https://americanvision.org/Recent content The American VisionHugo -- gohugo.ioen-usAll rights reserved.Thu, 30 Jul 2026 07:24:28 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/early-documents-in-the-debate-over-preterism/Thu, 30 Jul 2026 07:24:28 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/early-documents-in-the-debate-over-preterism/<p>While I was visiting my late friend Mike Britton, I spoke with a man who had been discipled by Mike. He’s been teaching a Bible study on prophecy. We spoke on the phone. He told me about a back-and-forth debate he was having with a friend. This friend would not look at alternative arguments. When he was confronted with some hard facts, he dismissed them.</p> <p>One of his arguments was that the early church fathers knew nothing of preterism, the prophetic view that most of the New Testament prophecies were fulfilled in the events leading up to and including the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. This is a common claim. It’s a false claim, cited so often that it’s become akin to the authority of the Bible.</p> <p>Much of the debate over preterism comes down to when a document was written. This is especially true for the book of Revelation.<strong>[1]</strong> If a New Testament document was written before the destruction of Jerusalem, which occurred in AD 70, then any statement about future prophetic events could refer to that event. The burden of proof is on the futurist to prove otherwise.</p> <p>Thomas Ice has written that there’s not a “shred of evidence” of preterism among the Early Church Fathers. One of the first places a critic of preterism will go is to the Didache. The Didache, also known as “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,” is probably the oldest surviving extant piece of non-canonical, extra-biblical literature that the church has <strong>available</strong> to study. It claims to have been written by the twelve apostles, but this cannot be proved.<strong>[2]</strong> While a copy of the full text of the Didache was not discovered until 1873, there are references to it in Clement of Alexandria’s <em>Miscellanies</em>, and Athanasius’s <em>Festal Letter</em>.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/files/NTEfr_large.png?v=1712955428" alt="New Testament Eschatology: What the Early Church Believed About Bible Prophecy"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>New Testament Eschatology: What the Early Church Believed About Bible Prophecy</h3> <p>It has been maintained by some modern writers that the early church was predominately premillennial and exclusively futuristic on Bible prophecy. While these claims have been made with certainty, there has always been a lack of clear historical documentation to support them. Sometimes the historical record has been stretched and exaggerated to fit an already developed theory. But since the futurist perspective has been promoted as an early church reality by so many for so long, few question it. New Testament Eschatology challenges this prevailing futurist view with a careful study of the historical record. The evidence shows that many early church writers understood the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 to be the end of the Old Covenant world.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/new-testament-eschatology-what-the-early-church-believed-about-bible-prophecy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>In Didache 16, there are 12 references to Matthew 24-25 (24:4, 10-13, 21, 24, 30, 31, 42, 44, and 25:31). The crucial time text of Matthew 24:34 (“this generation will not pass away”) is not quoted, but a form of Matthew 24:30 is: “The Lord shall come and all His saints with Him. <em>Then shall the world see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven</em>” (16.7-8). John MacArthur, whose chapter in <em>The End Times Controversy</em> uses the Didache as a defense for futurism, claims that the “document proves that those who actually lived through the events of A.D. 70 regarded Matthew 24:29-31—and the entire Olivet Discourse—as yet-unfulfilled prophecy.”<strong>[3]</strong> Nothing in the Didache says anything about “living through the events of A.D. 70.” Further, nothing in the Didache indicates that the destruction of the temple has taken place.</p> <p>The verses quoted from Matthew 24-25 in Didache 16 obviously refer to future events from the perspective of the author(s). Of course, if the Didache was written before the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, then preterists have their “shred of evidence” that Thomas Ice says does not exist. MacArthur maintains that “most scholars believe it was written near the close of the first century, most likely after A.D. 80.”<strong>[4]</strong> He does not offer a source for his assertion. The dating of the Didache, like many of these very early documents, is debatable. But there is good reason to place its composition early, prior to the destruction of the temple.</p> <p>Didache authority Kurt Niederwimmer, after a thorough study of the document, concludes that “the date of the <em>Didache</em> is a matter of judgment.”<strong>[5]</strong> In addition to MacArthur’s “most scholars,” none of whom he cites, other scholars believe that the Didache was composed before AD 70. In the authoritative work <em>The Apostolic Fathers</em>, we read the following.</p> <blockquote> <p>A remarkably wide range of dates, extending from before A.D. 50 to the third century or later, has been proposed for this document&hellip;. The Didache may have been put into its present form as late as 150, though a date considerably closer to the end of the first century seems more plausible. The materials from which it was composed, however, reflect the state of the church at an even earlier time. The relative simplicity of the prayers, the continuing concern to differentiate Christian practice from Jewish rituals (8.1), and in particular the form of church structure&ndash;note the twofold structure of bishops and deacons (cf. Phil. 1:1) and the continued existence of traveling apostles and prophets alongside a resident ministry—reflect a time closer to that of Paul and James (who died in the 60s) than Ignatius (who died sometime after 110).<strong>[6]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>The definitive work on the Didache was written by the French-Canadian Jean-Paul Audet who concluded “that it was composed, almost certainly in Antioch, between 50 and 70,”<strong>[7]</strong> “contemporary with the first gospel writings.”<strong>[8]</strong></p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/files/RFCfr_large.png?v=1779468036" alt="Revelation and the First Century"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Revelation and the First Century</h3> <p>With Revelation and the First Century, Francis Gumerlock has done an invaluable service to everyone interested in prophecy and church history. Dr. Gumerlock provides dozens of citations from early church history proving that many of them held a preterist view from the very first days of Christianity onward.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/revelation-and-the-first-century" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>In an earlier edition of <em>The Apostolic Fathers</em>, we read a similar conclusion: “In his very thorough commentary J.-P. Audet suggests about A.D. 70, and he is not likely to be off by more than a decade in either direction.”<strong>[9]</strong> Even liberal scholars, who tend to date all New Testament documents late, acknowledge the evidence for an early date for the Didache. For example, Stephen J. Patterson comments that the trend is to date the document early, “at least by the end of the first century or the beginning of the second, and in the case of Jean-P. Audet, as early as 50-70 C.E.”<strong>[10]</strong> Andrew Louth writes that many scholars would date the Didache “earlier than the New Testament itself.”<strong>[11]</strong> Aaron Milavec’s 1000-page study of the Didache also places its composition sometime between AD 50 and 70.<strong>[12]</strong> Milavec contends that the Didache is not dependent on Matthew’s gospel: “Even in those instances where there is close verbal agreement [with Matthew], the logic and order of the Didache is openly in conflict with what one finds in Matt 24.”<strong>[13]</strong> Also see E. Earle Ellis, <em>The Making of the New Testament Documents</em>.<strong>[14]</strong></p> <p>So then, if the Didache was written prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, as many scholars suggest, then its use of prophetic passages later found in Matthew 24-25 to describe events that were yet to take place, including “the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven” (Matt. 24:30), makes perfect sense given a preterist interpretation of the Olivet Discourse. Ice has his “shred of evidence.”</p> <hr> <p>[1] Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., <em>Before Jerusalem Fell: Dating the Book of Revelation</em>, rev. ed. (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 1998).</p> <p>[2] “It purports to be the Lord’s teaching through the Twelve to the Gentiles.” (Sherman E. Johnson, “A Subsidiary Motive for the Writing of the Didache,” in Massey H. Shepherd and Sherman E. Johnson, eds., <em>Munera Studiosa: Studies Presented to W. H. P. Hatch on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday</em> [Cambridge, MA: Episcopal Theological School, 1946], 122. Quoted in Kurt Niederwimmer, <em>The Didache: A Commentary</em>, trans. Linda M. Maloney [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1988], 3, note 14).</p> <p>[3] John F. MacArthur, Jr., “Signs in the Sky,” <em>The End Times Controversy</em>, 112. “Signs in the Sky” originally appeared in John MacArthur, Jr., <em>The Second Coming: Signs of Christ’s Return and the End of the Age</em> (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), chap. 6.</p> <p>[4] MacArthur, “Signs in the Sky,” 112.</p> <p>[5] Niederwimmer, <em>The Didache</em>, 53.</p> <p>[6] Michael W. Holmes, ed., <em>The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations</em>, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, [1992] 1999), 247-248. Emphasis added.</p> <p>[7] John A. T. Robinson, <em>Redating the New Testament</em> (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), 323.</p> <p>[8] Jean-Paul Audet, <em>La Didachè: Instructions des Apôtres</em> (Paris: Gabalda, 1958), 187-210.</p> <p>[9] Michael W. Holmes, ed., <em>The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations of Their Writings</em>, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1992), 247. Holmes references Audet, La Didachè, 187-206.</p> <p>[10] Stephen J. Patterson, <em>The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus: Thomas Christianity, Social Radicalism, and the Quest of the Historical Jesus</em> (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 1993), 173.</p> <p>[11] Andrew Louth, <em>Early Christian Writers</em> (London: Penguin Books, 1968), 189.</p> <p>[12] Aaron Milavec, *The Didache: Faith, Hope, and Life of the Earliest Christian Communities, 50-70 CE (*Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2003).</p> <p>[13] Aaron Milavec, “Synoptic Tradition in the Didache Revisited,” Center for the Study of Religion and Society, University of Victoria [no date], 19. <a href="https://www.didache.info/AaMainDownloadsFree.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">www.didache.info</a></p> <p>[14] (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002), 55</p>https://americanvision.org/posts/the-sad-state-of-education/Wed, 29 Jul 2026 06:47:49 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/the-sad-state-of-education/<p><em>Gary <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/the-sad-state-of-education" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">discusses</a> the current state of education in public schools and universities.</em></p> <p>The biblical view of the future presents the truth that history is moving forward, and every Christian is responsible before God to show himself a good and faithful steward of his God‐given gifts. God requires an accounting.</p> <p>The kingdom of God has purpose because God directs its every movement. History is not bound by a never‐ending series of cycles, with God powerless to intervene and govern. The future, as Nebuchadnezzar came to realize, is governed by God. Earthly sovereigns who fail to recognize God’s absolute sovereignty will be destroyed:</p> <blockquote> <p>You [Nebuchadnezzar] continued looking [at the statue] until a stone was cut out without hands, and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay, and crushed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed all at the same time, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them was found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth (Dan. 2:34–35).</p> </blockquote> <p>The pagan idea of the future is a myth. The future belongs to God’s people and Christians are not trapped in futile historical cycles.</p> <p>The Christian’s view of the future determines how he lives, plans, and works in the present for the future. Even during Israel’s captivity under Babylonian rule, the nation’s darkest hour, the people were told to plan and build for the future:</p> <blockquote> <p>Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens, and eat their produce. Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease. . . . For I know the plans that I have for you, ‘declares the LORD,’ plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope (Jer. 29:5–6, 11).</p> </blockquote> <p>God’s words seemed contrary to what people saw all around them. Destruction and captivity awaited the nation, yet God commanded them to prepare for the future. In spite of every pessimistic view, God wanted the people’s desires and hopes to be future‐directed. Build for what will be. The psychological benefit of such a mind set does much to spur the church of Jesus Christ to greater kingdom activity. A preoccupation with defeat brings defeat by default. Why would anyone wish to build for the future when there is no earthly future hope? Who would invest in a losing proposition? Why should anyone work to establish a godly home, school, business, or civil government when all such institutions seemed doomed despite our efforts?</p> <p>The hope of the future is real because Christians should know that God governs the affairs of men and nations (Ps. 22:28; 47:8; 127:1; Dan. 4:35). All conspiracies, no matter how well planned, will be put to an end by the God who rules from heaven (Ps. 2).</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/bkp5647_front.1__78227_zoom__29640.1342099739.1280.1280_large.jpg?v=1364990075" alt="Whoever Controls the Schools Rules the World"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Whoever Controls the Schools Rules the World</h3> <p>Whoever Controls the Schools Rules the World shows how education can be used as a vehicle for social change from Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler to secular humanism and radical Islam. Our worldview opponents understand that education is where the war of ideas is fought. If Christians are serious about securing the future for our children, they must understand the nature of the war we are fighting. If you have children, want children, or know someone who has children -- you need to get this book and read it before it becomes too late to save the generation to follow us from the ruins</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/whoever-controls-the-schools-rules-the-world" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary discusses the current state of education in public schools and universities. For all the money being spent and all the focus on &ldquo;what is best for students,&rdquo; the quality of the product has been steadily declining for decades. Most students leave high school unprepared for college, and colleges have adapted to this, all the while raising prices and bringing in more and more students.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/the-sad-state-of-education" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here to browse past episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast</a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/how-good-were-the-good-old-days/Tue, 28 Jul 2026 07:31:01 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/how-good-were-the-good-old-days/<p>• “In 1905, a Vermont doctor and his chauffeur were the first to successfully drive a car across the country from San Francisco to New York. It took them 63 days. Today you can fly cross-country in a matter of hours while using wireless Internet.” — David Bahnsen</p> <p>• “Nothing is more responsible for the Good Old Days than a bad memory.”</p> <p>• Everybody is always talking about ‘the good old days,’ and a lot of the nostalgia expressed is simply the result of poor memory.”<strong>[1]</strong></p> <p>• “A certain class of people are fond of talking about ‘the good old days,’ but they are for the most part individuals without imagination and with a very poor memory. As a matter of fact, there never was a time in the history of the world when the days were as good as they are right now in this year of our Lord 1913.”<strong>[2]</strong></p> <p>It’s 2026, and to the surprise of many, we’re still here after two World Wars, polio, the Great Depression, and the Dust Bowl. We don’t know what the future will bring. With that in mind, many people are nostalgic about the past. The writer of the biblical book Ecclesiastes puts the past in perspective when he writes: “Do not say, ‘Why is it that former days were better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this” (7:10).</p> <p>Matthew Henry’s (1622-1714) comments on this passage are helpful: “The supposition is a foolish reflection upon the providence of God in this world&hellip;. One is so much a stranger to the times past, and such an incompetent judge even of the present times, that he cannot expect a satisfactory answer to the inquiry and therefore he ‘does not enquire wisely.’”</p> <p>Our memory of the past is selective. We tend to block out the bad and remember only the good. Thus, “The best explanation for the good old days is a bad memory.” Read Otto L. Bettmann’s book <em>The Good Old Days—They Were Terrible</em> if you want some historic perspective of where we’ve been.</p> <p>Authors Carl Olof Jonsson and Wolfgang Herbst write, “Perhaps because we are to such an extent ‘strangers to the past,’ we easily read into the events of circumstances of our own day a distinctiveness and uniqueness that may not actually be there.”<strong>[3]</strong> Television shows like <em>Leave It to Beaver</em> and <em>Father Knows Best</em> are not the best ways to view the past:</p> <blockquote> <p>The 1950s may not be as innocent—or Christian—as people of faith recall. [Gary] Ross believes. “Each era has its own false nostalgia. We all put a picket fence around something. For my generation it was the fifties, and for other generations it will be something else.” Certainly, those of us born after the fifties cannot imagine returning to a place and time we never visited except through reruns. Perhaps conservatives and Christians are calling America to return to a place that only existed in the movies, on television, in Hollywood’s version of history.<strong>[4]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>Do we realize how modern it is even to own a home with indoor plumbing and central air conditioning and heating? The light bulb was invented in 1879. Before that time, it was candles, kerosene lamps, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_oil" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">whale oil</a>, and dangerous natural gas.<strong>[5]</strong></p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/bkp0397_front__84725.1286483519.1280.1280_large.jpg?v=1371841572" alt="Thinking Straight in a Crooked World"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Thinking Straight in a Crooked World</h3> <p>We live in a crooked world of ideas evaluated by crooked people. Left to our crooked nature, we can never fully understand what God has planned for us and His world. God has not left us without a corrective solution. He has given us a reliable reference point in the Bible so we can identify the crookedness and straighten it. </p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/thinking-straight-in-a-crooked-world" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>I was born in 1950. Everything I know about history before 1950 has come from reading, discussions with people who were there, and modern media presentations of events captured on film. I’ve read how bad things were when hordes of soldiers raped and pillaged, when tyrants ruled by whim, when cheers went up from the crowds when another head dropped in the basket after Madame Guillotine did her work, when mass starvation was the consequence of utopian revolutions that went inevitably bad, when people died of simple infections because antibiotics had not been discovered, when polio struck the healthy until Jonas Salk developed his vaccine, when the Black Death killed tens of millions of people. I could go on, but you get the picture.</p> <p>I can remember the mechanical washer and wringer, or “mangle,” that my grandmother used to wash clothes and squeeze out the water. She hung the wet clothes outside on a line to get them dry. Yes, those were the good old days of drudgery, sun-up to sun-down chores that never went away.</p> <p>The first manned flight occurred in 1903 when Wilbur and Orville Wright took to the air at Kill Devil Hill on the coast of North Carolina. Many who were alive in 1903 saw two men walk on the moon in 1969. Today, a person can fly across the country in less than 4 hours and across the ocean in less than half a day. Christopher Columbus set sail from Southern Spain on August 3, 1492, and arrived in the Bahamas on October 12th —more than a two-month voyage. Now we have around-the-world luxury cruises.</p> <p>There’s the telephone, first invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. These early phones were attached to the walls in our homes or sat on tables or desks connected by wires to wall outlets. Now we carry our phones with us wherever we go. No wire. No long-distance calling charges. No need for an operator. We have smartphones that are more powerful than the computers used to send men to the Moon. Who in the nineteenth century thought such things were possible? Not even Jules Verne envisioned them.</p> <p>Humorist P. J. O’Rourke wrote, “When you think of the good old days, think ‘dentistry.’” “The greatest invention of the modern world is anesthetics,” Dr. Gary North wrote. “Prior to 1844, in preparation for an operation, you drank booze until you passed out—hopefully. Then the physician—‘sawbones,’ he was called—got started hacking away.”</p> <p>The three leading causes of death a hundred years ago in the US were: (1) pneumonia and influenza, (2) tuberculosis, and (3) diarrhea. What’s America’s most publicized health risk today? Obesity! Diet programs are a multi-billion-dollar industry because we have too much food. What a great problem to have—in moderation.</p> <p>What was life comparable to before today’s polluting automobile? Do you have any idea what city life was like when hundreds of horses defecated in the streets? During hot days, the manure would dry, and the air would be filled with bacteria-laden dust that people would breathe. When it rained, pedestrians would have to traverse through manure sludge.</p> <p>Sanitary experts in the early part of the twentieth century agreed that the normal city horse produced between fifteen and thirty pounds of manure a day, with the average being something like twenty‑two pounds. In a city like Milwaukee in 1907, for instance, with a human population of 350,000 and a horse population of 12,500, this meant 133 tons of manure a day, for a daily average of nearly three‑quarters of a pound of manure per person. Or, as the health officials in Rochester calculated in 1900, the 15,000 horses in that city produced enough manure in a year to make a pile covering an acre of ground 175 feet high and breeding sixteen billion flies.<strong>[6]</strong></p> <p>The horse population of Chicago was 83,000, and this was after the automobile and electric streetcar had caused a decline in the number of urban horses. In 1880, the cities of New York and Brooklyn had a combined horse population somewhere between 150,000 and 175,000. As one can imagine, keeping the streets clean was a major problem. Some suggested that epidemics of cholera, smallpox, yellow fever, and typhoid were caused by “‘a combination of certain atmospheric conditions and putrefying filth,’ among which horse manure was a chief offender.”<strong>[7]</strong></p> <p>Keeping the streets clean was expensive. Some cities tried to recoup the cost by selling the manure for fertilizer. This caused another unforeseen problem since collecting manure was more profitable than collecting regular trash. Daily refuse often remained in the streets along with the leftover manure. What they wouldn’t have given for a garbage truck and a landfill back then.</p> <p>The flu epidemic of 1918-1919 killed somewhere between 20 and 40 million people worldwide.</p> <p>Some say the rise of Islam is a sign of the end. People thought the same thing in the 15th century and before when Islam came into being in the 7th century. Read the opening paragraph to the Prologue of Samuel Eliot Morison’s biography on Christopher Columbus, <em>Admiral of the Ocean Sea</em> (1942):</p> <blockquote> <p>At the end of the year 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science, and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through the study of the pagan past. Islam was now expanding at the expense of Christendom&hellip;. The Ottoman Turks, after snuffing out all that remained of the Byzantine Empire, had overrun most of Greece, Albania and Serbia; presently they would be hammering at the gates of Vienna.</p> </blockquote> <p>Plug in any year where 1492 appears in Morison’s quotation, and his description reads like today’s headlines. Things looked bleak. The world changed in a day when Martin Luther posted a public declaration on a chapel door in 1517 in Wittenberg, Germany, calling out one of Europe’s major powers.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/files/jtbfr_large.png?v=1763827352" alt="The Greatest and the Least: A Biblical Theology of John the Baptist"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>The Greatest and the Least: A Biblical Theology of John the Baptist</h3> <p>Just like Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel, and the Twelve,16 John was a true prophet sent by God. The real question—just as it was with the previous prophets hundreds of years earlier—was what the people would do with his message of coming judgment. With John, the prophetic office had been reinstated for one final task. God was preparing to do something new in Israel’s midst.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/the-greatest-and-the-least-a-biblical-theology-of-john-the-baptist" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>It’s over five hundred years later and there’s a lot of hand-wringing about the condition of our world. Too often we dwell on the bad and the ugly and dismiss the good as inconsequential or improbable.</p> <hr> <p>[1] Sylvia Strum, 1950.</p> <p>[2] “The Good Old Days,” <em>The American Food Journal</em> 8:5 (Chicago: B. Meyers &amp; Company), May 1913, 131.</p> <p>[3] Carl Olof Jonsson and Wolfgang Herbst, <em>The “Sign” of the Last Days—When?</em> (Atlanta: Commentary Press, 1987), x.</p> <p>[4] Craig Detweiler, “Opportunity Lost,” <em>Behind the Screen: Hollywood Insiders on Faith, Film, and Culture</em>, eds. Spencer Lewerenz and Barbara Nicolosi (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2005), 38.</p> <p>[5] Natural gas does not have an odor that can be smelled. Trace amounts of a chemical called mercaptan are added to the gas that’s piped into homes. It has a distinctive rotten egg or sulfur-like odor. That so-called gas smell is added to the gas so it can be detected. Prior to the addition of mercaptan, a gas leak in a home could be fatal since no one would know it was happening.</p> <p>[6] Joel A. Tarr, “The Horse—Polluter of the City,” <em>The Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective</em> (Akron, OK: University of Akron Press, 1996), 323-324.</p> <p>[7] Tarr, <em>The Search for the Ultimate Sink</em>, 325.</p>https://americanvision.org/posts/the-rod-and-the-staff/Mon, 27 Jul 2026 06:49:42 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/the-rod-and-the-staff/<p><em>Gary <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/the-rod-and-the-staff" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">discusses</a> Christian worldview, the pastorate, and current events.</em></p> <p>Government consists of sovereignty (legitimacy to rule: Romans 13:1), representation (accountability to the rule of another: Exodus 18:17- 23), law (a moral code by which to rule: Romans 13:4), jurisdiction (authority to enforce sanctions in the name of the ruler: 1 Peter 2:13-14), and continuity (stability and longevity of government: Deuteronomy 28).</p> <p>The Apostle Paul writes that “all authority [sovereignty] comes from God” (Romans 13:1) because only God is absolutely sovereign and omnipotent (1 Timothy 6:15-16; Revelation 4:8, 11). Rulers, therefore, only have limited authority to govern. God delegates this limited sovereignty to every government (family, church, and civil).</p> <p>Nebuchadnezzar, ruler in Babylon and claimant of absolute and unlimited sovereignty, recognized the delegated nature of his governmental sovereignty when God made his “dwelling place with the beasts of the field” (Daniel 4:30-33). After being treated like an animal with no sovereignty (Genesis 2:18-20), Nebuchadnezzar repented affirming that God’s “dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom endures from generation to generation” (Daniel 4:34). It was after this that he was reinstalled to his rightful limited sovereignty under God’s absolute government: “My majesty and splendor were restored to me for the glory of my kingdom, and my counselors and my nobles began seeking me out; so I was reestablished in my sovereignty, and surpassing greatness was added to me” (v. 4:36). To be restored and reestablished assumes an initial installation and establishment.</p> <p>Having sovereignty to govern does not mean that rulers, whether they are fathers and mothers in family government, elders in church government, or civil servants in civil government, always exercise their authority legitimately. It only means that the government is legitimate and must be obeyed unless there is biblical cause for disobedience.</p> <p>The biblical philosophy of sovereignty and legitimacy in government explains why rebellion against duly constituted governments (family, church, and civil) is sin (Exodus 22: 28; Acts 23:5). “For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry” (1 Samuel 15: 23).</p> <p>Wherever Christians find themselves under the rule of a tyrant, they are to live under it, but not with resignation (Luke 20:19-25; 1 Timothy 2:1-3; Titus 3:1; 1 Peter 2:13-17). God has made non-revolutionary means available for the dissolution of tyrannical governments. In addition, God providentially works to overrule the works of men. Man proposes, but God disposes. “The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes” (Proverbs 21:1).</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/godandgovt_large.png?v=1608039906" alt="God and Government"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>God and Government</h3> <p>With a fresh new look, more images, an extensive subject and scripture index, and an updated bibliography, God and Government is ready to prepare a whole new generation to take on the political and religious battles confronting Christians today. May it be used in a new awakening of Christians in America—not just to inform minds, but to stimulate action and secure a better tomorrow for our posterity.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/god-and-government" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary discusses Christian worldview, the pastorate, and current events. Psalm 23 talks about &ldquo;the rod and the staff&rdquo; as sources of comfort, but what exactly does this mean? These tools are used by a shepherd to guide, direct, and protect the sheep. How should these tools be used today?</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/the-rod-and-the-staff" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here to browse past episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast</a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/episode-101-the-seven-churches-of-revelation/Fri, 24 Jul 2026 07:37:40 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/episode-101-the-seven-churches-of-revelation/<p><strong>Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 101</strong></p> <p><em>Gary <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/the-seven-churches-of-revelation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">responds</a> to various views about the seven churches of the book of Revelation.</em></p> <p>A popular argument for a pre-tribulation rapture is the claim that while the “church” is mentioned 19 times in the first three chapters of the book of Revelation, in chapters 4–18 “there is absolute silence.”<strong>[1]</strong> Similar to the way author Mark Hitchcock places a gap in time between the 69th and 70th weeks of Daniel 9:24–27, he places the same gap between the last verse of Revelation 3 and the first verse of Revelation 4. It’s in Revelation 4:1 that the Church supposedly will be “raptured” because there is no mention of “the church” in chapters 4–18.</p> <p>Let’s test Hitchcock’s claim. The first three chapters of Revelation deal with seven first-century historical churches, assemblies of believers in Asia Minor: the church in Ephesus (2:1), the church in Smyrna (2:8), the church in Pergamum (2:12), the church in Thyatira (2:18), the church in Sardis (3:1), the church in Philadelphia (3:7), and the church in Laodicea (3:14). There is no mention of “the church” as a universal entity in Revelation 1–3. If Jesus meant the universal church at a time just before a so-called “rapture,” He could/would have used a phrase like “the whole church” (Rom. 16:23). Instead, Jesus refers to actual congregations in a limited geographical area in the first century.</p> <p>We know this is true because there were other local churches in the Roman Empire: the church in Rome, the “church which is at Cenchrea” (Rom. 16:1), “all the churches of the Gentiles” (16:4), the church that met in the house of Aquila and Prisca (16:5), “all the churches” (16:16), Corinth (1:2; 2 Cor. 2:1), Galatia (Gal. 1:2: “churches of Galatia”), Philippi, Colossae, and Jerusalem (Acts 5:11; 8:1).</p> <p>If the number of times a word appears is important, and Revelation 4–19 is said to be about Israel, why does the word <em>Israel</em> only appear once after the supposed rapture of the Church, and not until Revelation 7:4? One would think that if the corporate church is in view in the first three chapters because the words church and churches are used 19 times, then shouldn’t we expect to find the word <em>Israel</em> used more than once after chapter three if this entire seven-year period is about Israel? The word <em>Israel</em> does appear in 21:12, but the word <em>churches</em> appears in 22:16.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/figtree_large.png?v=1578455246" alt="The Rapture and the Fig Tree Generation"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>The Rapture and the Fig Tree Generation</h3> <p>Since the national reestablishment of Israel in 1948, countless books and pamphlets have been written defending the doctrine assuring readers that it could happen at any moment. Some prophecy writers claimed the “rapture” would take place before 1988. We are far removed from that date. Where are we in God’s prophetic timetable?</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/the-rapture-and-the-fig-tree-generation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary responds to various views about the seven churches of the book of Revelation. Many see a rapture beginning in chapter four because the word &ldquo;church&rdquo; is no longer mentioned in the rest of the book. This is not the case, as Gary shows in this brief episode.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/the-seven-churches-of-revelation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://americanvision.org/categories/microscope/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for all episodes of Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope</a></p> <hr> <p>[1] Mark Hitchcock, <em>Could the Rapture Happen Today?</em>, 73.</p>https://americanvision.org/posts/on-what-are-you-standing/Thu, 23 Jul 2026 07:42:59 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/on-what-are-you-standing/<p>In the 1950s, the John C. Winston Company, later to become part of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, published “Adventures in Science Fiction,” a series of juvenile hardcover novels that made up a collection of thirty-six books.</p> <p>Some of the world’s greatest science fiction writers got their start with the series: Arthur C. Clarke (best known for <em>2001: A Space Odyssey</em>), Ben Bova, Lester Del Rey, Donald Wollheim, and Poul Anderson. The books originally sold for $2.00. Today, depending on condition, scarcity, and the author, a first edition/first printing with a dust jacket can bring a high price. For example, Ben Bova’s <em>The Star Conquerors</em> is the rarest of all the Winston Juvenile books published. A first edition/first printing copy is offered for sale on several sites for more than $1000. An autographed copy is for sale for $2000.</p> <p>In addition to the wonderful stories, the books are worth collecting for the cover art. While the books are dated in terms of technology (the use of computers is minimal and email was non-existent), the stories reflect the moral worldview of post-World War II America trying to find its footing. Civil religion was in vogue. In 1954, in response to the Communist threat of the times, President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add the words “under God” to the original Pledge Allegiance that was written by socialist Francis Bellamy and published in <em>The Youth’s Companion</em> on September 8, 1892. Bellamy’s daughter objected to the addition.</p> <p>“In God We Trust” and “One Nation Under God” are not indicators of a Christian worldview since most Americans do not trust God, since they generally vote for more government, and the question remains about what God we are under, given the fact that killing unborn babies and redefining what sex and marriage are hardly indicators of being under the God of Scripture.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/PTA-front_large.png?v=1628716122" alt="Pushing the Antithesis"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Pushing the Antithesis</h3> <p>Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen believed that to deal with the academics of the day and their arguments against the Christian faith, it is necessary to do battle with them at the highest levels of scholarship using their intellectual tools against them. He could quickly analyze and give direct and compelling answers to all their objections. Prior to his untimely death in 1995, Dr. Bahnsen delivered a series of lectures on apologetics at American Vision's Life Preparation Conference. These lectures have been transcribed and edited with summary points, study questions, and much more in Pushing the Antithesis.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/pushing-the-antithesis" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>A young person reading these books would find a great deal of borrowed capital worldview wisdom sprinkled throughout the 200+ pages of these fascinating science fiction novels like I did. One scene caught my attention in the 1956 novel <em>The Lost Planet</em> by Paul Dallas, a story about how two teenagers try to stop a war between their home planets. The scene takes place just before the teenager from Earth boards a spaceship and travels to the distant planet of Poseida, which is partially underwater.</p> <p>In a discussion after a Christmas dinner, the topic turns to defending Earth “against an aggression from space,” brought up by General Watkins. He then describes the proper tactic.</p> <blockquote> <p>As he spoke, the general seemed to become preoccupied with thoughts of the military situation, and he absently deployed salt and pepper shakers with knives and forks on the table, setting up in front of him an imaginary military problem in the field. “It is a basic truism,” he continued, “that wherever possible the best defense is a good offense. Now if we are attacked,” and he brought a piece of silverware in toward the plate that was obviously representing Planet Earth, “not only do we defend the point under immediate attack but,” and here several pieces were quickly moved from the plate Earth to the butter dish from which the attack had originated, “we immediately counterattack at the source of the aggression. After all, if you cut off the head, you have no need to fear the arms.”<strong>[1]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>Dallas has the General making a crucial point about fighting and winning against an enemy combatant that applies to ideological conflicts. Defending the Christian worldview against unbelieving thought requires understanding that every worldview has a central guiding principle that serves as its foundational operational assumption about the nature of reality.</p> <p>This means that we must begin where the Bible begins: “In the beginning God…” (Gen. 1:1). God is not a probability argument that we reason to, making us the foundational principle and ultimate authority. God is the operating presupposition from which we reason.</p> <p>We should never forget that opposing worldviews also have a fixed starting point from which they reason. Such a standing place—a <em>pou sto</em>—is inescapable. The goal is to rock the foundation of opposing worldviews. Instead of blasting away from a battleship by way of particulars, our efforts to undermine unbelieving autonomous thinking are better done by a submarine. Damage the hull, and the ship with all its particulars sinks.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/bkp0397_front__84725.1286483519.1280.1280_large.jpg?v=1371841572" alt="Thinking Straight in a Crooked World"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Thinking Straight in a Crooked World</h3> <p>The nursery rhyme "There Was a Crooked Man" is an appropriate description of how sin affects us and our world. We live in a crooked world of ideas evaluated by crooked people. Left to our crooked nature, we can never fully understand what God has planned for us and His world. God has not left us without a corrective solution. He has given us a reliable reference point in the Bible so we can identify the crookedness and straighten it. </p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/thinking-straight-in-a-crooked-world" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Numerous starting points are put forward as the foundational basis for unbelieving thought. Here’s a sample of some of them:</p> <p>• Rationalism: reason rules</p> <p>• Mysticism: unknown forces rule</p> <p>• Hedonism: pleasure rules</p> <p>• Relativism: we get to make up our own rules</p> <p>• Post-modernism: there are no rules</p> <p>• Pragmatism: it&rsquo;s a rule only if it works</p> <p>• Materialism: only matter matters</p> <p>• Monism: all is one so there is nothing to argue about</p> <p>And if specific philosophical systems like the above are not enough to establish an authoritative starting point, then there is the appeal to any number of self-proclaimed or institutionally sanctioned experts: a brilliant college professor, the writings of a Zen Master, the directives of a cult leader, the latest scientific studies, the writings or revelations of self-appointed religious leaders, statistical analysis, opinion polls, the Constitution of the United States, psychics, fortune tellers, frequently quoted philosophers, newspaper and magazine editors, judges, television news anchors, Oprah, the high-minded opinions of Hollywood actors, or even alien life forms.</p> <p>Even some atheists hope against hope that someone (other than a personal God) is &ldquo;out there&rdquo; to give meaning to the cosmos. Abandoning pure materialism, some are proposing that &ldquo;an invisible force is at work&rdquo; in the ever-evolving universe.<strong>[2]</strong> The materialists have become mystics. Maybe it&rsquo;s from watching too much <em>Star Wars</em>. Of course, when the ever-changing worldviews of a splintered secularism fail to live up to their claims of ultimacy, the university is quick to shut out competitive debate. Speech codes abound. Contrary opinions are suppressed. Outside speakers are hooted off the stage if they ever make it on campus in the first place. The entrenched university worldview—no matter how discredited—must be protected at all costs, even though it&rsquo;s a philosophical house of cards.</p> <p>So-called experts, no matter what their field of study or how much information they gather, are finite in knowledge and fallible in practice. Put simply, they don&rsquo;t know everything, and they make mistakes. For every group of experts who claim to know something authoritatively, there are always other groups of experts who claim they can dispute the findings of the first group of experts. The Bible describes it this way: &ldquo;The first to plead his case seems just, until another comes and examines him&rdquo; (Pr. 18:17).</p> <p>Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky, after compiling thousands of expert opinions and declarations about innumerable subjects over thousands of years, summarize their findings:</p> <blockquote> <p>Our research has yielded (and we have systematically catalogued and footnoted for the first time) thousands of examples of expert misinformation, disinformation, misunderstanding, miscalculation, egregious prognostication, boo-boos, and occasional just plain lies. And based on our preliminary findings we can say with some confidence that the experts are wrong without regard to race, creed, color, sex discipline, specialty, country, culture, or century. They are wrong about facts, and they are wrong about theories, they are wrong about dates, they are wrong about geography, they are wrong about the future, they are wrong about the past, and at best they are misleading about the present, not to mention next week.<strong>[3]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>In brief, &ldquo;Just because most of the authorities in a field are shouting in unison that they know the truth, it ain’t necessarily so.”<strong>[4]</strong></p> <hr> <p>[1] Paul Dallas, <em>The Lost Planet</em> (Philadelphia, PA: The John C. Winston Company, 1956), 2–3.</p> <p>[2] Charles W. Petit, “From big bang to big bounce,” <em>U.S. News &amp; World Report</em> (May 6, 2002), 59.</p> <p>[3] Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky, &ldquo;Introduction to the Original (1984) Version,&rdquo; <em>The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation</em>, rev. ed. (New York: Villard, [1984] 1998), xxvii.</p> <p>[4] William R. Fix, <em>The Bone Peddlers: Selling Evolution</em> (New York: Macmillan, 1984), xix.</p>https://americanvision.org/posts/god-government-and-americas-christian-heritage/Wed, 22 Jul 2026 05:06:40 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/god-government-and-americas-christian-heritage/<p><em>Gary is <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/god-government-and-americas-christian-heritage" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">interviewed</a> by Ricardo Davis from the Constitution Party of Georgia.</em></p> <p>Faith gives meaning to life. To determine the faith of a nation look to its institutions. The people, documents, institutions, educational establishments, courts, and halls of government will speak volumes regarding a nation’s faith and its religious commitment. What faith did America exhibit in its earliest days? Was it a faith in the pioneering spirit? The rugged individual? A reliance upon superior reasoning? Or was our nation’s faith founded upon eternal principles? Our forefathers looked beyond their own frail existence to the God who created heaven and earth. They saw the impossibility of accomplishing any task without a firm reliance upon the providence of the God of the Bible.</p> <p>For generations the true story of America’s faith has been obscured by those who deny the providential work of God in history. The great “Political Textbook,” the Bible, has been ridiculed as an antiquated book of moralisms that has no meaning for our day. Our forefathers, the critics say, were mistaken about the so-called absolute principles of government set forth in the Bible. A new day has dawned in which the principles of the past must be cast aside to make room for the ideas of the future. Some historians even deny the Christian commitment of those who made this nation great. Modern textbooks, for the most part, omit the religious devotion of the men and women who settled this land. A deliberate attempt has been made to distort the facts of the past in order to manipulate the future. The doctrine of the so-called “separation of church and state” has been formulated on the basis of a rewriting of history. A wealth of historical evidence points to the fact that our forefathers knew nothing about an absolute separation as is being promoted by present-day court decisions.</p> <p>What was the religious commitment—the faith—of our forefathers, the documents they penned, and the institutions they founded? In order properly to understand the religious motivation of our forefathers, it is necessary that we study the original documents themselves.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/godandgovt_large.png?v=1608039906" alt="God and Government"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>God and Government</h3> <p>With a fresh new look, more images, an extensive subject and scripture index, and an updated bibliography, God and Government is ready to prepare a whole new generation to take on the political and religious battles confronting Christians today. May it be used in a new awakening of Christians in America—not just to inform minds, but to stimulate action and secure a better tomorrow for our posterity.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/god-and-government" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary is interviewed by Ricardo Davis from the Constitution Party of Georgia. The two have known each other for a while, and Ricardo relates how his initial introduction to Gary was through his book, <em><strong><a href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/god-and-government" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">God and Government</a></strong></em>. Ricardo has been putting those same principles into action in his work in politics and with the Constitution Party.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/god-government-and-americas-christian-heritage" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here to browse all episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast</a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/the-consequences-of-not-preaching-politics-from-the-pulpit/Tue, 21 Jul 2026 07:44:53 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/the-consequences-of-not-preaching-politics-from-the-pulpit/<p>I heard a pastor say that the Session of the church where he was being considered as a pastor would not be permitted to preach on politics. He agreed with the restriction. This was troubling to me. No one can preach through the Bible and ignore politics. The Bible is filled with politics. There are two books of the Old Testament named Kings. The books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and First and Second Samuel include political content. Politics is a synonym for civil government that includes rulers as “civil servants.” They are described by Paul as “ministers [διάκονός/<em>diakonos</em>] of God (Rom. 13:4). There are ecclesiastical ministers and civil ministers. Civil ministers are under obligation to follow God’s law as it relates to civil affairs. ‘Caesar’ must also render unto God (Matt. 22:21).</p> <p>Paul encountered the Roman government. He appealed to his Roman citizenship when he was jailed. Here was the Roman response when it was learned that Paul was a Roman citizen who had been beaten by government officials:</p> <blockquote> <p>Now when day came, the chief magistrates sent their officers, saying, “Release those men.” And the jailer reported these words to Paul, saying, “The chief magistrates have sent word that you be released. So come out now and go in peace.”</p> </blockquote> <p>I can hear a preacher saying, “Praise God! God worked a miracle here because of Paul’s attitude, and the Roman government let them ‘go in peace.’” Many Christians might argue that this is the way Christians should handle disputes with the government. Stay silent, keep your head down, and take what the civil magistrates dish out. Notice what Paul said to the civil officials:</p> <blockquote> <p>But Paul said to them, “After beating us in public without due process—men who are Romans—they threw us into prison, and now they are releasing us secretly? <strong>No indeed! On the contrary, let them come in person and lead us out.</strong>” The officers reported these words to the chief magistrates. And they became fearful when they heard that they were Romans, and they came and pleaded with them, and when they had led them out, they repeatedly asked them to leave the city. They left the prison and entered the house of Lydia, and when they saw the brothers and sisters, they encouraged them and departed. (Acts 16:35-40)</p> </blockquote> <p>Our ‘Caesar’ is the Constitution. There are numerous protections in our Constitution that were fought for by Christians. Christian pastors in the colonial era and following preached politics from their pulpits. Colonial-era preaching was the primary vehicle for political education and revolutionary ideology in America, with ministers delivering approximately 8 million sermons over the colonial period.</p> <p>Religious and political themes were deeply intertwined, as clergy viewed the Bible as the ultimate authority for civil government and societal order. Ministers such as Jonathan Edwards, John Witherspoon, and George Whitefield used the pulpit to challenge British authority, framing political liberty as a divine mandate. See Alice M. Baldwin’s book titled <em><a href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/the-new-england-pulpit" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">The New England Pulpit and the American Revolution: When American Pastors Preached Politics, Resisted Tyranny, and Founded a Nation on the Bible</a></em>. Commenting on the classic paraphrase of “life, liberty, and property,” Baldwin declared,</p> <blockquote> <p>No one can fully understand the American Revolution and the American constitutional system without a realization of the long history and religious associations which lie behind these words; without realizing that for a hundred years before the Revolution men were taught that these rights were protected by divine, inviolable law.</p> </blockquote> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/nep_cover_large.jpg?v=1422219157" alt="The New England Pulpit and the American Revolution"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>The New England Pulpit and the American Revolution</h3> <p>Dr. Baldwin illustrates how the preachers of the early American era thought and practiced just the opposite as today. Mountains of research in colonial sermons, tracts, pamphlets, and other publications, reveals how the pulpits of colonial America rang constantly on all aspects of the public square: good rulers, good laws, good forms of government, and the blessings of liberty. We especially hear of those choice values of biblical order that became the battle cries of American independence.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/the-new-england-pulpit" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Also see the two-volume series <em>Political Sermons of the American Founding Era: 1730-1805</em>, published by the <a href="https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/816" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Liberty Fund</a>. Volume I is a collection of sermons written between 1730-1805 by people such as Jonathan Mayhew, John Wesley, Moses Mather, John Witherspoon, Richard Price, Jonathan Edwards, and Noah Webster. John Wingate Thornton (1818-1878) stated, “To the Pulpit, the <em>Puritan Pulpit</em>, we owe the moral force which won our independence.”</p> <blockquote> <p>Of the several vehicles for expounding political theology available to American ministers, the most venerable were the election sermons preached for 256 years in Massachusetts and 156 years in Connecticut. The practice began in Vermont in 1778 and in New Hampshire in 1784 in the sermon by Samuel McClintock…. These were sermons preached annually to the governor and legislature after the election of officers. To be chosen for the task was an honor, and the sermons were published and distributed to each official with an extra copy or two for the ministers of the official’s home district…. [V]ery few of the sermons preached were published; thus Samuel Dunbar, an Old Light minister from Stoughton, Massachusetts, wrote out some eight thousand sermons during his long career but published only nine of them. (<a href="https://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/political-sermons-and-the-american-revolution" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Source</a>)</p> </blockquote> <p>No one can claim that political preaching and exhortation were exclusive to the Old Covenant when we read the following from 2 Timothy 3:16-17.</p> <blockquote> <p>All Scripture is God-breathed and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work.</p> </blockquote> <p>The Bible addresses all areas of life. No exceptions. Training our senses to discern good and evil requires practice based on God’s Word (Heb. 5:11-14), but if pastors ignore politics, I guarantee you that Christians will get their ‘sermons’ elsewhere. I suspect many of them do. In addition, secularists and Islamists have no problem preaching politics from their pulpits, and there are many of them. No ‘rapture’ will save us from the consequences of silent pulpits.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/godandgovt_large.png?v=1608039906" alt="God and Government"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>God and Government</h3> <p>With a fresh new look, more images, an extensive subject and scripture index, and an updated bibliography, God and Government is ready to prepare a whole new generation to take on the political and religious battles confronting Christians today. May it be used in a new awakening of Christians in America—not just to inform minds, but to stimulate action and secure a better tomorrow for our posterity.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/god-and-government" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div>https://americanvision.org/posts/sacred-secular-and-the-myth-of-neutrality/Mon, 20 Jul 2026 07:07:21 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/sacred-secular-and-the-myth-of-neutrality/<p>Gary is <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/sacred-secular-and-the-myth-of-neutrality" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">interviewed</a> by Pastor William Ochoa from Guatemala about presuppositional apologetics.</p> <p>All of us think in terms of worldviews. A worldview is the way each of us looks at and evaluates everything that is seen, experienced, or thought about. Worldviews have been described as a web of beliefs that we carry around in our heads that becomes an “interconnected system of all that we believe. Tied together more or less coherently in this web are all of the beliefs we hold as true. These include the basic beliefs (such as ‘I exist’ and ‘life is worthwhile’) and the more trivial ones (such as ‘I hope we won’t have liver again’). No belief exists in isolation; each belief is connected with all others in one big network.”<strong>[1]</strong></p> <p>Every person has a worldview that daily systematizes and organizes tens of thousands of bits of seemingly unrelated pieces of information and varied experiences. In fact, without a coherent worldview, these informational fragments would remain unrelated, disjointed, and ultimately meaningless.</p> <blockquote> <p>A person’s worldview is the collection of his presuppositions or convictions about reality, which represent his total outlook of life. Nobody is without such fundamental beliefs, and yet many people go through life unaware of their presuppositions. Operating at the unconscious level, their presuppositions remain unidentified and unexamined. The result is that people generally fail to recognize how their world views govern every dimension of their lives: the intellectual life (what they believe is true about themselves and their place in history); the physical (how they treat or mistreat their bodies by eating, sleeping, and exercising); the social (how they interact with friends and enemies, the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak); the economic (why they work and how they spend their wages); and the moral (what ethical guidelines and obligations direct their thinking about justice and issues such as abortion and euthanasia).<strong>[2]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>As worldviews develop and mature over time, they sort and interpret familiar information instantaneously. New information is evaluated in terms of what is already known and thought to be true. If some new facts or experiences do not fit within the boundaries of our already established worldview, they are either rejected, ignored, or reinterpreted to make them conform. Someone who understands the finite nature of all creatures, might put aside any unfamiliar findings until additional information can be gathered and evaluated to make sense of the new data in light of what is already known. After some time of thoughtful consideration, adjustments might have to be made to our worldview web to accommodate the new information.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/bkp0397_front__84725.1286483519.1280.1280_large.jpg?v=1371841572" alt="Thinking Straight in a Crooked World"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Thinking Straight in a Crooked World</h3> <p>The nursery rhyme "There Was a Crooked Man" is an appropriate description of how sin affects us and our world. We live in a crooked world of ideas evaluated by crooked people. Left to our crooked nature, we can never fully understand what God has planned for us and His world. God has not left us without a corrective solution. He has given us a reliable reference point in the Bible so we can identify the crookedness and straighten it. </p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/thinking-straight-in-a-crooked-world" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary is interviewed by Pastor William Ochoa from Guatemala about presuppositional apologetics. William has been translating some of Gary&rsquo;s books into Spanish, and he is currently working on <em><a href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/thinking-straight-in-a-crooked-world" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Thinking Straight in a Crooked World</a></em>. The conversation begins there and continues through why it is important for Christians to have answers to objections to the Christian faith.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/sacred-secular-and-the-myth-of-neutrality" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here to browse all episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast</a></p> <hr> <p>[1] Winfried Corduan, <em>No Doubt About It: The Case for Christianity</em> (Nashville, TN: Broadman &amp; Holman Publishers, 1997), 66.</p> <p>[2] W. Andrew Hoffecker, “Preface: Perspective and Method in Building a World View,” <em>Building a Christian World View: God, Man, and Knowledge</em> (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1986), ix–x.</p>https://americanvision.org/posts/important-facts-in-the-book-of-revelation/Fri, 17 Jul 2026 06:59:54 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/important-facts-in-the-book-of-revelation/<p><em>Gary <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/important-facts-in-the-book-of-revelation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">gives an overview</a> of the book of Revelation and helps readers to put the confusing book into perspective.</em></p> <p>From the very beginning, cranks and crackpots have attempted to use Revelation to advocate some new twist on the Chicken Little Doctrine: <em>The Sky Is Falling!</em> But, as I hope to show in this exposition, St. John&rsquo;s Apocalypse teaches instead that Christians will overcome al opposition through the work of Jesus Christ. My study has convinced me that a true understanding of this prophecy must be based on the proper application of five crucial interpretive keys:</p> <p>• <em>Revelation is the most “Biblical” book in the Bible</em>. St. John quotes hundreds of passages from the Old Testament, often with subtle allusions to little-known religious rituals of the Hebrew people. In order to understand Revelation, we need to know our Bibles backward and forward.</p> <p>• <em>Revelation has a system of symbolism</em>. Almost everyone recognizes that St. John wrote his message in symbols. But the meaning of those symbols is not up for grabs. There is a systematic structure in Biblical symbolism. In order to understand Revelation properly, we must become familiar with the “language” in which it is written.</p> <p>• <em>Revelation is a prophecy about imminent events</em> that were about to break loose on the world of the first century. Revelation is not about nuclear warfare, space travel, or the end of the world. Again and again it specifically warns that “the time is near!”</p> <p>• <em>Revelation is a worship service</em>. St. John did not write a textbook on prophecy. Instead, he recorded a heavenly worship service in progress. One of his major concerns, in fact, is that the worship of God is central to everything in life. It is the most important thing we do.</p> <p>• <em>Revelation is a book about dominion</em>. Revelation is not a book about how terrible the Antichrist is, or how powerful the devil is. It is, as the very first verse says, <em>The Revelation of Jesus Christ</em>. It tells us about His lordship over all; it tells us about our salvation and victory in the New Covenant, God’s “wonderful plan for our life”; it tells us that the kingdom of the world has become the Kingdom of our God, and of His Christ; and it tells us that He and His people shall reign forever and ever.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/s-l1600_burned_large.png?v=1557155461" alt="The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation</h3> <p>A biblical and scholarly exposition of Revelation is laid out for readers to soak up and begin to view the world with renewed hope and optimism. Chilton skillfully shows in detail that Christians will overcome all opposition through the work of Jesus Christ. The book of Revelation is not about the antichrist, the devil, microchips, or bar codes. It is, as the very first verse says, "The Revelation of Jesus Christ."</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/the-days-of-vengeance" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary gives an overview of the book of Revelation and helps readers to put the confusing book into perspective. Context is key, and the timing of the events discussed in this last book of the Bible must be taken into consideration. Internal clues about when it was written also need to be taken seriously.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/important-facts-in-the-book-of-revelation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here to browse all episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast</a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/are-only-laws-repeated-in-the-nt-applicable-today/Thu, 16 Jul 2026 07:52:59 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/are-only-laws-repeated-in-the-nt-applicable-today/<p>Are we to believe that while laws regarding incest (Lev. 18:8; Deut. 22:30; 27:20) apply in the New Testament (1 Cor. 5:1-2), but laws against sex with animals (Ex. 22:29), abortion (21:22-25), kidnapping (Deut. 24:7), arson (Ex. 22:6), or cursing the deaf or tripping blind people (Lev. 19:14) do not apply? Some might say that most of these are common-sense prohibitions. If this is the argument, then they were common-sense regulations in Moses’ day, so why include them then?</p> <p>How about “just weights and measures” (Lev. 19:35-36; Deut. 25:13-16)? This law is repeated in Proverbs (11:1; 20:10) but not in the NT. I suppose this law would come under the commandment not to steal, the Eighth Commandment. But why mention these specific laws from the OT if they are reasonably covered by the Eighth Commandment? The Apostle Paul writes:</p> <blockquote> <p>It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife. You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst (1 Cor. 5:1-2; cf. 7:1-3).</p> </blockquote> <p>Some sexual impropriety had taken place in the Corinthian church. Paul references Old Testament law (Lev. 18:8; Deut. 22:30; 27:20). The Bible required that the unrepentant person be removed from the church and treated as an unbeliever (see Matt. 18:15-20). This would have been done by the elders after all remedies for reconciliation had failed. Paul writes, “<em>I have decided</em> to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Cor. 5:5). The old leaven was to be cleaned out so the new leaven would not be affected (5:6-7). I guess the accused should have told Paul, “That’s ‘Jewish Law.’ It doesn’t apply under the New Covenant.” Some preterists today would say, “That law was still in effect, but it was done away with when Jesus returned to put an end to the Old Covenant Law” in AD 70. This makes no sense since we learn from various examples that specific Old Covenant laws were done away with before the judgment coming of Jesus before their generation passed away, circumcision being the most evident example.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/bts-front_large.png?v=1601296021" alt="By This Standard: The Authority of God&#39;s Law Today"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>By This Standard: The Authority of God&#39;s Law Today</h3> <p>God's Law is Christianity's tool of dominion. This is where any discussion of God's law ultimately arrives: the issue of dominion. Ask yourself: Who is to rule on earth, Christ or Satan? Whose followers have the ethically acceptable tool of dominion, Christ's or Satan's? What is this tool of dominion, the Biblically revealed law of God, or the law of self-proclaimed autonomous man? Whose word is sovereign, God's or man's?</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/by-this-standard-the-authority-of-gods-law-today" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Some years ago, I participated in a discussion with a group of dispensationalists about the kingdom of God. Naturally, the subject of the law came up. Dr. Harold Hoehner, at the time a professor of New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary, said: “Well, if something isn’t repeated in the New Testament, it’s not applicable today.”</p> <p>David Chilton asked this pointed question in response: “So if your pastor was found to have had sex with an animal, what would you say?” Hoehner responded, “Since it’s not repeated in the New Testament, it’s not a sin.”</p> <p>The other DTS professors backed away from Hoehner’s claim. They remarked, “The prohibition comes under laws governing fornication. The New Testament forbids fornication.”</p> <p>I responded, “I agree with you. It is covered under the provision regarding fornication. How do you know what constitutes fornication from the New Testament alone?”</p> <p>They knew they were trapped. “The Old Testament defines fornication,” they said.</p> <p>What do we do with an Old Covenant law (Ex. 21:17; Lev. 20:9) that Jesus uses against the Pharisees concerning the death penalty for “he who speaks evil of father or mother” (Mark 7:10)? Of course, Jesus was not addressing little children. He was condemning the way the Pharisees were manipulating God’s law to avoid its practical applications and thereby “neglecting the commandment of God” and setting it aside “in order to keep [their] tradition” (vv. 8-9). Jesus not only rejected their unbiblical traditions, but He also quoted a law from the Torah to condemn them.</p> <p>Jesus repeated the commandment in the NT. Is it still applicable? Jesus applied it to adults. What do we make of the woman caught in the act of adultery? Did Jesus overturn the sanction for this prohibition? Some scholars believe He did. Then why not the commandment regarding rebellious children?</p> <p>Paul freely uses Old Covenant law in the NT. He applies a law about the mistreatment of animals (Deut. 25:4) to “the laborer is worthy of his wages” (1 Tim. 5:18). See an expanded application in 1 Corinthians 9:7-10 where Paul references what is written in “the law of Moses” (v. 9) and broadens its application by stating that it was written “for our sake” (v. 10).</p> <p>He makes a similar application from the OT about different animals being yoked together for work (Deut. 22:10) with believers and unbelievers being bound together, that is, being “unequally yoked” (ἑτεροζυγέω=<em>hetero</em> [differently] + <em>zugeó</em> [yoked]) (2 Cor. 6:14).</p> <p>The Old Testament is filled with such applicational laws that did not pass away with the coming of the New Covenant. That’s why Paul could write the following: “All Scripture is God-breathed [θεόπνευστος/<em>theopneutos</em>] and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17).</p> <p>Reproof, correction, and training in righteousness are moral categories. Paul commended Timothy because “from childhood” he had “known the sacred writings” (v. 15). Paul is referring to the Old Covenant by using the terms “sacred writings” (ἱερὰ γράμματα/<em>hera grammata</em>) and “scripture” (γραφὴ/<em>graphē</em>). They were, and still are, applicable today, though in different forms.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/LOC-front_large.png?v=1644675877" alt="The Law of the Covenant"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>The Law of the Covenant</h3> <p>If we take a man-centered approach to these laws, we might say that the purpose of this legislation is only to ensure human prosperity. Such an approach to the law of God misses the most basic point. These laws show us God's own genuine personal care for His world, and as such these laws cannot be altered by human whim. To be sure, the Bible is man-oriented, and thus obedience to these laws will improve human life; but the laws are God's, and cannot be changed by man. Thus, as we examine the laws in Exodus 21-23, our first concern must be the glory of God, not whether these laws seem right to us sinful men. If we start with God, we will soon see how these laws also improve human life.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/the-law-of-the-covenant" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>What about Hebrews 8:13? If the moral law from the OT was no longer applicable except for those laws repeated in the NT, which most people did not have access to, then why did God promise to put His “laws into their minds and write them upon their hearts” (8:10) in the New Covenant? What laws are these? They seem to be biblical laws— “elementary principles of the oracles of God”—that were to become second nature by way of study, practice, and application (Heb. 5:11-14).</p> <p>The writer to the Hebrews explains in what way the first covenant was “obsolete … and growing old” and “near [ἐγγὺς/<em>engus</em>] to disappear” (8:13). He was referring to the “regulations of divine worship and the earthly sanctuary” (9:1). Jesus is the Word that “became flesh and tabernacled” among the Jews during His earthly ministry (John 1:14). He is the lamb of God (John 1:29, 36), the temple (2:13-2), and the once for all sacrifice (Heb. 10:10). These are the laws that passed away because they found their fulfillment in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ:</p> <blockquote> <p>But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, He went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but He entered the Most Holy Place once for all by His own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God! For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that He has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant (Heb. 9:11-15).</p> </blockquote> <p>There is nothing about the passing away of the moral application of the law to the individual and society at large. The moral law was designed for the nations (Deut. 4:1-8).</p> <p>We cannot live within the fluid boundaries of legal relativism. There must be a definitive and final legal standard of appeal to justify moral decisions at the personal and governmental levels. If not, then one judge’s opinion is as good (or as bad) as another. “Everyone did what was right in their own eyes” (Judges 17:6)</p> <p>The debate over the applicability of the whole law of God to Christians has been addressed in numerous places. Before you critique the position, learn what all the factors are. The following materials will help:</p> <p>• Greg L. Bahnsen, <em><a href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/by-this-standard-the-authority-of-gods-law-today" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">By This Standard: The Authority of God’s Law Today</a></em>.</p> <p>• Greg L. Bahnsen, <em><a href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/no-other-standard-theonomy-and-its-critics" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">No Other Standard: Theonomy and Its Critics</a></em>.</p> <p>• Greg L. Bahnsen, “<a href="https://garynorth.com/BahnsenKline.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">M.G. Kline on Theonomic Politics: An Evaluation of His Reply</a>.”</p> <p>• Greg L. Bahnsen and Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., <em><a href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/house-divided-the-break-up-of-dispensational-theology" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">House Divided: The Break-Up of Dispensational Theology</a></em>.</p> <p>• Kenneth L. Gentry, <em><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7966123-god-s-law-made-easy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">God’s Law Made Easy</a></em>.</p> <p>• Kenneth L. Gentry, <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Covenantal-Theonomy-Response-Klinean-Covenantalism/dp/0982620640" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Covenantal Theonomy: A Response to T. David Gordon and Klinean Covenantalism</a></em>.</p> <p>• Gary North, ed., <em><a href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/theonomy-an-informed-response" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Theonomy: An Informed Response</a></em>.</p> <p>• Gary North, <em><a href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/victims-rights" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Victim’s Rights: The Biblical View of Civil Justice</a></em>.</p> <p>• James B. Jordan, <em><a href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/the-law-of-the-covenant" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">The Law of the Covenant: An Exposition of Exodus 21-23</a></em>.</p>https://americanvision.org/posts/the-purpose-of-church/Wed, 15 Jul 2026 06:43:09 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/the-purpose-of-church/<p><em>Gary <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/the-purpose-of-church" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">discusses</a> the need for biblical and worldview teaching and preaching that helps Christians to understand how God&rsquo;s truth applies and informs every area of life.</em></p> <p>Does the Bible have a clear standard of ethical behavior that should be followed by sinners everywhere? Why the need to go to general revelation if the Bible already gives an answer? When you lead someone to Christ, do you point him to general revelation or special revelation? What book did you use for daily devotions this morning? What law have you adopted for the governance of your family? What principles should govern your mind as you enter the voting booth?</p> <p>Westminster Seminary graduate Kenneth A. Myers has gone so far as to argue that &ldquo;there is a biblical mandate for not attempting to solve all cultural problems with deductions from Scripture.&rdquo; What about some cultural problems? The theonomist asks: Wouldn&rsquo;t it be legitimate to exhaust the Bible of all that it says about answers to &ldquo;cultural problems&rdquo; before we lay aside Scripture for the less clear statements of general revelation? He deserves a forthright answer.</p> <p>My guess is that advocates of a general revelation ethic are viewing general revelation through the corrective lens of special revelation. For them general revelation is clear only because special revelation is clear.</p> <p>It is one thing to talk about the ethical requirements easily distilled from general revelation, but theonomists are still waiting for someone to demonstrate that this can actually be done. Theonomists often catch general revelation advocates borrowing from the theonomist&rsquo;s garden, similar to the way humanists borrow from the Christian&rsquo;s garden. But as our nation moves steadily from an ethic that most Americans recognize as being Bible-based, any ethic based on general revelation will dissipate as quickly as a morning fog vanishes at the appearing of a blazing sun.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/Theo-fr_large.png?v=1674139413" alt="Theonomy: An Informed Response"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Theonomy: An Informed Response</h3> <p>Christendom is a civilization—the kingdom of God in history—that is governed in every area, every nook and cranny, by God: a society whose lawfully anointed rulers govern in terms of God’s revealed law. In this view, God is not in retirement or on vacation; He is a King who has delegated to His officers the authority to exercise command. There are three covenantal institutions: family, church, and state. To deny that God’s covenant law applies to civil government in New Testament times is necessarily to abandon the ideal of Christendom.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/theonomy-an-informed-response" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Why do Christians go to church every week? Gary discusses the need for biblical and worldview teaching and preaching that helps Christians to understand how God&rsquo;s truth applies and informs every area of life. No aspect of life is &ldquo;off limits&rdquo; to a biblical worldview; all of life is to be claimed for God&rsquo;s glory.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/the-purpose-of-church" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here to browse all episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast</a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/the-date-of-revelation-what-do-the-sources-say/Tue, 14 Jul 2026 07:54:28 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/the-date-of-revelation-what-do-the-sources-say/<p>When you debate a subject, it is incumbent upon you to consider the strongest argument for the opposing position. Anything less than this approach is fundamentally flawed. In addition, failing to inform readers about works on the topic that support the opposing view is nothing less than sloppy scholarship. An example of this is Joel Richardson’s podcast about when Revelation was revealed to John. Was it written before AD 70, around the time of Nero, who died by suicide in AD 68, or around AD 95, during the reign of Domitian, who died in AD 96? Joel gives the impression that the late date has been the agreed-upon view for nearly two millennia, and that it was only recently claimed that Revelation was written before AD 70.</p> <blockquote> <p>The first to plead his case seems right,<br> Until another comes and examines him (Prov. 18:17).</p> </blockquote> <p>Let’s put Joel’s claims to the test. In addition to his claim that “the majority of the church has believed that Revelation was written roughly 25 years after 70 AD,” he also claims “the early church for the first 300 years overwhelmingly” was premillennial. What does he mean by “the church”? No church council discussed or determined the date. The Nicene Creed, composed in AD 325, and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in AD 381, never mention the millennial question. The 17th-century Westminster Confession and Catechisms do not address the topic. To use the word “church” is misleading. For example, attendance at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD ranged between 250 and 318 Bishops, and yet we do not have anything from them about their views on the dating question or the thousand-year period mentioned in Revelation 20. <a href="https://www.modernreformation.org/resources/articles/why-the-early-church-finally-rejected-premillennialism" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Charles E. Hill</a> comments:</p> <blockquote> <p>To many Christians today, premillennialism is the very mark of Christian orthodoxy. But there was a period of well over a “millennium” (over half of the Church’s history), from at least the early fifth century until the sixteenth, when <em>chiliasm</em> [thousand-year-ism]<strong>[1]</strong> was dormant and practically non-existent. Even through the Reformation and much of the post-Reformation period, advocates of chiliasm were usually found among fringe groups like the Münsterites. The <em>Augsburg Confession</em> went out of its way to condemn chiliasm (Art. XVII, ‘Of Christ&rsquo;s Return to Judgment), and John Calvin criticized “the chiliasts, who limited the reign of Christ to a thousand years” (Institutes 3.25.5). It was not until the nineteenth century that chiliasm made a respectable comeback, as a favorite doctrine of Christian teachers who were promoting revival in the face of the deadening effects of encroaching liberalism….</p> </blockquote> <p>The problem with the advocacy of early pre-millennialism is the sources that some of its advocates used to promote it. For example, Irenaeus promoted his millennial view by an appeal to Jewish sources.</p> <blockquote> <p>Irenaeus cites a tradition from a book written by Papias of Hierapolis about the millennial kingdom. … It is the famous report about each grapevine in the kingdom having ten thousand branches, each branch ten thousand twigs, each twig ten thousand shoots, each shoot ten thousand clusters, and each cluster ten thousand grapes, etc., with talking grapes, each one anxious that the saints would bless the Lord through it. As it turns out, this account seems to be a development of a tradition recorded in the Jewish apocalypse 2 Baruch in its account of the Messiah’s earthly kingdom (Ch. 29).</p> </blockquote> <p>I discuss this important point in my book, <em><a href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/new-testament-eschatology-what-the-early-church-believed-about-bible-prophecy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">New Testament Eschatology: What the Early Church Believed about Bible Prophecy</a></em>, with Francis X. Gumerlock. As we’ll see in a future article, Joel uses Irenaeus as his lynchpin for the late date of Revelation and a key advocate for premillennialism. Joel is not telling the whole story. There is no straight line from the Bible to these early writers and their claims. Let’s keep in mind that we have writings from (1) people who wrote down their views, (2) writings that survived, (3) writings that have been translated for English readers, (4) no surviving works by maybe other Christians from the first three centuries, and (5) the views of Christians who never wrote anything.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/files/NTEfr_large.png?v=1712955428" alt="New Testament Eschatology: What the Early Church Believed About Bible Prophecy"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>New Testament Eschatology: What the Early Church Believed About Bible Prophecy</h3> <p>It has been maintained by some modern writers that the early church was predominately premillennial and exclusively futuristic on Bible prophecy. New Testament Eschatology challenges this prevailing futurist view with a careful study of the historical record. The evidence shows that many early church writers understood the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 to be the end of the Old Covenant world.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/new-testament-eschatology-what-the-early-church-believed-about-bible-prophecy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <ol> <li>In the earliest period of the church, “nothing with certainty can be found of Revelation in the Apostolic Fathers.” The “first explicit mention of the Revelation is in Justin Martyr’s <em>Dialogue with Trypho</em>” (ACCS 12: xix). Trypho was a non-believing Jew. Justin wrote: “I admitted to you formerly, that I and many others are of this opinion [of chiliasm], and that such will take place, as you assuredly are aware; but, on the other hand, I signified to you that <strong>many who belong to the pure and pious faith, and are true Christians, think otherwise</strong>.” There was no unified “church” opinion on the millennial question.</li> <li>In fact, the earliest surviving commentary on Revelation we have is by Victorinus, which is in Latin, around the year 300.</li> <li>I could write a book dealing with these and other claims Joel makes in his video. But I don’t have to because this topic has been covered by many sound scholars for centuries. Here are some recent examples that Joel ignores.</li> </ol> <p>• James Glasgow’s 1872 commentary on Revelation: <em>The Apocalypse: Translated and Expounded</em>, in which he spends a considerable amount of time on the dating issue. He wrote, “There is reason to believe that John was banished from Rome and went to Patmos about A.D. 51.” Note what John wrote in Revelation 1:9. He described himself as a “fellow-partaker in the tribulation,” most likely under Nero and when the temple was still standing (Rev. 11:1-2). There is a debate over whether Domitian was a persecutor of Christians. Nero certainly was. More recent scholarship shows that there was no wholesale persecution under Domitian. See <em><a href="https://bibleworld.com/domper.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Did Domitian Persecute Christians?: An Investigation</a></em> by Arthur M. Ogden and Ferrell Jenkins. Also see <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/blog/domitian-and-the-persecution-that-didn-t-happen" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">here</a> and <a href="https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/post-biblical-period/domitian-persecution-of-christians/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">here</a>.</p> <p>• There is the timing issue: the events were to happen “soon” (1:1; 22:6) because “the time is near” (1:3; 22:10). What “soon” took place after AD 95 that fits the context?</p> <p>• There are many reputable scholars throughout the centuries who argued that Revelation was revealed to John before the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. John Owen, J.B. Lightfoot, Adam Clark, James Glasgow (<em>The Apocalypse: Translated and Expounded</em>, 1872),<strong>[2]</strong> John Lightfoot (1602-1675), James Stuart Russell, Alfred Edersheim, Philip Schaff, John A.T. Robinson’s <em>Redating the New Testament</em> (1976) and Jonathan Bernier’s <em>Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament: The Evidence for Early Composition</em>(2022), Moses Stuart, F.J.A. Hort, B.F. Westcott, F.W. Farrar, R.A. Torrey, Cornelius Vanderwaal, Albert A. Bell, C.F.D. Moule, James M. Macdonald, Milton Terry, F. F. Bruce, E. Earle Ellis, Joseph Fitzmyer, Robert Young, author of <em>Young’s Literal Translation</em> and <em>Young’s Analytical Concordance</em>, argue that Revelation was written before the fall of Jerusalem. Many modern-day scholars, such as Jay E. Adams, Frank Turek, and Kenneth Gentry, hold to a pre-AD 70 date. Zane Hodges, a dispensationalist, believed Revelation was written during the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero (AD 65). John Weldon and John Ankerberg wrote, “Indeed, it is becoming an increasingly persuasive argument that all the New Testament books were written before 70 A.D. — within a single generation of the death of Christ.”<strong>[3]</strong></p> <p>• For a recent (February 5, 2024) scholarly approach to the dating question, see <em><a href="https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/5558/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">A Defense of the Neronic Date of the Book of Revelation</a></em>: A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the School of Divinity in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy” by Jason L. Quintern. There are others.</p> <p>• The definitive work on the dating question is Kenneth L. Gentry’s dissertation <em>Before Jerusalem Fell: Dating the Book of Revelation</em>, first published in 1989. It’s gone through five printings and three editions. The latest edition includes a new Preface where he responds to some objections.</p> <p>• There’s also Gentry&rsquo;s two-volume Commentary on Revelation that is necessary reading.</p> <p>• The same is true of Peter J. Leithart’s two-volume commentary.</p> <p>• Francis X. Gumerlock’s book <em><a href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/revelation-and-the-first-century" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Revelation and the First Century: Preterist Interpretations of the Apocalypse</a></em> is must-reading. It’s a real historical eye-opener. Gumerlock has translated several very early Latin texts that explicitly state that Revelation was written before AD 70.</p> <p>• Also see the book that Frank Gumerlock and I wrote: <em><a href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/new-testament-eschatology-what-the-early-church-believed-about-bible-prophecy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">New Testament Eschatology: What the Early Church believed about Bible Prophecy</a></em>. It includes a discussion of Irenaeus and how a single sentence from him is used to support the late date of Revelation.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/files/RFCfr_large.png?v=1779468036" alt="Revelation and the First Century"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Revelation and the First Century</h3> <p>With Revelation and the First Century, Francis Gumerlock has done an invaluable service to everyone interested in prophecy and church history. Dr. Gumerlock provides dozens of citations from early church history proving that many of them held a preterist view from the very first days of Christianity onward.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/revelation-and-the-first-century" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Joel should have at least mentioned the amount of material available on the dating question. The topic is more complex than Joel maintains. When debating, especially in a Christian context when truth matters, it is incumbent that both sides be discussed honestly.</p> <hr> <p>[1] Derived from the Greek word for “thousand.” <em>Mille</em> is the Latin word for “thousand.”</p> <p>[2] “THERE IS REASON TO BELIEVE THAT JOHN WAS BANISHED FROM ROME AND WENT TO PATMOS ABOUT A.D. 51” (page 9). “Now if John went to Patmos in A.D. 51, or even early in 54, the Apocalypse might have been written within the period (50-54) during which Lucius Domitius, who received the title of Nero, was associated as Caesar with Claudius. In that case, the opinion of Epiphanius, that the book was written in the reign of Claudius, is in harmony with that expressed in the title of the Syriac version, that it was written in the reign of Nero Caesar; while the meaning of the phrase used by Irenaeus — ‘the Domitian reign,’ or ‘the reign of Domitian,’ on which so much stress has been laid, as if Irenaeus were inspired — is a vexed question, whether it was the reign of Domitian or of Domitius Nero, — in other words, whether δομετιανου [<em>dometianou</em>] is a noun or a derivative adjective.” (10-11)</p> <p>[3] John Ankerberg and John Weldon, <em>Ready With An Answer: For the Tough Questions About God</em> (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1997), 364-365.</p>https://americanvision.org/posts/christians-kamala-and-the-apostle-paul/Mon, 13 Jul 2026 07:15:08 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/christians-kamala-and-the-apostle-paul/<p><em>Political liberals <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/christians-politics-and-the-apostle-paul/id1500969161?i=1000673838589" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external"></a>are <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/christians-politics-and-the-apostle-paul-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">more than willing</a> to use every means necessary to get their message out, even breaking tax laws they supported.</em></p> <p>When, in 1800, President John Adams received a letter from Germany, proposing to send over to this country “a company of schoolmasters, painters, poets, etc., all of them disciples of Thomas Paine,” he made prompt and emphatic reply as follows: “I had rather countenance the introduction of Ariel and Caliban with a troupe of spirits the most mischievous from the fairy-land.”</p> <p>And in a proclamation shortly thereafter, setting forth the dangers threatening the young republic, he thus reannounced the national faith: “The most precious interests of the United States are still held in jeopardy by the hostile designs and insidious arts of a foreign nation (France), as well as by the dissemination among them of those principles subversive of the foundation of all religious, moral, and social obligations, that have produced incalculable mischiefs and misery in other countries.”</p> <p>The one man whose coming to America was more to be deplored than any other was Thomas Paine. His political writings gave him fame and influence, but his coarse and vulgar skepticism made him in the end the shunned and despised of all American decency&hellip;</p> <p>I come now to study the federal charter—the “supreme law of the land”—adopted by the historic convention of 1787 in the city of Philadelphia, and its relation to the Christian religion. Was any action taken by that grave body of great statesmen that was intended directly or indirectly to repudiate the pronounced Christian faith of the colonial fathers? Their courage had been tested in the storm of war, and now their ambitions could only be inspired by the loftiest patriotism—the completion of a work so gloriously begun. James Madison, who preserved the debates of that memorable convention, and who was conspicuous in its deliberations, said that “there never was an assembly of men, charged with a great and arduous trust who were purer in their motives, or more exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them, than were the members of the federal convention of 1787 to the object of devising and proposing a constitutional system which should best supply the defects of that which it was to replace, and best secure the permanent liberty and happiness of their country.”</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/CAC_Rev.Jacket2_large.jpg?v=1551949855" alt="Christianity and the American Commonwealth"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Christianity and the American Commonwealth</h3> <p>Originally published in 1898, Christianity and the American Commonwealth is a collection of five brilliant lectures given by Dr. Charles B. Galloway at the Chapel of Emory College in Oxford, Georgia. The arguments made in his book, although written more than 100 years ago, are persuasively modern and need to be heeded by today’s church. More than a hundred historical images from all over the world have been added to bring Galloway’s text to life.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/christianity-and-the-american-commonwealth" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>One from the archives and the tactics remain the same. Political liberals are more than willing to use every means necessary to get their message out, even breaking tax laws. Conservatives and Christians seldom have this boldness. In fact, many Christians don&rsquo;t even see the reason to be involved. The Apostle Paul would not agree.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/christians-politics-and-the-apostle-paul-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here to browse all episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast</a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/episode-100-dating-the-book-of-revelation/Fri, 10 Jul 2026 08:56:29 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/episode-100-dating-the-book-of-revelation/<p><strong>Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 100</strong></p> <p><em>Gary <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/dating-the-book-of-revelation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">discusses</a> the date of the writing of the book of Revelation.</em></p> <p>Quite a bit of diversity existed in early Christianity regarding the date that John wrote the book of Revelation, and the dominance of one opinion is not synonymous with unanimity of opinion.</p> <p>Several writers in recent years have noted that markedly different opinions about the date of Revelation abounded among early Christian writers. For example, Adela Yarbro Collins took notice of “traditions about the date of Revelation” that “were apparently independent of Irenaeus.” More recently George Wesley Buchanan wrote that in the church fathers “there is no consistent agreement on the precise time when John lived and wrote.” In an earlier book (<em><a href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/new-testament-eschatology-what-the-early-church-believed-about-bible-prophecy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">NT Eschatology</a></em>), I categorized these various opinions regarding the date of Revelation under different headings, from “very early,” e.g., the time of Claudius, (41–54 A.D.) to “very late” during the reign of Trajan (98–117 A.D.). This chapter and the next expand significantly upon that research.</p> <p>These two chapters will provide passages from ancient and medieval texts, showing that there were at least ten different traditions favoring a date of the book of Revelation before 70 A.D. These interpretations all predate the seventeenth-century commentary of Luis Alcasar, which is regarded by many as the first preterist commentary of Revelation.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/files/RFCfr_large.png?v=1779468036" alt="Revelation and the First Century"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Revelation and the First Century</h3> <p>Criticisms against preterist interpretations of the book of Revelation elicit questions: Did any early and medieval Christian writers interpret the visions of Revelation in a preterist manner? Are preterist interpretations of the book of Revelation a modern, seventeenth century invention, as is claimed by some? This book answers these questions by providing selections from ancient and medieval commentaries on the book of Revelation, writings composed long before the seventeenth century. Many of these selections are translated into English here for the first time. All of the selections reflect the fact that some Christians in ancient and medieval times interpreted visions in the book of Revelation in a preterist fashion.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/revelation-and-the-first-century" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary discusses the date of the writing of the book of Revelation. Joel Richardson recently claimed that the historic church has primarily been premillennial in its eschatology and has held to a &ldquo;late date&rdquo; (around AD 95) for the writing of the book. Is this correct?</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/dating-the-book-of-revelation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://americanvision.org/categories/microscope/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for all episodes of Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope</a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/pastors-and-the-pulpit/Thu, 09 Jul 2026 08:05:49 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/pastors-and-the-pulpit/<p>For decades, pastors have been timid about preaching politics from the pulpit. The Old Testament prophets would have been stunned by such timidity. Many modern-day churches believe they have good biblical reasons for not addressing politics. They believe they are prohibited from doing so because it will jeopardize their tax-exempt status. It won’t, but even if it did, so what? Faithfulness to the Bible is every Christian’s calling regardless of the financial consequences, including the loss of your church’s tax exemption. Such a development might clear out the “almost Christians.” Then there are the typical arguments for non-involvement that I deal with in my book <em><a href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/myths-lies-and-half-truths" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths</a></em>.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/mlht1_large.png?v=1365620692" alt="Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths</h3> <p>Like the Bereans of Paul’s day (Acts 17:11), Christians should check the veracity of all opinions against the only reliable standard of authority that God has placed in our hands: the Bible. This may mean a change in belief systems for some. There is no novelty in this. God confronted Peter directly about the inclusion of Gentiles into the household of faith (10:9–16). Paul confronted Peter “to his face” on a similar matter (Gal. 2:11–14). There are times when we all need to be knocked off our horse of mistaken opinions (Acts 9:4). “Testing” is a biblical mandate (2 Cor. 13:5; 1 John 4:1).</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/myths-lies-and-half-truths" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Ministers of another era saw it as their biblical duty to preach about politics from the pulpit because the Bible addressed every sphere of life, including civil government. Harry Stout opens a window into the colonial era by pointing out the effect preaching had on the young nation:</p> <blockquote> <p>Over the span of the colonial era, American ministers delivered approximately 8 million sermons, each lasting one to one-and-a-half hours. The average 70-year-old colonial churchgoer would have listened to some 7,000 sermons in his or her lifetime, totaling nearly 10,000 hours of concentrated listening. This is the number of classroom hours it would take to receive ten separate undergraduate degrees in a modern university, without ever repeating the same course!</p> <p>The pulpits were Congregational and Baptist in New England; Presbyterian, Lutheran, and German Reformed in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; and Anglican and Methodist in the South. But no matter the denomination, colonial congregations heard sermons more than any other form of oratory. The colonial sermon was prophet, newspaper, video, Internet, community college, and social therapist all wrapped in one. Such was the range of its influence on all aspects of life that even contemporary television and personal computers pale in comparison.<strong>[1]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>These colonial pastors were aware of the politics of the day, both in America and in their country of origin. Many of them made the trek to the New World for political reasons. It was Old World preaching on the nature and limits of civil government that led the Pilgrims to embark on an effort to create “a city on a hill.” These early founders brought their worldview preaching to an unknown but promising new land. “They hoped—and this was the point of the New World mission—that England would take note of this decentralized but still coherent ‘nation’ and imitate it. In the meantime, New Englanders would keep the covenant alive in their own corner of the New World and signify that fact on election day.”<strong>[2]</strong> It is no less true today.</p> <p>All discussions of the duties of the citizenry and those called to minister in the civil sphere must begin with the Sovereign God of Scripture. Any opinion that civil government is an autonomous work of nature cannot be supported by a faithful reading of the Bible. There is no neutral “social contract” whereby men and nations agree to legitimize civil government. The “social contract” theory of the origin of civil government is the religion of Babel (Gen. 11).</p> <p>Family, church, and civil governments are not contractual. For example, marriage is a divine government, instituted by God at creation (Gen. 2:22-25). The covenant that men and women make in marriage is modeled after the divine relationship, the duties of which are set forth in Scripture. The husband, therefore, is to model his love for his wife after the love Jesus has for the church, giving Himself up for her (Eph. 5:25).</p> <p>Ecclesiastical government (church government) results from Christ’s institution. Jesus declared that it is <strong>His</strong> church that is to be built (Mat­t. 16:18). When Christians establish local churches, the divine blueprint must be followed. There are earthly rulers in the church (Acts 20:28; Heb. 13:17), but Jesus is the head (Eph. 5:23). There are many locales where churches operate, but the living Christ is their authority (Matt. 28:18; Rev. 2:12-17).</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/godandgovt_large.png?v=1608039906" alt="God and Government"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>God and Government</h3> <p>The work of reviving America is far from finished, and Americans need to hear—now more than ever—the biblical and historical truths explained in God and Government. American Vision has thoroughly renovated, revised, and updated Gary DeMar’s monumental work into this beautiful one-volume hardback. With a fresh new look, more images, an extensive subject and scripture index, and an updated bibliography, God and Government is ready to prepare a whole new generation to take on the political and religious battles confronting Christians today. May it be used in a new awakening of Christians in America—not just to inform minds, but to stimulate action and secure a better tomorrow for our posterity. </p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/god-and-government" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>As in family and ecclesiastical governments, civil government is an extension of God’s rule over nations: “For the kingdom is the Lord’s, and He rules over the nations” (Psalm 22:28). “Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God” (Rom. 13:1). The specifics of civil government, like those of marriage and ecclesiastical governments, are outlined in Scripture. Governmental principles do not flow “naturally.” They are ordained by God.</p> <p>Four primary duties proceed from the biblical model established for civil government:</p> <p><em>First</em>, the people must understand their obligations as citizens. Because governmental power is God-ordained, certain obligations are part of the governmental process. There can be no autonomy among citizens. Even those who we would not consider to be within the orbit of orthodox Christianity understood that human autonomy was dangerous.</p> <p><em>Second</em>, those who minister in the civil arena must understand that they derive their authority from God. Civil government is not an independent government outside the jurisdiction of God’s sovereign rule. But rulers are not directly chosen by God as were Moses and Joshua (Num. 12:1-8; Deut. 34:9-12). God made provision for the ratification of leaders through a godly citizenry.</p> <p><em>Third</em>, in a Christian society, the people endorse those who rule by voting them into a civil office, and they confirm the laws they enact by keeping them in office. This is why Jethro instructed Moses to “teach [the people] the statutes and the laws and make known to them the way in which they are to walk, and the work they are to do” (Ex. 18:20).</p> <p><em>Fourth</em>, there is no legitimate claim to a “divine right” whereby rulers can enact law. Civil laws must be in terms of God’s revealed law. It is important to note that citizens, especially Christian citizens, must question unbridled and autonomous political power. This is why at the death of Solomon “Jeroboam and all the assembly of Israel came and spoke to Rehoboam” about the tyrannical rule of the king (1 Kings 12:3). A Christian society, as a “holy” and “royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:5, 9; cf. Ex. 19:6), must confront the unrighteous in civil government in terms of God’s law and their limited governmental authority.</p> <p>The influence of the <em>divine right doctrine</em>, “which assumes that divinely ordained authority is beyond questioning, is not a biblical doctrine.” For example, the apostle Paul questioned the authority of the existing Roman government (Acts 16:22-40). “The divine right of kings gave way, for many, to the divine right of husbands, an equally pernicious idea. Indeed, all legitimate authority is established by God, but this does not entitle authorities to the unquestioning obedience God alone is entitled to. <em>All</em> human authorities are to be obeyed <em>in the Lord</em>, i.e., in terms of a questioning and devout attention to the word of God as superior to man.”<strong>[3]</strong></p> <p>Christians are obligated to obey those in authority; leaders are required to rule in terms of God’s Word, but no earthly authority must be obeyed in <em>all</em> cases. There are times when “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). Again, the Bible is our guide. Human government, therefore, resides under the control of God. Justice reflects the righteousness of God, while the need for retribution reflects the sinfulness of man. The temporal powers, when exercising authority as a ministry of justice, must know and enforce the parameters of justice. This makes for the working of a just society (not a perfect society). There is to be no biased judgment; no favorable treatment under the law; no partiality in judgment. Righteousness is the standard.</p> <blockquote> <p>Just as God, the supreme Judge, is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34; Rom. 2:11; Eph. 6:9; Col. 3:25) and is Himself absolutely righteous, so too those who exercise governmental authority on earth are required to display impartiality towards all with­out exception — otherwise they show themselves to be betray­ers of the power entrusted to them and despisers of the law they administer. Thus the judges of Moses’ time were solemnly charged, “You shall not be partial in judgment; you shall hear the small and the great alike; you shall not be afraid of the face of man, <em>for the judgment is God’s</em>” (Deut. 1: 7).<strong>[4]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>In this way, citizens and civil representatives know the extent of their jurisdiction. Freedom and security prevail under such a system when the people realize rulers “do not judge for man but for the Lord” (2 Chron. 19:6). The fear of the Lord should guide the heart of all who rule. Citizens have a duty to remind rulers that “the Lord our God will have no part in unrighteousness, or partiality, or the taking of a bribe” (v. 7).</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/RFC-front_large.png?v=1603236877" alt="Restoring the Foundation of Civilization"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Restoring the Foundation of Civilization</h3> <p>There are many Christians who will not participate in civilization-building efforts that include economics, journalism, politics, education, and science because they believe (or have been taught to believe) these areas of thought are outside the realm of what constitutes a Christian worldview. Nothing could be further from the truth.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/restoring-the-foundation-of-civilization" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>The Bible gives many examples of Christians involving themselves in the political process. Many Christians consider politics a dirty business, an area where Christ has no business. If politics is “dirty,” it becomes necessary for Christians to involve themselves. Here are a few examples of political involvement from the Bible. Noah, as an agent of the civil mag­istrate, is given authority to execute murderers (Gen. 9:1-7); Joseph is made ruler in Egypt (41:38ff.); Israel is kept in bondage by a political ruler who sets himself up in opposition to the kingdom of God (Ex. 1:8; 5:1-21); God gives instructions to both priests and kings (Deut. 17:14-20); the book of Judges shows the interrelationship between religion and rule; 1 Samuel 8 shows how the rejection of God as Israel’s true King leads the people to choose an earthly king as a substitute (an attempt to equate the State with the kingdom of God); the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles tell the story of the rise and fall of kings and kingdoms; and individual kings are singled out for special counsel (Jer. 38:17-28). The list could go on.</p> <blockquote> <p>That God is vitally concerned with political affairs is quite easy to demonstrate: it is God who ordained governments in the first place (Rom. 13:1; Rom. 2:21). He is the One who establishes particular kings (Prov. 16:12; Psa. 119:46, 47; 82:1, 2). Therefore, He commands our obedience to rulers (Rom. 13:1-3). Rulers are commanded to rule on His terms (Psa. 2:10ff. ). Even in the New Testament activity of political import is discoverable. Je­sus urged payment of taxes to <em>de facto</em> governments (Matt. 22:15-22). In response to reminders of King Herod’s political threats against Him, Jesus publicly rebuked the king by calling him a vixen (Luke 12:32). He taught that a judge is unjust if he does not fear God (Luke 18:2, 6). John the Baptist openly criticized King Herod (Luke 3:19, 20). Peter refused to obey authorities who commanded him to cease preaching (Acts 5:29). The Apostle John referred to the Roman Empire as “the beast” (Rev. 13).<strong>[5]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>The denial of political involvement is the denial of most of the Bible. Christians are responsible for acting righteously as citizens and, if God so calls, for participating in politics in a ministerial capacity. Every regenerate man is a priest, a minister of God (Isa. 61:6; 66:21; 1 Peter 2:5, 9; Rev. 1:6). Citizenship is closely tied to righteousness. Jesus Christ is King of the church and “Lord of lords and King of kings” (Rev. 17:14).</p> <hr> <p>[1] Harry S. Stout, “How Preachers Incited Revolution,” <em>Christian History</em>, Issue 50 (Spring 1996), 3.</p> <p>[2] Harry S. Stout, <em>The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England</em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 29.</p> <p>[3] Rousas J. Rushdoony, <em>Salvation and Godly Rule</em> (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1983), 390-391.</p> <p>[4] Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, <em>Christian Ethics in Secular Society</em> (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1983), 185.</p> <p>[5] Kenneth L. Gentry, “The Greatness of the Great Commission,” in <em>The Journal of Christian Reconstruction</em>, Symposium on Evangelism, ed. Gary North, 7:2 (Winter 1981), 45.</p>https://americanvision.org/posts/billionaires-and-trillionaires/Wed, 08 Jul 2026 07:36:21 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/billionaires-and-trillionaires/<p><em>Gary <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/billionaires-and-trillionaires" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">responds</a> to recent criticisms about certain rich people in America and whether they &ldquo;need all that money.&rdquo;</em></p> <p>The modern world has debased its coinage. No nation’s mint issues silver coins as common coinage—only as collectibles. By the mid-1960’s, silver coins were replaced by central bank counterfeits.</p> <p>In 1965, most money was not coinage, as is true today. Most money was a combination of paper currency and bank checks. Printed currency of any denomination all looked alike. The “dross” was paper and ink, worth a few cents. The “silver” was the face value of the bill. The central bank’s profit—mark-up—on printing these bills was enormous. The governments had laws against printing counterfeit bills, but their central banks printed nothing but counterfeit bills. What held this process in check was the threat that people could bring in their paper money or write checks and get gold coins. That ended in Europe in late 1914: World War I. It ended in the United States in 1933. It ended for silver coins in the United States in 1964. (Note: in the summer of 1963, I converted almost all of my money into silver coins, which I got at a bank at face value. By the end of the summer, these coins started going out of circulation as a result of Gresham’s famous law: “Bad money drives good money out of circulation.”)</p> <p>Today, most money is digital. <em><strong>All digital money is counterfeit money</strong></em>. We do not even see the money any longer. We use pieces of plastic. Computers communicate with each other. Counterfeit money is morally wrong. It is a form of theft. But economists do not like to invoke ethics in their analysis of economic cause and effect. They also do not like to criticize theft by civil governments as theft, for that brings up this ethical issue: “Thou shalt not steal” (Exodus 20:15). It does not say, “Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.”</p> <p>Henry Hazlitt followed the lead of Ludwig von Mises. He used the word “inflation” to refer to fiat money creation. He did not use it to describe the <em>result</em> of fiat money creation: rising prices. Isaiah preceded both of them in this regard (see Isaiah 1:22-24). He identified the evil of inflating—and it <em>is</em> evil. Mises did not mention ethics and economics together. Neither did Hazlitt. Murray Rothbard did. He always labeled inflating as theft.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/CEfront_large.png?v=1611238392" alt="Christian Economics in One Lesson"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Christian Economics in One Lesson</h3> <p>Christian Economics in One Lesson is Dr. North's reworking of Henry Hazlitt’s classic introduction to economic thought, Economics in One Lesson. That book set the standard as an introductory economics book. Nothing has come close to replacing it ever since it was first published in 1946. Christian economics must begin with the issue of ultimate ownership. This sets it apart from modern economic analysis, which begins with the issue of scarcity. Second, this leads to the issue of theft, which in turn raises the issue of ethics.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/christian-economics-in-one-lesson" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary responds to recent criticisms about certain rich people in America and whether they &ldquo;need all that money.&rdquo; This is beside the point, aside from the fact that most critics are using technology created by billionaires to voice their opposition. It all comes down to the two Es: Eschatology and Economics.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/billionaires-and-trillionaires" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here to browse all episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast</a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/some-thoughts-on-americas-christian-heritage/Tue, 07 Jul 2026 08:23:18 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/some-thoughts-on-americas-christian-heritage/<p>In 1783, at the close of the war with Great Britain, a peace treaty was ratified that began with these words: “In the name of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity. It having pleased the Divine Providence to dispose the hearts of the most serene and most potent Prince George the Third, by the Grace of God King of Great Britain.”<strong>[1]</strong> The treaty was signed by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay. Keep in mind that it was Adams who signed the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli.</p> <p>In 1822, the United States, along with Great Britain and Ireland, ratified a “Convention for Indemnity Under Award of Emperor of Russia as to the True Construction of the First Article of the Treaty of December 24, 1814.”<strong>[2]</strong> It begins with the same words found in the Preamble to the 1783 treaty: “In the name of the Most Holy and Indivisible Trinity.” Only Christianity teaches a Trinitarian view of God. There doesn’t seem to be any reluctance on the part of the American signers to affix their names to it.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/cachfr_large.png?v=1675169569" alt="The Case for America&#39;s Christian Heritage"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>The Case for America&#39;s Christian Heritage</h3> <p>Even some of our nation’s Founders who did not identify as Christians could not escape the impact the Bible had on our nation’s founding and the moral precepts that held the fledgling nation together. America’s Christian heritage is writ large in its state Constitutions, charters, laws, symbols, and repeated stated reliance on the overruling providence of God.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/case-for-americas-christian-heritage" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>The 1848 Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits and Settlement between the United States of America and the Mexican Republic, the peace treaty between the United States and Mexico that ended the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), begins with “In the name of Almighty God.” The treaty also states that both countries are “under the protection of Almighty God, the author of peace&hellip;.”<strong>[3]</strong></p> <p>During the War for Independence, George Washington wrote the following to Brig. General Thomas Nelson:</p> <blockquote> <p>“The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations.”<strong>[4]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>As President, Washington stated that “it is the duty of all <em>nations</em> to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.” He went on in his Thanksgiving Proclamation of October 3, 1789, to write that as a nation “we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great <em>Lord and Ruler of Nations</em>, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions.”<strong>[5]</strong> Professor Stone’s contrary evidence is at best hearsay. Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation is direct evidence that he was no deist. When a person offers “prayers and supplication,” he expects some sort of response. There is no response possible for the deist who operates as an absentee landlord. In his Farewell Address of 1796, Washington stated the following:</p> <blockquote> <p>Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, <strong>religion and morality are indispensable supports</strong>. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: <strong>Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice</strong>? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, <strong>reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle</strong>.</p> </blockquote> <p>Notice the connection between religion and morality, and how they lead to “political prosperity.” While noting that there are “slight shades of difference,” the people “have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles.” This “same religion” was Christianity.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/acr_large.jpg?v=1452623830" alt="American Christian Rulers"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>American Christian Rulers</h3> <p>Reprinted for the first time since 1890, this newly typeset edition of Rev. Edward J. Giddings’s biographies of nearly 200 American statesmen recalls a time in American history when the citizens of this republic made no distinction between the personal morality and public service of their leaders.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/american-christian-rulers" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <hr> <p>[1] Malloy, <em>Treaties, etc.</em>, 1:586.</p> <p>[2] Malloy, <em>Treaties, etc.</em>, 1:634.</p> <p>[3] Malloy, <em>Treaties, etc.</em>, 1:1107.</p> <p>[4] George Washington’s letter of August 20, 1778, to Brig. General Thomas Nelson, in John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., <em>The Writings of George Washington</em> (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1932), 12:343.</p> <p>[5] George Washington, “Proclamation: A National Thanksgiving,” <em>A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1902</em>, ed. John D. Richardson, 11 vols. (Washington, DC: Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1907), 1:64.</p>https://americanvision.org/posts/an-eschatological-worldview/Mon, 06 Jul 2026 07:17:18 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/an-eschatological-worldview/<p><em>Gary <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/an-eschatological-worldview" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">reveals</a> that he is considering having a prophecy conference in the Nashville area next summer.</em></p> <p>2 Corinthians 7 begins: “Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (v. 1). “These promises” were made to <em>Israel</em>, and yet Paul applies them to the <em>church</em> at Corinth (1:1).</p> <p>There is no mention of a postponement of the promises first made to Abraham. These Jewish believers, the recipients of the promises spoken by the prophets (Acts 3:24), made up “the church” (5:11). So then, when Gentiles were grafted into the existing all-Israelite <em>ekklēsia</em>, they took part in the same Israelite promises. Dispensationalists have to maintain that this was never God’s plan. Citing Isaiah 57:19, Paul assures Israelites and non-Israelites who are in Christ, “and He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near” (Eph. 2:17). The New Testament <em>ekklēsia</em> was always God’s plan!</p> <p>Dispensationalists still maintain that there are unfulfilled promises for Israel. Where in the New Testament does it say this? Not a single New Testament writer offers a caveat to their claim that the promises have been fulfilled. We have to ask the dispensationalist when these unfulfilled promises are going to be fulfilled. It can’t be during the so-called church age since, as dispensationalist Thomas Ice states, “We dispensationalists believe that the church has superseded Israel during the current church age, but God has a future time in which He will restore national Israel ‘as the institution for the administration of divine blessings to the world.’” When will this divine blessing to the world take place? It can’t take place “during the current church age” since God, according to Ice, has replaced Israel with the church. It’s not going to take place during the dispensationalist’s version of the Great Tribulation since there will be a mass slaughter of Jews and even greater destruction to the world. Will it be during the “millennium”? Revelation 20 doesn’t say anything about the promises being finally fulfilled since there is no mention of Israel or the land of Israel.</p> <p>If the dispensationalists are correct, then the New Testament writers were awfully confused, in spite of the fact that they, like their Old Testament counterparts, were under the direct inspiration of the infallible Holy Spirit (2 Tim. 3:16-17). Of course, we know they weren’t confused in the least. If they had wanted to make such a distinction between Israel and the “church” they certainly would have used a word other than <em>ekklēsia</em>, which possessed a <em>continuity of meaning</em> spanning both the Old and New Testaments of the Greek Bible.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/files/10PMfr_large.png?v=1726012494" alt="Ten Popular Prophecy Myths Exposed and Answered"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Ten Popular Prophecy Myths Exposed and Answered</h3> <p>Since the reestablishment of Israel in 1948, “end-time” prophetic speculation has been on the rise. While there is a long history of date setting, the past century has seen an exponential increase in the number of books proclaiming that the end is near. It’s time that the “Boy who cried wolf” syndrome be dealt with in a biblical way.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/ten-popular-prophecy-myths-exposed-and-answered" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary reveals that he is considering having a prophecy conference in the Nashville area next summer. Why is this necessary and what will be taught? Listen to today&rsquo;s episode to learn much more about what Gary has in mind for this potential event.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/an-eschatological-worldview" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here to browse all episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast</a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/episode-99-how-literal-are-the-literalists/Fri, 03 Jul 2026 08:25:36 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/episode-99-how-literal-are-the-literalists/<p><strong>Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 99</strong></p> <p><em>Gary <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/how-literal-are-the-literalists" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">points out</a> that no one interprets purely &ldquo;literally,&rdquo; although many prophecy speculators claim that they do.</em></p> <p>Jesus often uses the plural &ldquo;you&rdquo; in Matthew 24 and in the parallel passages in Mark 13 and Luke 21: “They will lay their hands on you and will persecute you, delivering you to the synagogues and prisons, bringing you before kings and governors for My name’s sake” (Luke 21:12; see verses 13-20, 28, 30; Acts 12:1, 20; 25:13, 24, 26).</p> <p>Now, if you heard Jesus say that all these things would happen to “this generation” while you were standing there listening to Him, and in every other instance of its use “this generation” meant the present generation, and you also heard Him say that when “you” would see these things, what would you conclude? The most natural (literal) interpretation is that it would happen to your generation, and maybe even to you personally (Matt. 16:27-28). Again, if it were a future generation, we would expect Jesus to have said, “when they see … they will bring them … they will persecute them.”</p> <p>This overwhelming evidence does not phase futurists. Stanley D. Toussaint writes that “the second person plural may be employed of those who are not contemporaries.” (Notice that he says “may be.”) He turns to Matthew 23:35 for support. In this passage, Toussaint argues, “the Lord Jesus referred to the death of Zechariah and says, ‘whom you murdered.’ Obviously Zechariah was killed centuries before Christ.” Note that Jesus makes it clear that He is referring to the contemporary generation of Jews who heard His message of judgment. The “you” refers to them as Toussaint admits, regardless of who murdered Zechariah. It was their generation that “filled up the measure of the guilt” begun by their fathers (23:32). Jesus tells us that “you” refers to them. The “you” does not refer to a past generation of murderers. Nowhere are we told that “you” refers to anyone but them. The burden of proof is on Toussaint to prove otherwise. And since there is a great deal of speculation as to the identity of this Zechariah, it is possible that they had indeed killed him.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/LDM-front_large.png?v=1572279906" alt="Last Days Madness"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Last Days Madness</h3> <p>In this authoritative book, Gary DeMar clears the haze of "end-times" fever, shedding light on the most difficult and studied prophetic passages in the Bible, including Daniel 7:13-14; 9:24-27; Matt. 16:27-28; 24-25; Thess. 2; 2 Peter 3:3-13, and clearly explaining a host of other controversial topics.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/last-days-madness" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary points out that no one interprets purely &ldquo;literally,&rdquo; although many prophecy speculators claim that they do. The book of Revelation says in the very first chapter that the book is &ldquo;signs,&rdquo; not actual events and beings. In reality, interpreting the Bible &ldquo;literally&rdquo; means to interpret what it says in terms of the type of &ldquo;literature&rdquo; it is written in, whether historical narrative, poetry, apocalyptic, etc.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/how-literal-are-the-literalists" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://americanvision.org/categories/microscope/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for all episodes of Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope</a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/thomas-paine-and-the-american-founding/Thu, 02 Jul 2026 07:15:48 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/thomas-paine-and-the-american-founding/<p>Thomas Paine is often called a Founder of the American Republic. But is it the Paine of <em>Common Sense</em> or the Paine of <em>The Rights of Man</em> (1791) and <em>The Age of Reason</em> (1793-94)? Since <em>Common Sense</em> was written on the eve of the Revolution and <em>The Rights of Man</em> and <em>The Age of Reason</em> were written after the ratification of the Constitution, we should begin with <em>Common Sense</em>. Paine’s <em>Common Sense</em> put forth arguments for independence from Great Britain. How did he argue his case? What were his sources?</p> <p>A. J. Ayer remarks that “the first argument that Paine brings against the institution of kingship is scriptural.”<strong>[1]</strong> Paine declared that “government by kings was first introduced into the world by the Heathens, from which the children of Israel copied the custom&hellip;. As the exalting of one man so greatly above the rest cannot be justified on the equal rights of nature, so neither can it be defended on the authority of scripture; for the will of the Almighty, as declared by Gideon and the prophet Samuel, expressly disapproves of government by kings [Judges 8:22-23; 1 Sam. 8]. All anti-monarchical parts of scripture have been smoothly glossed over in monarchical governments, but they undoubtedly merit the attention of countries which have their governments yet to form. ‘Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s’ is the scriptural doctrine of courts, yet it is no support of monarchical government, for the Jews at that time were without a king, and in a state of vassalage to the Romans.”<strong>[2]</strong></p> <p>Paine has an extended discussion of Judges 8:22–23 where he describes “the King of Heaven” as Israel’s “proper sovereign.”<strong>[3]</strong> He then spends several pages quoting, discussing, and applying the importance of 1 Samuel 8 to the modern situation. He concludes this section of <em>Common Sense</em> with these words: “In short, monarchy and succession have laid (not this or that kingdom only) by the world in blood and ashes. ’Tis a form of government which the word of God bears testimony against, and blood will attend it.”<strong>[4]</strong> See the Appendix to my book <em>The Case for America’s Christian Heritage</em>.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/cachfr_large.png?v=1675169569" alt="The Case for America&#39;s Christian Heritage"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>The Case for America&#39;s Christian Heritage</h3> <p>An Illustrated Journey of Our Nation's Providential Beginnings. America’s original founding was rooted deeply in the things of Jesus Christ and His kingdom. The original charter given to Sir Walter Raleigh by Queen Elizabeth I in the 16th century was to establish “the true Christian faith.” John Rolfe at Jamestown sought to “advance the Honor of God and to propagate his Gospel.” The faithful Christians who wrote the Mayflower Compact stated that their mission was “for the Glory of God and advancements of the Christian faith.”</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/case-for-americas-christian-heritage" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>It seems that some historians trim this bit of history from Paine’s body of work. Instead, he only quotes from his later publications, which are anti-Christian but not atheistic. Consider his views of creation from his 1787 “Discourse at the Society of Theophilanthropists in Paris”:</p> <blockquote> <p>It has been the error of schools to teach astronomy, and all the other sciences and subjects of natural philosophy, as accomplishments only; whereas they should be taught theologically, or with reference to the Being who is the Author of them: for all the principles of science are of divine origin. Man cannot make, or invent, or contrive principles; he can only discover them, and he ought to look through the discovery to the Author. When we examine an extraordinary piece of machinery, an astonishing pile of architecture, a well-executed statue, or a highly-finished painting where life and action are imitated, and habit only prevents our mistaking a surface of light and shade for cubical solidity, our ideas are naturally led to think of the extensive genius and talent of the artist. When we study the elements of geometry, we think of Euclid. When we speak of gravitation, we think of Newton. How, then, is it that when we study the works of God in creation, we stop short and do not think of God? It is from the error of the schools in having taught those subjects as accomplishments only and thereby separated the study of them from the Being who is the Author of them&hellip;. The evil that has resulted from the error of the schools in teaching natural philosophy as an accomplishment only has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of creation to the Creator Himself, they stop short and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of His existence. They labor with studied ingenuity to ascribe everything they behold to innate properties of matter and jump over all the rest by saying that matter is eternal. And when we speak of looking through nature up to nature’s God, we speak philosophically the same rational language as when we speak of looking through human laws up to the power that ordained them. God is the power of first cause, nature is the law, and matter is the subject acted upon. But infidelity, by ascribing every phenomenon to properties of matter, conceives a system for which it cannot account and yet it pretends to demonstrate.<strong>[5]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>Could the above comments by Paine be worked into the curriculum of today’s public schools? I doubt it.</p> <p>How much support did Paine get from the Founders in his later works, where he repudiated the Bible and Christianity but remained a theist? John Adams called him a “blackguard.” Samuel Adams wrote Paine a stiff rebuke, telling him, “[W]hen I heard you had turned your mind to a defence of infidelity, I felt myself much astonished and more grieved that you had attempted a measure so injurious to the feelings and so repugnant to the true interest of so great a part of the citizens of the United States.”<strong>[6]</strong> In his Introduction to <em>Common Sense</em>, Gregory Tietjen wrote that Paine’s “explicit expressions of disbelief roused the faithful to fury and earned Paine an enmity that destroyed the good reputation he enjoyed for his earlier activities in behalf of the American cause. . . . [H]is polemics against President Washington had lost him the loyalty of many patriots, and his religious beliefs had earned him the wrath of the Christian faithful.”<strong>[7]</strong> Even the usually tolerant Quakers refused him burial in a Quaker graveyard.</p> <p>Geoffrey Stone, professor of law at the University of Chicago, describes the views of the later Paine as “shockingly blunt and ‘politically incorrect’ to modern ears, but they were in fact the views of many of our most revered Founders. The fable that the United States was founded as a Christian Nation is just that—a fable.” Paine’s <em>Common Sense</em>, with its biblical arguments from the Old and New Testaments, is direct testimony that Stone is incorrect.</p> <p>Mark A. Noll, a research professor of history at Regent College, argues, “If Paine’s <em>Age of Reason</em> (with its dismissive attitude toward the Old Testament) had been published before <em>Common Sense</em> (with its full deployment of Scripture in support of republican freedom), the quarrel with Britain may have taken a different course. It is also likely that the allegiance of traditional Christian believers to republican liberty might not have been so thoroughly cemented. And it is possible that the intimate relation between republican reasoning and trust in traditional Scripture, which became so important after the turn of the new century, would not have occurred as it did.”<strong>[8]</strong></p> <p>Robert Royal comments that “for Paine—a skillful polemicist whose attachment to Christianity was always uncertain and seems eventually to have evaporated—to use an argument such as this at a delicate moment testifies, at the very least, to the power of religious arguments for liberty in America.”<strong>[9]</strong> John Orr’s remarks that Paine received a “cold reception &hellip; when he returned from France after publishing his deistic book <em>The Age of Reason</em>.” This reaction “does not suggest that deism was as popular in America as some” historical accounts “might lead one to suppose.”<strong>[10]</strong></p> <p>The answer to Paine’s <em>Age of Reason</em> was <em><strong><a href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/the-age-of-revelation-the-age-of-reason-shewn-to-be-an-age-of-infidelity" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">The Age of Revelation: The Age of Reason Shewn to be an Age of Infidelity</a></strong></em> by Elias Boudinot. In 1779, he was elected to the Continental Congress and then to its successor, the Congress of the Confederation, serving as President of Congress in 1782-1783, during the war&rsquo;s final years.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/ageofrevelation__99178.1286483642.1280.1280_large.jpg?v=1371644638" alt="The Age of Revelation"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>The Age of Revelation</h3> <p>Paine is considered to be an American Founding Father, and yet, unlike Paine, Boudinot actually served in a civil capacity in the United States that included work on the Constitution. Paine's only elective office was in France. Boudinot is a true American Founding Father. Paine had no role in the founding conventions of America and their documents. Boudinot waited some time before deciding to respond to Paine's Age of Reason. His measured rejoinder to Paine's work is contemplative and, contrary to Paine's treatise, a work of sound scholarship. A great deal of thought and humility went into the well-argued reply.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/the-age-of-revelation-the-age-of-reason-shewn-to-be-an-age-of-infidelity" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>After being elected to the first, second, and third U.S. Congresses, where he served from 1789 to 1795, Boudinot was appointed director of the United States Mint by President Washington and held the position through 1805 under the presidencies of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Boudinot, a devout Presbyterian, spoke out frequently against slavery, both as a member of Congress and as a private citizen. In 1816, he helped found the American Bible Society and served as its first president for five years. Paine’s only elective office was in France.</p> <hr> <p>[1] A.J. Ayer, <em>Thomas Paine</em> (New York: Atheneum, 1988), 40. Ayer remarks that his appeal to the Old Testament is curious “in view of the want of respect he was later to show for the Old Testament” (40).</p> <p>[2] Thomas Paine, <em>Common Sense</em> (New York: Barnes &amp; Noble, [1776] 1995), 10.</p> <p>[3] Paine, <em>Common Sense</em>, 11.</p> <p>[4] Paine, <em>Common Sense</em>, 11-14.</p> <p>[5] Thomas Paine, <em>Life and Writings of Thomas Paine</em>, ed. Daniel Edwin Wheeler, 10 vols. (New York: Printed by Vincent Parke and Company, 1908), 7:2-8, “The Existence of God,” A Discourse at the Society of Theophilanthropists, Paris. Also see Thomas Paine, “Discourse Delivered to the Society of Theophilanthropists at Paris” in <em>The Theological Works of Thomas Paine</em> (London: R. Carlile, 1818), 4-5.</p> <p>[6] William V. Wells, <em>The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams</em> (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1865), 3:372-373. Letter to Thomas Paine on November 30, 1802.</p> <p>[7] Gregory Tietjen, “Introduction,” <em>Common Sense</em>, xii.</p> <p>[8] Mark A. Noll, <em>America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln</em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 84.</p> <p>[9] Royal, <em>The God that Did Not Fail</em>, 216.</p> <p>[10] John Orr, <em>English Deism: Its Roots and Its Fruits</em> (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1935), 219.</p>