how else could it be in this world, in this age, where sin is still here, where the devil still tries to destroy God's holy Church through false doctrine and temptation to a sinful life? But how do you deal with the problems of the Church? How can you fight heresy and how can you stop new and strange ideas of what is the proper godly behavior of a Christian?

One of the answers given in the course of the history of the church is that councils decide points at issue. Councils were assemblies of bishops, either of a certain area, or of all Christian countries, the so-called ecumenical councils (ecumenical means here universal, it has nothing to do with the modern ecumenical movement). There is an impressive series of these ecumenical councils, starting with the Council at Nicea 325.

In the late Middle Ages there was a universally-felt need for reform in the Roman Catholic Church. So several "reform councils" met, but they did not succeed. One of the reasons was that the Pope sabotaged any efforts to diminish his power. And, as it is often in organizations, the bureaucracy won against boards that meet only from time to time. When the Reformation movement started, the urge for a council became even greater. But the Pope was busy waging war against the emperor. When there was finally peace, a council was announced, and then postponed, and then transferred, and then again postponed, and after that delayed and so on, since the Pope did not want to have a meeting that was not under his total control. This went on for 14 years, and only after Luther's death was there finally a council in Trent. But it was no fair hearing, no free council, but an assembly in which the Pope set and controlled the agenda. Lutherans were not even admitted for a hearing.

During an era in history called, “The Enlightenment”, it was fashionable to use what has been termed as “higher criticism” to introduce questions & doubts about biblical inerrancy, biblical historicity, & general presuppositional belief – that ultimately would lead to the undermining of faith.

One way that higher criticism has been defined is:

Another offshoot of the higher criticism approach is often misunderstood as “exegesis”.  The word exegesis literally means to “bring out of” in that a person who is approaching the Bible in an “exegetical” manner is supposed to be bringing the meaning of the text out rather than reading their opinion back into the text.