[T]he sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken
Matthew 24:29 (portion)
This event describes the second coming. It is described in many places, including the Olivet discourse (here). The Preterist interpretation of the Olivet discourse rightly interprets Matthew 24:34’s “genea” as the current generation Jesus was speaking to. This is confirmed by Matthew 24:1-3, in which Jesus says “these things” refer to “As for what you see here…” (v3). No other destruction other than the 70 AD destruction destroyed the then visible buildings. This is echoed in the two other parallel passages (Luke 21, Mark 13).
Because, however, preterism does not distinguish between a past Great Tribulation in 70 AD from a future second coming (see the article “All These Things” for a further disambiguation of these two events), they interpret certain events from the record of Josephus as this event. This event, however, is repeated through numerous other scriptures, and the events of the the 70 AD do not adequately explain what is repeated in many of the Old Testament prophets. While many yet adhere to a future, bodily return of Jesus, they maintain that Matthew 24 is speaking of something else.
What the typical Partial Preterist gets right in Matthew 24:34, sticking to the text, they get quite wrong when it comes to the Second Coming scriptures. The futurist camps, on the other hand, while they get the Second Coming right, make a mess out of “genea”, effectively ignoring the Matthew 24:1-3 context of the passage (hence, “All These Things”).
Some have taken this to be a great Paradox, or perhaps even an error in the text of some sort, however, this need not be (see here for a detailed analysis of Matthew 24 and its use of the Greek word Eutheos in Matthew 24:39, which is wrongly interpreted as “immeidately” in the English).
Rather, the passage describes two separate events, the Great Tribulation fulfilled in 70 AD, and the future Second Coming, also parallelled, apparently, in the end of Revelation 20.
The two camps which are at odds with each other, the futurist and the preterist, both see pieces of the puzzle which the other cannot interpret, thus claiming a correct interpretation, but both generally operate under a misunderstanding through a translation issue in Matthew 24:29. Since Matthew 24:29’s Eutheos, translated “Immediately”, is the only text which absolutely describes the Great Tribulation as concurrent with the Second Coming, and since this implied lack of interval between them is not implied in the Greek, the basis for the division so widely held merely demonstrates the ditch on either side of the road. As it were, between the two ditches on either side of the road, is, namely, the road. Both were right, both were wrong, and the truth is the simple Word of Scripture, rightly translated and divided, which contradicts both.
As it happens, there is generally more conformity to the Preterist position, however, the typical Preterist eschatology usually looks at 70 AD for the complete fulfillment of the text, rather than the couple centuries that followed.