The preterists and the historicists are part of the ekklesia who the remnant says are in apostasy and have been in apostasy since sometime in the 19th century.
Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910), Ellen G. White (1827-1915), Edward Irving (1792 –1834), John Darby (1800 -1882), Charles T. Russell (1852-1916),
and and C.I. Scofield (1843 -1921) were some of the major false
prophets of the 19th century who influenced Christians. The most
influential 19th century false doctrines, or cults, were the Jehovah's
Witnesses, the Mormons, Christian Science and Dispensationalism.. Dispensationalism became the most popular cult and took over, by the mid 20th century, the majority of protestant denominations.
Walter Martin in The Kingdom of the Cults, defines a cult as "any
religious group which differs significantly in some one or more
respects as to belief or practice from those religious groups which
are regarded as the normative expressions of religion in our total
culture. This is from:
http://www.internetarchaeology.org/w...ons/intro.html
There is a problem with defining a Christian cult, or a false
doctrine, in terms of how much it differs from "normative expressions
of religion in our total culture" and/or how much it is different from
what was believed in the majority of denominations before the theology
became popular. This is because if the false doctrine or cult becomes
so popular that it takes over the majority of Christian denominations
and churches, then for those in the theology and others, it is no
longer false but "truth." The theology or cult becomes the authority
for the broad way of the majority of Christians. The theology replaces
scripture as authority.
A false doctrine or false prophet has to be defined as promoting a clear departure from scripture.
There was a beginning of apostasy in the ekklesia in the 19th century. To say that apostasy did not exist because the writers of the New Testament are thought to have limited the time for the fulfillment of their prophecy to the First Century is false.
Who says their prophecies about apostasy were to be fulfilled only in the First Century? The Catholic apostasy did not occur until after the time of Origen, 185–254 AD and Augustine, 354-430 AD.