setting.137 The church, threatened by the growing demands of emperor worship, is entering into a period in which its faith is to be severely tested. Persecution will increase, but those who endure will share in the final victory of God over the demonic powers that control and direct the totalitarian state. The great merit of the preterist approach is that it understands and interprets the plight of the first-century church in terms of the crisis that had developed at that particular time. By not