sb. (a.) Theol. [f. FUTURE sb. -IST.] One who believes that the Scripture prophecies, esp. those in the Book of Revelation, are still to be fulfilled in the future.
The sense ‘one who has regard to the future,’ given in Worcester 1846, and expanded in later Dicts., is prob. a figment.
1842. G. S. Faber, Prov. Lett. (1844), I. 83, note. Dr. Todd and Mr. Mac-Causland … are alike stanch Antiprotestant Futurists.
1854. D. S. Desprez, Apocal. Fulfilled, i. 2. We have Præterists and Futurists—one class of interpreters believing that the Apocalypse was fulfilled in the first three or four centuries of the Christian æra; another class maintaining that, with the exception of the three first chapters, none of it is fulfilled.
1882. Farrar, Early Chr., II. 302. All commentators alike, Præterist, Futurist, Continuous-Historical, and Allegorical.
b. attrib. passing into adj.
1878. H. G. Guinness, End of Age, Pref. (1880), 5. The futurist school of prophetic interpreters.
1881. Ch. Times, 25 Feb., 121. To give themselves up … to idle futurist speculations.
