Be fair now. What people mostly have trouble with, is that the theory doesnât cover as much of the data as the post-mortem interpretation. There wasnât a general resurrection in 70CE and death and hades definitely werenât sent into exile or burned up in a Temple fire, nor many other prophecies about and âaroundâ the final judgment fulfilled. Not all people were salted by the unquenchable fire of Jerusalem burning, leading to peace with one another, and it caused (and still causes) a LOT of little children to stumble, not the final sheep to be found and brought back (yet). More than the unmerciful were thrown to the tormentors, and their torment was not something that God would put to an end once they learned to pay the mercy they themselves owed. Nor (to say the least) was Jerusalem saved at the last moment by Jesus / YHWH returning to put down the assaulting armies in any way form or fashion (much less in a quite overtly militant way).
Itâs literally like someone in 40CE arguing that since Sodom was already destroyed, and Jerusalem itself previously, the people who expect Jerusalem to be overthrown by fire and armies again sometime in the generation after Jesus are mostly refusing to be robbed of their (implictly only irrational) fears. Partial fulfillments point ahead to full fulfillments later. No one denies Jesus was predicting the fall of Jerusalem. But He (and others He inspired) were predicting a lot more than that, too.
I would go so far to say that if I came to believe the eschaton prophecies only referred to the fall of Jerusalem, then I might have to reject Biblical testimony to universal salvation, or at best think the scriptural witness, including Jesus by report, was being actually schizophrenic in their (and His) testimony about that.
Re temporarily not existing after death â Iâm okay with the idea of tunneling forward to the resurrection, so to speak, since that keeps actual continuity of existence, even though to the people living meanwhile the ones who have died arenât there anymore.
However, Iâm not sure even that concept wouldnât require abandoning Christâs evangelism of hades, âtoday you will be with Me in paradiseâ, and the restoration of anyone to life (by Jesus or a prophet/apostle) before their resurrection.
The Transfiguration would work okay I guess, with Moses and Elijah back-projecting âafterâ their resurrection, so to speak. Maybe pre-res raisings would work if the spirits tunneled forward to that point (called there by God of course) instead of to one of the actual Res events (yet). There may be similar âquantumâ workarounds for the other points.
Iâm not at all a fan of consigning the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus to total fictionality: I do recognize there are parabolic details to it â but even where fictional the other parables are set in ârealâ if sometimes implausible settings. The sheep and the goats arenât literally sheep and goats either, but the judgment is real â even if the judgment only referred to the fall of Jerusalem! (Though it doesnât, or there wouldnât be a reference to the baby goats being sent into the fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Nor did Jesus arrive to judge His flock including accepting people who are surprised to learn theyâve been serving Him faithfully and are now being accepted into eonian life and other rewards prepared for them.)
Re the Dead Sea being the Lake of Fire â sure, I think itâs pretty clearly a type or âliving metaphorâ for it, so to speak. But not the other way around, and not fully so either. The basin before the sacrificial throne in the Temple is, too, and not exhaustively so either (though importantly so). Ditto Sodom (in some very limited ways) and the fall of Jerusalem (in very limited ditto) and any burning garbage dumping in Ge-hinnom. Even if the area around Edom, or the whole earth itself, became a molten wasteland (temporarily, as prophesied in various places), Iâd still only regard those as quite limited living metaphors for the LoF.
I think itâs much better, on a full accounting of the data, to regard the LoF (and related Gehenna language involving eonian unquenchable fire) as the Holy Spirit in one or more related modes of operation. We all get to be salted/baptized by the Son in the Spirit-even-fire, which is the best of things and leads to us being at peace with one another when we accept the salting in our hearts/selves. To the extent that we insist on clinging to the thorns and thistles in our souls, or to the stubble with which weâve built on Christ (Who is the only Logos/foundation upon which anyone can build anything, even rebels against God), weâre going to naturally suffer as a result, but only to that proportion, no further (though by the same token it could be very extreme, and/or last into the eons, even the eons of the eons) and not permanently â because God is going to succeed sooner or later not only in getting us clean of our sins but in leading us to reject our sins, slake our thirst, wash ourselves clean, and so obtain permission to enter into the healing and life of Godâs own life shared with us.
This by the way is another reason why Iâm against the notion of reducing Gehenna/LoF and related language to only meaning the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by Roman armies back in 70. In my reckoning it would be no less than explaining that something apparently related intimately to God Most High Himself is only the tragic suffering and murder of a city long ago which we should put behind us.
Like that street preacher who got unjustly sentenced to crucifixion outside Jerusalem back in, what was it, 30 or 33, something like that? Thatâs over and done with now, weâre past it, no reason to expect anything more there. Did he prophecy the destruction of Jerusalem? No reason to pay any more attention to that; people who cling to what he said on the matter are only in love with their own irrational fears. Some people even cling so hard as to think he rose from the grave, ha! â or was divine somehow, even God Most High somehow! Okay, he also predicted he himself would die on a cross, though with what he was saying about the destruction of the Temple that was hardly a big prediction, but no reason to expect anything more from what he said now: he died on the cross and thatâs over. Hey, didnât he even compare himself to the Temple?! Some of his disciples even teach he meant that the Temple being torn down referred to his own death! So really, once he died, he fulfilled all the prophecies he gave about the destruction of the Temple, the end. Any more details which donât fit that can and should be explained away; there are probably creative ways to do so, if we put our minds to it. Wait, didnât he also say something about his death being the ultimate sacrifice for sin somehow? Well, thereâs another reason not to expect God to destroy Jerusalem â if that guy was telling the truth, there is no reason for us to expect God to ever be wrathy about sin again for any reason in any way.
Anyway, it all ends with his death. Nothing beyond that. Resurrection, salvation from sin? Thatâs just poetic language about people sharing meals commonly with one another while theyâre still alive. There are superstitious and irrationally emotional people who believe more than that, but isnât it better (and certainly less personally bothersome, to many other people anyway) to just explain away anything that might look like evidence otherwise?
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I donât like it when liberal sceptics try to go that route, and I like it less when actually religious Christians (like NT Wright) try to go that route. I donât accept his historical preterist arguments for much the same kind of reasons he himself doesnât accept John Dominic Crossanâs ideas of what Christianity âreallyâ and âonlyâ should mean.
I donât think of Adam as an âimposterâ after he sinned. He was what he was: a human who exercised his will to do what he wanted to do. The rest of what you say makes sense. 
You addressed some points I was struggling with. I was thinking along your lines, but you worded it much better than I could. 