Some preterist continue to show their historical focus which shows their narrow and natural thinking mindset. Symbols deployed in the parables have nothing to do with our hearts or about judging the thoughts of men, but are really just symbolic of physical nations, and groups of people. How much more can scripture be marginalized by Preterist who proclaim spiritual things are really just symbolic of visible and natural types. Not only that, Douglas excludes the possibility of judgement continuing after 70AD by saying this parable is NOT ABOUT "judgment of all humanity throughout history" Now, if Jesus is not speaking about the hearts of men, and is really just concerned with physical nations, and groups of people which existed long ago, what relevance does this have for us today. NONE!
Stephen Douglas
So the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats isn’t about a future judgment of all humanity throughout history — but what is it about? Chiefly, this parable is yet another proclamation of the irrelevance of race in the New Covenant. It is remarkably parallel to the parables of the Wedding Banquet and the Ten Virgins (the latter which Jesus recounted immediately prior to the Sheep and the Goats parable), in which the importance of ethnic Israel is shown to pass away with the Old Covenant. This story was meant to rankle the Jewish leaders of the time. For them, the only imaginable outcome of this judgment was that the division of sheep and goats would go straight down the line: Law-keeping Israel as the sheep, all other nations as the goats. Yet shockingly, in what I think is probably the primary point of the parable, Jesus puts all nations on equal footing, scandalously lumps Jew and Gentile together, and determines who are wicked and who are righteous based on His own standard, a right He has as the King Who came (cf. Daniel 7:13, “He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him.”). The discerning Shepherd distinguished acts of compassion prompted and empowered by regenerate believers from rote implementation of a particular race’s rules and regulations, discriminated behavior from ethnicity, and this is how the Shepherd determined who was who.
undeception.wordpress.com/2007/11/17/the-sheep-the-goats-and-the-judgment/
