The American Vision

Can Your Pastor Answer These Questions?

Mon, 19 Oct 2026 07:24:22 -0400

Gary discusses the biblical perspectives and the responsibilities of pastors in addressing controversial issues.

While the Bible may be believed in principle, it is too often denied in practice. When we are told that “Christians must address ‘issues’ in the society,” the following disclaimer is often given: “but not institutions.” How does one address issues but not institutions since “issues arise within institutions and cannot be properly addressed unless one has some idea of what an institution in God’s world should be like”? The key to fighting any evil is to understand how God’s world works. Without that understanding there is no possibility of changing anything. There must be a model. That model must come from the person who designed the model. God has designed the world, and the Bible is the Owner’s Manual on how it works. “Without a model, we draw our options over issues from the alternatives presented by the society.” This is exactly what the church has done. Prevailing anti-Christian ideologies have shaped the church’s view of the world.

This approach leaves the Christian with few regulations. “A diversity of cultural contexts and political structures” mitigates the application of a narrowly focused law system, even if it’s from God. The absence of specific biblical regulations means an ethical free-for-all. If the Christian’s life is not regulated by “detailed regulations,” then we can’t expect much from the Bible to be applied to the world at large.

We have moved from specific guidelines to being “moved by the Holy Spirit.” The Spirit and the Word are never in opposition. Much has been done in the name of the Holy Spirit, and not all of it can be supported by Scripture. But what does it mean, for example, to “pay your taxes”? Is the State free to tax citizens at any rate? Are there biblical norms for taxation? If there are no “detailed regulations,” then the State is free to confiscate all our income by an appeal to the general law “pay your taxes.” Keep in mind that the prohibition regarding abortion is found with those laws Dr. Henry says are no longer obligatory during the New Testament era (Ex. 21:22–25). There’s no direct prohibition of abortion in the New Testament, although it is certainly possible to infer such a prohibition (Luke 1:41), but only because the Old Testament is more specific. Neither will you find a prohibition of bestiality in the New Testament (cf. Ex. 22:19; Lev. 18:23–25).

Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths

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).

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Gary discusses the biblical perspectives and the responsibilities of pastors in addressing controversial issues. He critiques the arguments made by James Talarico, emphasizing the need for a clear understanding of the Bible’s stance on abortion and the importance of teaching these principles in churches. The unborn child is considered a human being in biblical texts and pastors should be teaching these topics from the pulpit.

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Episode 113: Are Christians Who Believe Jesus is Coming Soon 'Born Yesterday'?

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 08:32:17 -0400

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 113

Using the movie Born Yesterday as an example, Gary discusses the history of prophetic speculation, its inaccuracies, and how to interpret biblical prophecy correctly.

At first reading, the New Testament seems to teach that the temple would be destroyed (Matt. 23:38; 24:2), Jerusalem would come under siege (Matt. 22:7), and the Old Covenant order would come to an end before the last disciple died (Matt. 10:23; 16:27–28; cf. John 21:18–23). Jesus prophesied that a series of devastating events would take place before that first-century generation passed away (Matt. 24:34). But how could this be? Hal Lindsey and other prophecy writers presented what seemed to be compelling evidence that “famines, pestilences, and earthquakes” (24:7), the rise of “false prophets” (24:11), and the gospel being preached “to all the nations” (24:14) were end-time events that were taking place in our day. I was confused.

I looked for an answer in the Bible. Steadily, I began to see that the Bible really is its own best interpreter. Jesus said there would be famines before the generation to whom He was speaking would pass away. A famine hit the Roman Empire “in the days of Claudius Caesar” (Acts 11:28), who ruled from A.D. 41 to 54. Luke describes the famine as being “throughout all the world,” that is, encompassing the borders of the Roman Empire since the Greek word oikoumene (“inhabited earth” or “known world”) and not kosmos (“world”) is used.

Was the “gospel of the kingdom preached in all the world for a witness to all the nations” prior to the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70? I learned that the Greek word translated “world” in Matthew 24:14 is the same Greek word used in Luke 2:1 to describe a “world-wide” census that took place during the time of Jesus’ birth and is best translated “inhabited earth” or “known world” (cf. Acts 11:28). Paul states unequivocally that the gospel “was preached to every creature under heaven” (Col. 1:23) in his day. The gospel had “been made known to all nations” in his day (Rom. 16:26). Those who are mesmerized by end-time speculation will insist that this did not happen. Their argument is with the Bible, not me. Paul’s language is clear.

Is Jesus Coming Soon?

Wars and rumors of wars, famines, plagues, and earthquakes. These are the biblical signs. All of them are realities of planet earth each days. Is Jesus coming back soon? Did Jesus provide an exact, predictable scenario as so many modern prophecy writers advocate? The answer to these questions will shock the majority and ambush the sentries of the end-times status quo. Readers of Is Jesus Coming Soon? will no longer be bound by the idol of eschatology tradition which has paralyzed the Church and minimized the impact of Christianity on our world. Don't be disturbed by what you read, because the truth is about to set you free!

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Using the movie Born Yesterday as an example, Gary discusses the history of prophetic speculation, its inaccuracies, and how to interpret biblical prophecy correctly. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the context and warns against falling for false predictions about the end times.

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Do Roman Coins Reveal When Revelation Was Written? (Part 2)

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:06:09 -0400

In my first part of this article, I addressed a claim Joel Richardson made on a podcast about a coin struck by Domitian around AD 82-83. He argued that the coin proved Revelation was written during Domitian’s reign and that Revelation 1:16, 20 referred directly to that coin. I showed that numerous coins with stars, some with seven stars, were struck before AD 70 and after AD 95, when Richardson claims Revelation was written. Nero is the better candidate for several reasons I outline in Part 1.

Nero commissioned a 100-foot bronze statue of himself, the Colossus Neronis, that represented him as the sun god. Nero’s successors later modified it into a statue of the sun god Sol, Colossus Solis. Nero’s crown featured sun rays radiating outward and upward. An earthquake probably toppled it in the fifth century, or the sack of Rome in AD 410 destroyed it.

David Chilton (1951-1997) wrote a commentary on Revelation that has been in print since 1987. He was a well-known preterist. The following are some of his comments on Revelation 1:16. Richardson should have read more widely before making such a dogmatic claim.

The symbolic use of the seven stars was quite well known in the first century, for the seven stars appeared regularly on the Emperor’s coins as symbols of his supreme political sovereignty. At least some early readers of the Revelation must have gasped in amazement at St. John’s audacity in stating that the seven stars were in Christ’s hand. The Roman emperors had appropriated to themselves a symbol of dominion that the Bible reserves for God alone—and, St. John is saying, Jesus Christ has come to take it back. The seven stars, and with them all things in creation, belong to Him. Dominion resides in the right hand of the Lord Jesus Christ.[1]

The Days of Vengeance

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."

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As a preterist, Chilton believed Revelation was written before AD 70. This means he explained that Revelation 1:16 referred to star symbols that existed before AD 70 and would have applied after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple and to this day. He points out that “the seven stars appeared regularly on the Emperor’s coins as symbols of supreme political sovereignty.” Domitian’s seven-star coin was not unusual, and neither were similar coins struck long after. Today, nations use the sun (Japan), the moon (Islamic nations), and stars (the United States of America) on their flags and coins. The European Union flag and coins contain stars.

Grant R. Osborne says something like what Chilton wrote but doesn’t link it to Domitian because stars on coins, even seven stars, weren’t unusual.

Some scholars see an astrological reference here, perhaps to the Pleiades cluster (linked in the Hellenistic world with the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione), or as in Jewish writings with seven members of this solar system (sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) linked with the seven branches of the menorah. In this sense an interesting suggestion is made by Krodel [2] (1989:95) that this could be intended to contrast with “the pretensions of Roman emperors who asserted their cosmic rule with the symbols of planets surrounding them.” In the ancient world stars were frequently seen as powers (usually the gods) that could influence the course of history and determine the destiny of humankind.[3]

Note this comment by Osborne: “as in Jewish writings with seven members of this solar system.” John could easily have had Job 9:5-9, 38:31-33, and Amos 5:8 in mind rather than any emperor. Craig R. Koester’s Revelation commentary mentions the Domitian coin, in that it “depicts the emperor’s deceased son as young Jupiter, sitting on the globe in a posture of world dominion.”[4] But this would conflict with his claim that 666 and 616 refer to Nero Caesar. Gordon Franz’s comment sounds a lot like what Richardson claims but is less dogmatic:

I cannot help but use my sanctified imagination and wonder if John did not have this coin in front of him when he penned, “and in the midst of the seven lampstands One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to His feet … He had in His right hand seven stars’ (Rev. 1:13,16).”[5]

This is not biblical exegesis. Imagining what a biblical writer was doing or thinking is not how we should interpret the Bible. The biblical approach is to let the Bible speak for itself, and enough internal and external evidence supports the view that God revealed Revelation to John before the temple’s destruction.

The Bible provides the best and most reliable evidence. Revelation 11:1-2 states that the temple was still standing when John received the contents of Revelation: “measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there” (11:1). George Edmundson states this in his 1913 work, The Church in Rome in the First Century:

The opening verses of chapter xi. imply that the Temple of Jerusalem was still standing, and that there was no expectation of the destruction of the Shrine itself. But the outer court was to be given to the nations, who for a period represented by 42 months would trample it underfoot. [Rev. xi. I, 2. See Daniel, vii. 25, three and a half years or 42 months. It is the time of the duration of the Fourth Kingdom or Roman Empire]. This statement must have been made at the time when the legions of Titus were already closing round Jerusalem and its doom was sealed, but before it was known that the desperate character of the defence would carry with it the entire destruction of the city and its world-famous sanctuary. That Jerusalem was not destroyed when the words (xi. 8) were written—‘their dead bodies lie in the street of the Great City, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified’ — is evident. In 95 A.D. the city was in ruins.

[T]he baleful figure of Nero dominates the entire picture of the struggle between the forces of good and evil. The wild beast, [Rev. xiii. i. At a short distance from Patmos the island of Thera or ‘the Wild Beast’ rises out of the sea.] coming up out of the sea with its seven heads and ten horns, and the imagery connected with it, was suggested to the Seer by the apocalyptic visions of Daniel vii., the fourth kingdom of Daniel being identified by him with the Roman Empire. The name of the beast [Rev. xiii. i8] is expressed by a number —‘the number of a man’ —and the number is Six Hundred and Sixty-Six…. [I]t is only when the Apocalypse is treated historically as a Neronian document that any satisfactory interpretation can be found for the imagery of certain difficult passages.[6]

Notice that Revelation 11:1 does not say, “measure a future rebuilt temple and the altar and those who will worship there.” Richardson presupposes “a future temple and a future restoration of Jerusalem.” The New Testament says nothing about a future temple or a future restoration of Jerusalem, only the temple’s destruction (Matt. 24:2). Like Domitian’s coin, Richardson and other theorists are reading into Revelation what they need to prove.

By the time the Domitian coin had been struck, the temple in Jerusalem had been in ruins for more than a decade. Not one stone was left upon another, as Jesus predicted (Matt. 24:2). Richardson appeals to archaeology, but when the date of Revelation is at stake, the strongest physical evidence is the temple’s ruins, confirmed by eyewitness accounts and archaeological findings. For his theory to carry any weight, he must find a New Testament verse stating that the temple under construction in Jesus’ day (John 2:13-22) and destroyed within a generation will be rebuilt again. There isn’t one.

Nero Caesar, who reigned from AD 54 until his suicide in 68, makes for a better candidate for the early date than Domitian based on Revelation 17:10: “There are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet come. And when he comes, he must continue a short time.” “[T]he ‘five’ are Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius, and Claudius, who have already “fallen” (i.e., are dead). We know, therefore, that the sixth one ‘is’ (estin) the reigning emperor, Nero,” who was alive when Revelation was written. And “the other who has not yet come” is the seventh, Galba, who will only ‘remain a little while.’”[7] He reigned for only seven months, from June 8, AD 68 to January 15, 69.

The seven stars are described as the “angels” (messengers) of the seven churches—held safely in Jesus’ right hand of power and protection. The two-edged sword from His mouth symbolizes His judging word (cf. Heb. 4:12). Jesus conquers by proclamation, not by a physical sword. Jesus Himself interprets the imagery, showing that Revelation uses symbols with clear referents, not random fantasy or unbridled imagination. The “angels” may be heavenly representatives or, more likely, human messengers/overseers of each church. The key point is that Jesus Christ holds their leaders in His right hand and walks among their congregations. Before He judges Jerusalem and the nations, He first evaluates and purifies His own church and warns the seven churches that what was about to befall Jerusalem and the temple could happen to them. In Revelation 2:5, the phrase “remove your candlestick” (or lampstand) signifies the withdrawal of a church’s spiritual authority, presence, or status within the community of believers because of unrepentant sin.

Ten Popular Prophecy Myths Exposed and Answered

Millions of books have been sold proclaiming countless false prophecies. Many Christians are beginning to take a second look at the biblical prophetic record. A seismic shift in biblical eschatology is taking place around the world because Christians, some for the first time, are willing to challenge what they have been taught based on what the Bible actually says. Gary DeMar has taken on the task of exposing some of the popular myths foisted upon the public by prophetic speculators.

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Domitian and Roman emperors before and after him borrowed from God’s creation and corrupted its original meaning (Rom. 1:18-28). The sun, moon, and stars are signs of God’s creating power and sovereignty (Gen. 1:14-19). The Bible does not borrow from pagan cultures; pagan cultures borrow from the true God. “The heavens are telling of the glory of God / And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands” (Psalm 14:1). Kings, emperors, and presidents have no glory. They exist at God’s discretion. They owe their existence to God. “And let all kings bow down before him / All nations serve Him” (72:11).

Excursus

I’ve checked some premillennial commentaries that hold to a late date to see what, if anything, they say about Domitian and his coin as a date for Revelation’s composition.

• “There is no warrant for connecting the seven stars with the seven planets or with images on Domitian coins (Stauffer).”[8]

• “That Jesus holds the seven stars in his right hand means that he is in control of the churches, and that he is among the lampstands means that he is present with the churches.”[9]

• While John F. Walvoord mentions the Domitian coin and Stauffer’s comments, he states, “The mystery of the seven stars is defined in the Scriptures; however, in verse 20: ‘The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches.’”[10]

• “The ‘seven stars’ which John says are the angels of the seven churches are held in His right hand. In his Gospel, John said that the believer is secure in Christ’s hands. This is also true of the church (John 10:28-30).”[11]

• “In his strong hand he held ‘seven stars’—symbolical of the destiny of the churches as it lay in the pastors.”[12]

• “In the phrase ‘in his right hand he held seven stars,’ the right hand is the place of power and safety, and the ‘seven stars’ Christ held in it are identified with the seven angels of the seven churches in Asia (v. 20). This is the only detail in the vision that is identified. Why the symbolism of stars? This probably relates to the use of ‘angels’ as those to whom the letters to the seven churches are addressed (chs. 2-3). Stars are associated in the OT and in Revelation with angels (Job 38:7; Rev 9:1) or faithful witnesses to God (Da 12:3). The first letter (that to Ephesus) includes in its introduction a reference to the seven stars (2:1), and in 3:1 they are associated closely with the ‘seven spirits of God.’”[13]

• “Verse 16. In his right hand he held seven stars. This signifies his care of the churches (1:20; see John 10:28).”[14]

• “Taking a clue from Revelation 1:20, we understand this to mean that Christ is present in the midst of the congregation and holds them in his control.”[15]

• “The image of the seven stars in Christ’s right hand would have also spoken to the people of John’s time in other ways. First, this is an anti-astrology message. The stars do not control our destiny and are not to be feared. Christ is the Lord who holds the stars in his hand. Second, the symbol of the stars challenges the divine claims of certain Roman Caesars. To illustrate, the young son of the Emperor Domitian died in A.D. 83. Domitian proclaimed the child a god and minted coins picturing his mother, Domitia, as queen of heaven, and the child holding the stars in his hands. In Revelation 1, John removes the stars from human hands and places them where they rightfully belong—in the hand of Christ. He thus declares the Roman Caesars to be false imitations of the true cosmic ruler, who is Christ the Lord.”[16]

• “In his right hand seven stars” The stars are afterwards interpreted as representing the seven angels, messengers, or bishops of the seven Churches. Their being in the right hand of Christ shows that they are under his special care and most powerful protection.”[17]

• “There is no need to search for a mythological or astrological background such as Pleiades (the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione, placed by Zeus among the stars) or the seven planets (sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). [For a presentation of this idea, see M. Wojciechowski, “Seven Churches and Seven Celestial Bodies,” Biblische Notizen, 45 (1988), 48-50.] That Christ has the full complement of stars in his right hand indicates his sovereign control over the churches [Roloff comments that ‘in the ancient world the stars were viewed as powers that determine the course of the world and control human destiny in a variety of ways. Dominion over them thus means supreme power and authority that encompasses everything” (36).] It may also imply protection (John 10:28: ‘no one can snatch them out of my hand’).”[18]

• “Let the churches know that their risen Redeemer is mighty; is crowned with glory and honor and set over the realm of nature and the empire of the world, “King of kings and Lord of lords.” Let them have no fear as to the final triumph of his cause.”[19]

[1] Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Dallas, GA: Dominion Press, 1987), 75-76. Also see Michael Barber, Coming Soon: Unlocking the Book of Revelation and Applying its Lessons Today (Stubenville, OH: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2005), 47.

[2] “The seven stars in his right hand contrast with the pretensions of Roman emperors who asserted their cosmic rule with the symbols of planets surrounding them. Moreover, in astrological magic the stars, or planets, were believed to determine the destiny of people and nations. Christ holding the seven stars in his right hand appears as the one and the only one who controls the fate of each individual and of the cosmos as a whole. Moreover, an ironic interpretation will turn the stars into ecclesiastical angels who are subject to censure and praise (v. 20).” Gerhard A. Krodel, Revelation, Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1989), 95.

[3] Grant R. Osborne, Revelation, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002), 92.

[4] Revelation: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries) (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), 253.

[5] “Propaganda, Power, and Perversion of Biblical Truths: Coins Illustrating the Book of Revelation,” Biblical Archaeology (November 15, 2021). https://bit.ly/4xLq6ts

[6] (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1913), 172-173, 174.

[7] Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Divorce of Israel: A Redemptive-Historical Interpretation of Revelation, 2 vols. (Acworth, GA and Vallecito, CA: Tolle Lege Press and Chalcedon Foundation, 2024), 2:1341.

[8] Alan F. Johnson, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: with The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996), 34.

[9] James M. Hamilton, Jr., Revelation: The Spirit Speaks to the Churches (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 51.

[10] The Revelation of Jesus Christ (Chicago: Moody Press, 1966), 45.

[11] John P. Newport, The Lion and the Lamb: A Commentary on the Book of Revelation for Today (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1986), 137.

[12] Ray Summers, Worthy Is the Lamb: An Interpretation of Revelation (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1951), 105.

[13] Alan F. Johnson, “Revelation,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Hebrews–Revelation, eds. Tremper Longman III and David E. Garland, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), 13:606.

[14] George Eldon Ladd, A Commentary on the Revelation of John (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972), 33.

[15] Robert H. Mounce, What Are We Waiting For? A Commentary on Revelation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2004), 6.

[16] Christopher A. Davis, Revelation, The College Press NIV Commentary (Joplin, MO: College Press Pub., 2000), 121.

[17] Adam Clarke, Revelation 1:16.

[18] Robert H. Mounce, The Book of Revelation, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997), 59.

[19] Henry Cowles, The Revelation of John; With Notes, Critical, Explanatory, and Practical (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1871), 64.

Creating a "Just" Society

Wed, 14 Oct 2026 09:00:53 -0400

Gary responds to a recent article by Christian apologist Greg Koukl about Christians being involved in culture and politics.

The objection from Christians that religion and politics do not mix can be answered in at least four ways. First, it’s true that the Bible’s primary concern is not politics. Of course, the same could be said about the family and church not being the Bible’s primary concern. And yet, there are few Christians who would maintain that Christians should not be involved in developing biblical models for the family and church.

Second, because there is sin in the world, God has created temporal ways of dealing with it. In family government, God has designated mothers and fathers as rulers (governors) to admonish and discipline their children because children tend to disobey their parents (Eph. 6:1–3). The “rod of correction” is one instrument of discipline (Prov. 13:24). In the church, depending on the ecclesiastical governmental structure, bishops (Episcopalian), elders (Presbyterian), and deacons (Congregational) have ecclesiastical authority in their respective churches and/or denominations. The reason for church government, including its laws and discipline, is the reality of sin even among Christians (e.g., 1 Cor. 5–6). Paul outlines ways for churches, as ecclesiastical governments with real and necessary authority, to handle disputes among members (1 Cor. 6:1–11).

Third, civil government has been given authority to maintain order in society, to punish evildoers, and to promote the good (Gen. 9:5–6; Rom. 13:1–6; 1 Pet. 2:13–14). Essentially, civil governments have jurisdiction over what people do of a criminal nature (theft, rape, murder, etc.). As Thomas Jefferson put it, “the legislative powers of government reach actions only.” But what actions deserve punishment? Left to itself, history has shown us that civil governments can be notoriously unjust and tyrannical. Genocide has been committed against racial and ethnic groups with the full approval of civil governments. With no moral reference point outside the State, civil governments are not bound by ethical constraints. For example, “In 1933, it was officially declared in Germany that the final authority as to the principles of the State and the law is the National Socialistic German Workers’ Party; that no other political party could be formed; and that the Fuehrer should make its laws.”

Fourth, politics, because it deals with civil government, is not a necessary evil; it’s necessary because of evil (Gen. 4:4–15, 23–24; 9:5–7). The sword is the State’s God-ordained instrument of “wrath.” This is why the “law is not made for a righteous man, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers” (1 Tim. 1:9–10). Since civil government has the power of the sword, it is incumbent upon Christians to get involved in politics to ensure that political officials use it wisely and with restraint.

Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths

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Gary responds to a recent article by Christian apologist Greg Koukl about Christians being involved in culture and politics. Koukl strangely recommends not using Scripture to make arguments in moral debates, but instead using “common grace and natural revelation.” Gary points out that this is a) nothing new, and b) begging the question because who gets to define what’s “common” or “natural”? It’s essentially every man for himself.

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Do Roman Coins Reveal When Revelation Was Written?

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 08:46:48 -0400

Podcaster and author Joel Richardson recently claimed that Revelation’s content was revealed to John around AD 95,[1] during Domitian’s reign (AD 81-96), based on a coin the Emperor struck. The coin features the Latin legend Divvs Caesar Imp[eratori] Domitiani F[ilivs] (“The Divine Caesar, Son of the Emperor Domitian”) on the face. The reverse depicts a naked infant seated on a globe surrounded by seven stars. Minted around AD 82-83, the coin honors Domitian’s deceased infant son, Flavius Caesar. (None of the images of the coins in this article are AI-generated.)

Coins for deceased emperors and empresses often feature heavenly bodies, including sun rays, the moon, and stars. The seven stars primarily symbolize immortality and deification.

According to numismatic evidence, there were several imperial coins prior to Domitian that contained the seven stars on the reverse side. For example, Robert S. McIvor points to three types of coins that were minted on the island of Crete during the reigns of Caligula and Claudius (i.e., between 37 and 54 CE) to celebrate divine Augustus.[2]

Joel Richardson claims the Domitian coin “settles the late dating of the book of Revelation” by arguing that the seven stars refer to a coin struck around AD 82-83 by Domitian. Richardson challenges those who date the composition of Revelation to before AD 70 based on the Domitian coin. (For a comprehensive study of the dating issue, see Greg L. Bahnsen’s unfinished article “The Historical Setting of the Writing of Revelation.”)[3] Richardson bears the burden of proof for his claim, since nothing in Revelation links the following verses to Domitian or to coins.

• In His right hand He [Jesus] held seven stars, and out of His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword; and His face was like the sun shining in its strength (1:16).

• As for the mystery of the seven stars which you saw in My right hand, and the seven golden lampstands: the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches (1:20).

• To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: “The One who holds the seven stars in His right hand, the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands” (2:1).

The Days of Vengeance

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The Bible is clear: “The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches.” We know this for certain because Revelation 1:20 explains the meaning. Everything else is speculation, either good or bad.[4] Richardson said the following in his podcast of September 2026:

I’ve never heard anyone who holds to the early dating even attempt to explain this. In my opinion, anyone who is honest, anyone who examines the evidence, is going to go, “Yeah, that’s pretty strong evidence. That’s a pretty clear explicit connection.” Does it prove it? Absolutely, 100% no.

It is not “a pretty clear explicit connection.” What evidence does he offer beyond speculation? I’m not opposed to speculation, but speculation is not evidence. It’s an opinion based on a minimal study of the subject.

He is correct on one point. His argument does not prove the late date 100 percent. In fact, there is no way to prove that Revelation 1:16, 20, and 2:1 refer to Domitian and his coin, mainly because Revelation does not tell us when John was exiled to Patmos (1:9), who exiled him, or whether a coin with seven stars is a key interpretive factor for the date of Revelation.

If coins with seven stars are interpretive keys for the dating of Revelation, then seven-star coins before AD 70 and after AD 95 are equally important and ruin Richardson’s claim. Richardson has found no new evidence from the Domitian coin that points, directly or indirectly, to Revelation’s date.

He gives the impression, intentional or not, that his claim is a new discovery. It’s not. The first place I saw it is in Ethelbert Stauffer’s book Christ and the Caesars: Historical Sketches, first published in German in 1952 and later in English in 1955. Stauffer states, “We see [seven stars] from early imperial times on provincial coins from Crete. Crete is the home of the myth of Zeus. There Zeus was born, and there he lies buried. So the seven planets appear on Cretan coins, now with the Zeus child at play on the heavenly globe, now with the heavenly king with his sceptre, and occasionally, too, along with the deified Augustus.”[5] The Greeks’ Zeus became the Romans’ Jupiter.

Other coins show seven stars before AD 70. Many Roman coins include seven stars. A coin from Lucius Lucretius Trio, struck during the Roman Republic and dating to around 76 BC, features an upward-pointing crescent moon surrounded by a ring of seven stars, possibly representing the constellation Ursa Major, like the Domitian coin. This coin could just as easily support a pre-AD 70 date for Revelation, since the prophecy looks back, and these coins had been circulating for decades.

The DIVVS IVLIVS (Divine Julius) coin below is a silver denarius minted by Augustus (c. 19-18 BC) that commemorates the deification of Julius Caesar. The design references Caesar’s Comet of 44 BC amid seven stars, which appeared during Caesar’s funeral games. The Romans interpreted it as a sign that his soul had ascended to the heavens. These coins served as political propaganda, reinforcing Augustus’s status as a son of god (Divi Filius).

Several Roman coins celebrating prominent deceased personalities reproduced seven stars on their reverse: for instance, Divus Augustus, Diva Faustina, Diva Paulina.

Coincidentally, Halley’s comet (considered a star like the planets) passed over Jerusalem in AD 66, four years before the temple’s destruction and around the time Revelation was revealed to John. According to the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, the comet’s appearance was a dire omen that foretold the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Josephus described “a star resembling a sword, which stood over the city, and a comet, that continued a whole year” (The Jewish War, 6.5.3.289). The print below is cataloged as “Comet of 66 AD (Halley) over Jerusalem,” from Stanisław Lubieniecki’s Historia universalis omulum cometarum, published in Amsterdam in 1666.

The coin below depicts the bare head of Caligula (Gaius, AD 37-41), with a scepter over his left shoulder. The reverse shows the radiate head of Divus Augustus, surrounded by seven stars, symbolizing the deified emperor. This design appears on silver denarii and gold aurei minted in AD 37 to honor Augustus, whose Temple Caligula dedicated early in his reign. Following Richardson’s interpretive logic, this coin depicts what we find in Revelation 1:16, 20, and 2:1.

The coin below depicts an Emperor with sun rays emanating from his head and flanked by two stars.

Hadrian (AD 117 to 138) issued silver denarii between AD 125 and 128 that feature a crescent moon accompanied by seven stars. The stars represent the Big Dipper, while the moon was associated with various goddesses, linking the emperor to divine protection and eternity.

Coins struck by Septimius Severus (AD 193 to 211) feature the seven-star and lunar motifs, accompanied by legends such as SAECVL FELICIT (Happy Times) or AETERNITAS AVS (Eternal Augustus). Some coins from Nikopolis ad Istrum, a major Roman and Early Byzantine city, show six stars surrounding one large star within the crescent moon:

This is a Roman silver denarius issued for Julia Maesa, grandmother of the emperors Elagabalus and Severus Alexander (c. AD 160-217), with the legend IVLIA MAESA AVG (Julia Maesa Augusta). The reverse legend SAECVLI FELICITAS (“Happiness of the Age”) surrounds a crescent moon and seven stars.

Using the sun, moon, and stars to describe people or nations is nothing unusual. Abraham was promised that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars of heaven (Gen. 22:17). In Genesis 37, we read about Joseph’s dream of the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowing to him. Jacob immediately interprets the celestial bodies as his family members: the sun represents himself, the moon represents Joseph’s deceased mother Rachel, and the eleven stars represent Joseph’s eleven brothers. Revelation 12:1 uses similar language: “A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” The darkening of the sun and moon and the falling of stars indicate the demise of nations (e.g., Isa. 13:10; 24:23; 34:4; Ezek. 32:7-8; Joel 2:2, 31; 3:15; Amos 5:20; 8:9; Zeph. 1:5). “Isa 14:12 reads, ‘How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn.’”[6] Jesus borrowed this language directly from Scripture and applied it to the judgment that would befall Jerusalem before that first-century generation passed away (Matt. 24:29, 33-34). It’s not surprising that Roman rulers would elevate themselves in lofty, stellar ways, driven by arrogance and self-importance. They may have considered themselves gods or sons of the gods, but they died as all men do (Psalm 82:7). “He who sits in the heavens laughs/The Lord scoffs at them” (2:4).

The Book of Revelation Made Easy

With 22 chapters of symbolism, mysterious characters, and apocalyptic drama—all told in “picture language” unmatched in the rest of Scripture—the book of Revelation is difficult enough on its own. But in ignoring the Apostle John’s clear directives for interpreting his prophecies, contemporary theologians have wrested Revelation away from its first-century context and perverted its significance for the church—then and now—often turning the book into a stumbling block. Now in its second edition, Kenneth Gentry’s The Book of Revelation Made Easy seeks to pry John’s narrative of the victory of Christ’s bride out of the grip of speculative futurists, and put it back in the hands of everyday Christians.

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John, the recipient of the revelation, could just as easily have been thinking about past Roman rulers, like the Divine Julius and Caligula, whose coins were struck before AD 70. Here’s a Nero coin with two stars.[7]

Notice the spelling NEPON (Nerōn).[8] When the name Neron Caesar is transliterated into Hebrew letters as Neron Qesar(נרון קסר), the sum of its letter values (Nun=50, Resh=200, Vav=6, Nun=50, Q=100, Samekh=60, Resh=200) equals 666 (see the chart below),[9] a figure associated with the number of the beast in Revelation 13:18 that coincides with the timing of events (1:1, 3: 22:6, 10) since there were no “soon” and “near” prophetic events after AD 95. An alternative spelling, the Latin-derived name and title Nero Qesar (נרו קסר), yields 616, which accounts for the number found in some ancient manuscripts. In both cases, Nero is the identified sea beast (13:1-10).

Craig R. Koester has analyzed the Number of the Beast (666) from Revelation in his 2016 article in the Journal of Early Christian History.[10] Koester supports the “Nero Caesar” interpretation, which argues that 666 is a gematria code for the name “Nero Caesar” written in Hebrew characters. This should not surprise us since the Revelation is written against the literary background of the Old Testament, and Jews would be the ones to decipher the number. “Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast …” (Rev. 13:8). He validates this theory by examining recently published papyri, graffiti, and inscriptions from ancient sites including Smyrna, Oxyrhynchus,[11] Ketef Jericho, Murabba‘at, Sardis, and Dura Europos. Additionally, Koester discusses textual variant 616, its interpretive history, and how it entered the textual tradition of Revelation, citing early church figures such as the second-century Greek bishop and Church Father Irenaeus of Lyons.

Click here to read Part Two

[1] Richardson also claims that a great persecution occurred during Domitian’s reign, and this was evidence of a late date. Historic premillennialist George Eldon Ladd admits, “there is no evidence that during the last decade of the first century there occurred any open and systematic persecution of the church.” George Eldon Ladd, A Commentary on the Revelation of John (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972), 197.

[2] Sanghwan Lee, “Jesus, the Holder of the Seven Stars in His Right Hand: An Examination of Rev 1:16a in Light of Numismatic Evidence,” Brill (June 6, 2022). Link here.

[3] “In 1872 James Glasgow asserted that the defenders of the early date ‘have so established the early date of the Apocalypse as no writer of the Domitianic school can successfully meet. They find it much easier to speak lightly of what they cannot answer.’” James Glasgow, The Apocalypse Translated and Expounded (Edinburgh: T.O.T. Clark, 1982), 41. Quoted by Bahnsen in “The Historical Setting of the Writing of Revelation.”

[4] J. Nelson Kraybill, who begins with the claim that Revelation was written during Domitian’s reign, states that “a coin from the reign of Domitian (AD 81-96), most likely the emperor when John wrote Revelation, features an icon of the infant son of the emperor seated on a globe.” Apocalypse and Allegiance: Worship, Politics, and Devotion in the Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2010), 37. He begins with an assumption and then argues from an unproven premise.

[5] Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars: Historical Sketches, trans. K. and R. Gregor Smith (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, [1952] 1955), 152.

[6] David E. Aune, Revelation 1-5, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1997), 52A: 107-108.

[7] The reverse side is translated as “ΤΑΒΗΝΩΝ (Tabēnōn), of the people of Tabae” (that is, from the city of Tabae).

[8] The uppercase r (rho) in Greek is written as ‘P.’

[9] For a comprehensive study about Nero being the Sea Beast of Revelation 13, see Jay Rogers’ book Nero Caesar: The Sixth Head of the Beast (Clermont, FL: Media House International, 2021).

[10] Craig R. Koester, “The Number of the Beast in Revelation 13 in Light of Papyri, Graffiti, and Inscriptions,” Journal of Early Christian History (2016), 1-21. Link here.

[11] J. K. Elliott, “Seven Recently Published New Testament Fragments from Oxyrhynchus,” Novum Testamentum 42, no. 3 (2000), 209-213.

Government Schools and Bogus History Books Have Corrupted Young Minds

Mon, 12 Oct 2026 05:45:50 -0400

Each Columbus Day (or is it now ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Day’ commemorating the bloodlust of the Aztecs and Incas?), Christopher Columbus is hammered for his voyages of exploitation of native peoples. See the first chapter in Mary Grabar’s Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation Against America and Jeff Fynn-Paul’s Not Stolen: The Truth About European Colonialism in the New World. In the 1997 film Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon’s character recommends Zinn’s book A People’s History of the United States as a “real history book” that will “knock you on your ass,” contrasting it with traditional academic texts.

J. Soprano from HBO’s The Sopranos does his homework at the kitchen counter. He tells his parents that his history teacher compared Christopher Columbus to Slobodan Milošević. His father, Tony, fumes, “Your teacher said that?” A. J. responds, “It’s not just my teacher—it’s the truth. It’s in my history book.” The camera pans to A. J. holding a copy of A People’s History.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s Zinn’s “history” that has corrupted millions of young people who are most likely some of the crazies voting for Communists and Islamists.

The Case for America's Christian Heritage

America’s Christian heritage is writ large in its state Constitutions, charters, laws, symbols, and repeated stated reliance on the overruling providence of God. It’s not enough, however, to relive history. There’s much work before us to reset the foundation stones of a firm reliance on Divine Providence. We need to heed the words of Benjamin Franklin who quoted Psalm 127:1 during the drafting process of the Constitution: “except the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it,” and “that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the Builders of Babel.” The principles that were true and necessary centuries ago for building nations are equally true and necessary today

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Many history books get a lot of history wrong, and we are left with the consequences. Consider the claim that Christians taught that the earth was flat because that’s what the Bible teaches. That couldn’t be further from the truth, yet the claim often appeared in our history books. In the eleven-volume Our Wonder World, first published in 1914, the editors offered the following undocumented claims: “All the ancient peoples thought the earth was flat, or, if not perfectly flat, a great slightly curving surface,” and “Columbus was trying to convince people that the earth was round.”[1]

Even as recently as 1961, the Encyclopedia Britannica perpetuated the myth that Columbus’s voyage was about proving the earth was round: “Before Columbus proved the world was round, people thought the horizon marked its edge. Today we know better.” The people knew better in Columbus’s day.

A 1983 textbook for fifth graders reported that Columbus “felt he would eventually reach the Indies in the East. Many Europeans still believed that the world was flat. Columbus, they thought, would fall off the earth.”[2] A 1982 text for eighth graders said that Europeans “believed … that a ship could sail out to sea just so far before it fell off the edge of the sea…. The people of Europe a thousand years ago knew little about the world.”[3]

The late evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould admitted that Christians did not believe the earth was flat. “Virtually all major Christian scholars affirmed our planet’s roundness. The Venerable Bede referred to the earth as orbis in medio totius mundi positus (an orb placed in the center of the universe).”[4] Roger Bacon (1220-1292) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) also believed that Earth is round.

Prominent scholars like John D. Bernal (1901-1971), in his four-volume Science in History (1954), and Daniel J. Boorstin (1914-2004), prize-winning author and Librarian of Congress from 1975 to 1987, propagated the myth without any historical substantiation. Boorstin spills a great deal of ink inventing a history of flat-earth beliefs that he traces to an obscure sixth-century monk, Cosmas Indicopleustes, a 6th-century Greek merchant, traveler, and later a monk from Alexandria, Egypt, who, according to medieval scholar Jeffrey Russell, “had no followers whatever: his works were ignored or dismissed with derision throughout the Middle Ages.”[5]

Earlier attempts to present Columbus as a scientific iconoclast can be found in two standard nineteenth-century anti-Christian works pitting science against religion. John William Draper claims Christians had no interest in scientific discovery. Instead, “they originated in commercial rivalries, and the question of the shape of the earth was finally settled by three sailors, Columbus, De Gama, and, above all, by Ferdinand Magellan.”[6]

While Columbus and other informed sailors who regularly sailed beyond the horizon believed in “the globular figure of the earth,” such an idea was, “as might be expected . . . received with disfavor by theologians.”[7] A similar argument appears in Andrew D. White’s A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom.[8]

The “shape of the earth” was not in question in Columbus’s day. “Columbus, like all educated people of his time, knew that the world was round….”[9]

The myth is widely held that scholars of the Renaissance believed that the Earth was flat and Columbus had to prove them wrong by sailing west to “India.” Makes a great story, except that it’s categorically false. Since the dawn of recorded history, people realized that the Earth was a sphere. Aristotle came to this conclusion through geometry; Roman scholars were also clear on this point. Documented accounts take note of how the mast of a ship stays visible after the body disappears over the horizon. Even ancient sailors had to be aware of the Earth’s curve. (JSTOR)

The image above is from a 1550 edition of a reproduction of the work On the Sphere of the World, originally written around 1230. Below is a coin struck during the reign of Domitian around AD 82-83 that depicts Earth as a globe.

The Flat-Earth Culprit

How and when did the flat-earth myth get started? The earliest claim that “the myth that a flat earth was part of Christian doctrine in the Middle Ages appears to have originated with Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), who wrongly claimed that geographers had been put on trial for impiety after asserting the contrary.”[10]

He revised this claim in his 1620 book Novum Organum. Contrary to Bacon’s original claim, “no major church council declared heretical either the roundness of earth or the antipodes.”[11]

But the myth entered popular history and textbooks when Washington Irving published his three-volume History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828). Irving, best known for “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle,” used his fiction-writing skills to invent a supposed confrontation between Columbus and churchmen who claimed the Bible taught the earth was flat. No such encounter ever took place. Samuel Eliot Morison, a noted Columbus biographer, describes Irving’s story as “misleading and mischievous nonsense, … one of the most popular Columbian myths.”[12]

Irving’s fictionalized account of Columbus describes him as being “assailed with citations from the Bible and the Testament: the book of Genesis, the psalms of David, the orations of the Prophets, the epistles of the apostles, and the gospels of the Evangelists. To these were added expositions of various saints and reverend Commentators…. Such are specimens of the errors and prejudices, the mingled ignorance and erudition, and the pedantic bigotry, with which Columbus had to contend.”[13] Irving’s account has only one problem: “It is fabrication, and it is largely upon this fabric that the idea of a medieval flat earth was established.”[14]

Like maps today, medieval maps were flat. “The mappae mundi [below] interpreted the world in spiritual as well as geographical terms, and included Biblical illustrations as well as portrayals of Classical learning and legend. As pictorial descriptions of the outside world, these impressive maps were also educational; they were used for teaching natural history and classical legends, and reinforcing religious beliefs.”

History 101: Lessons from the Past

History 101 is an overview course designed to help Christians understand their place in the historical timeline. With study materials in audio, video, and print, History 101 will give the student of history much to think about. This course will point the way forward by revealing how we got where we are. You will be entertained and encouraged by the stories from ancient and not-so-ancient history.

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A critic of Russell’s book claims that evidence for the belief in a flat earth can be found in the Hereford Cathedral in England and the 13th-century Hereford Mappa Mundi. This would be like an archaeological dig a thousand years from today, finding a cache of maps hanging in public schools from the 1960s and concluding that people in the 20th century believed in a flat Earth. Why are geopositioned satellites needed if Earth is flat? Three satellites would be enough for triangulation if Earth were flat. Mappa Mundi is no different from how schoolchildren study geography today, using flat maps.

Boorstin asserted that from AD 300 to at least 1300, Europe suffered under what he describes as “scholarly amnesia” due to the rise of “Christian faith and dogma [that] suppressed the useful image of the world that had been so slowly, so painfully, and so scrupulously drawn by ancient geographers.”[15] He also claimed that the scientific advances made by the Greeks were dismantled by Christians based on an appeal to the Bible. It is the Bible, independent of any competing cosmology, which supports the empirical data that the earth is a globe:

Religion enforced the scientific demonstration of the earth’s rotundity; God made the earth a sphere because it was the most perfect form. In the Old Testament there is a reference to this in Isaiah xl.22: “It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth”—“circle” being the translation of the Hebrew khug, sphere.[16]

The image below is from the Psalter World Map, Mid-13th Century.

Of course, not all Christians appealed to the Bible for their views of the shape of Earth. In fact, the Bible says little on the subject. Nothing in the Bible, however, contradicts the empirical data. For example, Venerable Bede (673-735), a monk of Jarrow (in present-day Tyne and Wear, England) and “the Father of English history,” maintained “that the earth is a globe that can be called a perfect sphere because the surface irregularities of mountains and valleys are so small in comparison to its vast size.” He specifies that the “earth is ‘round’ not in the sense of ‘circular’ but in the sense of a ball.”[17] Earth is smoother than a bowling ball, but it is not rounder. It is an oblate spheroid.

In Columbus’s day, the debate wasn’t about whether Earth was flat or round. “The issue was the width of the ocean; and therein the opposition was right.”[18] Columbus underestimated Earth’s circumference and the ocean’s width by many miles. “In fact, the distance Columbus was planning to cover [based on accurate maps] was 10,600 miles by air.”[19] Providentially for Columbus and his edgy crew, the Americas stood in his way.

Even considering his mistaken conclusions about measurements, “Columbus always rates the highest accolades from scholars when it comes to seamanship. He was, without question, the finest sailor of his time.”[20] Virtually every student of Columbus accepts Bartolomé de Las Casas’s (1484-1566) opinion, written in his Historia de las Indias, that “Christopher Columbus surpassed all of his contemporaries in the art of navigation.”[21]

The Columbus myth is another example of historical revisionism, the attempt by secularists to cast the Church in a negative light. Liberal historians relish the fact that schoolchildren all over the country are being taught that Christians are ignorant, flat-earthers who will not listen to history, reason, and science. However, when we accurately survey the facts of history, we discover that true science never conflicts with the Bible. Scientific misinformation is never promoted through an accurate understanding of the Bible. Instead, people manipulate truth only outside the biblical worldview.

[1] Howard Benjamin Grose, ed., Our Wonder World, 11 vols. (Chicago: George L. Shuman & Co., [1914] 1918), 1:1, 5.

[2] America Past and Present (Scott Foresman, 1983), 98. Quoted in Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth, 3.

[3] We the People (Heath, 1982), 28-29. Quoted in Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth, 3.

[4] Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998), 114.

[5] Jeffrey Burton Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians (New York: Praeger, 1991), 4. See Daniel J. Boorstin, The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself (New York: Random House, 1983), chaps. 11-14.

[6] John William Draper, History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1875), 159.

[7] Draper, History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science, 160.

[8] Andrew D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (New York: George Braziller, [1895] 1955), 108.

[9] Zvi Dor-Ner, Columbus and the Age of Discovery (New York: William Morrow, 1991), 72.

[10] James Hannam, The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution. Hannam references John Henry, Knowledge is Power: How Magic, the Government and an Apocalyptic Vision Inspired Francis Bacon to Create Modern Science (Cambridge: Icon Books, 2003), 85.

[11] Michael Newton Keas, Unbelievable: 7 Myths About the History and Future of Science and Religion (Wilmington, DE: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2019), 55.

[12] Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1942), 89.

[13] Quoted in Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth, 53.

[14] Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth, 53.

[15] Boorstin, The Discoverers, 100.

[16] Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 6.

[17] Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth, 20.

[18] Morison, Admiral of the Sea, 89.

[19] Kenneth C. Davis, Don’t Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned (New York: Crown Publishers, 1990), 6.

[20] Robert H. Fuson, The Log of Christopher Columbus (Camden, ME: International Marine Publishing Co., 1987), 29.

[21] Quoted in Fuson, The Log of Christopher Columbus, 29.

Episode 112: Why Don't Literalists Interpret Ezekiel 38-39 Literally?

Fri, 09 Oct 2026 06:55:15 -0400

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 112

Gary points out that many Bible prophecy writers, who claim to interpret the Bible “literally,” don’t actually do so.

Applying the prophecy of Ezekiel 38 and 39 to modern-day nations is contrary to the historical context. No nation today had any part in Israel’s exile 2600 years ago.

The prophecy begins with instructions given to Ezekiel to set his “face toward Gog of the land of Magog” (38:2). Who is Gog and what is the land of Magog? The most popular interpretation is that Gog is modern-day Russia. Magog, a people group that first appears in Genesis 10:2, is thought to be an alliance of nations that join Russia in a failed end-time invasion of Israel. Added to the mix, a leader of this confederation is said to be the “prince of Rosh,” the leader of Russia.

In 1972, Carl Johnson wrote Prophecy Made Plain for Times Like These, in which he includes a lengthy quotation from a message Jack Van Impe gave at Canton Baptist Temple in Canton, Ohio, sometime in 1969. Like so many who claim to know what’s on the prophetic horizon, Van Impe made his case for an imminent war with Russia on what the newspapers of 1969 were reporting. This war was so close, he charged, “that the stage is being set for what could explode into World War III at any moment.” The passage of more than half of a century hardly seems like “at any moment.”

History shows that when the headlines reflect a change in the political climate, many of the interpretations of the prophetic parts of the Bible change with them. The repeated failure of the interpretive history of Ezekiel 38 and 39 over the centuries is prime evidence that modern-day prophecy writers are not “profiling the future through the lens of Scripture” but through the ever-changing headlines of today’s news. This is why revised prophecy books continue to be published.

The Gog and Magog End-Time Alliance

My library is filled with books that attempt to make the case that the events predicted in Ezekiel 38 and 39 are on our prophetic horizon, and it seems that each month new books and articles appear insisting that “given the current world situation, nuclear war is inevitable” based on what we read in Ezekiel’s prophecy. What if we read Ezekiel 38 and 39 literally? Is it possible that the Gog and Magog alliance that was designed “to destroy, to kill and to annihilate all the Jews, both young and old, women and children” has already taken place? That’s exactly what The Gog and Magog End-Time Alliance attempts to show.

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Gary points out that many Bible prophecy writers, who claim to interpret the Bible “literally,” don’t actually do so. This is especially true of the so-called Battle of Gog and Magog in Ezekiel 38-39. This battle is said to be fought with primitive weapons in ancient countries, with the goal of plundering gold, silver, cattle, and goods. The literalists seldom take these details literally.

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Click here for all episodes of Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope

The Rise of “Sheilaism” and Beyond

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 07:24:51 -0400

“Sheilaism” is based on the moral philosophy of Sheila Larson, “a young nurse who has received a good deal of therapy.” Sheila believes in God, but in the end, her faith is in herself. “My faith has carried me a long way,” she says. “It’s Sheliaism. Just my own little voice.”[1] If there is “Sheilaism,” then there is Maryism, Tomism, Michaelism, and every other individualism. The Bible has described “Sheilaism” as every person doing what is right in their own eyes (Judges 17:6). Such a moral worldview is not sustainable as long as there are two people in the world.

On October 15, 2006, the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia participated in a one-hour televised debate with American Civil Liberties Union president Nadine Strossen.[2] Scalia defended a number of his opinions and stated that neither homosexual rights nor abortion can be found in the Constitution. “On controversial issues on stuff like homosexual rights, abortion, we debate with each other and persuade each other and vote on it either through representatives or a constitutional amendment…. Whether it’s good or bad is not my job. My job is simply to say if those things you find desirable are contained in the Constitution,” he said.

Strossen countered, “There are some rights that are so fundamental that no majority can take them away from any minority, no matter how small or unpopular that minority might be.” What is the basis for the claim that some rights are “fundamental”? The ACLU fights tooth and nail to keep any mention of a creator out of government schools. How can certain rights be fundamental in an atheistic, chance-oriented cosmos? According to the ACLU, given its materialistic assumptions, there is no way to account for the concept of “fundamental rights.” The idea is borrowed from the Bible. Men and women have dignity — rights — because we are created in the image of God. Joseph Sobran wrote:

I used to believe in evolution myself, but I took no joy in it. Who could? If atheism is true, then nothing really matters — not even atheism. Even as a kid I could see that. In my atheistic days I thought nothing was quite as silly as the militant atheist…. I regretted losing my faith, and I couldn’t understand people who could be enthusiastic about living in a cold, godless universe. I tried to make art — especially Shakespeare and Beethoven — my consolation prizes for the religion I’d lost. At least they made me feel as if I had a soul, even if the cheerless dogma of Darwin said otherwise.”[3]

Strossen believes that moral decisions should be left to unelected judges. So where do these unelected judges formulate their views on what constitutes “fundamental rights”? All she can say is that fundamental rights are fundamental rights. And what if a new set of unelected judges gets a chance to redefine what was once considered a fundamental right? Who’s to argue with them? Scalia made this very point. “Someday, you’re going to get a very conservative Supreme Court and regret that approach.”

Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor

The most damning assessment of a matter-only cosmos devoid of a Creator is that we got to this place in our evolutionary history by acts of violence whereby the strong conquered the weak with no one to support or condemn them. Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor repeatedly raises the issue of accounting for the conscience, good and evil, and loving our neighbor. It’s shocking to read what atheists say about a cosmos devoid of meaning and morality.

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Before 1972, abortion was illegal. In January of 1973, abortion was made legal, and the status of the unborn changed overnight. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, ending the federal constitutional right to abortion. The Court reached the decision by a 5-4 vote, with Justice Samuel Alito writing the majority opinion and calling Roe “egregiously wrong from the start.” But why?

Strossen laid her cards on the table with the following response that brought cheers from some in the crowd: “I’m very distressed about your failure to find protections in the Constitution for the right of consenting individuals in their homes to decide what they see and read, and what type of sexual relations they have,” she told Justice Scalia. This is a dig at those who oppose abortion and sodomy, but it has no teeth. Anti-abortion advocates believe that abortion kills an unborn baby. Since an unborn baby is a human being, given pro-life beliefs based on Scripture, history, science, and reason, it is reasonable to conclude that civil government should not allow the procedure. Abortion, therefore, is not a fundamental right because of certain moral absolutes that stand outside individuals, courts, and legislators.

Privacy is not a moral cure-all. Not all behavior done behind closed doors is immune to civil penalties. Anyway, killing unborn babies does not take place in bedrooms. Abortion is a medical procedure that takes place in government-regulated medical facilities.

In general, most crimes are committed behind closed doors. What if a man beats his wife in the bedroom? What if a young girl is raped in a bedroom? Are these acts outside the civil magistrate’s jurisdiction because they take place in private?

The ACLU has created a moral dilemma for itself. While it pushes for individual moral rights, it knows that to be consistent would be disastrous for everyone.

The question is whether an individualism in which the self has become the main form of reality can be sustained. What is at issue not simply whether self-contained individuals might withdraw from the public sphere to pursue purely private ends, but whether such individuals are capable of sustaining either a public ora private life. If this is the danger, perhaps only the civic and biblical forms of individualism — forms that see the individual in relation to a larger whole, a community and a tradition — are capable of sustaining genuine individuality and nurturing both public and private life.[4]

We’ve come a long way since 1996. Sheilaism has made accepted moral anarchy the norm. If you don’t get your way and change does not come fast enough, it’s OK to burn down neighborhood businesses, set police cars on fire, kill a few people if necessary, strangle your three children, and kill your 17-year-old twins.

By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today

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?

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[1] Robert N. Bellah, ed., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985), 221.

[2] Hope Yen, “Scalia says courts must avoid taking political questions ACLU debate” (October 15, 2006).

[3] Joseph Sobran, “Is Darwin Holy?” (December 29, 2005).

[4] Bellah, ed., Habits of the Heart, 143.

Progressives and Presuppositionalists

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 06:44:56 -0400

Gary highlights a few “non-negotiables” that he found online from a self-proclaimed “progressive pastor.”

Some have abused Jesus’ name and deeds in their attempts to bring about a “better society.” Jesus has been portrayed as a social revolutionary, the purveyor of a “liberation theology” which is little more than Karl Marx dressed in religious garb. Ronald H. Nash, a long-time professor of theology and philosophy and a vocal critic of this so-called liberation theology, wrote:

Liberation theologians have one thing right. Christians ought to be concerned about liberating people from poverty, tyranny and, of course, from sin.

The major problem with many liberation thinkers thus far is their uncritical acceptance of economic, political, and theological ideas that cut them off from beliefs, practices, and institutions that offer people genuine liberation.

Because of the way Christ’s redemptive message and work had been minimized by modern-day “liberationists” and previous social gospel advocates, Christians have been reluctant to preach a “social gospel” message in the name of Christ. Who can blame them from abandoning the social dimension of the gospel when social gospel advocate Walter Rauschenbusch wrote, “It is not a matter of getting individuals into heaven but of transforming the life on earth into the harmony of heaven.” Even so, why should Christians abandon an area of legitimate biblical concern just because others have perverted Jesus’ message, methods, and goals?

Every biblical doctrine has been perverted in some way. Salvation by grace through faith has become “easy believism” for some. A misunderstanding and misapplication of Romans 6:14 that we are “not under law, but under grace” has led to the “carnal Christian” heresy. A belief that Jesus’ Second Coming is near has led many Christians to be preoccupied with the next event in eschatological time while ignoring centuries of failed prophetic predictions. As Christians, we do not jettison biblical doctrines because they are misunderstood and misapplied by some. In the same way, we cannot abandon biblical social reform because of a similar abuse. The Bible considers outward reform to be, first, evidence of internal renewal (Matt. 7:15–23), and second, a beacon to those who are in darkness to see the light of the gospel of grace (Matt. 5:13–16; Luke 2:32). Failure to comply with the Bible’s admonitions for outward reform hinders an effective proclamation of the gospel.

Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths

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Gary highlights a few “non-negotiables” that he found online from a self-proclaimed “progressive pastor.” Apparently, even progressives have limits to their open-mindedness, but this pastor can’t appeal to the Bible he claims to believe, or to the “Jesus” he claims to follow, to bolster his own “progressive” agenda.

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Confronting the Myth that Pastors Must Stay Out of Politics

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 06:57:24 -0400

Southern Baptist Convention President Willy Rice “is firing back against the absurd, un-American demands that pastors must ‘stay out of politics.’… Rice is urgently calling on Christian leaders across the nation to STEP UP, find their courage, and get aggressively involved ahead of the most important midterm elections of our lifetimes.” This is almost a day late and a dollar short. It’s going to be hard to fix the problem in a few weeks. Pastors should have been dealing with the civil side of government forever! Our session told our new pastor not to preach on politics.

Unfortunately, most pastors don’t know how to preach on what we have named ‘politics.’ It’s not ‘politics’; it’s civil government. I wrote my book God and Government to show that civil government is one form of biblical government that includes self-government (Prov. 25:28; Gal. 5:22-23; 2 Tim. 1:7; 2 Peter 1:5-6), family governments (Eph. 5:22-25; Col. 3:17-20), church governments (Matt. 18:17; Acts 6:1-6; 15: 1-35; 1 Tim. 3:1-7; Titus 1:5; 1 Cor. 5:1-2; 6:1-8), and civil governments (Ex. 18).

God and Government

The battle today, and every day, is over lordship. What is the relationship between Jesus Christ and His Word to our political and legal system in the United States? Who has jurisdiction over every aspect of American society, Jesus Christ or the State? Is this to be a nation founded on the precepts of the Bible or one founded on the shifting sands of humanism? The issue of politics is the issue of sovereignty. Who is the Lord of all of life to whom man must give his total allegiance, Christ or Caesar? The answer to this question is the difference between liberty and slavery, justice and tyranny.

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Many Christians have been bamboozled into believing that religion should be separated from government. If this is done, then there are no moral or jurisdictional restraints. The civil sphere of government is found on nearly every page of Scripture. The Mosaic legislation is filled with civil application of the law. Judah and Israel were judged because of the misuse of the civil sphere. Isaiah presents a vision of Judah and Jerusalem during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. The prophet Isaiah accuses the nation of deep spiritual rebellion, noting that despite their extensive sacrifices and festivals, God rejects their worship because their hands are “full of blood” and they fail to practice justice for the oppressed. God promises to purge the nation’s “dross,” including the debasement of the currency and commerce (Isa. 1). David’s treatment of Uriah the Hittite (2 Sam. 11) and Ahab and Jezebel’s treatment of Naboth also come to mind (1 Kings 21).

According to a radio editorial some years ago, “a man’s religion and the strength of his conviction are his own personal matter” and therefore “religion should not interfere with politics.”[1] Regrettably, many churches during Adolf Hitler’s rise to power accepted the argument that religion and morality should be separated from politics based on the ever-operating neutrality myth. “Religion was a private matter,” historian Richard V. Pierard concluded, “that concerned itself with the personal and moral development of the individual. The external order—nature, scientific knowledge, statecraft—operated on the basis of its own internal logic and discernable laws.”[2]

The church’s sole concern and domain was a person’s spiritual life. “The Erlangen church historian Hermann Jorda declared in 1917 that the state, the natural order of God, followed its own autonomous laws while the kingdom of God was concerned with the soul and operated separately on the basis of the morality of the gospel.”[3] Because of this disjunction—built on the myth of neutrality—Hitler knew he could carry out his devilish schemes unhindered by religious arguments and pressures. The “Confessional Church” took a different, non-neutral position.

[It] opposed the Nazification of the Protestant churches, rejected the Nazi racial theories and denounced the anti-Christian doctrines of Rosenberg and other Nazi leaders. In between lay the majority of Protestants, who seemed too timid to join either of the two warring groups, who sat on the fence and eventually, for the most part, landed in the arms of Hitler, accepting his authority to intervene in church affairs and obeying his commands without open protest.[4]

Those “who sat on the fence,” having fallen for the neutrality myth, supported Hitler by default. While they did not openly join with the “German Christians,” a pro-Hitler alliance of ministers and churches, their inaction, their supposed neutrality, “landed them in the arms of Hitler” anyway.

Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths

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Congressman Wilson Lumpkin (1783-1870) attempted to use the neutrality argument to keep Christians from arguing against removing the Cherokee Indians from Georgia in what has become known as the “Trail of Tears.”

“[Lumpkin] decried those Christians who left their proper realm and sought to involve themselves in politics as ‘canting fanatics.’ He said he had no trouble with ‘pure religion’ (that is, religion that steered clear of politics), ‘but the undefiled religion of the Cross is a separate and distinct thing in its nature from the noisy cant of the pretenders who have cost this Government, since the commencement of the present session of Congress, considerably upwards of $100,000 by their various intermeddlings with the political concerns of the country.’”[5]

In 2003, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry criticized the Vatican for saying that “it’s important to not have the church instructing politicians. That is an inappropriate crossing of the line in America.”[6] Would Kerry have agreed to the following logic of his position?

• “It’s important not to have the church instructing politicians about slavery.”

• “It’s important not to have the church instructing politicians about ethnic cleansing.”

• “It’s important not to have the church instructing politicians about civil rights.”

The church’s failure to address the issues of the day, including civil/political issues, has made it possible for the enemies of the gospel to impose their wicked worldview on the most innocent among us in their support of abortion by appealing to the Bible! “You know, Jesus didn’t get mixed up in politics.” The Great Commission says otherwise.

For Christians to adopt the neutrality myth is to fall into the humanist trap, to believe that religious convictions are reserved for the heart, home, and the worship center, while the affairs of this world are best handled by using reason, experience, and technical expertise devoid of religious assumptions and convictions.[7]

Humanists recognize the importance of education in shaping worldview shifts and control; why don’t Christians? Because they do not believe the family is a government, and children are not under the jurisdiction and control of civil government! Charles Francis Potter, who founded the First Humanist Society of New York in 1929 and signed the first Humanist Manifesto in 1933, made no secret of the purpose of the American public schools.

Education is thus a most powerful ally of Humanism, and every American public school is a school of Humanism. What can the theistic Sunday-school, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?[8]

According to Rousas J. Rushdoony, modern government education “is erosive and destructive of all culture except the monolithic state, which is then the ostensible creator and patron of culture. When it speaks of the whole child, it speaks of a passive creature who is to be molded by the statist education for the concept of the good life radically divorced from God and from transcendental standards.”[9]

Whoever Controls the Schools Rules the World

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.

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The usual Christian response is to reform public schools, get more parents involved, sue to get a moment of silence, add prayers at sporting events and commencement exercises, release programs, and pass laws to teach the Bible as literature, as they’ve done in Georgia.[10]

Abraham Kuyper said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign overall, does not cry, ‘Mine!,’”[11] Given today’s preoccupation with the last days, Christians often claim, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Satan doesn’t say, ‘Mine’” until Jesus takes us to heaven in the ‘rapture.’”

[1] Heard on WGST, Atlanta, Georgia (September 12, 1986).

[2] Richard V. Pierard, “Why Did Protestants Welcome Hitler?,” Fides et Historia (North Newton, KS: The Conference on Faith and History), X:2 (Spring 1978), 13

[3] Pierard, “Why Did Protestants Welcome Hitler?,” 14.

[4] William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), 236. Emphasis added.

[5] Quoted in John Wilson, “Why Evangelicals Can’t Opt Out of Political Engagement,” Books & Culture (July 15, 2002). See John G. West, Jr, The Politics of Revelation and Reason: Religion and Civic Life in the New (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1996).

[6] Quoted in “Kerry criticizes Vatican Pressure,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution (August 2, 2003), D4.

[7] E. L. Hebden Taylor, “Religious Neutrality in Politics,” Applied Christianity (April 1974), 19.

[8] Charles Francis Potter, Humanism: A New Religion (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1930), 128. Quoted in David A. Noebel, J.F. Baldwin, and Kevin Bywater, Clergy in the Classroom: The Religion of Secular Humanism (Manitou Springs, CO: Summit Press, 1995), vi.

[9] R. J. Rushdoony, Intellectual Schizophrenia: Culture, Crisis and Education (Vellecito, CA: Ross House Books, [1961] 1998), 10.

[10] David Van Biema, “The Case for teaching the Bible,” Time (March 22, 2007).

[11] Abraham Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty,” in James D. Bratt, ed., Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 488.

Transgenderism Weighed, Measured, and Found Wanting

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 06:09:25 -0400

Gary weighs, measures, and analyzes the debate over transgender sports with track and field events.

The Christian’s starting point is the Word of God which rests upon God Himself. “[M]en need an epistemological ‘Archimedean point of reference’ to understand their cosmos and themselves; but only a revelation from One transcendentally outside of the cosmos can provide the pou sto essential to knowledge, since man can never break out of his finite cosmic perspective.”[1] God is the One who stands outside the universe. In order for us to know how the world works, we must turn to Him. God is our “Archimedean point of reference.”

When the sixteenth-century German Reformer Martin Luther “was called to defend his rejection of indulgences before the church and before the emperor, Luther, alone and in peril of his life, appealed to the authority of the Word of God. ‘Here I stand,’ he said; ‘I can do no other.’”[2] There was no appeal to tradition, the expert testimony of church scholars, scientists, or even the precisely fashioned creeds. It’s not that these aren’t helpful; they simply are not ultimate authoritative starting points.

In Matthew 7:24–27, Jesus points out that “the strength of a foundation determines whether a house will withstand heavy rains and strong winds. If a man builds his house on sand, it will fall; but if he builds his dwelling on solid rock, it will stand secure even in a fierce storm.”[3] If the foundation upon which the apologist uses to build his worldview is compromised in any way, then it will eventually collapse when challenged. Therefore, the starting point in any defense of the truthfulness of the Christian worldview is all-important. Will it be a foundation of sand or one of solid rock?

Thinking Straight in a Crooked World

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.

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Gary weighs, measures, and analyzes the debate over transgender sports with track and field events. His expertise in this sport is both personal and deep. Gary threw the shot put competitively through high school, college, and at the masters’ level. He makes it obvious how ridiculous it is to argue that there is no inherent genetic difference between men and women.

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[1] Robert L. Reymond, The Justification of Knowledge (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1976), 30n.

[2] Gene Edward Veith, “Millennium on our Mind,” World (August 7, 1999), 27.

[3] Richard L. Pratt, Jr., Every Thought Captive: A Study Manual for the Defense of Christian Truth (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1979), 1.

Episode 111: What Did Jesus Mean by "A Long Time"?

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 08:31:04 -0400

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 111

Gary answers a recent critic who questions whether he is a Christian.

The Jews did know, from Daniel 9, that the Messiah would come and bring judgment on their city. They expected it to happen around 50 BC. When this did not happen, the faithful religious leaders kept being faithful, like Hannah, who was eighty-four when she saw the baby Jesus (Luke 2:37) and like old Simeon, who had been told he would not die before seeing Him (Luke 2:26), but those who were not inclined to be faithful fell into evil behavior. Jesus condemned them in Matthew 23. Then, when Jesus appeared and raised people from the dead and the sky was darkened for three hours over the city at His crucifixion, they began to walk softly (like Ahab before them, 1 Kings 21:27-28) and look for the judgment to come soon. When that judgment did not come, they went back to their evil behavior, but worse than before (Luke 11:24-26).

The Delay is an important theme in the Bible and an important aspect of how God deals with us. It should make us afraid, very afraid. God promises judgment for a sin and then delays the judgment after we sin. He does this to give us time to repent but also time to harden in our sin. We see this principle immediately in Genesis 3. We know from Genesis 1–3 that only Adam heard God forbid the eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Eve got her information from Adam, her husband and protector. We know that Adam was standing by silently the whole time the serpent persuaded Eve to eat (Gen. 3:8: “with her”). He did not intervene. Clearly, Adam wanted her to eat the fruit, so he could test God’s word. When Eve did not drop dead immediately, Adam went ahead and ate as well. Only then, after the Delay, did God appear to judge Adam.

Similarly, Samuel delayed to come to Saul, arriving after Saul had decided to take matters into his own hands and had stopped trusting the Lord (1 Sam. 13:8-10). Similarly, God did not send Nathan to David immediately after David took Bathsheba, nor after she told him she was pregnant (after a couple of months, probably). God delayed, and David did not repent. David went further and murdered Uriah. Then Nathan came to David.

Be afraid, reader! When you transgress God’s law, judgment may not come immediately. The Delay is both a blessing and a curse. God gives you time to repent, but also an opportunity to fall asleep and stop fearing Him. But after the Delay, He surely will come!

Matthew 23–25: A Literary, Historical, and Theological Commentary

Those who first read Matthew’s gospel only would have had as an interpretive reference what we describe as the Old Testament. They were living the history that Jesus said would take place before their generation passed away. They would have immediately noted the Old Testament parallels with the abomination of desolation (Matt. 24:15; Dan. 9:27), the judgment on Sodom and fleeing to the mountains to escape the coming conflagration (Matt. 24:16; Gen. 19:17), false prophets (Matt. 24:24; Jer. 14:14), signs in the sun, moon, and stars (Matt. 24:29; Isa. 3:10; 24:33; Ezek. 32:7; Amos 5:2; 8:9; etc.), the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven (Matt. 24:30; Dan. 7:13), and so much more.

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Gary answers a recent critic who questions whether he is a Christian. When Jesus says “a long time” in Matthew 24 and 25, does this indicate that He means people thousands of years in the future? Is He actually referring to a completely different audience than the one He was directly speaking to in the first century?

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We All Live by Faith

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 09:21:43 -0400

William Goldman, not to be confused with William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, sums up the problem of attempting to be certain about the success of a film this way: “Nobody knows anything.” Goldman should know. He was a successful novelist and screenwriter with several Academy Awards and big screen blockbusters to his credit. Goldman was not saying that Hollywood types are generally ignorant or stupid. He was pointing out that they are not omniscient. They don’t have enough knowledge about people and their tastes to know whether a film will be a success. It’s always been that way, and it will always be that way.

“Testing theories against evidence never ends. The National Academy [of Sciences] booklet [on science] correctly states that ‘all scientific knowledge is, in principle, subject to change as new evidence becomes available.’ It doesn’t matter how long, or how many scientists currently believe it. If contradictory evidence turns up, the theory must be reevaluated or even abandoned.”[1]

Man in the Dock

In a biblical defense of the Christian faith, God is not the one on trial. Modern man, however, does not see it this way. C. S. Lewis points out:

The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock [the enclosure where a prisoner is placed in an English criminal trial]. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defence for being the god who permits war, poverty and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God in the Dock.[2]

How can a finite, fallible, and fallen person ever be a qualified judge of eternal things? How is it possible that the creature can legitimately question the Creator? God asks Job: “Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Let him who reproves God answer it” (Job 40:1). Job responded, knowing the limitations of his own nature, the only way he could: “Behold, I am insignificant; what can I reply to Thee? I lay my hand on my mouth” (40:4). God asks Job a series of questions that demonstrate how limited he is in knowledge and experience. God inquires of Job: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth! Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who set its measurements, since you know?” (38:4). Job was trying to figure out the world and the way it works based on his own limited frame of reference. This is an impossible and immoral task.

The Fool and His Folly

Given that neutrality is impossible, how is the Christian apologist to argue with someone who holds a contradictory set of assumptions? Christians are commanded not to “answer a fool according to his folly.” Why? He’ll be “like him” in his misguided assumptions and will also be classified as a “fool” (Prov. 26:4). The Bible assumes that worldviews based on presuppositions that are contrary to the Bible are foolishness. This is why Scripture states emphatically and without apology that the professed atheist is a “fool” (Psalm 14:1; 53:1). How can an insignificant creature who is smaller than an atom when compared to the vastness of the universe be so dogmatic?

An apologetic methodology that claims a Christian should be “open,” “objective,” and “tolerant” of all opinions when the faith is attacked is like a person who hopes to stop a man from committing suicide by taking the hundred-story plunge with him, hoping to convince the lost soul on the way down. No one in his right mind would make such a concession to foolishness. But Christians do it all the time when they adopt the operating presuppositions of unbelieving thought as if they were neutral assumptions about reality.

Against All Opposition

There are no "neutral" assumptions about reality. The starting point is the God of the Bible. The Bible begins with this foundational presupposition: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Against All Opposition lays out the definitive apologetic model to help believers understand the biblical method of defending the Christian faith.

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While the Bible maintains that the Christian apologist is prohibited from adopting the starting point of unbelieving thought, he is encouraged to show the unbeliever the end result of his foolish philosophical principles if they are consistently followed. As defenders of the only true faith, we are to “answer a fool as his folly deserves, lest he be wise in his own eyes” (Prov. 26:5). That is, we are to put the unbeliever’s worldview to the test, showing how absurd it is when followed consistently. A world without God and moral absolutes leads to despair and moral anarchy.

We All Believe in Something

All worldviews are belief systems, even all the anti-worldviews. A person does not have to believe in God to be considered religious. “Richard Dawkins has publicly admitted: ‘I believe, but I cannot prove, that all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all “design” anywhere in the universe, is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection.’”[3] Dawkins was not a consistent atheist. He borrowed Christian moral capital to keep himself alive.

John H. Dietrich (1878-1957), a Unitarian minister who “accepted the theory of evolution and revised the worship service so that the Apostles Creed was delineated and secular readings were incorporated,” admitted that he was a religious humanist.

For centuries the idea of God has been the very heart of religion; it has been said, “No God, no religion.” But humanism thinks of religion as something very different and far deeper than any belief in God. To it, religion is not the attempt to establish right relations with a supernatural being, but rather the unpreaching and aspiring impulse in a human life. It is the striving for its completest fulfillment, and anything which contributes to this fulfillment is religious, whether it be associated with the idea of God or not.[4]

Since we are all limited in knowledge and restrained by our inability to be everywhere (omnipresence) and know everything (omniscience), an atheist puts forth his claim that God does not exist in terms of a faith commitment. When the late Carl Sagan wrote, “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be,”[5] he was making a declaration of faith, a statement of his ultimate presupposition. There is no way he could be assured that God does not exist based on his limited knowledge and experience and the limited knowledge and experience of others. Sagan admitted that “the size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding.”[6] Even so, he was convinced that the material world is all that exists. He believed one thing to be true and dismissed any worldview that did not conform to it without having all the facts or the ability to understand fully what he did know. Sagan’s assertions do not conform to reality. Greg Koukl describes the inevitability of belief:

Everybody believes something, and even what appears to be a rejection of all beliefs is a kind of belief. We all hold something to be true. Maybe what you hold true is that nothing else is true, but that is nonetheless something you believe.

Even if you are agnostic, you believe that it is not possible to know things about ultimate issues like the existence of God. You believe in the justifiability of your agnosticism—your uncertainty—and you have a burden of proof to justify your unwillingness to decide. There is nowhere someone can stand where he or she has no beliefs. If you reject Christianity, there is something else that you end up asserting by default.[7]

Once a person rejects Christianity, he has not set himself free from the concept of faith. He has only transferred his faith to something or someone else.

Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor

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For Sagan, the cosmos is god-like, a glorious accidental substitute for what he assured himself were ancient, pre‑scientific mythical beliefs about the deity and the origin and nature of the universe. The very idea of a personal God, in Sagan’s worldview, is simply “the dreams of men.”[8] Even so, Sagan’s worldview was fundamentally just as religious as that of a theist. He did not entertain the possibility that his own worldview was simply the dreams of an atheist. Sagan’s starting point—his ultimate presupposition—evaluates all that he sees or doesn’t see in the cosmos. There is no more fundamental belief. All that follows in the Cosmos worldview is measured by his one‑sentence, presuppositional yardstick: “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” William Fix doesn’t allow Sagan to get away with his supposed claim of “objectivity”:

When Sagan excludes even the possibility that a spiritual dimension has any place in his cosmos—not even at the unknown, mysterious moment when life began—he makes accidental evolution the explanation for everything. Presented in this way, evolution does indeed look like an inverted religion, a conceptual golden calf, which manages to reek of sterile atheism. It is little wonder that many parents find their deeper emotions stirred if they discover this to be the import of Johnny’s education.[9]

Sagan worshiped an eternal cosmos that he presupposed is an evolutionary substitute for the eternal God of the Bible who gives life and meaning to the cosmos. Sagan said it like this: “It is the universe that made us…. We are creatures of the cosmos…. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed, not just to ourselves, but also to that cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring.”[10] The primordial biotic soup nourished our ancient ancestors as they emerged from that first ocean of life. These memories, according to Sagan, are eternally etched on our evolved psyche.

The ocean calls. Some part of our being knows this is from where we came. We long to return. These aspirations are not, I think, irreverent, although they may trouble whatever gods may be.[11]

How can anyone know this? Such a belief is nothing more than a hypothesis, and not a very good. This isn’t science. It’s stream of consciousness mysticism. Sagan believed that there are no transcendent personal “gods” in his universe, only “accidents”[12] that somehow developed into design and meaning.

At times, however, Sagan muses rhapsodic over a seemingly benign reverence for the cosmos that hints at a deep religious commitment to atheism and elements of paganism. “Our ancestors worshipped the sun,” he reflects, “and they were far from foolish. It makes good sense to revere the sun and the stars, because we are their children.” But who made the cosmos? How did the cosmos get here? No design, no order, no organized information, and a lack of complexity can’t “create” anything.

[1] Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why So Much of What We Teach About Evolution is Wrong (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2000), 2-3.

[2] C.S. Lewis, “God in the Dock,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970), 244.

[3] “Dawkins made this remark in response to a question posed by the New York Times to a number of prominent scientists: ‘What do you believe what you cannot prove?’ The Times published the responses on January 4, 2005.” Quoted in Robert Royal, The God that Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West (New York: Encounter Books, 2006), xii, 277.

[4] Quoted in Cornelius Loew, Modern Rivals to Christian Faith (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1956), 11.

[5] Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980), 4.

[6] Sagan, Cosmos, 4.

[7] Greg Koukl, “You’ve Got to Believe Something,” The Plain Truth (January/February 1999), 39.

[8] Sagan, Cosmos, 257.

[9] William R. Fix, The Bone Peddlers: Selling Evolution (New York: Macmillan, 1984), xxiv.

[10] From the 13-hour long television presentation of Cosmos aired in the fall of 1980. Quoted in Richard A. Baer, Jr., “They Are Teaching Religion in the Public Schools,” Christianity Today (February 17, 1984), 12.

[11] Sagan, Cosmos, 5.

[12] Sagan, Cosmos, 30.

The Inescapable Fact of Religion

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 08:53:48 -0400

In this continuation of his first lecture, Gary points out that if the biblical God is not recognized in a culture, something else will always take His place.

In debates on subjects where there are fundamental disagreements, several basic preliminaries must be established before a meaningful discussion can take place. The first principle is to establish the starting point for the ultimate authority used in a debate. The following fictional story points out that not all assumed authorities are ultimate but often rely on authorities that are derivative, suspect, and arbitrary:

A certain factory worker had the responsibility of blowing the whistle every day at precisely 12:00 noon. In order to be sure of the correct time, he set his own watch by a clock on the wall of a local jewelry store. After doing this for some time, it occurred to him that the jewelry store owner had to have some standard by which he could set his clock. Thus, one day when he was in the store, he inquired of the owner, “Sir, how do you know what time to set your clock?” The jewelry store owner replied, “Well, you see, on the other side of town there is a factory and every day precisely at noon they blow a whistle….”

What fundamental, ultimate, authoritative, interpretive touchstone principle is being used to evaluate life in general when there is a debate over facts, motives, and morals in competing worldviews? If any one of these supposed standards (reason, logic, or science) is chosen, what ultimately legitimizes them as foundational starting points? How can they be accounted for given materialistic assumptions about the nature of reality? What are they checked against to know if they are valid standards of thinking or whether they are operating properly?

If a person begins with a faulty premise (any faulty premise will do), then his use of reason, logic, and science could lead logically, reasonably, and scientifically to the execution of the aristocracy and those associated with it, as happened in the French Revolution, or the extermination of an entire ethnic group, as happened in the Holocaust. Christians can account for reason, logic, and the scientific method (investigation) because there is something/someone more fundamental that gives them meaning and allows them to work—the God of the Bible. “A proper epistemology [theory of knowledge] will thus give high weight to Scripture, observation, and logic. These are all God-given and will thus be in harmony; they form the touchstone of our knowledge.”[1]

Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor

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In this continuation of his first lecture given to a high school class, Gary points out that religion will always exist in society. If the biblical God is not recognized in a culture, something else will always take His place. Even atheism is a religion, despite the denials of its adherents.

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[1] John Byl, God and Cosmos: A Christian View of Time, Space, and the Universe (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 2001), 8.

America’s 250-Year-Old War with Islam Continues

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 09:03:41 -0400

What Christian non-voters don’t know about Islam may end up enslaving them or worse. Of course, not all Muslims are Jihadists, but more than 300 million are. Jihadist strategists do not believe they can militarily destroy the United States, so they target its social, economic, and political foundations to cause internal collapse.

There are too many Christians who avoid politics to fight Islam, a revival of Communism, Socialism, and materialism for a variety of reasons they believe are biblical:

• Jesus didn’t get involved in politics. (He also didn’t marry or have children.)

• The rapture is around the corner. (There is no such event. No single verse in the NT says the church will be taken off the earth before, during, or after seven years.)

• Politics can’t save us. (Whoever said it could?)

• Christians should not be involved in politics because it’s dirty. (Does this mean you’re OK with politicians pushing their dirty politics on us and taking away our freedoms?)

• We can’t impose our view of morality on other people. (Are you OK with letting non-Christians impose their morality on all of us? There’s no neutrality.)

• The Christian’s Citizenship is in Heaven. (This didn’t stop Paul from appealing to his Roman citizenship.)

• There is a separation between Church and State (There is a jurisdictional separation as the Bible teaches, but it does not teach separation of God and civil government.)

I discuss excuses like these and many more in my book Myth, Lies, and Half-Truths. Islamists take advantage of our nation’s freedoms and use them against us and exploit Christian quietism and defeatist eschatology.

Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths

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If the people do not embrace Islam and implement the Sharia on their own accord, it becomes an obligation upon the Muslims to fight and implement Islam. In countries such as Britain and America, their people have clearly rejected to embrace Islam and will never choose to live by the Sharia. Therefore, the only two ways in which these countries can become under the domain of Islam is by the last two options, a group of Muslims rise and overthrow the government, or an Islamic state is established elsewhere and comes to conquer these nations. (Source)

Our Founders understood the dangers of Islam and acted on it. For example, Thomas Jefferson studied the Koran. He owned a two-volume English translation that was published in 1734. He understood that the Koran’s peace initiatives were double-talk and one-sided. Peace meant the absence of any religious or political opposition. Historian Paul Johnson confirms this judgment:

Koranic teaching that the faith or “submission” can be, and in suitable circumstances must be, imposed by force, has never been ignored. On the contrary, the history of Islam from Arabia was followed by the rapid conquest of North Africa, the invasion and virtual conquest of Spain, and a thrust into France that carried the crescent to the gates of Paris. It took half a millennium of reconquest to expel the Moslems from Western Europe. The Crusades, far from being an outrageous prototype of Western imperialism, as is taught in most of our schools, were a mere episode in a struggle that has lasted 1,400 years and were one of the few occasions when Christians took the offensive to regain the “occupied territories” of the Holy Land.[1]

As early as 1786, Jefferson, serving as the ambassador to France, and John Adams, the Ambassador to Britain, met in London with Ambassador Abdrahaman, the Dey of Tripoli’s ambassador to Britain, to negotiate a peace treaty based on Congress’ vote to fund it. Peace would come at a price. The United States initially paid tribute to the Regency of Tripoli under the Treaty of Tripoli signed in 1796 and ratified in 1797 to protect American merchant ships from Barbary corsairs. This agreement required a one-time payment of $66,000 in goods and cash, including 40,000 Spanish dollars, watches, and cloth, and explicitly stated that neither party would make any periodic tribute or further payments. See my book The Case for America’s Christian Heritage for the fascinating story about our early nation’s war with Islam.

The Case for America's Christian Heritage

There’s much work before us to reset the foundation stones of a firm reliance on Divine Providence. We need to heed the words of Benjamin Franklin who quoted Psalm 127:1 during the drafting process of the Constitution: “except the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it,” and “that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the Builders of Babel.” The principles that were true and necessary centuries ago for building nations are equally true and necessary today.

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However, in 1801, the Pasha of Tripoli, Yusuf Qaramanli, demanded increased tribute and declared war on the United States when payments were delayed, initiating the First Barbary War. The conflict ended with the Treaty of 1805, which abolished the practice of annual tribute entirely in exchange for a one-time ransom payment of $60,000 for the release of American prisoners.

Jefferson and Adams argued in vain that the United States was not at war with Tripoli and had no part in the Crusades. In what way had the U.S. provoked the Muslims, they asked? Ambassador Abdrahaman went on to explain “the finer points of Islamic jihad” to Jefferson and Adams. In a letter to John Jay, Jefferson wrote the following:

The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.[2]

Abdrahaman was paraphrasing the Koran’s “rules of engagement” found in the 47th Surah:

“Whenever you encounter the ones who disbelieve [during wartime], seize them by their necks until once you have subdued them, then tie them up as prisoners, either in order to release them later on, or also to ask for ransom, until war lays down her burdens.” Unless a nation submitted to an Islamic nation, whether it was the aggressor or not, that nation was by definition at war with Islam. Jihad means “to submit.” A non-aggressing nation is at war with Islam as long as it hasn’t embraced Islam. Islam’s goal is to conquer the world, either by the submission of one’s will or by Allah’s sword.[3]

The Muslims financed their wars and terror operations by enslaving and then selling captured seamen. From 1500 to 1830, one million European and American seamen and passengers were captured by Muslim pirates in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.

Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), author of Don Quixote, was enslaved in the dungeons of Algiers for five years before he was ransomed by his parents and the Trinitarians. By 1795, America’s “peace” payments to Muslim terrorists comprised 16 percent of the entire federal budget!

The 1797 Treaty with Tripoli was written to assure the Muslims of Tripoli that America would not impose its Christian views on Islamic nations in any treaty transaction, “as it has in itself no character of enmity against the law, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [an archaic English term for a Muslim or follower of Islam].”

A November 3, 1784 letter to Benjamin Franklin from America’s agent in Morocco, the Italian Francisco Chiappe, Secretary of his Imperial Majesty for Foreign Affairs in Barbary, stated, “His Majesty the Emperour of Marocco (whom God preserve) commands me to write to your Excellency that he is in good Friendship and Peace with all the Christian Nations.”[4] This letter shows that, according to the Emperor of Morocco, the newly formed United States was considered a “Christian Nation,” along with Great Britain and other European countries.

[1] Paul Johnson, “‘Relentlessly and Thoroughly’: The Only Way to Respond,” National Review (October 15, 2001).

[2] Quoted in Joseph Wheelan, Jefferson’s War: America’s First War on Terror, 1801-1805 (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003), 40-41.

[3] Robert Spencer, The Truth about Muhammad: Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2006) and Robert Spencer, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2005).

[4] “To Benjamin Franklin from Francesco Chiappe: Two Letters, 3 November 1784”: https://bit.ly/3OpbNUB. Hitchens adds the following: “Let us not call this view reductionist. Jefferson would perhaps have been just as eager to send a squadron to put down any Christian piracy that was restraining commerce. But one cannot get around what Jefferson heard when he went with John Adams to wait upon Tripoli’s ambassador to London in March 1785. When they inquired by what right the Barbary states preyed upon American shipping, enslaving both crews and passengers, America’s two foremost envoys were informed that ‘it was written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.’”

The First Principles of Every Debate

Mon, 28 Sep 2026 09:10:23 -0400

We must always begin with first principles in any debate.

The Bible states a simple but fundamental fact: God’s government over all things is singular, absolute, without compromise, and without legitimate competitors. All earthly governments are delegated by God’s decree and limited. Contrary to the Declaration of Independence, it’s false to claim that “governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” if by that claim such governments are independent of God’s ultimate governing authority.

George Frideric Handel’s English-language oratorio Messiah (1741) set the truth of God’s established and immutable government to music in a majestic way:

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulders: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace (Isa. 9:6).

No commentary was needed. The words speak for themselves. God is the basis for what all good government is and should be. All earthly governments are derivative and are bound to follow God’s governing principles related to their designated jurisdictions and limited authority.

The capstone to the Passion Narrative in the Gospels is Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus”:

For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!
Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah!
The kingdom of this world is become
The kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ!
And He shall reign for ever and ever!

The starting point in any discussion of civil governments in all their forms (city, county, state, national) is Who is ultimately in charge? We see this with the Pharaohs of Egypt, King Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, the Caesars, the Herods, kings claiming a divine right, and atheist regimes during the twentieth century whose divine edicts led to the deaths of more than 100 million people in the name of the god-like sovereign State. They all claimed to be the ultimate authority for the good of mankind. Otherwise, why would people put them in power? No one chooses a governor or a governing power unless there is the promise of good government, but that “good” government can mean death to those who oppose or disagree with the knew governing power and its definition of what’s good.

Restoring the Foundation of Civilization

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.

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We must always begin with first principles in any debate. In this episode, Gary teaches students how to think about their own assumptions and foundations and why they believe what they claim to believe. Facts are important, but worldview precedes facts and interprets the facts.

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Episode 110: Does A Roman Coin Date When Revelation Was Written?

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 08:45:48 -0400

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 110

Gary responds to a recent video by Joel Richardson about a Roman coin that he claims “proves” that the book of Revelation was written during Domitian’s reign.

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. 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, The Early Church and the End of the World co-authored with Gary DeMar, 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. The two chapters 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. In this chapter I have arranged the texts starting with those that portray the earliest dating of the Apocalypse around 30 A.D. to those which dated it about 53 A.D.

Revelation and the First Century

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.

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Gary responds to a recent video by Joel Richardson about a Roman coin that he claims “proves” that the book of Revelation was written during Domitian’s reign. Richardson challenges those who hold to an early date (i.e., before AD70) to answer his claims, even though he admits that the coin can’t actually prove a late date.

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Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs!

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 09:30:54 -0400

Predictions about the end times have a long history, as Francis X. Gumerlock points out in his book The Day and the Hour: Christianity’s Perennial Fascination with Predicting the End of the World. The events we see today have recurred throughout the centuries.

“In 1712, William Whiston, [Isaac] Newton’s successor as professor of mathematics at Cambridge, had predicted that a comet would soon destroy the world. In November 1750, the third volume of Whiston’s memoirs recalled the second woe of Revelation 11:13 to predict the fall of a tenth part of London, the death of seven thousand men, ‘and the remnant so affrighted that they gave glory to the God of heaven.’”[1]

The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 led many people to conclude that the event was the prelude to the end of the world.

“In February 1763, when the Peace of Paris ended the Seven Years’ War, a pious Methodist, George Bell, prophesied the end of the world for February 28. John Wesley [1703-1791], who had surmounted any early belief in the imminent coming of Christ, had to preach to show the ‘utter absurdity of the supposition that the world was to end that night.’ Yet many were afraid to go to bed and wandered about the fields ‘persuaded that if the world did not end, at least London would be swallowed up by an earthquake,’ as Lisbon had been only eight years before.”[2]

The Day and the Hour

By exposing these erroneous predictions made century after century, The Day and The Hour encourages an approach of "cautious ignorance" concerning the date of the final coming of Christ and related events, and magnifies the truth of Christ's words that the day and the hour is indeed unknown. This fascinating chronicle of predictions will rivet the attention of any student of Bible prophecy, regardless of your eschatological position.

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News of earthquakes in our day holds prophetic significance for many Christians “because we are to such an extent ‘strangers to the past,’ [thus] we easily read into the events and circumstances of our own day a distinctiveness and uniqueness that may not actually be there.”[3]

Plagues

Two historic plagues ravaged the Roman Empire: the Antonine Plague (AD 165–180) and the Cyprian Plague (249-262 A.D.). The plagues killed roughly a quarter to a third of the population, including three of its emperors.

The Plague of Justinian reached the Byzantine capital of Constantinople in AD 541 and was soon claiming up to 10,000 lives per day—so many that unburied bodies were eventually stacked inside buildings or left in the open.

The Black Death in 1347 was a virulent strain of plague that invaded Europe from the East, most likely via Italian sailors returning home from Crimea. This “Black Death” would eventually spend half a decade tearing across the continent. The populations of whole towns were wiped out, and it was said that the living spent most of their time burying the dead in mass graves. “We see death coming into our midst like black smoke,” the Welsh poet Jeuan Gethin wrote, “a plague which cuts off the young, a rootless phantom which has no mercy or fair countenance.” …The Black Death finally subsided in the West around 1353, but not before it killed as many as 50 million people—more than half the population of Europe.

The Italian Plague of 1629-1631 was one of the most calamitous outbreaks of bubonic plague. It began in 1629, when troops from the Thirty Years’ War carried the infection into the Italian city of Mantua. … In Milan and Venice, city authorities quarantined the sick in “pesthouses” and burned their clothes and possessions to prevent the spread of infection. The Venetians even banished some of their plague victims to a pair of islands in a nearby lagoon. These harsh measures may have helped contain the scourge, but it still killed some 280,000 people, including over half the residents of Verona. The Republic of Venice, meanwhile, lost nearly a third of its population of 140,000.

The Great Plague of London hit between 1665 and 1666. … At its peak in September 1665, some 8,000 people were dying each week. … “Never did so many husbands and wives die together,” a pastor named Thomas Vincent wrote, “never did so many parents carry their children with them to the grave.” (His account of the plague in God’s Terrible Voice in the City by Plague and Fire, 1667, is graphic; seven in his own household died.)

As the sickness spread, London’s authorities tried to contain the infected by quarantining them in their homes, which were marked with a red cross. Somewhere between 75,000 and 100,000 people eventually perished before the outbreak died down in 1666. Later that same year, London was visited by a second major tragedy when the Great Fire of 1666 torched much of its city center.

The Great Plague of Marseille, which began in 1720, was Western Europe’s last major outbreak of medieval plague…. People died by the thousands, and the piles of bodies on the streets grew so large that convicts were conscripted to dispose of them. In nearby Provence, “plague walls” were even built to try to … contain the infection, but it still spilled over into southern France before finally disappearing in 1722. By then, it had killed roughly 100,000 people. (History.com)

Between 1918 and 1920, a deadly outbreak of influenza affected over a third of the world’s population and ended the lives of 20–50 million people. Of the 500 million people infected in the 1918 pandemic, the mortality rate was estimated at 10% to 20%, with up to 25 million deaths in the first 25 weeks alone. (Mphonline.com)

Signs in the Heavens

Blood Moons: Prophecy prognosticators claimed that a tetrad of blood moons in 2014 and 2015 were a prelude to some unnamed prophetic event. See my article “Will Four Blood Moons Usher in the Second Coming?” for an introduction to the topic. So-called Blood Moons and Blue Moons are common occurrences and have nothing to do with Bible prophecy. The same is true of lunar and solar eclipses.

Comets (e.g., Halley’s Comet): “Halley’s returns to the inner Solar System have been observed and recorded by astronomers since at least 240 BC.”

Jupiter Effect

In 1982, the planets would be in a straight-line formation perpendicular to the sun. This alignment — an event that occurs every 179 years according to Gribbin and Plagemann in The Jupiter Effect — supposedly exerts an uncommon gravitational pull on the planets.

Hal Lindsey saw eschatological significance in the Jupiter Effect. He wrote in 1980, “This alignment causes great storms on the sun’s surface, which in turn affect each of the planets. The sun storms will not only affect our atmosphere, as was previously mentioned, but they will slow down the Earth’s axis slightly.” This slowdown, according to Lindsey and his “author-experts,” would mean putting “a tremendous strain on the Earth’s faults, touching off earthquakes.” This new wave of earthquakes was to bring about great floods because dams have been built over fault lines. In addition, we were to see “nuclear power plant meltdowns at facilities built on or near the Earth’s faults.”[4] What happened? Nothing.

Astrophysicist John R. Gribben, one of the authors of the best-selling book The Jupiter Effect, admitted in his 1999 book The Little Book of Science that “[t]here is no Jupiter effect” and “I’m sorry I ever had anything to do with it.”[5]

Left Behind: Separating Fact from Fiction

What difference does it make what we believe about the end times anyway? DeMar shos how our point-of-view regarding end-times prophecies affects the way we live each day. In addition, DeMar answers skeptics who use failed end-times predictions to disprove the Bible. Giving us a different perspective on the end times, this approach to the Bible can revolutionize the life of the church.

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[1] Eugene Weber, Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults, and Millennial Beliefs Through the Ages (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 100-101.

[2] Weber, Apocalypses, 102.

[3] Carl Olof Jonsson and Wolfgang Herbst, The “Sign” of the Last Days—When? (Atlanta, GA: Commentary Press, 1987), x.

[4] Hal Lindsey, The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon (King of Prussia, PA: Westgate Press, 1980), 31.

[5] John Gribben, The Little Book of Science (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1999), 39.

Four Views of Revelation

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 08:57:23 -0400

Gary briefly discusses the four major interpretive approaches to the book of Revelation.

Revelation uses many Old Testament symbols: eating scrolls, beasts, marks on the forehead, gold, thrones, sun, moon, stars, candlesticks, Balaam, Jezebel, dragon, Gog and Magog, Sodom, Egypt, and Babylon. It’s unlikely that Old Testament references to people and places appeared either in John’s day, or will appear in their original form in our day or a time future to us. God uses them as a form of prophetic shorthand that those who were familiar with the Scriptures would have recognized but not always understood. Simon J. Kistemaker states the following in his commentary on Revelation:

The conclusion we must draw is that the numbers, images, and expressions of greatness must be interpreted as symbols that present the idea of totality, fullness, and perfection. Much of John’s symbolism derives from the Old Testament Scriptures and from the ecclesiastical context in which he spent his time. Let us note that the Jewish mind of the first century received and presented information by means of pictures, illustrations, and symbols. [1]

Interpreting any piece of literature takes skill and broad knowledge. Like with any piece of literature — and the Bible is literature — it’s necessary to know a great deal about the type of literature you are studying. In fact, the word “literal” is derived “from the word Latin litera meaning letter. To interpret something literally is to pay attention to the litera or to the letters and words which are being used. To interpret the Bible literally is to interpret is as literature. That is, the natural meaning of a passage is to be interpreted according to the normal rules of grammar, speech, syntax and context.”[2] The Bible should not be read outside the way it uses language to tell its story.

The Rapture and the Fig Tree Generation

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?

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Gary briefly discusses the four major interpretive approaches to the book of Revelation. Futurism, Historicism, Idealism, and Preterism have all been promoted—to greater and lesser degrees—throughout church history. What others have believed in the past should not determine how the Bible should be understood, but what the Bible itself actually says.

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[1] Simon J. Kistemaker, Revelation: Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 2001), 16.

[2] R.C. Sproul, Knowing Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1977), 48–49.

Twisting Scripture to Accommodate the ‘Spirit of the Age’

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 08:09:28 -0400

A documentary film called 1946 claims that the 1946 Revised Standard Version translation imported the word “homosexuality” into the Bible when the New Testament does not use the word “homosexual.” “[A] translational error caused the word homosexual to be added to the Bible 80 years ago.” The 1946 documentary is making its rounds again. I saw it being promoted on Facebook. Let’s test this argument. Twisting Scripture is a favorite pastime. We’re seeing some of this with some of today’s Democrats running for office as Christians. Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico is the most notable. There are others. None of this should surprise us since Scripture Twisters existed in the New Testament era. In Acts 20:29-30, the Apostle Paul warned the Ephesian elders about impending dangers to their church. He uses the metaphor of “savage wolves” to describe false teachers who will infiltrate the church after his departure.

The 1946 website opens with the following hook: “What if the word ‘homosexual’ was never meant to be in the Bible?” Where should we begin? With Creation. God made them male and female. First, this creation description should end any debate over the legitimacy of homosexuality. Second, the command was to be “fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:28). Same-sex sexuality (homo + sex = homosexual) cannot fulfill this command. On the merits of creation alone, homosexuality is excluded. In making them male and female, God created their anatomy to accommodate the command to be fruitful and multiply. (Even atheistic evolution concedes that male-female sexual relationships are required for evolution to take place: No male and female, no reproduction, therefore no evolution.) Is it any wonder why the Apostle Paul describes the same-sex relationship as “unnatural” (Rom. 1:26-27)? In biblical terms, marriage is exclusively heterosexual (different + sex = heterosexual). Jesus said it was like this from “the beginning” that God ‘God made them male and female” (Matt. 19:5; Matt. 1:27; 5:2).

We find the following in Romans 1 that describes the anti-creation norm:

For this reason, God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned [ἐξεκαύθησαν/exekauthēsan] in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

Homosexuals try to argue that Paul is describing the upper classes in Rome using their political and economic stations to abuse boys sexually. First, this is an admission that Paul is describing same-sex sexuality: “men with men,” the definition of “homo” (same) “sex” sexuality. There’s a word for that: homosexuality. Second, the sexual relationship is mutual: “burned in their desire toward one another.” The desire is mutual. One person is not being forced to comply by being dominated by older males and females to procure young boys and girls for sex. The “desire” is mutual. This is not to say that grooming does not take place. It’s happening all across the United States in government schools.

Whoever Controls the Schools Rules the World

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Here we get a little technical. The argument comes down to how the 1946 Revised Standard Bible translated a particular Greek word in 1 Corinthians 6:9 (ἀρσενοκοῖται) and 1 Timothy 1:10 (ἀρσενοκοῖται) as “homosexual.” The 1611 KJV translates the Greek ἀρσενοκοίταις (arsenokoitais) in 1 Timothy 1:10 as “for them that defile themselves with mankind.” The 1560 Geneva Bible translates arsenokoitais as “buggerers,” a word that usually refers to anal intercourse. Why didn’t the translators use the word “homosexual”? Because the word didn’t exist, but the behavior did. It didn’t need to exist because the description of the sex act is specific in the Bible. Would it be accurate to translate “the husband of one wife” in 1 Timothy 3:2 as “not a bigamist or a polygamist”? Yes, it would. But we know what Paul meant.

Many words we use today didn’t exist centuries or even a decade ago. Consider the “Glossary of LGBTQ+ and Gender Terms” used to describe a multitude of contrived sexual identities, from “Abrosexual: An individual that has a fluid and/or rapidly changing sexuality that fluctuates between different sexualities” to “Two-Spirit (also two spirit or, occasionally, twospirited): A modern, pan-Indian, umbrella term used by some indigenous North Americans to describe certain people in their communities who fulfill a traditional third-gender (or other gender-variant) ceremonial role in their cultures.” At last count, there are 169 gender neologisms.

Then there is the panoply of gender affirming pronouns. None of these existed before 1946, but somehow, they are legitimate terms and identifiers among today’s LGBTQ+ crowd, but the word “homosexual” cannot be the proper word to translate certain Greek words found in the Bible.

Consider 1 Timothy 1:10 again: “To whoremongers, to buggerers, to menstealers, to liars, to the perjured….” The KJV translates the Greek word ἀνδραποδισταῖς as “menstealers.” Some translations translate it as “enslavers” (ESV)[1] or “slave traders” (e.g., NIV, NLT). The New King James translation translates it as “kidnappers.” Each translation describes what the word means, even though those words did not exist when these translations were published (1560: Geneva Bible/1611: KJV).

When you go to the Greek translation of the Old Testament (Septuagint/LXX), the same Greek word in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 is found in 1 Cor. 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10. It’s from these two verses that we get the definition of homo (same) sex-sexuality because these OT verses describe same-sex sexuality. You can see the word “coitus” (κοίτην/koiten), sexual intercourse, in the description. So whatever is described in Leviticus 18:22 (below) and 20:13 is described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10: “a male who has sexual intercourse with males, especially in a penetrative role.”

Arsenos means male and koiten means “to lie down”: “arsenokoítēs …, ‘a male’ and koítē, ‘a mat, bed’) — properly, a man in bed with another man; a homosexual.” For example, “You shall not lie in bed with a male as those who lie with a female; it is an abomination” (Lev. 18:22). For a male to engage in sexual relations with another male is the definition of homosexuality. Two men are of the same (homo) sex. It’s quite simple.

Will any of this convince homosexuals and those who defend their behavior? It might, but don’t count on it. It’s not about facts. The Apostle Paul describes how people “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18). Sin blinds the eyes and makes the ears deaf to the truth.

Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths

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The homosexual movement will do anything to appeal to the ill-informed, and it often works. For example, one argument used is an appeal to Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible into German and the use of the word knabenschender that pro-homosexuals claim meant “boy molester.” If Luther only meant to condemn pederasty, a sexual relationship between an adult man and a pubescent or adolescent boy, then why did he write the following?

Martin Luther correctly identifies homosexuality with the sin of Sodom. Commenting on Genesis 19:4-5, he writes: “I for my part do not enjoy dealing with this passage, because so far the ears of the Germans are innocent of and uncontaminated by this monstrous depravity; for even though disgrace, like other sins, has crept in through an ungodly soldier and a lewd merchant, still the rest of the people are unaware of what is being done in secret. The Carthusian monks deserve to be hated because they were the first to bring this terrible pollution into Germany from the monasteries of Italy.” (Luther’s Works, 3:251-252).

In the same section of Luther’s Genesis lectures, he refers to “the heinous conduct of the people of Sodom ” as “extraordinary, inasmuch as they departed from the natural passion and longing of the male for the female [see Rom. 1:26-27], which is implanted into nature by God, and desired what is altogether contrary to nature. Whence comes this perversity? Undoubtedly from Satan, who after people have once turned away from the fear of God, so powerfully suppresses nature that he blots out the natural desire and stirs up a desire that is contrary to nature.” (Luther’s Works, 3:255)

A standard argument used against the Bible’s prohibition of homosexuality is the claim that Jesus or His disciples never mentioned it. They didn’t have to since any Jew familiar with the Torah knew same-sex sexuality was an abomination. That’s why Jesus didn’t have to condemn rape (Deut. 22:25-26), sex with animals (Ex. 22:29), incest (Lev. 18:6-18), abortion (Ex. 21:22-25), kidnapping (Ex. 21:16; Deut. 24:7), arson (Ex. 22:6), or tripping blind people (Lev. 19:14). Following the Jesus-didn’t-mention-it argument, Jesus must not have been opposed to rape, incest, kidnapping, bestiality, sex with minors, abortion, or tripping blind people.

[1] “That is, those who take someone captive in order to sell him into slavery.”

It's Just Not There

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 08:05:37 -0400

Gary begins a short lesson on the four views of the book of Revelation.

Political tyranny and religious apostasy are not necessarily signs of impending eschatological destruction. They, too, have been with us since the Fall. The light of the gospel was nearly extinguished as the church approached the sixteenth century. Few could ever have predicted what was about to happen, not only in terms of Christian revival but also in the explorer’s spirit to open passages to unknown worlds. Explorers fought the heaviness of pessimism and charted dreams for parts unknown. How different is our day?

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, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through studying the pagan past. [1]

There is little in this chronicle of the times that could not serve as an accurate description of our own era. A general societal pessimism fills speculation about our future. Christian influence seems to be shrinking due to infighting among rival Christian groups. A general malaise hovers over the educational establishment. Educational reform is demanded from each end of the political spectrum and from everyone in between because of a deficient curriculum that cannot compete with our European and Japanese economic rivals. Escape is in the air as many turn to paganism through New Age humanism, the occult, and goddess worship. As in Columbus’ day, Islam is “expanding at the expense of Christendom.” [2]

If, as the writer of Ecclesiastes writes, “there is nothing new under the sun” (1:9), then how do we evaluate historical tumults prophetically? Five hundred years ago many in Christendom believed that the end was near. As we now know, their speculations were misguided. How can we now discern when such “signs” are prophetic indicators since “a generation goes and a generation comes” (1:4) but the end does not?

Last Days Madness

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.

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Gary begins a short lesson on the four views of the book of Revelation. He begins with the most popular: futurism. The vast majority of futurists are premillennial and dispensational as well. A recurring problem with this view is that the dependent pieces of the system are simply not found in the Bible; they’re just not there.

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[1] Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1942), 3.

[2] Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, 3.