The American Vision

Eschatology and Worldviews

Wed, 19 Aug 2026 07:54:39 -0400

Gary discusses the conference that is being planned for next year in Franklin, Tennessee.

If Jesus’ kingdom is “not of this world,” so the argument goes, then how can Christians claim to have a responsibility to be involved in kingdom work? Since God’s kingdom is exclusively in the future and in heaven, as some assert, there can be no earthly manifestation of God’s works other than redeeming the lost out of this world for heaven. “God’s kingdom has nothing to do with this world until He personally reigns on this earth in the millennium,” is the refrain of many. But there is more to God’s kingdom than an exclusively heavenly reign or even a literal thousand-year rule of Christ on the earth.

Some Christian writers are so extreme in their insistence that God’s kingdom does not touch on earthly things that they are even denying that Jesus’ millennial reign is the kingdom of God. Dave Hunt, a proponent of an any-moment rapture, wrote that “the millennial reign of Christ, far from being the kingdom, is actually the final proof of the incorrigible nature of the human heart.” Hunt later retracted this statement, but his further writings on the same subject leave a clear impression: No aspect of God’s kingdom can manifest itself in a world where sinners still have bodies of flesh and blood.

Dave Hunt and others appeal to John 18:36 (“My kingdom is not of this world”) to establish that the kingdom is essentially (exclusively?) heavenly. David Wilkerson quotes this passage favorably and adds, “That settles it for me, as it should for all believers who tremble at His Word.” We must, as Wilkerson says, take Jesus’ words with the utmost seriousness and veracity. The question is, what does Jesus’ statement mean? What is settled by a recitation of a single verse? Satan knew the Bible as well as anyone. He was quick to quote it when it suited him. Of course, his favorite tactic was to quote it out of context to support his twisted worldview. The Bible is not a series of incantations that can be repeated to bring about miraculous results. The Bible was written in book and letter form. The context of every sentence is important.

What does Jesus mean when He tells Pilate that His kingdom is not of this world? Does He mean that His kingdom is like the invisible ether that scientists a century ago believed pervaded outer space? Does He mean that His kingdom has no effect on the course of history? Quoting the verse without explanation does little to enhance our understanding of the exchange of words between the prosecutor and the accused. A man on trial for murder who said in a police statement, “Yes, I killed the man,” is not necessarily guilty of murder no matter how many times the prosecutor repeats the words back to the accused. Who did he kill and why? Was it in self-defense?

Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths

Myths, Lies and Half-Truths adopts Jesus’ methodology of taking a closer look at God’s Word and applies it to erroneous misinterpretations that have resulted in a virtual shut-down of the church’s full-orbed mission in the world (Acts 20:27). These traditional but mistaken interpretations and applications of popular Bible texts to contemporary issues have resulted in the Christian faith being “thrown out and trampled under foot by men” (Matt. 5:13).

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Gary discusses the conference that is being planned for next year in Franklin, Tennessee. He explains that it will not be a prophecy conference, though it will address the topic. Ultimately, it will be a worldview conference because eschatology is a key component of any worldview, not only Christianity.

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Who and When Were the ‘Last Days Scoffers’?

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 09:38:16 -0400

If you question the modern-day claim that Jesus is physically returning “soon” (Rev. 1:1; 22:6) because “the time is near” (1:3; 22:10), then you are a ‘scoffer’ or a ‘mocker.’ This is standard prophetic agitprop. If the Bible says (and it does) that Jesus’ coming was “near … right at the doors” (James 5:7-9), and He hasn’t come after nearly 2000 years, then it’s necessary to evaluate popular prophecy claims.

The real mockers and scoffers mock and scoff at the Bible’s very clear claims about the soon and near coming of Jesus. Something must give. Jesus reinforced this claim in the Olivet Discourse. He said his coming was aligned with that first-century generation that would not pass away until He returned. “[S]o YOU too, when YOU see all these things, know that He is near, at the doors [of the temple?]. Truly I say to you, this generation [their generation] will not pass away until all these things take place [see verses 4-32]” (Matt. 24:33-34).

Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue just as they were from the beginning of creation” (2 Peter 3:3-4).

Jude, using the same Greek word for “mockers” (ἐμπαῖκται/empaiktai), stated the following:

But you, beloved, ought to remember the words that were spoken beforehand by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they were saying to you, “In the last time there will be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts.” These are the ones who cause divisions, worldly-minded, devoid of the Spirit (vv. 17-19).

Note the timing: “These are [present indicative active] the ones….” The scoffers were alive in Jude’s day. What were the particulars of their scoffing? That Jesus said He would return before their generation passed away (Matt. 24:34), when some of them would still be alive (16:28), and the temple would be destroyed so not one stone would be left upon another (24:2). But little had happened since Jesus stated what would happen. In fact, the temple was more glorious than ever!

The Destruction of Jerusalem

For most modern readers, Nehemiah Nisbett (d. 1812) is an unknown writer. He’s almost never quoted or cited, and yet his works were widely read in his day. He was most noted for his works dealing with the defense of Christianity against skeptics. Most of Nisbett’s works dealt with eschatology. Nisbett would be described as a preterist on passages that many partial preterists would say are yet to be fulfilled. This is especially true of his interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 5.

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Peter and Jude wrote their letters before AD 70. The book of Acts shows that many Jews objected to Jesus and the gospel message. They rejected Jesus as the true temple and turned it into an idol (Acts 19:37; 21:27, 30; 24:6). Paul showed no disrespect (25:8). God would deal with the end of the physical temple because “something greater than the temple is here” (Matt. 12:6). It was always meant to be. The physical temple was a type, a temporary physical edifice looking forward to the eternal fulfillment (John 1:14; 219-21). The physical temple had become an idol of the land beast of Israel (Rev. 13:15). In Ephesians 2:19-22, believers are described as “living stones” being built together into a “holy temple in the Lord,” with Jesus as the cornerstone.

Peter mentioned what would take place “in the last days” (2 Peter 3:3). John Lightfoot comments:

There is very much mention in Scripture of the ‘last days,’ and both of exceeding much good, and exceeding much evil, that should accrue in them. Our present dealing is about the latter. By the last days are meant the last days of Jerusalem, and of that nation. And there is foretold of them, that, “in the last days, there should be perilous times” [2 Tim. 3:1]; that, “in the last days, there should come mockers” [2 Peter 3:3]; that “in the last times, there should come many antichrists” [1 John 2:18], which was an evidence that those were the last times.

Under those sad times did the poor professors of the gospel live, till God gave them some recovery and refreshment, by the ruin of the city and nation. They were times of mockings, and scourgings, and imprisonments, and of most bitter persecution of the church, both by the Jews, that never believed, and by apostates, that had believed, but were revolted from the gospel, and became enemies to it [1 John 2:22]. A sad “hour of temptation” [Rev. 3:10]. “Judgment began at the house of God, 1 Pet. iv. 17; “A fiery trial” [1 Pet. 4:12], at the thirteenth verse of the same chapter [1 Pet. 4:13].[1]

Lightfoot makes the point that, even though what James describes was about his generation, his admonition does not apply only to his generation. The judge still stands before the door today. We can equally become a “perverse generation” (Acts 2:40). “God is the Judge of all, and, that this Judge stands at the door of all:—because there is no exception about whom he Judgeth, nor any exception at whose door he standeth.”[2]

When and where did the scoffing and mocking of God’s work begin? We know from Isaiah that it took place in Jerusalem:

“Therefore, hear the word of the LORD, you scoffers,

Who rule this people who are in Jerusalem” (Isa. 28:14).

Mocking and scoffing aren’t anything new. Jesus encountered it from the ruling religious leaders in Jerusalem. And what was His response? The same response God gave to the scoffers who ruled the people who were in Jerusalem in Isaiah’s day.

“Behold, I am laying a stone in Zion, a tested stone,

A precious cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed.

The one who believes in it will not be disturbed (24:16)

This passage is referenced in the New Testament, in Romans 9:33, 1 Peter 2:6, and Matthew 21:42, where it is applied to Jesus Christ as the spiritual cornerstone of faith. The religious leaders who were trying to subvert the work of Jesus understood that Jesus was talking about them.

“Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people, producing the fruit of it. “And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.” And when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they understood that He was speaking about them (Matt. 21:43-45).

Consider what happens during Jesus’ trial before Caiaphas (26:57-68; Mark 14:53-65, Luke 22:54-71). Caiaphas commands Jesus to tell him if He is “the Christ, the Son of God” (v. 63). Here was Jesus’ response:

Jesus said to him, “You have said it yourself; nevertheless I tell you, hereafter you shall see THE SON OF MAN SITTING AT THE RIGHT HAND OF POWER, and COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN.”

R. T. France points out the following:

“Coming on the clouds of heaven (together with the phrase ‘the Son of man’) is a clear allusion to Daniel 7:13, already similarly alluded to in 24:30. . . . We have seen that its natural application in terms of its Old Testament source is to the vindication and enthronement of the Son of man in heaven, not to a descent to earth. It is therefore in this verse a parallel expression to ‘seated at the right hand of Power’; the two phrases refer to the same exalted state, not to two successive situations or events. In this verse the appropriateness of this interpretation is underlined by the fact that this is to be true ‘from now on’ (hereafter is a quite misleading rendering of the more specific phrase ap’ arti, which, as in 23:39 and 26:29, denotes a new period beginning from now). Indeed it is something which Jesus’ inquisitors themselves will see (an echo of Zc. 12:10, as in 24:30), for it will quickly become apparent in the events of even the next few weeks (not to mention the subsequent growth of the church) that the ‘blasphemer’ they thought they had disposed of is in fact now in the position of supreme authority.”[3]

Caiaphas declared that Jesus had “blasphemed” and should be executed, “He is deserving of death!” (v. 65). Caiaphas made this unintended prophecy: Jesus would die for the nation, and not only for that nation, but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one. From that day on they plotted to take his life” (John 11:51-53). What follows Caiaphas’ charge is compelling. “Then they spat in His face and beat Him with their fists; and others slapped Him, and said, “Prophesy to us, You Christ; who is the one who hit You?” (vv. 67-68). Jesus had prophesied about His coming to their generation, and this was blasphemy! They believed Jesus could not ‘prophesy’ who would hit them, so how could He predict such a judgment?

And It Came to Pass

One of the ironies of church history is that a biblical text that reveals one of the most astonishing prophecies of a future event has served as a crucial launch pad for devastating critical theories that assail the inspiration and authority of the Bible. I commend this volume as a fine introduction to some of the most fascinating and important elements of preterist interpretation and hope that it will stimulate serious, scholarly research and discussion into the questions that remain in doubt.” — Dr. R.C. Sproul

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This takes us to 2 Peter 3:3 and the “mockers.” “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation” (v. 4). What coming? The one Jesus declared in Matthew 26:64. But according to them, nothing had changed. Everything was as it was. Jesus was a false prophet. The temple was still standing, and Jesus did not come like He said He would. But He did come, and the temple was destroyed just like He said it would be.

[1] John Lightfoot, “Behold, the Judge Standeth Before the Door,” The Whole Works of the Reverend John Lightfoot, ed. John Rogers Pitman(London: 1822), 6:380.

[2] Lightfoot, The Whole Works, 6:381.

[3] R. T. France, Matthew: Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985), 381.

Working Inside the System

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 07:25:51 -0400

Gary discusses some arguments people are raising online against trying to reform our current system of government.

God did not reserve His commandments for just the nation Israel and the church. Scripture makes it clear that all kings in Israel should copy the law in the presence of the Levitical priests so the rulers would be careful to observe every word of the law (Deuteronomy 17:18-19). Even nations outside Israel were required to follow the law as it was given to the nation Israel. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because they broke the law of God (Genesis 13:13). God commanded the prophet Jonah to preach to the Ninevites (Assyrians) because their wickedness had come up before God (Jonah 1:2). The reason is clear: “There shall be one standard for you; it shall be for the stranger as well as the native, for I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 24:22). The prophet Amos set forth the coming judgment of God to Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, and Moab. These non-Israelite nations stood accountable for their transgressions: “For three transgressions . . . and for four I will not revoke its punishment” (Amos 1:3, 6, 9, 13; 2:1). Non-Israelite nations were to be judged along with Judah and Israel (2:4, 6). There is one law and one Lawgiver.

The New Testament shows a similar emphasis, as we should expect. The God of the New Testament is the same God of the Old Testament. God does not change (Malachi 3:6), therefore His law does not change (Matthew 5:17-20). Though Christians do not make blood sacrifices as remission for sins, we do keep this Old Testament law in Christ. The Bible states that “all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22; cf. Leviticus 17:11). Shed blood still is required, but Jesus became our perfect and final sacrifice for sins: “[B]ut now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself” (Hebrews 9:26). All ceremonial laws, laws applied to the redemptive work of Christ, are fulfilled when an individual repents of his sin and unconditionally surrenders himself to Jesus.

The redemptive work of Jesus does not free us from an obligation to keep the moral and civil laws laid down in the Bible, however. Scripture shows no instance of an individual, Christian or pagan, who is no longer required to keep these laws. We are freed from the “curse of the law” (Galatians 3:13), but not from the demands of the law: “Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law” (Romans 3:31). Of course, the non-Christian is neither free from the curse of the law nor from the demands of the law: “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:18).

God and Government

With a fresh new look, more images, an extensive subject and scripture index, and an updated bibliography, God and Government is ready to prepare a whole new generation to take on the political and religious battles confronting Christians today. May it be used in a new awakening of Christians in America—not just to inform minds, but to stimulate action and secure a better tomorrow for our posterity.

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Gary discusses some arguments people are raising online against trying to reform our current system of government. The civil and the religious realm—Moses and Aaron—are both in need of constant reformation and this is the responsibility of those with a proper worldview. Should Christians do nothing? Or should they do their own thing? How will either of these responses avoid becoming just as corrupt as the current system eventually?

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Episode 104: Why is 'Seven Years' Not Mentioned in the NT?

Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:14:02 -0400

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 104

Gary does a deep dive on the absence of a seven-year period discussed in the New Testament, which is crucial for many end-time theories.

Could God have placed a “gap” between the sixty-ninth and seventieth years of Israel’s captivity, adding, say, a hundred years and still maintain that He had kept His word? There is no way He could have done it and remained a God of truth. But what if God came back and said, “I didn’t actually add any years; I just postponed the final year by means of a ‘gap’ of 100 years. The ‘gap’ consisting of 100 years, which you assume to be additional years, should not be calculated in the overall accounting.” This would mean that 170 years would have passed. Using “gap logic” the Bible could still maintain that Israel was in captivity for only seventy years. Let’s call this what it is: nonsense.

What would we think of such a deal? Could God ever delay keeping His promise in such a way and still be called a covenant-keeping God? No! And yet this is exactly what dispensationalists do with the “seventy weeks of years” (490 years) of Daniel’s prophecy. A “gap” of nearly two thousand years supposedly does nothing to change the integrity of a prophecy specifying the passage of only 490 years.

If we can find no gaps in the sequence of years in these examples, then how can a single exception be made with the “seventy weeks” in Daniel 9:24-27? Some maintain that the passage in Daniel lends itself to inserting a gap because of the division of weeks: seven weeks, sixty- two weeks, and one week. Since there is no gap between the seven and sixty-two weeks, what justification is there in inserting a gap between the sixty-ninth week (seven weeks + sixty-two weeks = sixty-nine weeks) and the seventieth week? Moses’ life is divided up into three forty-year periods (Acts 7:23; 7:30; Deut. 8:2). Should we look for and expect gaps in the 120 years of Moses’ life? No.

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 does a deep dive on the absence of a seven-year period discussed in the New Testament, which is crucial for many end-time theories. He asks why, if this timeframe is so pivotal, it is not explicitly mentioned in the NT. Although “three and a half years” are mentioned in Revelation, the concept of a definitive seven-year tribulation is not.

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Is Homosexuality ‘Like Being Left-Handed’?

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 07:39:41 -0400

Actress Rosie O’Donnell told former Saturday Night Live star Amy Poehler that being gay is a “doomed” existence that no one would choose because being gay “is no different than being left-handed or having blue eyes.” This claim was used in a scene from the 2005 film The Family Stone.

I saw something similar years ago in a Facebook post: “Why would anybody CHOOSE to be gay, with all the stigma that goes along with it?” Here was my response: “Why do people smoke when they know it shortens their life, causes cancer, and contributes to heart disease? Why do people continue to eat large amounts of food when they know it’s making them fat and harming their health? Why do alcoholics continue to drink even though they know it’s destroying their health, ruining their family, and jeopardizing their career? Why do people harm themselves with substances that damage major organs, rot teeth, and lead to lifelong addiction?”

The answer is simple: The negative consequences are often not seen, and the positives often outweigh the negative ones. Many women regret aborting their unborn baby. People detransition after sexual reassignment surgery. Rosaria Butterfield abandoned her homosexual lifestyle.

Most people look down on these behaviors and publicly denounce them. Anti-smoking products, dozens of diet programs, Alcoholics Anonymous, and drug rehab centers can be found from coast to coast. Dieting alone is a multi-billion-dollar business. Hardly anyone would argue that it is prejudicial, bordering on bullying, to help people change their behavior even for people who don’t want help. Planned group intervention is a popular therapy technique.

Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor

"My genes made me do it!" The genetic fallacy has been used for years to get people off in crimes they have committed because they weren't in their "right mind." No one is in their right mind without Jesus Christ because of sin, but evolution is trying to rewrite the human story as being simply "natural" and nothing else. This book proves that the only-natural argument has its limits, even among its adherents.

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Those pushing the homosexual and broader sexual agenda argue that their sexual behavior is innate. That is, they were born with the desire and inclination to engage in a variety of sexual practices—everything from homosexuality and bisexuality to transgenderism and pedophilia.

It seems, however, that only homosexuals and their sexual affiliates get to claim that the behavior is normal and to offer reparative help borders on being a hate crime.

If they were born that way, that is, if their genes determine their behavior, there can’t be a law or public aversion to what they do sexually. Maybe people are born with a genetic predisposition to alcoholism or nicotine addiction. Let’s assume that there are genetic explanations for homosexual behavior. Once this claim is made for one behavior, it can be made for other behaviors. Does a genetic cause make the behavior normal and moral, and should it be legislatively and legally protected?

For years I have been collecting articles on genetic explanations for various abnormalities. In each case, the genetic cause is viewed as undesirable. Extraordinary measures and funding are recommended to fix the genetic flaws.

When scientists say they had discovered a “fat gene,” “the finding was hailed by other researchers as pointing to a day when drugs might correct imbalances that cause some people to be hounded by food cravings and extra pounds while others remain lean.”[1] If the cause of fatness is genetic, as homosexuals claim is true of their “orientation,” then why the elation over the fat-gene discovery? If you’re fat, it’s not your fault. Anyone who proposes that a fat person should get thin, considering my-genes-made-me-do-it logic, is “fatophobic.” Here are some other examples of gene-related conditions:

• “A genetic double-whammy rarely found in whites dramatically increases the risk of congestive heart failures in blacks.”

• “Scientists say they have found a gene that predicts whether prostate cancer will develop into its most lethal form.”

• “Researchers at McGill University in Montreal have discovered the gene that causes a devastating neurological disorder that is found almost exclusively among families along Quebec’s North Shore.”

• “A research team at two Mideast universities has developed a new way to genetically alter cells in living mice; offering new possibilities in the war against cancer and other diseases.”[2]

• “Some of us, it seems, were just born to be bad. Scientists say they are on the verge of pinning down genetic and biochemical abnormalities that predispose their bearers to violence. An article in the journal Science . . . carried the headline EVIDENCE FOUND FOR POSSIBLE ‘AGGRESSION’ GENE.”[3]

• “Apparently healthy men with normal weight and cholesterol levels are at three times higher risk of a heart attack if they have a common variation of a particular gene, researchers say.”[4]

• “Salk Institute scientists say they have uncovered a gene that triggers certain forms of Leukemia, a discovery that may lead to the development of a screening test within the next few months.”[5]

• “Researchers have found a brain chemical that boosts the craving for fat—and a way to block it without affecting the appetite for healthier foods.”[6]

• “Why do gamblers often bet more after a losing hand? Or investors throw good money after bad? The answer may lie in the science of the brain.”[7]

• “Is racism simply human nature or something learned from society? Neither, says a team of psychologists who, despite criticism, argue that racism represents an accidental side effect of evolution.”[8]

The “I-was-made-like-this” argument has a long history. It reminds me of a scene from the movie The African Queen (1951). Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart) and Rose Sayer (Katherine Hepburn) are traveling down the very dangerous Ulanga River in Africa during World War I to avoid capture by the Germans. Rose is a conservative Christian missionary, and Charlie makes his living operating a small, dilapidated mail boat hauling supplies. In contrast to Rose’s character, Charlie is a bit more liberal and likes his gin a bit too much.

After binging and passing out after one of his regular bouts with the bottle, Charlie wakes to see Rose pouring the contents of one of his precious gin bottles into the river. Charlie is visibly upset as he pleads with her: “Oh, Miss. Oh, have pity, Miss. You don’t know what you’re doing, Miss. I’ll perish without a hair of the dog. Oh, Miss, it ain’t your property.”

Seeing that he’s getting nowhere with this line of argument, he tries a kinder, more subtle approach:

Uh, how’s the Book, Miss? [referring to the Bible]. Well, not that I ain’t read it, that is to say, my poor old Mum used to read me stories out of it. How’s about reading it out loud? I could sure do with a little spiritual comfort myself.

After getting the cold shoulder, Charlie lets his emotions fly and yells at her: “And you call yourself a Christian! Do you hear me? Don’t ya? Don’t ya? Huh?” She shows only a slight reaction but doesn’t say a word. He backs up and goes about cleaning the relief valve on the boiler that’s shaped like a cross — symbolic of the impact Rose is having on him and his circumstances. He asks for mercy: “What ya being so mean for, Miss? A man takes a drop too much once in a while; it’s only human nature.” Without looking up, she says, “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”

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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[1] Jeff Nesmith, “Dieters’ dream: Gene to control fat found,” Atlanta Constitution (December 1, 1994), C1.

[2] These four examples were taken from the “Science News” section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (October 10, 2002), A9.

[3] Dennis Overbye, “Born to Raise Hell?,” Time (February 21, 1994), 76.

[4] Amanda Huted, “Gene variant could mean higher risk of heart attack,” Atlanta Journal/Constitution (October 15, 1992), C3.

[5] “Gene discovery could lead to leukemia screening test,” Atlanta Journal/Constitution (October 3, 1992), E8.

[6] Tim Friend, “Brain chemical may feed craving for fat,” USA Today (October 29, 1992), 1A.

[7] Faye Flam, “Study: Reckless gambler, blame your brain,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (March 22, 2002), A18.

[8] Dan Vergano, “Racism may have evolutionary link,” USA Today (December 11, 2001), 11.

Justice Gorsuch and the American "Creed"

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 08:26:45 -0400

Gary responds to a comment made by Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch about the “American Creed.”

The concept of jurisdictional boundaries and limitations is not new to our time. God established property and moral boundaries when He instructed Adam and Eve not to eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:17). From beginning to end the law is a code of boundary limitations. The law tells us what is permissible and what is not as it applies to individuals in self-government, parents and children in family government, elders, deacons, and members in church government, and citizens and elected officials and their agents in civil government, and every other area of life.

What’s true of individuals and their relationship to the law is especially true of civil governments, since the State has the power of the sword (Rom. 13:4). Does the fact that the State has the sword lessen the legitimate restrictions on personal and property rights? Possession of deadly force does not overturn legitimate jurisdictional rights. If the boundary markers of civil government are not expressly set forth, then it is possible and likely that the civil sphere of government will be used to trample the boundary markers (jurisdictions) of individuals, families, churches, businesses, lesser magistrates, and nations for personal and national aggrandizement. The story of Ahab and his desire to get Naboth’s vineyard by hook or by crook is an obvious example (1 Kings 21).

Our founders understood these principles. That’s the form of civil government they developed was decentralized and specifically designed to limit political power. As Thomas Jefferson stated in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, “In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”

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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Gary responds to a comment made by Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch about the “American Creed.” Justice Gorsuch claims that America was founded not on particular religious beliefs, but rather on creedal beliefs of all men being created equal. However, this claim does not square with history, law, or logic.

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Atheism’s Nuremberg Trial Problem

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 07:40:15 -0400

After the defeat of Hitler’s Third Reich, war crime tribunals were set up in Nuremberg, Germany. The purpose was to judge those who had participated in the grossest of atrocities, the planned extermination of the Jewish race. John Warwick Montgomery explains the problem the tribunal faced:

When the Charter of the Tribunal, which had been drawn up by the victors, was used by the prosecution, the defendants very logically complained that they were being tried by ex post facto laws; and some authorities in the field of international law have severely criticized the Allied judges on the same ground. The most telling defense offered by the accused was that they had simply followed orders or made decisions within the framework of their own legal system, in complete consistency with it, and that they therefore could not rightly be condemned because they deviated from the alien value system of their conquerors. Faced with this argument, Robert H. Jackson, Chief Counsel for the United States at the Trials, was compelled to appeal to permanent values, to moral standards transcending the life-styles of particular societies—in a word, to a “law beyond the law” of individual nations, whether victor or vanquished.[1]

How did the Tribunal account for this “law beyond the law”? What justification was given for it being imposed ex post facto? The Tribunal could not appeal to the Bible. Revealed religion had been discounted decades before. Higher Criticism, which had its start in Germany, had effectively destroyed the Bible for so many as a reliable standard for history and law. What about natural law? Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780), whose Commentaries on the Laws of England served as the primary foundation of law from the time of the War for Independence to the time of the war between the states, developed a natural law theory based on the doctrine of creation:

Thus when the Supreme Being formed the universe, and created matter out of nothing, he impressed certain principles upon that matter, from which it can never depart, and without which it would cease to be.

* * * * *

This law of nature, being co-eval [at the same time] with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding over all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are in validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original.

* * * * *

Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered [permitted] to contradict these.[2]

But with the publication and adoption of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859 by the scientific and legal professions, Blackstone’s legal worldview was considered to be quaint, outdated, and hopelessly tied to religion. Darwinism made natural law a logical impossibility. How could an immaterial law be derived from a purely material cosmos that had come into existence by chance?

Charles Darwin destroyed natural law theory in biological science. . . . His successors destroyed natural law theory in social science. In the 1920’s, quantum physics destroyed natural law theory in the subatomic world. This immediately began to undermine modern legal theory.[3]

The shattered foundation of natural law theory, like Humpty Dumpty, can never be put together again as long as evolution remains our national religion. At the moment, natural law theory is dead given materialist assumptions that are firmly rooted in every major secular university and law school in the country.

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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Does anyone remember how the Senate Judiciary Committee attacked Clarence Thomas for believing that the Constitution had to be interpreted in the light of “natural law”? The Constitution contains little moral prescription. There is no discussion, for example, of what constitutes murder or theft in the body of the Constitution. The Constitution implements whatever moral precepts are generally held by the populace. For example, slavery was practiced in the colonies, and there is no freedom outlined that would give a woman a right to kill her preborn baby. The Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 claimed to have found the freedom of abortion in the “penumbra” of the Constitution, an unspecified set of “implied rights.”

The framers did not perceive that there was a need to acknowledge a fixed body of law since natural law—“the laws of nature and of nature’s God”—was almost universally accepted. This is why Clarence Thomas could write: “We look at the Natural Law beliefs of the founders as a background to our Constitution.”[4] The left-leaning members of the committee took exception to Thomas’s natural law beliefs. Joseph Biden wrote an article that appeared in the Washington Post [5] in which he claimed the following for his version of natural law:

• It does not “function as being a specific moral code regulating individual behavior.”

• It is not “a static set of unchanging principles.”

• It is “an evolving body of ideals.”

Basically, natural law is whatever the courts say it is. “In our system,” Biden writes, “the sole obligation of a Supreme Court justice is to the Constitution. Natural justice can supply one of the important means of understanding the Constitution, but natural law can never be used to reach a decision contrary to a fair reading of the Constitution itself.” This is why the Left wants to be the gatekeepers to the Supreme Court by mandating a liberal litmus test to all prospective judges. Biden’s article does not tell us anything about how we determine what’s right or wrong. Morality is a matter of “individual choice.” What happens when two individual choices are in conflict? That’s why we need judges. Who gets to pick the judges?

Biden’s concept of “good natural law” as opposed to “bad natural law” does not establish a set of “timeless truths” but rather an evolving body of ideals that changes to permit governments to adjust to new social situations. How convenient. “In short,” as Phillip E. Johnson notes, Biden’s view of “good natural law doesn’t prevent us from doing anything we really want to do.”[6] Biden never explains how he derived the content of this good natural law or how to account for any law at all given Darwinian assumptions taught in our schools and mandated by our courts. Of course, even though natural law theory has its problems, it does recognize the existence of a higher law. Ultimately, however, natural law, in order to remain stable, must presuppose the foundation of biblical law.[7]

The Impossibility of the Contrary

Those who deny God have no way to account for the uniformity of nature and its laws. “[N]atural man does have knowledge, but it is borrowed knowledge, stolen from the Christian-theistic pasture or range, yet natural man has no knowledge, because in terms of his principle the ultimacy of his thinking, he can have none, and the knowledge he possesses is not truly his own. . . . The natural man has valid knowledge only as a thief possesses goods.”

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Some people understood the dilemma of how to account for moral absolutes in a society that officially discounts God. Yale law professor Arthur Leff was perplexed that an agnostic culture even wants enduring values. In a lecture delivered at Duke University in 1979, Leff expressed his bewilderment:

I want to believe—and so do you—in a complete, transcendent and immanent set of propositions about right and wrong, findable rules that authoritatively and unambiguously direct us how to live righteously. I also want to believe—and so do you—in no such thing, but rather that we are wholly free, not only to choose for ourselves what we ought to do, but to decide for ourselves, individual and as a species, what we ought to be. What we want, Heaven help us, is simultaneously to be perfectly ruled and perfectly free, that is, at the same time to discover the right and the good and to create it.[8]

How can a solution ever be found in a random, impersonal cosmos, “governed” (if the word can be used) by chance given Leff’s logic? “[W]ith God out of the picture,” Johnson writes, “every human being becomes a ‘godlet’—with as much authority to set standards as any other godlet or combination of godlets.”[9] Any person who utters a moral injunction is most often met with, “Who says? Who are you to impose your morality on me?” Leff continues his logical analysis of the dilemma:

Putting it that way makes clear that if we are looking for an evaluation, we must actually be looking for an evaluator: some machine for the generation of judgments on states of affairs. If the evaluation is to be beyond question, then the evaluator and its evaluative processes must be similarly insulated. If it is to fulfil its role, the evaluator must be the unjudged judge, the unruled legislator, the premise maker who rests on no premises, the uncreated creator of values. . . . We are never going to get anywhere (assuming for the moment that there is somewhere to get) in ethical or legal theory unless we finally face the fact that, in the Psalmist’s words, there is no one like unto the Lord. . . . The so-called death of God turns out not to have been His funeral; it also seems to have effected the total elimination of any coherent, or even more-than-momentarily convincing, ethical or legal system dependent upon final authoritative, extrasystemic premises.[10]

So what is the secularist’s answer? How does the modernist create a moral center in the Darwinian struggle for life? The usual answer is that “doing good” is what benefits the species. Being kind, for example, has a good result. But is this always true? The claim is made “that a variety of widely accepted norms, including the keeping of certain promises, the abhorrence of unjustified killing of human beings, and perhaps even the sanctity of property rights, promote the adaptation of the human species to its environment. But so does genocide.”[11] All the “great” tyrants claimed that what they did was for the betterment of mankind. To Hitler, Jews were a world problem. Mass sterilization was first considered; then more efficient and quicker methods were proposed and carried out to rid the world of the “Jewish problem.” But in the end, it was all done for a “righteous” cause.[12] The Birth Control League founder Margaret Sanger, with her eugenic ideas, wanted “to create a race of thoroughbreds” by encouraging births of “more children from the fit, and less from the unfit.”[13] She purposely set up birth control clinics in poor immigrant neighborhoods to rid the world of “mongrel races.” Who’s to say, given the presuppositions of today’s Darwinian legal theorists, that any of it was wrong?

While Leff did a masterful job in pointing out the problem, and he evaluated numerous theories in finding a way out of the dilemma created by his “own kind,” he offered no solution. Even so, people will continue to maintain, at least for the moment, that napalming babies is bad, starving the poor is wicked, slavery is evil, war is hell, but there will always be one lingering question, “Says who?”

Modern legal theory, which denies the sovereignty of God over the nations, also denies the sovereignty of God over the individual and everything else. When pushed on the point, there is no way to account for anything given Darwinian assumptions, not even reason or logic, the supposed saviors of the rationalist worldview. Christians must face the steamroller effect of this set of assumptions. Laws are being put on the books that, when fully implemented and applied, will disenfranchise Christians to such an extent that they will not be able to speak the name of Jesus.

[1] John Warwick Montgomery, The Law Above the Law (Minneapolis, MN: Dimension Books/Bethany Fellowship, 1975), 24–25.

[2] William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols. (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, [1765-1769] 1979), 1:38, 41, 42.

[3] Gary North, Political Polytheism (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), xxii.

[4] “Thomas Spars With Committee over Natural Law and Abortion,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly Review, 49:38 (September 21, 1991), 2644.

[5] Joseph R. Biden, Jr., “Law and Natural Law: Questions for Judge Thomas,” The Washington Post (September 8, 1991), C-1.

[6] Phillip E. Johnson, “The Modernist Impasse in Law,” God and Culture: Essays in Honor of Carl F. H. Henry, D.A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge, eds. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), 181.

[7] Gary DeMar, “The Mating of Biblical Law and Natural Law,” Biblical Worldview (June 1990).

[8] Arthur Leff, “Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law,” Duke Law Journal (1979), 1229-49. Quoted in Johnson, “The Modernist Impasse in Law,” 182.

[9] Johnson, “The Modernist Impasse in Law,” 182.

[10] Leff, “Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law.” Quoted in Johnson, “The Modernist Impasse in Law,” 183.

[11] Richard Posner, The Problems of Jurisprudence (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1990), 235-236. Quoted in Johnson, “The Modernist Impasse in Law,” 184.

[12] For a chilling reenactment of the plan, see the HBO Film Conspiracy: The Meeting at Wannsee, starring Stanley Tucci, Colin Firth, and David Threlfall. The two-hour meeting on January 20, 1942, essentially sealed the fate of Jews in Europe. The approach taken by the thirty German bureaucrats was methodical, a straightforward outline on how to solve the Jewish problem without ever using the words “kill” or “exterminate.” The law as it existed in Germany at the time was followed, giving them proper legal cover and justification for their actions. The date of the meeting nearly coincides with the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 (January 22), which has had a more ominous effect. Safe to say that more than six million Jewish babies have been killed legally through abortion since 1973.

[13] Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization (New York: Brentano’s, 1922), 126. Quoted in George Grant, Killer Angel: A Short Biography of Planned Parenthood’s Founder, Margaret Sanger, rev. ed. (Nashville, TN: Cumberland House Publishing, [1995] 2001), 85.

They Always Fail

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 06:49:08 -0400

Gary discusses three recent items that address the ideas of the intellectual “elites” who believe they know how to understand and fix the world.

The long-term consequences of brains, bodies, and babies are that in the end we are nothing more than meat machines that have no intrinsic value. If this is so, and science tells us it is so, then in the future there will never be a valid moral argument against genocide.

In Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov the character Ivan concluded that if God is dead and the grave is our final destination, “nothing would be immoral any longer, everything would be permitted, even anthropophagy [i.e., cannibalism].”[1]

The French existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre understood the implications of a consistent atheism: “Existentialists find it extremely disturbing that God no longer exists, for along with his disappearance goes the possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven…. Dostoevsky once wrote: ‘If God does not exist, everything is permissible.’”[2]

Jerry Coyne wrote the following in the introduction to his book Why Evolution is True: “If, after all, we are simply beasts, then why not behave like beasts? What can keep us moral if we’re nothing more than monkeys with big brains? No other scientific theory produces such angst, or such psychological resistance….”[3]

In his book, Coyne set forth the stark consequences of his atheistic worldview:

Naturalism is the view that the only way to understand our universe is through the scientific method. Materialism is the idea that the only reality is the physical matter of the universe, and that everything else, including thoughts, will, and emotions, comes from physical laws acting on that matter. The message of evolution, and all of science, is one of naturalistic materialism. Darwinism tells us that, like all species, human beings arose from the working of blind, purposeless forces over eons of time. As far as we can determine, the same forces that gave rise to ferns, mushrooms, lizards, and squirrels also produced us.”[4]

Fortunately for him and his fellow atheists, they are not consistent with their atheistic religion. They have the biblical reality of God’s moral law to thank for that.

Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor

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Gary discusses three recent items that address the ideas of the intellectual “elites” who believe they know how to understand and fix the world. Their primary solution is to eliminate you and others like you to stop you from messing up the world, but their borrowed capital only takes them so far.

Click here for today’s episode

Click here to browse all episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast

[1] Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Richard Prevar and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), 69. Quoted in Mitch Stokes, How to be an Atheist: Why any Skeptics Aren’t Skeptic Enough (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2016), 154.

[2] Quoted in Stokes, How to be an Atheist, 155.\

[3] Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution Is True (New York: Penguin, 2009), xvii.

[4] Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, 224.

Episode 103: How to Talk to Dispensationalists

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 07:04:58 -0400

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 103

Gary answers a question he often receives about having conversations with dispensationalists.

One of the difficulties dispensationalists have in understanding the Messianic kingdom promised by the prophets is with regard to its fundamental nature. Several major misconceptions lead them astray in this regard. We highlight but three: they assert that the Messianic kingdom will (1) be a future, earthly, Armageddon-introduced, political system, (2) require the physical presence of Christ on earth, and (3) be fundamentally Jewish in purpose and character.

For instance, House and Ice write “that Christ will soon rapture his Bride, the church, and that we will return with him in victory to rule and exercise dominion with him for a thousand years upon the earth.” Emphatically this kingdom will not be “until Christ rules physically from Jerusalem.” A proper understanding of the Messianic kingdom requires “a consistent distinction between the Bible’s use of Israel and the church” that leads “dispensationalism to distinguish God’s program for Israel from his program for the church,” hence the Jewishness of the Messianic kingdom.

Despite House and Ice’s confusion, the Scripture is quite clear regarding the spiritual nature of the kingdom. It is a distinctive of dispensationalism that asserts Christ offered to Israel a literal, political, earthly kingdom, but that the Jews rejected it, thus causing its postponement. This view of the kingdom is totally erroneous. As a matter of fact, it was just that sort of kingdom that the first-century Jews wanted and that Christ refused: “When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone” (John 6:15).

The disciples themselves missed His point for the most part, while He was on earth. This is evidenced in the Emmaus Road encounter after the crucifixion, where these disciples lament: “But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done” (Luke 24:21). We should note that Jesus rebuked them for such foolishness: “Then he said unto them, 0 fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:25-27). They expected political deliverance and glory to come to Israel through this Messiah. But Jesus spoke to them of the true meaning of the prophecies of the Old Testament, showing them that He must suffer and then enter His resurrected, heavenly glory.

House Divided: The Break Up of Dispensational Theology

House Divided is a postmillennial book. It does not seek to fight something (dispensationalism) with nothing (amillennialism). You are not being asked to abandon hope in dispensationalism's escape hatch in the future (the pre-tribulation Rapture) only to take up residence in amillennialism's Fort Contraction, with a tribe of howling Darwinian Indians circling it, all armed with repeating rifles. You are being asked instead to join a victorious army led by Jesus Christ, who sits at God's right hand, and who will remain seated there until He subdues all His enemies under His feet.

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Gary answers a question he often receives about having conversations with dispensationalists. It can almost feel like a language barrier, because they will hear the words of Scripture, but reinterpret them to mean something entirely different. Gary reveals a few questions that can be helpful in guiding the discussion.

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Click here for all episodes of Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope

Redefining ‘Quickly’ and Adding Gaps to Make a Prophetic System Work

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 07:44:04 -0400

Brock Hollett’s book Debunking Preterism opens with a discussion of “time texts” like “near,” “at hand,” “shortly,” and “quickly” and seven particular passages where the words appear in the book of Revelation (1:1, 3; 3:11; 22:6, 7, 10, 12, 20). He writes that these “time statements appear in the introductory and closing sections of the Apocalypse.” He claims that “[t]his type of literary device is an ellipsis or parenthesis. This device functions to inform the readers that the issue of the nearness of the Lord’s coming is intrinsic to the book’s main theme.” Hollett used to be a preterist. He switched teams, and like dispensationalists who need gaps, Hollett needs them too.

When you see the word “parenthesis,” think dispensationalism. Dispensationalists describe the church age as a parenthesis, “[a]n intercalary period of history, after Christ’s death and resurrection and the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, has intervened. This is the present age, the Church age…. During this time God has not been dealing with Israel nationally, for they have been blinded concerning God’s mercy in Christ…. However, God will again deal with Israel as a nation. This will be in Daniel’s seventieth week, a seven-year period yet to come.”[1] Harry A. Ironside described it as The Great Parenthesis: The Mystery in Daniel’s Prophecy.

According to dispensationalism, God is now dealing with His Church, His “heavenly people.” God is not, according to dispensationalism, dealing with Israel, His “earthly people.” The promises made to Israel are “postponed.”

The Greatest and the Least: A Biblical Theology of John the Baptist

John was the transitional figure providing a clear path and a smooth road from the covenant with Adam to the new covenant with the Second Adam. As the final and greatest prophet of the Old Testament, John embodied and fulfilled the very purpose of the Law: revealing Jesus as the Bringer of God’s Kingdom.

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An ellipsis means something has been left out, and a parenthesis means something has been added to separate one era from another. There is no mention of either an “ellipsis” or a “parenthesis” in Revelation. Hollett is reading into the book of Revelation something that’s not mentioned. The same is true for those who find a gap in time of nearly 2000 years, the antichrist, and the antichrist making and breaking a covenant with the Jews in Daniel 9:24-27. Hollett doesn’t offer any contextual evidence for his “ellipsis” or “parenthesis” claim. Revelation forbids adding to (parenthesis) or taking away (ellipsis) what was revealed to John:

I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book (Rev. 22:18-19).

Hollett goes on to comment that “preterists correctly teach that these word groups ‘soon’ (ταχύ/tachu) and ‘near’ (ἐγγύς/engus) frequently convey the idea of temporal nearness and likely do in the particular context of the book of Revelation, yet preterists define these words in a particularly restrictive manner that differs from the historical undersanding of these texts.” Not “frequently convey” but always convey the idea of temporal and spatial nearness.

Some commentators argue that the parable of the woman and the unrighteous judge is an exception. It’s not. The unrighteous judge in Luke 18 gives justice to the widow in her lifetime! She receives justice before she dies. The point of the parable is to show how God brings about justice for His elect in a timely manner. He will not delay. “I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly [τάχει/tachei]” (18:8). If the woman received justice from the unrighteous judge in her lifetime, then how can we say that God acts “speedily” when nearly two thousand years have passed since John and the seven churches in Asia Minor were told that the “time is near” and that Jesus was “coming quickly”?

Hollett correctly notes that preterists consider these time words to be important when they appear in a passage related to prophecy. He accuses preterists of using time words as “the primary weapon in” their “arsenal.” It’s not preterists who define the above time words “in a particularly restrictive manner”; it’s the Bible that does. Notice that he says that preterists differ from the “historical understanding of these texts.” What we are looking for is the biblical understanding of these texts. Hollett appeals to “historical understanding” in other places. The Bible is the best interpreter of the Bible.

Time indicators aren’t weapons. These words are found in God’s Word, where they must be interpreted by God’s Word. Determining what these words mean is crucial to interpreting any passage, not just prophetic ones.

He notes that “most of these texts convey the meaning of nearness or imminence.” If this is true, and it is, then the words near and shortly mean “near” and “shortly”; otherwise, why would God reveal these words to the authors of the New Testament if He meant something else by their use? If these words don’t refer to “nearness or imminence,” then what other words should the Holy Spirit have used if He really meant nearness or imminence? Hollett doesn’t say. In fact, no critic of preterism has ever answered the question: If God didn’t mean “near” when He used a word that means “near,” then what other word that means “near” would He have used if He really meant “near”?

Hollett’s assessment of the preterist’s insistence that specific time words are crucial in identifying the “when” of prophetic fulfillment is absolutely true. Given this admission, there shouldn’t be a debate. In the end, Hollett equivocates on the meaning of “near” and “quickly.”

It’s untrue, however, that “the entire system of preterism is built around the primacy of the time indicators.” For example, the Olivet Discourse uses the word “near” in two verses (Matt. 24:32-33). But there’s much more in the chapter that indicates that the events described therein were to take place before that generation passed away. Anyone familiar with a preterist interpretation of the chapter knows that audience relevance (the repeated use of the second person plural: 24:6), comments about the destruction of the then-standing temple (“not one stone here”: 24:2, 15, 33), limited (local) geography (“then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains”: 24:16), local living conditions in Israel (Sabbath restrictions and flat roofs: Acts 1:12 and 24:17-20), definition of the meaning of “near” (leaves on a tree means summer “at the door” defines near: 24:32; James 5:8-9), historical events confirmed in Scripture such as famines (24:7; Acts 11:28), earthquakes (Matt. 24:7; 28:2; Acts 16:26), and false prophets (Matt. 24:11; 1 John 4:1), the extent of the gospel’s reach (Matt. 24:14; cp. Rom. 1:8 [κόσμος/kosmos]; 10:18 [οἰκουμένη/oikoumenē]; Col. 1:6 [κόσμος/kosmos], 23; 16:25-26), related time indicators related to audience relevance (cities of Israel and those standing here: Matt. 10:23; 16:27-28), and the consistent meaning of “this generation” (refers exclusively to Jesus’ contemporaries: Matt. 24:34; 11:16; 12:39, 41, 42, 45; 23:36; Luke 21:32) are also interpretive clues for a preterist interpretation of prophetic texts.

Hollett claims that the evidence he presents demonstrates that “preterism fails to consider the time statements in their proper biblical framework and historical understanding.”

The Great Tribulation

This book introduces readers to the theology of judgment: specifically, God's judgment sanctions against Israel. The sanctions were curses. God gave blessings to the church and cursings to rebellious Israel, which had crucified the Lord and publicly called God's judgment down on themselves: "Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children" (Matthew 27:25). God's cursings on ancient Israel in A.D. 70 matched their crime, the crucifixion of Christ. This crime was the greatest (worst) in history; their punishment was also the greatest (worst) in history. To call anything else "the great tribulation" is to downplay the immensity of that generation's crime.

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Hollett begins his study of the time statements with the book of Revelation. My study of the time statements begins with how words like “near,” “shortly,” and “quickly” are used elsewhere in the New Testament, something Hollett does not do. The words “soon” and “near” are used in the New Testament for events that are close in terms of time. For example:

• John 11:29: “And when she heard it, she arose quickly [ταχὺ], and was coming to Him.”

• John 11:31: “The Jews then who were with her in the house, and consoling her, when they saw that Mary rose up quickly [ταχέως] and went out, followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there.”

• John 13:27: And after the morsel, Satan then entered into him. Jesus therefore said to him, “What you do, do quickly [τάχιον].”

• John 2:13: “And the Passover of the Jews was at hand [near] [ἐγγὺς], and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.”

• John 6:4: “Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand [near].”

• John 7:2: “Now the feast of the Jews, the Feast of Booths, was at hand [near].”

• John 11:55: “Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand [near], and many went up to Jerusalem out of the country before the Passover, to purify themselves.”

Doing something quickly (ταχὺ) in the above passages does not allow for an extended period of time. The action that was done quickly happened in a short period of time. Quickly does not mean that when a person decides to do something—whether in a short or long period of time—it will be done fast. If an employee says, “I’ll do what you ask soon,” and then waits three months, he or she has not done the assigned task. When the employer inquires, “You said you would do it soon. Why hasn’t it been done?” The employee answers: “Soon means that when I act, it will be done quickly. The time in between the assignment and the job does not figure into the meaning of ‘soon’ and ‘quickly.’ When I eventually do the job, I will do it fast.” James Glasgow offers a helpful analogy:

“Wait for the Lord from heaven (after 1000 years); Behold, I come as a thief (after 1000 years); Go ye out to meet Him (after 1000 years); Come, Lord Jesus, quickly (after 1000 years),” etc. etc. … For it is not in our day that the promises of coming quickly were given, but in the day of the apostles; and from their standpoint they must be interpreted.[2]

The book of Revelation uses the word taxos (Rev. 1:1; 22:6) and taxus (2:5, 16; 3:11; 11:14; 22:7, 12, 20) a total of nine times. We find in Revelation 11:14 that the “third woe is coming quickly.” Futurists like Hollett believe Revelation 11 describes events of the last days during a concentrated period of seven years. If “quickly” and “soon” can mean an extended period of time of nearly 2000 years (so far), then how should the use of “quickly” be interpreted in Revelation 11:14 for the futurist? If “quickly” can mean nearly 2000 years in Revelation 1:1, then it should mean the same thing in 11:14, and yet, what’s being described in 11:14 happens in a short period of time. Given Hollett’s definition of “quickly,” the time between the past two woes (9:12) and the woe to come could be thousands of years, and yet the time span of Revelation 4-19 is said to be only seven years.

The time indicator words in Revelation should have the same meaning throughout Revelation as they do every other place in the New Testament (Matt. 5:25; 28:7-8; Mark 9:39; 16:8; Luke 18:8; John 11:29; Acts 12:7; 22:18; 25:4; Rom. 16:20).

[1] E. Schuyler English, A Companion to the New Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 135. Emphasis added.

[2] James Glasgow, The Apocalypse: Translated and Expounded (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1872), 61.

The Importance of Understanding History (Part Two)

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 07:41:00 -0400

Gary concludes his talk on the importance of knowing our own history. (Part One is here.)

A further study of American history will show that there were many founders who were outspoken Christians who are rarely mentioned by historical revisionists. Consider, for example, John Dickinson (1732-1808) who was a lawyer, militia officer during the American Revolution, Continental Congressman from Pennsylvania and Delaware, delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, President of Delaware, and President of Pennsylvania. He is obviously an important Founding Father. About the Bible, he wrote the following:

“The Holy Scriptures are able to make us wise unto Salvation, through Faith which is in Jesus Christ.” “All Scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable for Doctrine, for Reproof, for Correction, for Instruction in Righteousness that the Man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good Works.” The Scriptures give a full and ample testimony to all the principal Doctrines of the Christian Faith; and therefore no Divine or inward Communication at this Day, however necessary, do or can contradict that testimony.

There are others, all of whom signed the Constitution. Charles Pinckney and John Langdon were founders of the American Bible Society. James McHenry was the founder of the Baltimore Bible Society. Rufus King helped found a Bible society for Anglicans. Abraham Baldwin served as a chaplain in the War for Independence. Roger Sherman, William Samuel Johnson, and Jacob Broom wrote on theological subjects. James Wilson and William Patterson were placed on the Supreme Court by President George Washington. They had prayer over juries in the U.S. Supreme Court room. John Witherspoon was a Presbyterian minister and signed the Declaration of Independence, helped draft the Articles of Confederation, served twice in the New Jersey Legislature, and strongly supported the adoption of the United States Constitution during the New Jersey ratification debates.

Don’t these men count? Do we hear only of Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and Adams? Witherspoon, like so many men of his day, believed that reason and revelation were not in opposition. “Hence arises a question,” Witherspoon wrote in his Lectures on Moral Philosophy: “is it lawful, and is it safe or useful, to separate moral philosophy from religion? It will be said, it is either the same or different from revealed truth; if the same, unnecessary—if different, false and dangerous…. If the Scripture is true, the discoveries of reason cannot be contrary to it; and, therefore, it has nothing to fear from that quarter.”

Many Christians of that period agreed with Witherspoon. Even skeptics like Franklin and Jefferson operated within the moral framework of Christianity. They, like Witherspoon, believed that reason could get a person to the same place morally as revelation. None of these men saw what was on the horizon—the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) that turned the moral universe of Franklin, Jefferson, and Witherspoon upside down.

The Case for America's Christian Heritage

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Gary concludes his talk on the importance of knowing our own history. America was founded on a presupposed Christian worldview and didn’t need a lot of civil government oversight because most citizens were properly self-governed. This is no longer the case, and we must recapture an understanding of our Christian heritage in order to have hope and direction for the future.

Click here for today’s episode

Click here to browse past episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast

What Does James Mean by ‘Near’ in James 5:1-9?

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 07:44:18 -0400

James wrote to his fellow Christians at a time when hostilities and attacks were coming from the religious leaders of Israel. The book of Acts shows that some (many?) Jews opposed the Gospel, and many Jews embraced the Gospel (Acts 1-2), including some priests. Priests first confront Peter and John in Acts 4:1, where they, along with the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees, arrest the apostles for teaching that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. Later, in 6:7, a significant number of priests become obedient to the faith, marking a major shift from opposition to acceptance among some of the religious leadership in Jerusalem. What was the response?

So they stirred up the people and the elders and the teachers of the law. They seized Stephen and brought him before the Sanhedrin. They produced false witnesses, who testified, “This fellow never stops speaking against this holy place and against the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs Moses handed down to us” (6:12-14).

Stephen was later murdered by the Jewish religious establishment led by the Pharisee Saul (23:6). Luke tells us that Stephen’s executioners laid their garments at the feet of Saul (7:58), who approved of the mob’s murderous actions (8:1). Saul later ravaged the church, entering the homes of believers and sending them to prison, including female believers (8:3).

After his conversion, Paul was nearly assassinated by a group of more than forty zealous Jews in Jerusalem following his arrest (23:12-22). The conspirators were outraged by Paul’s teachings on the resurrection and his mission to the Gentiles, viewing him as a heretic who defiled the Temple. They swore a solemn oath not to eat or drink until they had killed him. J.B. Phillips writes in the “Translator’s Preface” in his The Young Church in Action: A Translation of the Acts of the Apostles.

Throughout the book the main enemies of the Church’s life, as in the life of Christ Himself, were the entrenched self-righteous—in this case the Jews. The persecution by non-Christians was spasmodic and more than once designed to please the Jews [Acts 12:1-3]. But all the bitter relentless campaign of persecution and misrepresentation, particularly of Paul, must be laid at the door of the Jews. Christ said that “Yea, the time cometh when whosoever killeth you will think he doeth God’s service.”[1]

James was dealing with the issues of his day, “miseries which are coming up upon you” (5:1-6). The “you” was them. It’s possible that whoever this group was, they “condemned and put to death the righteous” (v. 5), as James said earlier: “You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. And you are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask” (4:2).

Jesus said to that generation of religious leaders, “I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from city to city” (Matt. 23:34). Paul may have had them in mind in 2 Corinthians 11.

…imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death. Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes. … dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers at sea, dangers among false brothers (vv. 23-26).

According to Acts 14:19, Paul was stoned by a mob and dragged outside the city of Lystra, where he was left for dead. Jesus was continually threatened with stoning (John 8:59; 10:31-39; 11:8). On one occasion, in the synagogue at Nazareth, the crowd was filled with fury and tried to throw Him off a cliff (Luke 4:28-29).

Revelation and the First Century

With Revelation and the First Century, Francis Gumerlock has done an invaluable service to everyone interested in prophecy and church history. Dr. Gumerlock provides dozens of citations from early church history proving that many of them held a preterist view from the very first days of Christianity onward.

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James tells his readers to “be patient … until the coming of the Lord” (v. 7), which is said to be “near,” and uses the example of a farmer and his planted crops. A farmer could hardly be told to be patient if the harvest was far in the future. Like the farmer, James told his readers, “you too be patient … because the coming of the Lord is near” (v. 8). This is most likely not a reference to the Second Coming. Adam Clarke wrote, “He seems here to refer to the coming of the Lord to execute judgment on the Jewish nation, which shortly afterward took place. He is already on his way to destroy this wicked people, to raze their city and temple, and to destroy their polity forever; and this judgment will soon take place.” Alexander Ross agrees: “The word speaks of the coming of Christ in kingly majesty and glory. Such a ‘royal visit’ took place at the Fall of Jerusalem, when the Divine judgment fell with shattering effect on the Jewish community…. As already stated, in a very real sense the words, ‘Henceforth, from this moment onwards, ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven’ (Mt. 26:64).”[2] This is what Jesus described in Matthew’s Gospel:

• “Now the king was angry, and he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers and set their city on fire” (Matt. 22:7).

• “Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation…. Behold your house is being left to you desolate” (23:36-38).

• “This generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (24:34).

According to Frank Gumerlock, “At least four medieval commentators on the Epistle of James interpreted the ‘day of slaughter’ in James 5:5 as the first-century destruction upon Jerusalem and Judea at the hands of the Romans.”[3] In the book The Day of His Coming by Herbert Henry Gowen, we find the following:

The whole letter is written in the solemn shadow of a great impending judgment [that took place in Jerusalem in AD 70]. The rich**[4]** are to weep and howl for their “miseries which are coming” upon them; the brethren are exhorted to “be patient until the parousia of the Lord.” “Behold,” he cries, “the Judge is standing before the doors.”

Jesus said something similar in Matthew 24:33: “so, you too, when you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the doors.” The “you” referred to those of that generation (v. 34). Henry Cowles interpreted James 5:8 (“the coming of the Lord draweth nigh”) as referring to the imminent destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the Old Covenant age, rather than a future, distant Second Coming. He argued that this “coming” was a time of retribution upon the wicked and deliverance for the righteous, serving as a motive for patience against the specific oppressions and persecutions Christians faced from wealthy Jews and Roman authorities.

How could James have exhorted his readers to be patient if the coming he was describing was a long way off, nearly 2000 years away? A similar question arises in Revelation 6:10. “At hand” does not mean thousands of years. In fact, the definition of “at hand” is in the context: “right at the doors.” The plural may be important as a reference to the temple (Acts 21:30), which Jesus said, “not one stone here will be left upon another, which will not be torn down” (Matt. 24:2).

Albert Barnes offers a similar interpretation.

It is clear, I think, from this place, that the apostle expected that that which he understood by “the coming of the Lord” was soon to occur; for it was to be that by which they would obtain deliverance from the trials which they then endured…. The most natural interpretation of the passage, and one which will accord well with the time when the Epistle was written, is, that the predicted time of the destruction of Jerusalem Matthew 24 was at hand; that there were already indications that that would soon occur; and that there was a prevalent expectation among Christians that that event would be a release from many trials of persecution, and would be followed by the setting up of the Redeemer’s kingdom.

The destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple would contribute to that by bringing to an end the whole system of Jewish types and sacrifices…. The Epistle was written, it is supposed, some ten or twelve years before the destruction of Jerusalem, and it is not improbable that there were already some indications of that approaching event.

Many commentaries do not deal with the Greek word ἤγγικεν,[5] which is almost universally translated as “near” or “at hand.” The following is from a more recent commentary.

One can read “the coming of the Lord is near” in James 5:8 in the context of Paul’s statements about the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, and, if ēngiken [at hand] is understood as referring to something about to happen, then either Jesus did return somehow or James was wrong. Or one can read this text in light of the teachings of Jesus about the parousia in a Jewish context and see it as a prediction of the imminent judgment of God, and in this case one would have to think of the sacking of Jerusalem in 70 AD as told of so graphically by Josephus in his Jewish War.[6] The latter is far more probable, and the next verse tips the balance in its favor.[7]

The New Testament is filled with examples of statements about the nearness of Jesus’ return related to His judgment coming before that (their) generation passed away, from Matthew 10:23, 16:27-28, Matthew 24:33-34, and 26:64 to Luke 17:22-37, 19:39-44, 21:1-36, and Mark 13.

Wars and Rumors of Wars

A first-century interpretation of the Olivet Discourse was once common in commentaries and narrative-style books that describe the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. There is also a history of skeptics who turn to Bible prophecy and claim Jesus was wrong about the timing of His coming at “the end of the age” and the signs associated with it. A mountain of scholarship shows that the prophecy given by Jesus was fulfilled in exacting detail when He said it would: before the generation of those to whom He was speaking passed away.

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In Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, written in the fourth century, we learn of an incident that led to the martyrdom of James, the brother of Jesus. The original story comes from the second-century historian Hegesippus, who wrote his notes on the history of the church between AD 165 and 175. When James was called on by a group of Scribes and Pharisees to explain what he believed was the truth of Jesus as the promised Messiah, Hegesippus reports James said that Jesus “is about to come on the clouds of heaven.”[8]

These Scribes and Pharisees believed that people were “led astray after Jesus was crucified.” James said the following: “Why do you ask me respecting Jesus the Son of Man? He is now sitting in the heavens, on the right hand of great Power, and is about to come on the clouds of heaven.”[9]

After hearing James’ obvious allusion to Matthew 26:64, the officials of the temple cast him down from the “wing of the temple” and later stoned him and beat out his brains with a club. “Immediately after this,” Hegesippus writes, “Vespasian invaded and took Judea.”[10] James, the brother of Jesus, believed that Jesus’ coming was “about to take place.” Hegesippus identifies the coming of Jesus “on the clouds of heaven” with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.

[1] “They will make you outcasts from the synagogue, but an hour is coming for everyone who kills you to think that he is offering service to God” (John 16:2).

[2] The Epistles of James and John (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1954), 92, 93. Also see Douglas J. Moo, The Letter of James (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans/Leicester, England: Apollos, 2000), 223-224; C. Leslie Mitton, The Epistle of James (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1966), 186-187.

[3] Francis X. Gumerlock, Revelation and the First Century: Preterist Interpretations of the Apocalypse in Early Christianity (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2012), 163.

[4] Were the “rich” those who were profiting from money changing in the temple and possibly in synagogues where the 12 tribes were scattered who were encountering “various trials” (James 1:1-2)? Jesus raises the issue when He enters the temple where people were “buying and selling” (Matt. 21:12). Some people, with the approval of the priesthood, had turned the temple into a “robbers’ den” (v. 13). Is this one of the reasons that Jesus said that “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and be given to a nation producing the fruit of it…. And when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they understood that He was speaking about them” (vv. 43-46)?

[5] ἐγγύς and ἐγγίζω in the Gospels and Epistles.

• Matt. 3:2; 4:17; 10:7: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand”— ἤγγικεν.

Matt. 26:45: “The hour is at hand”—ἤγγικεν.

• Mark 1:15; Luke 10:9, 11: “The kingdom of God is at hand”—ἤγγικεν.

• Mark 14:42: “He that betrayeth me is at hand”—ἤγγικεν.

• Luke 16:8: “The time draweth near”—ἤγγικεν

• Luke 21:20: “The desolation thereof ” (of Jerusalem)” is nigh”—ἤγγικεν.

• Rom. 13:12: “The day is at hand”—ἤγγικεν.

• Heb. 10:25: “Ye see the day approaching”—ἐγγίζουσαν.

• James 5:8: “The coming of the Lord draweth nigh”— ἤγγικεν.

• 1 Pet. 4:7: “The end of all” (Πάντων—of the spiritually dead in the previous verse) “is at hand”—ἤγγικεν.

• Matt. 26:18: “My time is at hand”—ἐγγύς.

• Luke 21:31: “The kingdom of God is nigh at hand”—ἐγγύς.

• Phil. 4:5: “The Lord is at hand”—ἐγγύς.

• Rev. 1:3; 22:10: “The time is at hand”—ἐγγύς.

[6] The following items are themes in Jesus’ prophecies about the future that have parallels in Josephus, that suggest predictive prophecy, and that correspond to the theme of God acting in judgment against oppression:

• false prophetic/messianic claims: War 2.252-94 (John of Gischala); 4.529-44 (Simon ben Gioras);

• hideous persecution: 2.297-308, especially 306-8 (Florus); 2.457-80, 494-98 (50,000 Alexandrian Jews slaughtered in A.D. 66); 3.59-63 (Galilee a “scene of fire and blood”), 336-39, especially 336 (surrender of Jotapata), 414-27, especially 426-27 (Joppa exodus leads to sea of blood); 3.485-91 (Tarichaeae valley full of corpses), 522-31 (massacre on Sea of Galilee: blood, corpses, stench); 4.305-44 (bloody insurrection in Temple courts led by Zealots and Idumaeans, high priest Ananus killed); 5.446-59 (500 crucifixions per day), 512-26 (death everywhere); 6.351-55 (the city burns), 369 (“Not a spot in the city was left bare: every corner had its corpse, the victim of famine or sedition”);

• defilement of the Temple: 4.377-88 (by Zealots); 5.11-38, especially 16-18 (lakes of blood in the Temple); 5.527-33 (high priestly murders); 6.1-8 (war ruined it all); 6.249-66 (Temple burned);

• horrors of famine: 5.429-38; 6.193-213 (a mother devours her own child);

• the ultimate in pain: 5.442-45;

• flights ending in horrific murders: 5.548-52 (2,000 Jewish refugees ripped open by Syrians and Arabs when it was discovered that one Jew had golden coins in his excrement); 6.366-73 (flights to caves and among rocks);

• constant observation that all this was the judgment of God (6.93-110);

• corresponding events connected with the last days of Jerusalem before its total destruction: 6.288-309 (star and comet [birth of Jesus?]; midnight light around the altar [birth of Jesus?]; cow gives birth to lamb; gates open of their own accord [death of Jesus?]; chariots in the sky, with battalions; invisible voice saying, “We are departing hence”; a prophet named Jesus [not Jesus of Nazareth] announces judgment). I take this from New Vision, 141 n. 52.

[7] Scot McKnight, The Letter of James, The New International Commentary on the Old and New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2011), 412-413.

[8] Boyd, A Dispensational Premillennial Analysis of the Eschatology of the Post-Apostolic Fathers, 288. Boyd cites Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 2.33. The correct reference is 2:22. The account is also told in William Cave, Antiquitates Apostolicae: Or, the History of the Lives, Acts and Martyrdoms of the Holy Apostles or Our Saviour, and the Two Evangelists, SS. Mark and Luke, 2 vols. in 1 (London: R. Norton for R. Royston, Bookseller to His most Sacred Majesty, 1677), 1:193.

[9] Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, “The martyrdom of James, who was called the brother of the Lord,” 2.23 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1958), 77-78. The same account can be found in volume 8 of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, 763.

[10] Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, “The martyrdom of James, who was called the brother of the Lord,” 2.23 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1958), 77-78. The same account can be found in volume 8 of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, 763.

The Importance of Understanding History (Part One)

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 05:38:51 -0400

In a talk he gave recently, Gary discusses the importance of knowing where we’ve been in order to see the way forward.

No matter what the Constitution states, ultimately “We the people” are the ones who decide. The Constitution could declare that God is sovereign over our nation’s civil governments, and the people could still ignore this truth. All 50 states mention God in some way or another—“Almighty God” is the most used phrase—and yet these states do not rule in terms of God’s sovereignty today. For example, Colorado’s constitution declares “profound reverence for the Supreme Ruler of the Universe,” and yet it supports homosexual marriage and the right to kill unborn children.

Israel received God’s law directly from on high, and yet the religious and civil leaders, along with the people generally, repeatedly acted contrary to the divine demands. Even so, it was God’s law-word that served as the standard for judgment that sent the nation into captivity and brought them back full of repentance.

America’s original founding was rooted deeply in the things of Jesus Christ and His kingdom. The original charter that was given to Sir Walter Raleigh by Queen Elizabeth I in the 16th century was to establish “the true Christian faith.” John Rolfe at Jamestown sought to “advance the Honor of God and to propagate his Gospel.” The faithful Christians who drafted the Mayflower Compact stated that their mission was “for the Glory of God and advancements of the Christian faith.” Supreme Court Justice Brewer (1837-1910) confirmed these facts and many more that were gleaned from our nation’s original documents and referenced in his 1905 book The United States: A Christian Nation:

In no charter or constitution is there anything to even suggest that any other than the Christian is the religion of this country…. In short, there is no charter or constitution that is either infidel, agnostic, or anti-Christian. Wherever there is a declaration in favor of any religion it is of the Christian.

Even some of our nation’s Founders who did not identify as Christians could not escape the impact the Bible had on our nation’s founding and the moral precepts that held the fledgling nation together. America’s Christian heritage is writ large in its state Constitutions, its charters, laws, symbols, and repeated reliance on the overruling providence of God. This is why Justice James Kent (1763-1847) could state that people need religion and morality “to bind society together” so self-government could prevail: “The people of this State [New York], in common with the people of this country, profess the general doctrines of Christianity as the rule of their faith and practice…. We are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity, and not upon the doctrines or worship of those impostors [other religions].”

The Case for America's Christian Heritage

Buy Now

In a talk he gave recently, Gary discusses the importance of knowing where we’ve been in order to see the way forward. America was founded on a presupposed Christian worldview and didn’t need a lot of civil government oversight because most citizens were properly self-governed. This is no longer the case, and we must recapture an understanding of our Christian heritage.

Click here for today’s episode

Click here to browse past episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast

Episode 102: Do We Oppose God If We Defend Israel?

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 07:08:03 -0400

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 102

Gary responds to a recent video by Pastor Jack Hibbs about the “expiration date of the United States.”

When we approach the Scriptures, we must understand, first and foremost, that the Bible is a history book about redemptive history. So, we must ask, “Whose history of redemption is the Bible concerned with? Where was or is this history headed?” These important questions need to be answered. We must remain focused on the whole redemptive-historical picture while we study the individual parts of this history. We cannot neglect one focus for the sake of the other. Here is a helpful illustration.

Four blind men are instructed to reach out, touch, and describe what they feel. The first man reaches out and says, “Oh, it is a large rubber hose.” The next man reaches out and says, “It is a flag or a tent flap.” The third one reaches out and says, “It is a tree trunk.” The fourth one reaches out and says, “It is a rope.” Now, their individual testimonies about each one of these tactile objects, as based on the empirical data that they each had from their sense of touch, make plenty of sense. The fact remains that not one of these blind men had a clue about what they were dealing with because the one tangible reality that they were touching and talking about was an elephant, and yet all of them failed to comprehend or realize this reality in terms of the whole. This failure is what skewed their understanding of what it was that they each were touching.

So, what was said to be the “hose”? That was the elephant’s trunk. What was the “flag” or the “tent flap”? That was the elephant’s ear. What was the ‘tree trunk’? That was the elephant’s leg. What was the ‘rope’? Well, that was the elephant’s tail. Without the elephant in their minds the whole time, they could and did easily misconstrue these component parts of the elephant. They naively thought that the individual parts could be identified accurately apart from grasping the reality of the whole, the whole that was the elephant.

To avoid this hermeneutical error is what we are trying to do per the material in this series. It may seem complicated and difficult at first because we too often do not have an accurate image or mental understanding of the whole in view as we study the parts of Scripture. We are concerned in this hermeneutical series to deal with the redemptive history of the Bible as a whole that was OT Israel’s history as well as with its component parts.

The Hope of Israel and the Nations

The reader and student of the Bible must first understand the content of the New Testament writings in terms of how those in the first century would have understood it. The New Testament is written against the background of the Old Testament. The shadows of the Old were fulfilled in the reality of the New. All the rituals and ceremonies were fulfilled in Jesus. The same is true of the temple, land, blood sacrifices, the nature of redemption, the resurrection of the dead, the breaking down of the dividing wall dividing Jews and Gentiles, and so much more. The New Testament's emphasis is on the finished work of Jesus and its application, not only to that Apostolic generation but to the world today.

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Gary responds to a recent video by Pastor Jack Hibbs about the “expiration date of the United States.” Claiming that Ezekiel 38-39 and Zechariah 14 are about what happens to Israel in our future, Hibbs makes an unbelievable leap in logic. Gary points out the actual context of these passages and the weapons that are being used to show it’s not about our future or the USA.

Click here for today’s episode

Click here for all episodes of Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope

Early Documents in the Debate Over Preterism

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 07:24:28 -0400

While I was visiting my late friend Mike Britton, I spoke with a man who had been discipled by Mike. He’s been teaching a Bible study on prophecy. We spoke on the phone. He told me about a back-and-forth debate he was having with a friend. This friend would not look at alternative arguments. When he was confronted with some hard facts, he dismissed them.

One of his arguments was that the early church fathers knew nothing of preterism, the prophetic view that most of the New Testament prophecies were fulfilled in the events leading up to and including the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. This is a common claim. It’s a false claim, cited so often that it’s become akin to the authority of the Bible.

Much of the debate over preterism comes down to when a document was written. This is especially true for the book of Revelation.[1] If a New Testament document was written before the destruction of Jerusalem, which occurred in AD 70, then any statement about future prophetic events could refer to that event. The burden of proof is on the futurist to prove otherwise.

Thomas Ice has written that there’s not a “shred of evidence” of preterism among the Early Church Fathers. One of the first places a critic of preterism will go is to the Didache. The Didache, also known as “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,” is probably the oldest surviving extant piece of non-canonical, extra-biblical literature that the church has available to study. It claims to have been written by the twelve apostles, but this cannot be proved.[2] While a copy of the full text of the Didache was not discovered until 1873, there are references to it in Clement of Alexandria’s Miscellanies, and Athanasius’s Festal Letter.

New Testament Eschatology: What the Early Church Believed About Bible Prophecy

It has been maintained by some modern writers that the early church was predominately premillennial and exclusively futuristic on Bible prophecy. While these claims have been made with certainty, there has always been a lack of clear historical documentation to support them. Sometimes the historical record has been stretched and exaggerated to fit an already developed theory. But since the futurist perspective has been promoted as an early church reality by so many for so long, few question it. New Testament Eschatology challenges this prevailing futurist view with a careful study of the historical record. The evidence shows that many early church writers understood the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 to be the end of the Old Covenant world.

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In Didache 16, there are 12 references to Matthew 24-25 (24:4, 10-13, 21, 24, 30, 31, 42, 44, and 25:31). The crucial time text of Matthew 24:34 (“this generation will not pass away”) is not quoted, but a form of Matthew 24:30 is: “The Lord shall come and all His saints with Him. Then shall the world see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven” (16.7-8). John MacArthur, whose chapter in The End Times Controversy uses the Didache as a defense for futurism, claims that the “document proves that those who actually lived through the events of A.D. 70 regarded Matthew 24:29-31—and the entire Olivet Discourse—as yet-unfulfilled prophecy.”[3] Nothing in the Didache says anything about “living through the events of A.D. 70.” Further, nothing in the Didache indicates that the destruction of the temple has taken place.

The verses quoted from Matthew 24-25 in Didache 16 obviously refer to future events from the perspective of the author(s). Of course, if the Didache was written before the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, then preterists have their “shred of evidence” that Thomas Ice says does not exist. MacArthur maintains that “most scholars believe it was written near the close of the first century, most likely after A.D. 80.”[4] He does not offer a source for his assertion. The dating of the Didache, like many of these very early documents, is debatable. But there is good reason to place its composition early, prior to the destruction of the temple.

Didache authority Kurt Niederwimmer, after a thorough study of the document, concludes that “the date of the Didache is a matter of judgment.”[5] In addition to MacArthur’s “most scholars,” none of whom he cites, other scholars believe that the Didache was composed before AD 70. In the authoritative work The Apostolic Fathers, we read the following.

A remarkably wide range of dates, extending from before A.D. 50 to the third century or later, has been proposed for this document…. The Didache may have been put into its present form as late as 150, though a date considerably closer to the end of the first century seems more plausible. The materials from which it was composed, however, reflect the state of the church at an even earlier time. The relative simplicity of the prayers, the continuing concern to differentiate Christian practice from Jewish rituals (8.1), and in particular the form of church structure–note the twofold structure of bishops and deacons (cf. Phil. 1:1) and the continued existence of traveling apostles and prophets alongside a resident ministry—reflect a time closer to that of Paul and James (who died in the 60s) than Ignatius (who died sometime after 110).[6]

The definitive work on the Didache was written by the French-Canadian Jean-Paul Audet who concluded “that it was composed, almost certainly in Antioch, between 50 and 70,”[7] “contemporary with the first gospel writings.”[8]

Revelation and the First Century

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In an earlier edition of The Apostolic Fathers, we read a similar conclusion: “In his very thorough commentary J.-P. Audet suggests about A.D. 70, and he is not likely to be off by more than a decade in either direction.”[9] Even liberal scholars, who tend to date all New Testament documents late, acknowledge the evidence for an early date for the Didache. For example, Stephen J. Patterson comments that the trend is to date the document early, “at least by the end of the first century or the beginning of the second, and in the case of Jean-P. Audet, as early as 50-70 C.E.”[10] Andrew Louth writes that many scholars would date the Didache “earlier than the New Testament itself.”[11] Aaron Milavec’s 1000-page study of the Didache also places its composition sometime between AD 50 and 70.[12] Milavec contends that the Didache is not dependent on Matthew’s gospel: “Even in those instances where there is close verbal agreement [with Matthew], the logic and order of the Didache is openly in conflict with what one finds in Matt 24.”[13] Also see E. Earle Ellis, The Making of the New Testament Documents.[14]

So then, if the Didache was written prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, as many scholars suggest, then its use of prophetic passages later found in Matthew 24-25 to describe events that were yet to take place, including “the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven” (Matt. 24:30), makes perfect sense given a preterist interpretation of the Olivet Discourse. Ice has his “shred of evidence.”

[1] Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., Before Jerusalem Fell: Dating the Book of Revelation, rev. ed. (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 1998).

[2] “It purports to be the Lord’s teaching through the Twelve to the Gentiles.” (Sherman E. Johnson, “A Subsidiary Motive for the Writing of the Didache,” in Massey H. Shepherd and Sherman E. Johnson, eds., Munera Studiosa: Studies Presented to W. H. P. Hatch on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday [Cambridge, MA: Episcopal Theological School, 1946], 122. Quoted in Kurt Niederwimmer, The Didache: A Commentary, trans. Linda M. Maloney [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1988], 3, note 14).

[3] John F. MacArthur, Jr., “Signs in the Sky,” The End Times Controversy, 112. “Signs in the Sky” originally appeared in John MacArthur, Jr., The Second Coming: Signs of Christ’s Return and the End of the Age (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), chap. 6.

[4] MacArthur, “Signs in the Sky,” 112.

[5] Niederwimmer, The Didache, 53.

[6] Michael W. Holmes, ed., The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, [1992] 1999), 247-248. Emphasis added.

[7] John A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), 323.

[8] Jean-Paul Audet, La Didachè: Instructions des Apôtres (Paris: Gabalda, 1958), 187-210.

[9] Michael W. Holmes, ed., The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations of Their Writings, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1992), 247. Holmes references Audet, La Didachè, 187-206.

[10] Stephen J. Patterson, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus: Thomas Christianity, Social Radicalism, and the Quest of the Historical Jesus (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press, 1993), 173.

[11] Andrew Louth, Early Christian Writers (London: Penguin Books, 1968), 189.

[12] Aaron Milavec, *The Didache: Faith, Hope, and Life of the Earliest Christian Communities, 50-70 CE (*Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2003).

[13] Aaron Milavec, “Synoptic Tradition in the Didache Revisited,” Center for the Study of Religion and Society, University of Victoria [no date], 19. www.didache.info

[14] (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002), 55

The (Sad) State of Education

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 06:47:49 -0400

Gary discusses the current state of education in public schools and universities.

The biblical view of the future presents the truth that history is moving forward, and every Christian is responsible before God to show himself a good and faithful steward of his God‐given gifts. God requires an accounting.

The kingdom of God has purpose because God directs its every movement. History is not bound by a never‐ending series of cycles, with God powerless to intervene and govern. The future, as Nebuchadnezzar came to realize, is governed by God. Earthly sovereigns who fail to recognize God’s absolute sovereignty will be destroyed:

You [Nebuchadnezzar] continued looking [at the statue] until a stone was cut out without hands, and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay, and crushed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed all at the same time, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them was found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth (Dan. 2:34–35).

The pagan idea of the future is a myth. The future belongs to God’s people and Christians are not trapped in futile historical cycles.

The Christian’s view of the future determines how he lives, plans, and works in the present for the future. Even during Israel’s captivity under Babylonian rule, the nation’s darkest hour, the people were told to plan and build for the future:

Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens, and eat their produce. Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease. . . . For I know the plans that I have for you, ‘declares the LORD,’ plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope (Jer. 29:5–6, 11).

God’s words seemed contrary to what people saw all around them. Destruction and captivity awaited the nation, yet God commanded them to prepare for the future. In spite of every pessimistic view, God wanted the people’s desires and hopes to be future‐directed. Build for what will be. The psychological benefit of such a mind set does much to spur the church of Jesus Christ to greater kingdom activity. A preoccupation with defeat brings defeat by default. Why would anyone wish to build for the future when there is no earthly future hope? Who would invest in a losing proposition? Why should anyone work to establish a godly home, school, business, or civil government when all such institutions seemed doomed despite our efforts?

The hope of the future is real because Christians should know that God governs the affairs of men and nations (Ps. 22:28; 47:8; 127:1; Dan. 4:35). All conspiracies, no matter how well planned, will be put to an end by the God who rules from heaven (Ps. 2).

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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Gary discusses the current state of education in public schools and universities. For all the money being spent and all the focus on “what is best for students,” the quality of the product has been steadily declining for decades. Most students leave high school unprepared for college, and colleges have adapted to this, all the while raising prices and bringing in more and more students.

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How Good Were the ‘Good Old Days’?

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 07:31:01 -0400

• “In 1905, a Vermont doctor and his chauffeur were the first to successfully drive a car across the country from San Francisco to New York. It took them 63 days. Today you can fly cross-country in a matter of hours while using wireless Internet.” — David Bahnsen

• “Nothing is more responsible for the Good Old Days than a bad memory.”

• Everybody is always talking about ‘the good old days,’ and a lot of the nostalgia expressed is simply the result of poor memory.”[1]

• “A certain class of people are fond of talking about ‘the good old days,’ but they are for the most part individuals without imagination and with a very poor memory. As a matter of fact, there never was a time in the history of the world when the days were as good as they are right now in this year of our Lord 1913.”[2]

It’s 2026, and to the surprise of many, we’re still here after two World Wars, polio, the Great Depression, and the Dust Bowl. We don’t know what the future will bring. With that in mind, many people are nostalgic about the past. The writer of the biblical book Ecclesiastes puts the past in perspective when he writes: “Do not say, ‘Why is it that former days were better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this” (7:10).

Matthew Henry’s (1622-1714) comments on this passage are helpful: “The supposition is a foolish reflection upon the providence of God in this world…. One is so much a stranger to the times past, and such an incompetent judge even of the present times, that he cannot expect a satisfactory answer to the inquiry and therefore he ‘does not enquire wisely.’”

Our memory of the past is selective. We tend to block out the bad and remember only the good. Thus, “The best explanation for the good old days is a bad memory.” Read Otto L. Bettmann’s book The Good Old Days—They Were Terrible if you want some historic perspective of where we’ve been.

Authors Carl Olof Jonsson and Wolfgang Herbst write, “Perhaps because we are to such an extent ‘strangers to the past,’ we easily read into the events of circumstances of our own day a distinctiveness and uniqueness that may not actually be there.”[3] Television shows like Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best are not the best ways to view the past:

The 1950s may not be as innocent—or Christian—as people of faith recall. [Gary] Ross believes. “Each era has its own false nostalgia. We all put a picket fence around something. For my generation it was the fifties, and for other generations it will be something else.” Certainly, those of us born after the fifties cannot imagine returning to a place and time we never visited except through reruns. Perhaps conservatives and Christians are calling America to return to a place that only existed in the movies, on television, in Hollywood’s version of history.[4]

Do we realize how modern it is even to own a home with indoor plumbing and central air conditioning and heating? The light bulb was invented in 1879. Before that time, it was candles, kerosene lamps, whale oil, and dangerous natural gas.[5]

Thinking Straight in a Crooked 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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I was born in 1950. Everything I know about history before 1950 has come from reading, discussions with people who were there, and modern media presentations of events captured on film. I’ve read how bad things were when hordes of soldiers raped and pillaged, when tyrants ruled by whim, when cheers went up from the crowds when another head dropped in the basket after Madame Guillotine did her work, when mass starvation was the consequence of utopian revolutions that went inevitably bad, when people died of simple infections because antibiotics had not been discovered, when polio struck the healthy until Jonas Salk developed his vaccine, when the Black Death killed tens of millions of people. I could go on, but you get the picture.

I can remember the mechanical washer and wringer, or “mangle,” that my grandmother used to wash clothes and squeeze out the water. She hung the wet clothes outside on a line to get them dry. Yes, those were the good old days of drudgery, sun-up to sun-down chores that never went away.

The first manned flight occurred in 1903 when Wilbur and Orville Wright took to the air at Kill Devil Hill on the coast of North Carolina. Many who were alive in 1903 saw two men walk on the moon in 1969. Today, a person can fly across the country in less than 4 hours and across the ocean in less than half a day. Christopher Columbus set sail from Southern Spain on August 3, 1492, and arrived in the Bahamas on October 12th —more than a two-month voyage. Now we have around-the-world luxury cruises.

There’s the telephone, first invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. These early phones were attached to the walls in our homes or sat on tables or desks connected by wires to wall outlets. Now we carry our phones with us wherever we go. No wire. No long-distance calling charges. No need for an operator. We have smartphones that are more powerful than the computers used to send men to the Moon. Who in the nineteenth century thought such things were possible? Not even Jules Verne envisioned them.

Humorist P. J. O’Rourke wrote, “When you think of the good old days, think ‘dentistry.’” “The greatest invention of the modern world is anesthetics,” Dr. Gary North wrote. “Prior to 1844, in preparation for an operation, you drank booze until you passed out—hopefully. Then the physician—‘sawbones,’ he was called—got started hacking away.”

The three leading causes of death a hundred years ago in the US were: (1) pneumonia and influenza, (2) tuberculosis, and (3) diarrhea. What’s America’s most publicized health risk today? Obesity! Diet programs are a multi-billion-dollar industry because we have too much food. What a great problem to have—in moderation.

What was life comparable to before today’s polluting automobile? Do you have any idea what city life was like when hundreds of horses defecated in the streets? During hot days, the manure would dry, and the air would be filled with bacteria-laden dust that people would breathe. When it rained, pedestrians would have to traverse through manure sludge.

Sanitary experts in the early part of the twentieth century agreed that the normal city horse produced between fifteen and thirty pounds of manure a day, with the average being something like twenty‑two pounds. In a city like Milwaukee in 1907, for instance, with a human population of 350,000 and a horse population of 12,500, this meant 133 tons of manure a day, for a daily average of nearly three‑quarters of a pound of manure per person. Or, as the health officials in Rochester calculated in 1900, the 15,000 horses in that city produced enough manure in a year to make a pile covering an acre of ground 175 feet high and breeding sixteen billion flies.[6]

The horse population of Chicago was 83,000, and this was after the automobile and electric streetcar had caused a decline in the number of urban horses. In 1880, the cities of New York and Brooklyn had a combined horse population somewhere between 150,000 and 175,000. As one can imagine, keeping the streets clean was a major problem. Some suggested that epidemics of cholera, smallpox, yellow fever, and typhoid were caused by “‘a combination of certain atmospheric conditions and putrefying filth,’ among which horse manure was a chief offender.”[7]

Keeping the streets clean was expensive. Some cities tried to recoup the cost by selling the manure for fertilizer. This caused another unforeseen problem since collecting manure was more profitable than collecting regular trash. Daily refuse often remained in the streets along with the leftover manure. What they wouldn’t have given for a garbage truck and a landfill back then.

The flu epidemic of 1918-1919 killed somewhere between 20 and 40 million people worldwide.

Some say the rise of Islam is a sign of the end. People thought the same thing in the 15th century and before when Islam came into being in the 7th century. Read the opening paragraph to the Prologue of Samuel Eliot Morison’s biography on Christopher Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942):

At the end of the year 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science, and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through the study of the pagan past. Islam was now expanding at the expense of Christendom…. The Ottoman Turks, after snuffing out all that remained of the Byzantine Empire, had overrun most of Greece, Albania and Serbia; presently they would be hammering at the gates of Vienna.

Plug in any year where 1492 appears in Morison’s quotation, and his description reads like today’s headlines. Things looked bleak. The world changed in a day when Martin Luther posted a public declaration on a chapel door in 1517 in Wittenberg, Germany, calling out one of Europe’s major powers.

The Greatest and the Least: A Biblical Theology of John the Baptist

Just like Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel, and the Twelve,16 John was a true prophet sent by God. The real question—just as it was with the previous prophets hundreds of years earlier—was what the people would do with his message of coming judgment. With John, the prophetic office had been reinstated for one final task. God was preparing to do something new in Israel’s midst.

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It’s over five hundred years later and there’s a lot of hand-wringing about the condition of our world. Too often we dwell on the bad and the ugly and dismiss the good as inconsequential or improbable.

[1] Sylvia Strum, 1950.

[2] “The Good Old Days,” The American Food Journal 8:5 (Chicago: B. Meyers & Company), May 1913, 131.

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

[4] Craig Detweiler, “Opportunity Lost,” Behind the Screen: Hollywood Insiders on Faith, Film, and Culture, eds. Spencer Lewerenz and Barbara Nicolosi (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2005), 38.

[5] Natural gas does not have an odor that can be smelled. Trace amounts of a chemical called mercaptan are added to the gas that’s piped into homes. It has a distinctive rotten egg or sulfur-like odor. That so-called gas smell is added to the gas so it can be detected. Prior to the addition of mercaptan, a gas leak in a home could be fatal since no one would know it was happening.

[6] Joel A. Tarr, “The Horse—Polluter of the City,” The Search for the Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in Historical Perspective (Akron, OK: University of Akron Press, 1996), 323-324.

[7] Tarr, The Search for the Ultimate Sink, 325.

The Rod and the Staff

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 06:49:42 -0400

Gary discusses Christian worldview, the pastorate, and current events.

Government consists of sovereignty (legitimacy to rule: Romans 13:1), representation (accountability to the rule of another: Exodus 18:17- 23), law (a moral code by which to rule: Romans 13:4), jurisdiction (authority to enforce sanctions in the name of the ruler: 1 Peter 2:13-14), and continuity (stability and longevity of government: Deuteronomy 28).

The Apostle Paul writes that “all authority [sovereignty] comes from God” (Romans 13:1) because only God is absolutely sovereign and omnipotent (1 Timothy 6:15-16; Revelation 4:8, 11). Rulers, therefore, only have limited authority to govern. God delegates this limited sovereignty to every government (family, church, and civil).

Nebuchadnezzar, ruler in Babylon and claimant of absolute and unlimited sovereignty, recognized the delegated nature of his governmental sovereignty when God made his “dwelling place with the beasts of the field” (Daniel 4:30-33). After being treated like an animal with no sovereignty (Genesis 2:18-20), Nebuchadnezzar repented affirming that God’s “dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom endures from generation to generation” (Daniel 4:34). It was after this that he was reinstalled to his rightful limited sovereignty under God’s absolute government: “My majesty and splendor were restored to me for the glory of my kingdom, and my counselors and my nobles began seeking me out; so I was reestablished in my sovereignty, and surpassing greatness was added to me” (v. 4:36). To be restored and reestablished assumes an initial installation and establishment.

Having sovereignty to govern does not mean that rulers, whether they are fathers and mothers in family government, elders in church government, or civil servants in civil government, always exercise their authority legitimately. It only means that the government is legitimate and must be obeyed unless there is biblical cause for disobedience.

The biblical philosophy of sovereignty and legitimacy in government explains why rebellion against duly constituted governments (family, church, and civil) is sin (Exodus 22: 28; Acts 23:5). “For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry” (1 Samuel 15: 23).

Wherever Christians find themselves under the rule of a tyrant, they are to live under it, but not with resignation (Luke 20:19-25; 1 Timothy 2:1-3; Titus 3:1; 1 Peter 2:13-17). God has made non-revolutionary means available for the dissolution of tyrannical governments. In addition, God providentially works to overrule the works of men. Man proposes, but God disposes. “The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes” (Proverbs 21:1).

God and Government

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Gary discusses Christian worldview, the pastorate, and current events. Psalm 23 talks about “the rod and the staff” as sources of comfort, but what exactly does this mean? These tools are used by a shepherd to guide, direct, and protect the sheep. How should these tools be used today?

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Episode 101: The Seven Churches of Revelation

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 07:37:40 -0400

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 101

Gary responds to various views about the seven churches of the book of Revelation.

A popular argument for a pre-tribulation rapture is the claim that while the “church” is mentioned 19 times in the first three chapters of the book of Revelation, in chapters 4–18 “there is absolute silence.”[1] Similar to the way author Mark Hitchcock places a gap in time between the 69th and 70th weeks of Daniel 9:24–27, he places the same gap between the last verse of Revelation 3 and the first verse of Revelation 4. It’s in Revelation 4:1 that the Church supposedly will be “raptured” because there is no mention of “the church” in chapters 4–18.

Let’s test Hitchcock’s claim. The first three chapters of Revelation deal with seven first-century historical churches, assemblies of believers in Asia Minor: the church in Ephesus (2:1), the church in Smyrna (2:8), the church in Pergamum (2:12), the church in Thyatira (2:18), the church in Sardis (3:1), the church in Philadelphia (3:7), and the church in Laodicea (3:14). There is no mention of “the church” as a universal entity in Revelation 1–3. If Jesus meant the universal church at a time just before a so-called “rapture,” He could/would have used a phrase like “the whole church” (Rom. 16:23). Instead, Jesus refers to actual congregations in a limited geographical area in the first century.

We know this is true because there were other local churches in the Roman Empire: the church in Rome, the “church which is at Cenchrea” (Rom. 16:1), “all the churches of the Gentiles” (16:4), the church that met in the house of Aquila and Prisca (16:5), “all the churches” (16:16), Corinth (1:2; 2 Cor. 2:1), Galatia (Gal. 1:2: “churches of Galatia”), Philippi, Colossae, and Jerusalem (Acts 5:11; 8:1).

If the number of times a word appears is important, and Revelation 4–19 is said to be about Israel, why does the word Israel only appear once after the supposed rapture of the Church, and not until Revelation 7:4? One would think that if the corporate church is in view in the first three chapters because the words church and churches are used 19 times, then shouldn’t we expect to find the word Israel used more than once after chapter three if this entire seven-year period is about Israel? The word Israel does appear in 21:12, but the word churches appears in 22:16.

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 responds to various views about the seven churches of the book of Revelation. Many see a rapture beginning in chapter four because the word “church” is no longer mentioned in the rest of the book. This is not the case, as Gary shows in this brief episode.

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[1] Mark Hitchcock, Could the Rapture Happen Today?, 73.

On What Are You Standing?

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 07:42:59 -0400

In the 1950s, the John C. Winston Company, later to become part of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, published “Adventures in Science Fiction,” a series of juvenile hardcover novels that made up a collection of thirty-six books.

Some of the world’s greatest science fiction writers got their start with the series: Arthur C. Clarke (best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey), Ben Bova, Lester Del Rey, Donald Wollheim, and Poul Anderson. The books originally sold for $2.00. Today, depending on condition, scarcity, and the author, a first edition/first printing with a dust jacket can bring a high price. For example, Ben Bova’s The Star Conquerors is the rarest of all the Winston Juvenile books published. A first edition/first printing copy is offered for sale on several sites for more than $1000. An autographed copy is for sale for $2000.

In addition to the wonderful stories, the books are worth collecting for the cover art. While the books are dated in terms of technology (the use of computers is minimal and email was non-existent), the stories reflect the moral worldview of post-World War II America trying to find its footing. Civil religion was in vogue. In 1954, in response to the Communist threat of the times, President Eisenhower encouraged Congress to add the words “under God” to the original Pledge Allegiance that was written by socialist Francis Bellamy and published in The Youth’s Companion on September 8, 1892. Bellamy’s daughter objected to the addition.

“In God We Trust” and “One Nation Under God” are not indicators of a Christian worldview since most Americans do not trust God, since they generally vote for more government, and the question remains about what God we are under, given the fact that killing unborn babies and redefining what sex and marriage are hardly indicators of being under the God of Scripture.

Pushing the Antithesis

Dr. Greg L. Bahnsen believed that to deal with the academics of the day and their arguments against the Christian faith, it is necessary to do battle with them at the highest levels of scholarship using their intellectual tools against them. He could quickly analyze and give direct and compelling answers to all their objections. Prior to his untimely death in 1995, Dr. Bahnsen delivered a series of lectures on apologetics at American Vision's Life Preparation Conference. These lectures have been transcribed and edited with summary points, study questions, and much more in Pushing the Antithesis.

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A young person reading these books would find a great deal of borrowed capital worldview wisdom sprinkled throughout the 200+ pages of these fascinating science fiction novels like I did. One scene caught my attention in the 1956 novel The Lost Planet by Paul Dallas, a story about how two teenagers try to stop a war between their home planets. The scene takes place just before the teenager from Earth boards a spaceship and travels to the distant planet of Poseida, which is partially underwater.

In a discussion after a Christmas dinner, the topic turns to defending Earth “against an aggression from space,” brought up by General Watkins. He then describes the proper tactic.

As he spoke, the general seemed to become preoccupied with thoughts of the military situation, and he absently deployed salt and pepper shakers with knives and forks on the table, setting up in front of him an imaginary military problem in the field. “It is a basic truism,” he continued, “that wherever possible the best defense is a good offense. Now if we are attacked,” and he brought a piece of silverware in toward the plate that was obviously representing Planet Earth, “not only do we defend the point under immediate attack but,” and here several pieces were quickly moved from the plate Earth to the butter dish from which the attack had originated, “we immediately counterattack at the source of the aggression. After all, if you cut off the head, you have no need to fear the arms.”[1]

Dallas has the General making a crucial point about fighting and winning against an enemy combatant that applies to ideological conflicts. Defending the Christian worldview against unbelieving thought requires understanding that every worldview has a central guiding principle that serves as its foundational operational assumption about the nature of reality.

This means that we must begin where the Bible begins: “In the beginning God…” (Gen. 1:1). God is not a probability argument that we reason to, making us the foundational principle and ultimate authority. God is the operating presupposition from which we reason.

We should never forget that opposing worldviews also have a fixed starting point from which they reason. Such a standing place—a pou sto—is inescapable. The goal is to rock the foundation of opposing worldviews. Instead of blasting away from a battleship by way of particulars, our efforts to undermine unbelieving autonomous thinking are better done by a submarine. Damage the hull, and the ship with all its particulars sinks.

Thinking Straight in a Crooked World

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Numerous starting points are put forward as the foundational basis for unbelieving thought. Here’s a sample of some of them:

• Rationalism: reason rules

• Mysticism: unknown forces rule

• Hedonism: pleasure rules

• Relativism: we get to make up our own rules

• Post-modernism: there are no rules

• Pragmatism: it’s a rule only if it works

• Materialism: only matter matters

• Monism: all is one so there is nothing to argue about

And if specific philosophical systems like the above are not enough to establish an authoritative starting point, then there is the appeal to any number of self-proclaimed or institutionally sanctioned experts: a brilliant college professor, the writings of a Zen Master, the directives of a cult leader, the latest scientific studies, the writings or revelations of self-appointed religious leaders, statistical analysis, opinion polls, the Constitution of the United States, psychics, fortune tellers, frequently quoted philosophers, newspaper and magazine editors, judges, television news anchors, Oprah, the high-minded opinions of Hollywood actors, or even alien life forms.

Even some atheists hope against hope that someone (other than a personal God) is “out there” to give meaning to the cosmos. Abandoning pure materialism, some are proposing that “an invisible force is at work” in the ever-evolving universe.[2] The materialists have become mystics. Maybe it’s from watching too much Star Wars. Of course, when the ever-changing worldviews of a splintered secularism fail to live up to their claims of ultimacy, the university is quick to shut out competitive debate. Speech codes abound. Contrary opinions are suppressed. Outside speakers are hooted off the stage if they ever make it on campus in the first place. The entrenched university worldview—no matter how discredited—must be protected at all costs, even though it’s a philosophical house of cards.

So-called experts, no matter what their field of study or how much information they gather, are finite in knowledge and fallible in practice. Put simply, they don’t know everything, and they make mistakes. For every group of experts who claim to know something authoritatively, there are always other groups of experts who claim they can dispute the findings of the first group of experts. The Bible describes it this way: “The first to plead his case seems just, until another comes and examines him” (Pr. 18:17).

Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky, after compiling thousands of expert opinions and declarations about innumerable subjects over thousands of years, summarize their findings:

Our research has yielded (and we have systematically catalogued and footnoted for the first time) thousands of examples of expert misinformation, disinformation, misunderstanding, miscalculation, egregious prognostication, boo-boos, and occasional just plain lies. And based on our preliminary findings we can say with some confidence that the experts are wrong without regard to race, creed, color, sex discipline, specialty, country, culture, or century. They are wrong about facts, and they are wrong about theories, they are wrong about dates, they are wrong about geography, they are wrong about the future, they are wrong about the past, and at best they are misleading about the present, not to mention next week.[3]

In brief, “Just because most of the authorities in a field are shouting in unison that they know the truth, it ain’t necessarily so.”[4]

[1] Paul Dallas, The Lost Planet (Philadelphia, PA: The John C. Winston Company, 1956), 2–3.

[2] Charles W. Petit, “From big bang to big bounce,” U.S. News & World Report (May 6, 2002), 59.

[3] Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky, “Introduction to the Original (1984) Version,” The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation, rev. ed. (New York: Villard, [1984] 1998), xxvii.

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

God, Government, and America's Christian Heritage

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 05:06:40 -0400

Gary is interviewed by Ricardo Davis from the Constitution Party of Georgia.

Faith gives meaning to life. To determine the faith of a nation look to its institutions. The people, documents, institutions, educational establishments, courts, and halls of government will speak volumes regarding a nation’s faith and its religious commitment. What faith did America exhibit in its earliest days? Was it a faith in the pioneering spirit? The rugged individual? A reliance upon superior reasoning? Or was our nation’s faith founded upon eternal principles? Our forefathers looked beyond their own frail existence to the God who created heaven and earth. They saw the impossibility of accomplishing any task without a firm reliance upon the providence of the God of the Bible.

For generations the true story of America’s faith has been obscured by those who deny the providential work of God in history. The great “Political Textbook,” the Bible, has been ridiculed as an antiquated book of moralisms that has no meaning for our day. Our forefathers, the critics say, were mistaken about the so-called absolute principles of government set forth in the Bible. A new day has dawned in which the principles of the past must be cast aside to make room for the ideas of the future. Some historians even deny the Christian commitment of those who made this nation great. Modern textbooks, for the most part, omit the religious devotion of the men and women who settled this land. A deliberate attempt has been made to distort the facts of the past in order to manipulate the future. The doctrine of the so-called “separation of church and state” has been formulated on the basis of a rewriting of history. A wealth of historical evidence points to the fact that our forefathers knew nothing about an absolute separation as is being promoted by present-day court decisions.

What was the religious commitment—the faith—of our forefathers, the documents they penned, and the institutions they founded? In order properly to understand the religious motivation of our forefathers, it is necessary that we study the original documents themselves.

God and Government

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Gary is interviewed by Ricardo Davis from the Constitution Party of Georgia. The two have known each other for a while, and Ricardo relates how his initial introduction to Gary was through his book, God and Government. Ricardo has been putting those same principles into action in his work in politics and with the Constitution Party.

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