https://americanvision.org/Recent content The American VisionHugo -- gohugo.ioen-usAll rights reserved.Mon, 25 May 2026 07:55:33 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/in-a-little-little-while/Mon, 25 May 2026 07:55:33 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/in-a-little-little-while/<p><strong><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></strong></p> <hr> <p><em>Gary <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/in-a-little-little-while" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">answers</a> a listener question about a Greek word used in Matthew 25:5, Hebrews 10:37, and in the Septuagint in Habakkuk 2:3.</em></p> <p>In Revelation 1:1, John was shown “the things which must shortly take place.” Why must they “shortly take place? Because the reader is told “the time is near” (Rev. 1:3). Jesus defines “near” to mean “at the door” (Matt. 24:33). James writes that “the coming of the Lord is at hand,” and he defines “at hand” to mean “right at the door” (5:8-9).</p> <p>If the purpose of Revelation was to demonstrate that the events of the book were a prophetic certainty that could occur at any time, John could have been told to write, “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His bond-servants the things which must take place.” This wording would have had the effect of expressing necessity without committing to any time parameters, the very thing dispensationalists claim the Bible teaches. Revelation uses this construction in several places (4:1; 10:11; 17:10; 20:3). But by adding “shortly,” Jesus is telling Revelation’s first readers that not only are these coming events a <strong>certainty</strong>, they will happen <strong>quickly</strong> because “the time is near.”</p> <p>Let’s allow Milton Terry, author of <em>Biblical Hermeneutics</em>, to put the debate over time words into perspective:</p> <blockquote> <p>When a writer says that an event will shortly and speedily come to pass, or is about to take place, it is contrary to all propriety to declare that his statements allow us to believe the event is in the far future. It is a reprehensible abuse of language to say that the words <em>immediately</em>, or <em>near at hand</em>, mean <em>ages hence</em>, or <em>after a long time</em>. Such a treatment of the language of Scripture is even worse than the theory of a double sense.</p> </blockquote> <p>Terry is a good judge in this matter since he is respected by futurists and those who believe that the majority of events described in Revelation have already been fulfilled. He is to the point—near means near all the time!</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/files/pwfr_large.png?v=1736370066" alt="Prophecy Wars: The Biblical Battle Over the End Times"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Prophecy Wars: The Biblical Battle Over the End Times</h3> <p>If you’re willing to take the Bible at its word, the study of prophecy can strengthen your faith, but if your trust is in man’s speculations, you will be disappointed every time. And that is why Bible prophecy is such a crucial area for apologetics. Skeptics of all stripes have condemned the Bible as inaccurate merely because various well-meaning Christians have been in error about the End Times.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/prophecy-wars-the-biblical-battle-over-the-end-times" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary answers a listener question about a Greek word used in Matthew 25:5, Hebrews 10:37, and in the Septuagint in Habakkuk 2:3. The NT often uses OT language to show that similar events are soon to pass in the first century. Israel&rsquo;s history often feels like a series of cyclical events and Paul even mentions that these events happened as &ldquo;examples&rdquo; to his generation, &ldquo;on whom the end of the ages has come&rdquo; (1 Corinthians 10:11).</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/in-a-little-little-while" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here to browse all episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast</a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/episode-93-will-jesus-return-in-just-the-same-way/Fri, 22 May 2026 09:00:10 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/episode-93-will-jesus-return-in-just-the-same-way/<p><strong><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></strong></p> <hr> <p><strong>Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 93</strong></p> <p><em>Gary takes a <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/will-jesus-return-in-just-the-same-way" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">closer look</a> at Acts 1:11, which is often pointed to as proof that Jesus will return exactly as He left during the Ascension.</em></p> <p>At His trial, Jesus told Caiaphas the high priest and the Sanhedrin that they would see “the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matt. 26:64). When would this take place? “The phrase… ‘from now on’ means exactly what it says…, and refers not to some distant event but to the imminent vindication of Jesus which will shortly be obvious to those who have sat in judgement over him.”<strong>[1]</strong> What did they “see”? Certainly not an event that was thousands of years in the future. N. T. Wright comments:</p> <blockquote> <p>Jesus is not, then, suggesting that Caiaphas will witness the end of the space-time order. Nor will he look out of the window one day and observe a human figure flying downwards on a cloud. It is absurd to imagine either Jesus, or Mark, or anyone in between, supposing the words to mean that. Caiaphas will witness the strange events which follow Jesus’ crucifixion: the rise of a group of disciples claiming that he has been raised from the dead, and the events which accelerate towards the final clash with Rome, in which, judged according to the time-honoured test, Jesus will be vindicated as a true prophet. In and through it all, Caiaphas will witness events which show that Jesus was not, after all, mistaken in his claim, hitherto implicit, now at last explicit: he is the Messiah, the anointed one, the true representative of the people of Israel, the one in and through whom the covenant God is acting to set up his kingdom.<strong>[2]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>At His ascension, Jesus had come up to the Ancient of Days “with the clouds of heaven” to receive the kingdom from His Father (Mark 16:19; Acts 1:9). Jesus’ reception of the kingdom gave Him possession so that He could do with it as He pleased. He had earlier stated that the kingdom would be “taken away from” those who rejected Him and would “be given to a nation producing the fruit of it” (Matt. 21:43). The church—made up initially of believing Jews and later of believing Gentiles—is described by Peter as a “holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9). It is this “nation” that is in possession of the kingdom by right of transfer. This covenant transfer is confirmed for us at the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7:54-56). Stephen’s murderers objected to being called “stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears” (7:51). His words of condemnation had put them outside the covenant community because they, too, persecuted and killed the prophets by publicly denouncing the gospel message (7:52).</p> <blockquote> <p>So Stephen saw Him, before his death by stoning (Acts 7:56), and thus prophesied judgment on his murderers, at the very moment when he prayed for their forgiveness. The priesthood stood on trial that day, although the execution of their sentence was yet to come, on that awful day in AD 70 when the priests were cut down at the altar as they steadily continued their sacrifices.<strong>[3]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>The church was persecuted by Jewish opposition for forty years after Jesus’ death, once again confirming what Jesus had prophesied. With the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the truth was comprehended by the tribes of Israel (Rev. 1:7). The generation that Jesus said would not pass away until all these things came to pass finally came to understand the implications of their rebellion: Jesus is the one who was given “[D]ominion, Glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve Him” (Dan. 7:14). They were not to look for another (Matt. 24:26).</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/LDM-front_large.png?v=1572279906" alt="Last Days Madness"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Last Days Madness</h3> <p>In this authoritative book, Gary DeMar clears the haze of "end-times" fever, shedding light on the most difficult and studied prophetic passages in the Bible, including Daniel 7:13-14; 9:24-27; Matt. 16:27-28; 24-25; Thess. 2; 2 Peter 3:3-13, and clearly explaining a host of other controversial topics.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/last-days-madness" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary takes a closer look at Acts 1:11, which is often pointed to as proof that Jesus will return exactly as He left during the Ascension. Most futurists use this verse to show that Jesus will return in His physical body because that would be necessary in order to fulfill &ldquo;just in the same way&rdquo; He went away. The problem is that this Greek phrase is translated differently in other parts of the NT.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/will-jesus-return-in-just-the-same-way" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://americanvision.org/categories/microscope/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for all episodes of Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope</a></p> <hr> <p>[1] R.T. France, <em>Matthew: Evangelist and Teacher</em> (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, [1989] 1998), 315.</p> <p>[2] N. T. Wright, <em>Jesus and the Victory of God</em> (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 525.</p> <p>[3] R.A. Cole, <em>The Gospel According to Mark: An Introduction and Commentary</em> (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1961), 229.</p>https://americanvision.org/posts/prime-time-historical-ignorance/Thu, 21 May 2026 07:27:57 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/prime-time-historical-ignorance/<p><strong><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></strong></p> <hr> <p>Katy Tur and an <a href="https://www.christianpost.com/news/ms-now-anchor-draws-backlash-for-questioning-god-given-rights.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">MS NOW panel show</a> that ignorance of our nation’s history is rampant. We’re coming up on July 4th, celebrating the Declaration of Independence in its 250th year. Apparently, some people have never read the Declaration of Independence. Let’s not forget that it’s not a standalone document. The Constitution references it: “done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September <strong>in the Year of our Lord</strong> one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the <strong>Independance of the United States of America the Twelfth</strong>.” That’s a reference to the Declaration of Independence, 12 years after its signing.</p> <p>The MS NOW panel questioned whether House Speaker Mike Johnson’s prayer during a National Mall event celebrating the coming 250th anniversary of America was appropriate or accurate. Here’s what Johnson prayed:</p> <blockquote> <p>You gave our fathers the wisdom and faith to establish this new nation, premised on the biblical and foundational principle that all men are created equal and free before you. Through Your divine providence, our Founders acknowledged and boldly proclaimed this self-evident truth: That every single person is created in your image and that we are endowed by you, our Creator, with our unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.</p> </blockquote> <p>Tur opened the discussion by speculating on whether Johnson was “putting God over” the Declaration and, by extension, over our government. The simple answer is “yes.” Johnson responded with a “newsflash” for MS NOW: “The Declaration literally proclaims the self-evident truth that our rights come from our Creator.”</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/cachfr_large.png?v=1675169569" alt="The Case for America&#39;s Christian Heritage"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>The Case for America&#39;s Christian Heritage</h3> <p>America’s original founding was rooted deeply in the things of Jesus Christ and His kingdom. The original charter given to Sir Walter Raleigh by Queen Elizabeth I in the 16th century was to establish “the true Christian faith.” John Rolfe at Jamestown sought to “advance the Honor of God and to propagate his Gospel.” The faithful Christians who wrote the Mayflower Compact stated that their mission was “for the Glory of God and advancements of the Christian faith.”</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/case-for-americas-christian-heritage" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Sen. Ted Cruz commented, “How can Katy Tur and MSDNC be so historically ignorant? The Speaker is not putting God ABOVE the Declaration—he is literally QUOTING FROM the Declaration: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’” The Declaration also states that God is “the Supreme Judge of the world” and the need of “a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.”</p> <p>What’s the alternative? Anarchy, where everyone does what is right in his own eyes (Judges 17:6)? We have a lot of that today when people celebrate the various assassination attempts on President Trump, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and Luigi Mangione being charged in the fatal shooting of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, on a Manhattan sidewalk on December 4, 2024. Women are lining up to support him.</p> <p>What about a pure Democracy where the voice of the majority is the voice of God and becomes the standard of government legislation? The phrase “democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch” is a metaphor warning that pure majority rule can lead to the tyranny of the majority, where the dominant group exploits the minority.</p> <p>There is so much talk about democracy that few people have considered what our founders said about it. Democracy is no moral cure-all. John Winthrop (1588-1649), the first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, declared <em>direct</em> democracy to be “the meanest and worst of all forms of government.”<strong>[1]</strong> John Cotton (1584-1652), a seventeenth-century Puritan minister in Massachusetts, wrote in 1636: “Democracy, I do not conceive that ever God did ordain as a fit government either for church or commonwealth. If the people be governors, who shall be governed?”<strong>[2]</strong> James Madison (1751-1836), recognized as the “father of the Constitution,” wrote that democracies are “spectacles of turbulence and contention.”</p> <p>Pure democracies are “incompatible with personal security or the rights of property&hellip;. In general, they have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”<strong>[3]</strong> John Adams, the second president of the United States, stated that “the voice of the people is ‘sometimes the voice of Mahomet, of Caesar, of Catiline, the Pope, and the Devil.’”<strong>[4]</strong> Francis A. Schaeffer described democracy as “the dictatorship of the 51%, with no controls and nothing with which to challenge the majority.”<strong>[5]</strong> The logic is simple: “It means that if Hitler was able to get a 51% vote of the Germans, he had a right to kill the Jews,”<strong>[6]</strong> if that’s what the majority of people wanted.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/CLC-front_large.png?v=1625058462" alt="The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States</h3> <p>Organizations like the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State have done their best to ignore the content of the massive compilation of original source material found in this book. If Americans ever become aware of the facts assembled by the author in this historic encyclopedia of knowledge, arguments for a secular founding of America will turn to dust. Reprinted by American Vision for the first time in over 140 years in 2007, we can't keep this book in print!</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/christian-life-and-character-of-the-civil-institutions-of-the-united-states" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Democracies degenerate into exploitation because rulers discover that if they promise certain benefits to a majority of voters, they can get those voters to put them in power. These voters realize that with their chosen ruler now in power, they can pressure him to vote in their best interests by threatening not to vote for him in the next election. The following is attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747-1813). (Note: I have not been able to find the source for it, but it’s true nevertheless.<strong>[7]</strong>)</p> <blockquote> <p>A democracy cannot exist as a permanent force of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote for themselves largesse [benefits] from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always foiled by dictatorship.</p> </blockquote> <p>Randall Holcombe’s book, <em>Liberty in Peril: Democracy and Power in American History</em>, states that while “the Founders wanted those in charge of government’s operations to be selected by a democratic process,” they “also wanted to insulate those who ran the government from direct influence by its citizens” because “[b]y insulating political decision-makers from directs accountability to citizens, the government would be in a better position to adhere to its constitutionally-mandated limits.”<strong>[8]</strong> In this way, “the Constitution created a limited government designed to protect liberty, not to foster democracy,”<strong>[9]</strong> where the majority rule directly.</p> <p>Let’s dispense with all these forms of government and declare, “We have no king but Caesar.” How did that work out?</p> <hr> <p>[1] Quoted in A. Marvyn Davies, <em>Foundation of American Freedom: Calvinism in the Development of Democratic Thought and Action</em> (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1955), 11.</p> <p>[2] Letter to Lord Say and Seal, quoted by Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson, eds., <em>The Puritans: A Sourcebook of Their Writings</em>, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Row, [1938) 1963), 1:209-210. Also see Edwin Powers, <em>Crime and Punishment in Early Massachusetts: 1620-1692</em> (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1966), 55.</p> <p>[3] Quoted in Jacob E. Cooke, ed., <em>The Federalist</em>, (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 61.</p> <p>[4] John Adams, quoted by Gilbert Chinard, <em>Honest John Adams</em> (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., [1933] 1961), 241 in John Eidsmoe, “The Christian America Response to National Confessionalism,” in Gary Scott Smith, ed., <em>God and Politics: Four Views on the Reformation of Civil Government</em> (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1989), 227-228.</p> <p>[5] Francis A. Schaeffer, <em>The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century</em> (1970) in <em>The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview</em>, 5 vols. (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1982), 4:27.</p> <p>[6] Schaeffer, <em>The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century</em>, 4:27.</p> <p>[7] Tytler did write the following: “The people flatter themselves that they have the sovereign power. These are, in fact, words without meaning. It is true they elected governors; but how are these elections brought about? In every instance of election by the mass of a people—through the influence of those governors themselves, and by means the most opposite to a free and disinterested choice, by the basest corruption and bribery. But those governors once selected, where is the boasted freedom of the people? They must submit to their rule and control, with the same abandonment of their natural liberty, the freedom of their will, and the command of their actions, as if they were under the rule of a monarch.” Book 1, Chapter VI – <em>Political reflections Arising from the History of Greece</em>, 217.</p> <p>[8] Randall G. Holcombe, <em>Liberty in Peril: Democracy and Power in American History</em>, 2nd ed.(Oakland, CA: Independent Institute, 2019), 15.</p> <p>[9] Holcombe, <em>Liberty in Peril</em>, 16,</p>https://americanvision.org/posts/from-pittsburgh-to-atlanta/Wed, 20 May 2026 06:49:25 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/from-pittsburgh-to-atlanta/<p><strong><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></strong></p> <hr> <p><em>Gary</em> <em><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/from-high-school-to-college-to-atlanta" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">discusses the providential history</a></em> <em>of his life after high school and college.</em></p> <p><em>The War of the Worlds</em> depicts a clash between <em>very</em> alien societies—one planetary world hell-bent on destroying another. The fictionalized Martian attack was relentless. Cobra-like periscopes emitted pulverizing beams of energy that ravaged the countryside. The sleek and deceptively beautiful Martian flying machines destroyed everything in their path.</p> <p>A similar war rages in our own day. The invasion is not extraterrestrial in the usual sense. Alien worldviews, however, have made their way to planet Earth bringing with them even greater devastation than that depicted in the fictional <em>War of the Worlds</em>. Today’s real-life battle is between the worldview of biblical Christianity where the infinite and sovereign God of the universe reigns and rules and the worldview of the many varieties of man-centered belief systems where finite and dependent creatures work to rule and reign independent of God.</p> <p>Man-centered worldviews oppose the biblical worldview at every point. Truth is turned into a lie (Rom. 1:25); good becomes evil, and evil good (Isa. 5:20); darkness is substituted for light, and light for darkness (Matt. 6:23; John 3:19; Isa. 5:20); a “futile” and “depraved mind” (Eph. 4:17; Rom. 1:28) is preferred over a “renewed mind” (Rom. 12:2). “It must be emphasized that it is not just a question of the <em>mental</em> rejection of the truth, for what is involved is nothing less than the rebellion of the whole man, man in the totality of his being, mind, emotion, and will, against God. It is the refusal to give God the glory which is his due.”<strong>[1]</strong></p> <p>The Bible tells us that those who parade their alien, anti-biblical worldviews “are without excuse. . . . For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks” (Rom. 1:20–21). The rejection of the sovereign God of the Bible leads to a downward spiral that begins with perverse thinking and degenerates into corrupt action. What was originally designed to be straight, man has made crooked by suppressing the truth in unrighteousness (Deut. 32:5; Psalm 125:5; Prov. 2:15; 3:32; 14:2; 17:20; 21:8; Phil. 2:15).</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0220/1508/products/bkp0397_front__84725.1286483519.1280.1280_large.jpg?v=1371841572" alt="Thinking Straight in a Crooked World"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Thinking Straight in a Crooked World</h3> <p>The nursery rhyme ‘There Was a Crooked Man’ is an appropriate description of how sin affects us and our world. We live in a crooked world of ideas evaluated by crooked people. Left to our crooked nature, we can never fully understand what God has planned for us and His world. God has not left us without a corrective solution. He has given us a reliable reference point in the Bible so we can identify the crookedness and straighten it.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/thinking-straight-in-a-crooked-world" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary discusses the providential history of his life after high school and college and how he met and worked with Greg Bahnsen, David Chilton, Ken Gentry, and many others. This excerpt is from the Burros of Berea podcast.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/from-high-school-to-college-to-atlanta" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here to browse all episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast</a></p> <p><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-77-testimonies-gary-demar-for-god-and-country/id1588605731?i=1000584078209" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Listen to the full interview here</a></p> <hr> <p><strong>[1]</strong> Philip Edgcumbe Hughes, “Crucial Biblical Passages for Christian Apologetics,” in <em>Jerusalem and Athens: Critical Discussions on the Philosophy and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til</em>, ed. E.R. Geehan (Nutley, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1971), 136.</p>https://americanvision.org/posts/prophetic-dealing-off-the-bottom-of-the-deck/Tue, 19 May 2026 08:08:04 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/prophetic-dealing-off-the-bottom-of-the-deck/<p><strong><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></strong></p> <hr> <p>Imagine yourself hearing or reading the New Testament gospels and letters for the first time as they circulated throughout the Roman Empire. Would anyone in those days have constructed the prophetic wild child that passes for biblical eschatology today with gaps between a number like 70, redefining Greek words like “near” and “shortly” by quoting 2 Peter 3:8, when they were common words of their time?</p> <p>How about those who first read Ezekiel’s prophecy about Gog and Magog and the use of the Hebrew word <em>rosh</em> (used 600+ times in the OT and means head and chief and not ‘Russia’) and decided that it described a battle far in the future to be fought with space-age weapons, where bows and arrows would be missile launchers and missiles, and referred to an Islamic antichrist? Pop Prophecy has a long history, as this list of Gog and Magog Candidates through the centuries shows from Frank Gumerlock’s book <em>The Day and the Hour</em>.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/DAHfront_large.png?v=1673474916" alt="The Day and the Hour: Christianity&#39;s Perennial Fascination with Predicting the End of the World"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>The Day and the Hour: Christianity&#39;s Perennial Fascination with Predicting the End of the World</h3> <p>In The Day and The Hour, Gumerlock spans two thousand years of conjecture on the last days, disclosing the dreams and delusions of those who believed that their sect was the 144,000 of Revelation 7; that the 1290 days of Daniel 12 had expired in their generation; that the "Man of Sin" of II Thessalonians 2 was reigning in their time; that a Rapture of the saints, a Great Tribulation, a Battle of Armageddon were just around the corner; or that a Millennial Kingdom was about to dawn.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/the-day-and-the-hour-christianitys-perennial-fascination-with-predicting-the-end-of-the-world" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <ol> <li>Goths (4th century)</li> <li>Goths and Moors (5th century)</li> <li>Huns (7th century)</li> <li>Islamic Empire (8th century)</li> <li>Hungarians (10th century)</li> <li>Mongols (14th century)</li> <li>Persecution of the Lollards (14th century)</li> <li>Turks (16th century)</li> <li>Mohammedans and the Papacy (16th century)</li> <li>Pope and Spain (16th century)</li> <li>Native Americans (17th century)</li> <li>France (18th century).</li> </ol> <p>When Jesus said, “this generation will not pass away,” does anyone honestly believe that those who heard what Jesus said would have interpreted “this generation” to mean a distant generation was in view? Not based on what Matthew 24:33 states. Why tell <em>them</em> (note the use of ‘<em>you</em>’ throughout the Olivet Discourse) to flee to the mountains, like the way Lot was told to flee to the mountains in Genesis 19, if Jesus was not referring to <em>them</em>? Do you think Lot thought God had a distant generation in mind when he was told to flee to the mountain? No, he fled!</p> <p>The religious leaders knew Jesus was talking about them: “When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, <strong>they</strong> understood that He was speaking about <strong>them</strong>. And although they sought to arrest Him, they feared the crowds, since they considered Him to be a prophet” (Matt. 21:45-46). Jesus meant to say, “No, it’s about a future generation of Jews who will be slaughtered during a Great Tribulation because that generation will just happen to be there at that time.”</p> <p>What do we make of Jesus’ response to the high priest? “You have said it yourself. But I tell <strong>you</strong> [plural], from now <em>on</em> <strong>you</strong> will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matt. 26:64). I guess the high Priest was mistaken in not understanding Jesus to mean a future generation when He will come again: “Then the high priest tore his robes and said, ‘He has blasphemed! What further need do we have of witnesses? See, you have now heard the blasphemy; what do you think?’ They answered, ‘He deserves death!’” (vv. 65-66) I guess Jesus didn’t have time to tell them that His coming was way in the future, and there was nothing for that generation to worry about.</p> <p>But dispensationalists and those associated with their end-time beliefs always have a prophetic ace up their sleeves when someone shows a nearly unbeatable hand. It’s called “double fulfillment.” But there’s always someone with a “triple fulfillment” card. Dealing off the bottom of the deck is also popular.</p> <p>I found this comment interesting by someone who rejected preterism and went back to premillennialism after listening to Joel Richardson: “This is what happens when you read the Old Testament on its own terms, without spiritualising &amp; allegorising all the promises made by God to Israel, applying them to the church.”</p> <p>First, but this is what ALL dispensationalists and their kin do with chapters like Ezekiel 38 and 39. “Those ancient weapons are only symbols of modern weapons because the people in Ezekiel&rsquo;s day and beyond for nearly 2500 years could not have understood future weaponry.” No matter how many parallels there are with the book of Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah, there’s always “But what about that verse?” One verse can be used to nullify a hundred or more.</p> <p>Second, the ‘church’ is not something new in the NT. The Greek word 𝙚𝙠𝙠𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙞𝙖 is commonly used for ‘assembly’ or ‘congregation,’ as in Acts 7:38: “the congregation (𝙚𝙠𝙠𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙞𝙖) in the wilderness.” The KJV translates 𝙚𝙠𝙠𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙞𝙖 in Acts 7:38 and Hebrews 2:12 as ‘church.’</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/figtree_large.png?v=1578455246" alt="The Rapture and the Fig Tree Generation"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>The Rapture and the Fig Tree Generation</h3> <p>Since the national reestablishment of Israel in 1948, countless books and pamphlets have been written defending the doctrine assuring readers that it could happen at any moment. Some prophecy writers claimed the “rapture” would take place before 1988. We are far removed from that date. Where are we in God’s prophetic timetable? </p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/the-rapture-and-the-fig-tree-generation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Third, the promises made to Israel were being fulfilled in the NT, and many Jews understood that (Acts 2:37-42). What dispensationalists must explain is how an eternal covenant can be postponed for more than 2000 years!</p> <p>Fourth, what will be the result of renewing that long-overdue ‘eternal’ covenant? Millions of Jews will be slaughtered during the Great Tribulation based on Zechariah 13:7-9. Why would God single out a generation that had nothing to do with the rejection of Jesus, based on what we read in Acts 2:22-23? It was that “perverse generation” (2:40) that was going to come under judgment and did. Unlike today’s eschatologists who claim to love the Jews, Jesus warned those of that generation (Matt. 24:34) how they could escape it (24:15-20; Luke 21:20). You never hear Joel Richardson and dispensationalists telling Jews to leave Israel because millions of them are going to be wiped out!</p>https://americanvision.org/posts/so-youre-a-preterist-now-what-part-two/Mon, 18 May 2026 07:11:40 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/so-youre-a-preterist-now-what-part-two/<p><strong><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></strong></p> <hr> <p><em>In the <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/so-youre-a-preterist-now-what-part-two" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">conclusion</a> of this conference talk, Gary discusses the worldview implications of eschatology and why they&rsquo;re so important.</em></p> <p>The ungodly are involved in a game of self-deception, so that even they are “being deceived” when they think their worldview will ultimately prevail. We also must remember the previous words of Paul: “But they will not make further progress; for their folly will be obvious to all” (2 Timothy 3:9). While the ungodly burn themselves out on present-oriented living, the faithful steadily influence their world: “You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of” (2 Tim. 3:14). In time, faithfulness will be rewarded: “And let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we shall reap if we do not grow weary” (Gal. 6:9).</p> <p>Paul does not deny “persecutions” and “sufferings” (2 Tim. 3:11). In fact, his words echo those of Jesus: “In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Paul can tell Timothy, “out of them all the Lord delivered me!” (2 Tim. 3:11). If God delivered Paul and the Christian church of the first century from Jewish persecution and Roman tyranny, what leads us to believe that God cannot and will not do the same today? A belief in the inevitability of certain prophetic events, the belief that we are the terminal generation, can lead to a spirit of malaise, indifference, and despair.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/mlht1_large.png?v=1365620692" alt="Myths. Lies, and Half-Truths"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Myths. Lies, and Half-Truths</h3> <p>There was a time when the gospel of Jesus Christ touched every area of a person’s life and the world in which he lived. This is no longer the case. Our nation is in a crisis. The world is crying out for answers in the face of bewildering and seemingly unsolvable problems. Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths demonstrates that the Bible has real answers and shows that the church has been instrumental throughout history in the development of what is uniformly described as a comprehensive Christian worldview.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/myths-lies-and-half-truths" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>In the conclusion of this conference talk, Gary discusses the worldview implications of eschatology and why they&rsquo;re so important. Believing something is one thing, but acting on that belief has daily consequences. Morality, ethics, education, and social action all stem from a person&rsquo;s ultimate commitment to their beliefs about the future.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/so-youre-a-preterist-now-what-part-two" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here to browse all episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast</a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/episode-92-debunking-major-signs-that-the-end-is-near/Fri, 15 May 2026 08:09:30 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/episode-92-debunking-major-signs-that-the-end-is-near/<p><strong><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></strong></p> <hr> <p><strong>Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 92</strong></p> <p><em>Gary <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/debunking-major-signs-that-the-end-is-near" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">responds</a> to an article titled &ldquo;Major Signs That the End of Life as We Know It is Near.&rdquo;</em></p> <p>It’s no wonder that Jesus applied the judgment against Babylon (Isa. 13; Matt. 24:29) to [His own] generation (Matt. 24:34). Peter described that generation as “this perverse generation” (Acts 2:40). Jesus withdrew from the religious leaders and the crowds and entered Gentile territory. This is the region referred to when He condemned the unwillingness of fellow Israelites to repent (Matt. 11:20-24). The stone temple had no significance to the Gentiles. Accepting Jesus was to embrace the everlasting temple and bypass the temporary stone temple that had always been planned to be done away with because it accomplished its stated goal as a type of the true temple, Jesus.</p> <p>The dividing wall between Jews and the nations was removed (Eph. 2:11-22). Jesus was about to turn the tables on the unbelieving religious leaders in His encounters with the Canaanite (Syrophoenician) woman who begged Him to cure her daughter (Matt. 15:21-28). Jesus initially refuses her request saying, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs” (15:26). But under the New Covenant, people “from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues” stand “before the throne and before the Lamb” and are “clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb’” (Rev. 7:9-10). The world was opened for the gospel. Distinctions among nations would no longer exist in Jesus.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/files/z14fr_large.png?v=1776945869" alt="Making Prophetic Sense of Zechariah 14"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Making Prophetic Sense of Zechariah 14</h3> <p>Zechariah 14 has been interpreted in various ways throughout history. The chapter describes a future “Day of the Lord.” How far in the future is that time, and what events does the final chapter of Zechariah describe? Making Prophetic Sense of Zechariah 14 covers a lot of ground, including the history of interpretation going back centuries. As this volume points out, interpretations vary, and some are radically different, even when they agree on the time of fulfillment. There is no consensus, given the fact that it’s one of the most difficult prophetic sections found in Scripture, as many well-known and respected commentators have admitted.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/making-prophetic-sense-of-zechariah-14" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary responds to an article titled &ldquo;Major Signs That the End of Life as We Know It is Near.&rdquo; Not surprisingly, the article uses biblical language to prove what it claims, and yet ignores both the context and the time frame of the original writing of the New Testament documents.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/debunking-major-signs-that-the-end-is-near" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://americanvision.org/categories/microscope/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for all episodes of Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope</a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/what-israel-is-really-all-about/Thu, 14 May 2026 07:24:20 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/what-israel-is-really-all-about/<p><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></p> <hr> <p>What is the focus of redemptive history? Is it Jesus or the modern state of Israel? This is not a trick question. Every Christian would say Jesus is the focus and center of redemptive history. Our calendars used to use BC for <em>Before Christ</em> and AD for <em>Anno Domini</em>, that is, “the Year of our Lord.” Our nation’s Constitution affirms this in words just below George Washington’s signature, “Done in the Year of our Lord &hellip; one thousand seven hundred and Eighty-seven.” The year 1787 marked the number of years since the birth of Jesus Christ. In academic, scientific, and educational contexts, BC has been replaced by BCE (Before Common Era), and AD by CE (Common Era). So far, we still follow the dating based on the birth of Jesus that even BCE and CE acknowledge. Our constitutional framers did not do what the French Revolutionaries did by starting with a ‘New Year One’ and replacing the seven-day creation week with a ten-day week. Our Constitution notes that Sunday is a day of rest based on the change from the seventh day (Saturday) Sabbath to the first day of the week (Sunday), the “Lord’s Day” based on the biblical calendar (Article I, Section 7, Clause 2).</p> <p>The birth of Jesus changed the world forever, and Israel was the chosen nation to make it happen.</p> <blockquote> <p>For to us a child is born,<br> to us a son is given;<br> and the government shall be upon his shoulder,<br> and his name shall be called<br> Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,<br> Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (Isa. 9:6).</p> </blockquote> <p>Without the nation of Israel, the redemptive work of Jesus would not have happened. The genealogies found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke confirm this truth.</p> <blockquote> <p>So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations (Matt. 1:17).</p> </blockquote> <p>The magi inquired about the “King of the Jews” (Matt. 2:2). Even in death, Jesus was identified as “the King of the Jews.”</p> <ol> <li> <p>“This is Jesus the King of the Jews” (Matt. 27:37).</p> </li> <li> <p>“The King of the Jews” (Mark 15:26).</p> </li> <li> <p>“This is the King of the Jews” (Luke 23:38).</p> </li> <li> <p>“Jesus the Nazarene, the King of the Jews (John 19:19).</p> </li> </ol> <p>This declaration was a worldwide proclamation. We learn from John that the inscriptions were written “in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek” (John 19:20), the main languages of the Middle East, Asia Minor, and the farthest boundaries of the Roman Empire at that time. At least some portions of the Bible have been translated into more than 4,000 languages, out of a total of 7,396 known languages (including sign languages and Braille) to proclaim that Jesus is the source of reconciliation with God.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/godandgovt_large.png?v=1608039906" alt="God and Government"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>God and Government</h3> <p>With a fresh new look, more images, an extensive subject and scripture index, and an updated bibliography, God and Government is ready to prepare a whole new generation to take on the political and religious battles confronting Christians today. May it be used in a new awakening of Christians in America—not just to inform minds, but to stimulate action and secure a better tomorrow for our posterity.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/god-and-government" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Christianity would not exist without the Jewish nation. God made that the case. That’s why Israel was chosen by God.</p> <blockquote> <p>“The LORD did not make you His beloved nor choose you because you were greater in number than any of the peoples, since you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the LORD loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the LORD brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt (Deut. 7:7-8).</p> </blockquote> <p>The message of the kingdom went first “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt. 10:6). Paul declared that the gospel message was “to the Jew first” (Rom. 1:16; 2:9). Israel’s role in God’s redemptive plan for the world is self-evident. No matter how unfaithful Israel had been in the past, sent into exile for 70 years, and nearly wiped out by the evil Haman (Esther 3), God faithfully guided and directed His chosen nation through people like Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph, Simeon and Anna, John the Baptist, and Jesus’ disciples, Let’s not forget Stephen, Paul, and Timothy, among others.</p> <p>So, what of Israel today? What role does Israel play in prophetic history? What’s left on the prophetic calendar to be accomplished? Has anything been postponed? Will the temple be rebuilt? Should it be rebuilt? Nothing in the New Testament says anything about a rebuilt temple. There is no need for one because the temple was always planned for obsolescence. Jesus was the temple (John 2:13-22). He was “the door” (10:7, 9) and the “chief cornerstone” (Matt. 21:42; Acts 4:11; Eph. 2:20; 1 Peter 2:6). Jesus serves as the High Priest and Mediator between God and humanity, a role most fully explained in the New Testament book of Hebrews. Unlike the Old Testament Levitical priests who offered repeated animal sacrifices, Jesus offered Himself as the perfect, once-for-all sacrifice for sin, thereby securing eternal redemption.</p> <p>Today&rsquo;s pop-prophecy writers continually accuse those who hold to these truths of being ‘antisemitic&rsquo; because we believe the gospel unites Jews and Gentiles in Christ (Eph. 2:11-22). We believe the destruction of the temple in AD 70 marked the end of the covenant’s exclusive and temporary nature with Israel. This never meant that God was finished with Israel, not in the least. The first believers were Jews. The first New Testament <em>ekklēsia</em> (improperly translated as ‘church’) was made up exclusively of Jews (Acts 5:11). The first evangelists were Jews. Jews were being saved from “every nation under heaven” (2:5). The gospel went to “the Jew first and also the Greek” (Rom. 1:16). Paul&rsquo;s message was “for the sake of the hope of Israel”<strong>[1]</strong> (Acts 28:20). Of course, there was opposition from many of the Jewish religious leaders (28:22-30).</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/files/HOIAN1_large.png?v=1752935538" alt="The Hope of Israel and the Nations"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>The Hope of Israel and the Nations</h3> <p>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.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/a/bundles/the-hope-of-israel-and-the-nations-two-volume-series-byue" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Additionally, the Bible records a significant event in Acts 6:7 , where “a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith” and joined the early Christian community in Jerusalem, marking a transition in which the traditional priestly role expanded to include believers. Paul was never deterred from his mission because he knew that not every Jew would come to Christ, and that has not changed. Dispensationalists want to revive that period of history that included the destruction of the temple that took place before that generation passed away (Matt. 24:1-3, 34). They believe and teach that there will be another Jewish holocaust that will result in the slaughter of millions of Jews and billions of non-Jews around the world. They tell us that this is a prophetic inevitability.</p> <p>These facts are not up for debate. The Bible is clear. Does this mean that Jews today are disenfranchised? Not any more than non-Jews are disenfranchised. Peter gave this answer to this question: “What must I do to be saved?”</p> <blockquote> <p>“Repent, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far away, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.” And with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on urging them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation!” (Acts 2:38-40)</p> </blockquote> <p>That answer has not changed. It remains the same for Jews and non-Jews. It’s the starting point—not the end point—of worldview thinking and application. End-time thinkers can’t think beyond what they believe are inevitable prophetic events: zero hope for the church and sure disaster for a single end-time generation of Jews living in Israel. We are in a waiting game in anticipation of some great end-time cataclysmic events that can’t be avoided. Nothing is going to be built because it’s all going to be destroyed. Lovers of Israel only see hope when Jesus returns to Earth to set up His millennial kingdom. We sit. We wait. We anticipate. Nothing on this side of Revelation 20 matters.</p> <p>Can you imagine what the world would have been like through the centuries if Christians had embraced this kind of thinking? Israel is not the focus of history. Jesus is. If you love Israel, then make that the message.</p> <hr> <p>[1] Kim Burgess with Gary DeMar, <a href="https://store.americanvision.org/a/bundles/the-hope-of-israel-and-the-nations-two-volume-series-byue" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">The Hope of Israel and the Nations, 2 vols</a>. (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2024).</p>https://americanvision.org/posts/so-youre-a-preterist-now-what-part-one/Wed, 13 May 2026 08:25:52 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/so-youre-a-preterist-now-what-part-one/<p><strong><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></strong></p> <hr> <p><em>In this <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/so-youre-a-preterist-now-what-part-one" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">first part</a> of a conference talk, Gary discusses the worldview implications of eschatology and why they&rsquo;re so important.</em></p> <p>While it is true there is an attempt by the ungodly to dominate culture, and some are successful for a season, the fact is, that over time “they will not make further progress” (2 Timothy 3:9); their fling with ungodliness is only temporary (cf. Rom. 1:18–32). Christians can be optimistic even if the actions of the ungodly increase in their own day. If Christians remain faithful in influencing their world with the gospel and applying a Christian worldview to every area of life, the world can and will change. History and God’s providential care are on our side.</p> <p>Paul, however, does not allow Christians to remain passive as the ungodly self-destruct. Timothy has followed Paul’s “teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, persecutions, [and] sufferings” (2 Tim. 3:10–11), and he calls on us to do the same. While the ungodly expend capital from their contrary and corrupted worldview on present-oriented living, the Christian is to develop future-oriented spiritual capital to replace the bankrupt culture of secularism, humanism, materialism, relativism, and hedonism.</p> <p>Notice that the characteristics of the ungodly are all self-directed and short-lived, summarized by the phrase “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Tim. 3:4). Sin has its pleasure for a short period of time: “He who loves pleasure will become a poor man; he who loves wine and oil will not become rich” (Prov. 21:17). The love of pleasure is no investment in the future.</p> <p>The characteristics of the godly are directed toward the future, foregoing the lure of present pleasures for future blessings. Teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love and perseverance take time and energy from the present but result in lasting rewards. Moreover, even persecutions and sufferings should not deter future-oriented Christians because “out of them all the Lord” delivers His people (2 Tim. 3:11).</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/mlht1_large.png?v=1365620692" alt="Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths</h3> <p>Like the Bereans of Paul’s day (Acts 17:11), Christians should check the veracity of all opinions against the only reliable standard of authority that God has placed in our hands: the Bible. This may mean a change in belief systems for some. There is no novelty in this. God confronted Peter directly about the inclusion of Gentiles into the household of faith (10:9–16). Paul confronted Peter “to his face” on a similar matter (Gal. 2:11–14). There are times when we all need to be knocked off our horse of mistaken opinions (Acts 9:4). “Testing” is a biblical mandate (2 Cor. 13:5; 1 John 4:1).</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/myths-lies-and-half-truths" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>In this first part of a conference talk, Gary discusses the worldview implications of eschatology and why they&rsquo;re so important. Believing something is one thing, but acting in terms of that belief has daily consequences. Morality, ethics, and social action all stem from a person&rsquo;s ultimate commitment to what they believe about the future.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/so-youre-a-preterist-now-what-part-one" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here to browse all episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast</a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/racial-gerrymandering-and-black-victimhood-profiteering/Tue, 12 May 2026 07:44:10 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/racial-gerrymandering-and-black-victimhood-profiteering/<p><strong><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></strong></p> <hr> <p>Exploiting race for political and financial advantage has a long history. Black “leaders” like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton made their living by promoting black victimhood and white guilt. Jackson spent his career shaking down big-name corporations with threats and boycotts if they did not do his bidding in the name of “racial justice.” Rush Limbaugh described Jackson and Sharpton as the “Justice Brothers.” They were anything but in the business of justice. Patrisse Khan-Cullors, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter, “went on a real estate buying binge, snagging four high-end homes for $3.2 million in the US alone, according to property records.” (<a href="https://nypost.com/2021/04/10/inside-blm-co-founder-patrisse-khan-cullors-real-estate-buying-binge/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Source</a>)</p> <p>The new “everything is racist” mantra is being used to keep racial Gerrymandering alive. For decades, congressional districts have been drawn to ensure that mostly Democrat Black candidates would win elections because of their race. Now that’s racist! Consider this map from Louisiana:</p> <p><img src="https://americanvision.org/images/uploads/bluela.png" alt="Gerrymandered Louisiana" title="Gerrymandered Louisiana"></p> <p>The <em><a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-109_21o3.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Louisiana v. Callais</a></em> “case focused on a lawsuit led by the NAACP demanding Louisiana create a second majority-black congressional district. What they were really after was forcing the red state to draw up another Democrat seat. Lower courts helped them do just that. The plaintiffs argued that just one majority-black district was a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As <em>The American Spectator</em> described it, the section established ‘affirmative action for black Democrat politicians.’” (<a href="https://thefederalist.com/2026/05/11/scotus-liberals-caught-slow-walking-another-ruling-to-help-dems/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Source</a>)</p> <p><em>The American Spectator’s</em> Scott McKay wrote. “The Congressional Black Caucus has been the repository of crooks, dopes, communists, and reprobates on a scale unmatched by any other, for the express reason that the districts producing the Star Wars cantina-scene cast of characters that make up that caucus are protected.”</p> <p>Playing the race card is about keeping the Democrat Party in power by keeping Black people under the heel of the Party. The creation of welfare programs for Blacks and poor whites has kept these groups dependent on and empowered by the Democrat Party while the Party’s leaders get rich.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/mlht1_large.png?v=1365620692" alt="Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths</h3> <p>Like the Bereans of Paul’s day (Acts 17:11), Christians should check the veracity of all opinions against the only reliable standard of authority that God has placed in our hands: the Bible. This may mean a change in belief systems for some. There is no novelty in this. God confronted Peter directly about the inclusion of Gentiles into the household of faith (10:9–16). Paul confronted Peter “to his face” on a similar matter (Gal. 2:11–14). There are times when we all need to be knocked off our horse of mistaken opinions (Acts 9:4). “Testing” is a biblical mandate (2 Cor. 13:5; 1 John 4:1).</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/myths-lies-and-half-truths" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Thomas Sowell argues that the expansion of the welfare state in the 1960s significantly harmed Black families by undermining family structure and incentivizing single parenthood. He contends that before the Great Society programs, in the 1960s, 22% of Black children were raised by a single parent, but by 1985, that figure rose to 67%, which he attributes to welfare policies that financially discouraged marriage and father involvement.</p> <p>Black victimhood is big business. It’s an old story. Booker T. Washington (1865-1915) warned of such people within the black community in his 1911 book <em>My Larger Education</em>. He described them as “problem profiteers”:</p> <blockquote> <p>There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.</p> </blockquote> <p>Washington could have had in view, although writing more than a hundred years ago, black people who rail against a black conservative like the late Herman Cain or any Black conservative. Cain didn’t present himself as a victim, and this disturbed people like Al Sharpton. Cain lived at a time when there were “colored” water fountains, segregated schools and neighborhoods, and racial discrimination that few people today can imagine. If anyone had a right to play the victim card, it was Cain. He didn’t feel sorry for himself. He stayed out of trouble, worked hard, and made something of himself without the help of a cadre of “poverty pimps.”</p> <p>Black people are not immune from victimizing other Blacks people. Black-on-black crime is real, and so is white-on-white crime, but there is a distinct disproportionality of such crimes among Black people. In 2024, there were <strong>8,158 Black murder victims</strong> and <strong>6,753 white murder victims</strong> in the United States. African Americans experienced a homicide victimization rate of <strong>28.4 per 100,000</strong>, which is nearly nine times higher than that of White Americans.</p> <p>Washington continues with a story that encapsulates what is wrong with so many black “leaders” and their guilt-ridden white supporters, which shows up in other areas.</p> <blockquote> <p>A story told me by a coloured man in South Carolina will illustrate how people sometimes get into situations where they do not like to part with their grievances. In a certain community there was a coloured doctor of the old school, who knew little about modern ideas of medicine, but who in some way had gained the confidence of the people and had made considerable money by his own peculiar methods of treatment. In this community there was an old lady who happened to be pretty well provided with this world’s goods and who thought that she had a cancer. For twenty years she had enjoyed the luxury of having this old doctor treat her for that cancer. As the old doctor became — thanks to the cancer and to other practice — pretty well-to-do, he decided to send one of his boys to a medical college. After graduating from the medical school, the young man returned home, and his father took a vacation. During this time the old lady who was afflicted with the “cancer” called in the young man, who treated her; within a few weeks the cancer (or what was supposed to be the cancer) disappeared, and the old lady declared herself well.</p> </blockquote> <p>When the boy’s father returned and found the patient standing perfectly well, he was outraged. He called the young man before him and said the following.</p> <blockquote> <p>“My son, I find that you have cured that cancer case of mine. Now, son, let me tell you something. I educated you on that cancer. I put you through high school, through college, and finally through the medical school on that cancer. And now you, with your new ideas of practicing medicine, have come here and cured that cancer. Let me tell you, son, you have started all wrong. How do you expect to make a living practicing medicine in that way?”</p> </blockquote> <p>I am afraid that there is a certain class of race problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well because, if the disease holds out, they not only have an easy means of making a living but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.</p> <p>If the patient gets well, an entire industry of victimhood will get cancer and die. This would be the best thing for Black communities. Until Black people throw off the shroud of victimhood, they will be at the mercy of “doctors” who treat a self-inflicted cancer that only makes the doctors rich. Of course, white victimhood is also real.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/maker-takers_large.jpg?v=1648865334" alt="The Maker vs. the Takers"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>The Maker vs. the Takers</h3> <p>Academic historians of first century Palestine/Judea have been pushing an account of a poor peasant Jesus leading a poor peasant's revolt based on the idea of mass displaced workers in Lower Galilee. The problem is the actual archeological findings paint a picture of an industrious and entrepreneurial economy during Jesus's time there. Reading the Gospels in light of archeology and history, which are now available to us, gives us a very different picture than the one you’ve been told regarding what Jesus taught about work and money.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/the-maker-vs-the-takers" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div>https://americanvision.org/posts/a-worldview-of-optimism-and-victory/Mon, 11 May 2026 06:53:22 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/a-worldview-of-optimism-and-victory/<p><strong><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></strong></p> <hr> <p><em>Gary <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/a-worldview-of-optimism-and-victory-0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">interviews</a> his longtime friend, Kirk Cameron, about how he came to embrace a new view of Christianity and the world.</em></p> <p>One of the reasons we are in this cultural and political mess is partly due to a misunderstanding of particular prophetic texts that claim to teach that the “rapture of the church” is inevitably near (for 2000 years?). Why do battle when “the Antichrist” is inevitably going to take over the world that will lead to the death of billions of people?</p> <p>I’ll let Kirk Cameron, formerly known as the “Left Behind Guy,” explain that the job of the Church is “to push back darkness and stop corruption and disciple nations with the power that raised Him from the dead in a kingdom which wins; it doesn’t lose. Greater is He who is within us than he that is in the world.” As Jerry Bowyer in his interview with Cameron describes it, “In other words, go ahead and polish the brass. Swab the decks, scrape the hull, stoke the coal, grab the wheel and full-steam ahead. This ship is going forward, not down.”</p> <p>In an interview, Kirk Cameron listed some of his heroes of the faith by naming St. Patrick, John Knox, Martin Luther, the Puritans and the pilgrims:</p> <blockquote> <p>They were being run out of the country by a woke mob and what did they do? They didn’t put their head between their knees and cry in their Chick-Fil-A soup and wait for the rapture while the culture deteriorated. They read their Bibles. And they got on a little boat, and they sailed across the world to start a new society that would later become the freest, strongest, most benevolent and generous nation the world has ever known.</p> </blockquote> <p>The promised false hope is that Christians will miraculously escape this soon coming “Great Tribulation” that the latest reiteration of the Left Behind film franchise depicts. Watch it, the tagline tells us, so you won’t have to experience the horrors of the Great Tribulation and possibly go to hell! But what if the entire Left Behind approach to Bible prophecy is more fiction than fact? That’s what this book is about.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/files/lbfront_large.png?v=1683813853" alt="Left Behind: Separating Fact from Fiction"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Left Behind: Separating Fact from Fiction</h3> <p>Will Any Actually Be Left Behind? You might think so, if you've read Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series (written with Jerry Jenkins). You can be convinced that the Bible specifically teaches that in the end times Christians will be rescued from a terrible seven-year tribulation period while unbelievers will remain on earth to be subjected to countless horrors at the hands of the antichrist. In Left Behind: Separating Fact From Fiction, Gary DeMar takes a critical look at the theology behind this popular fiction series and challenges readers to consider a different interpretation.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/left-behind-separating-fact-from-fiction" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary interviews his longtime friend, Kirk Cameron, about how he came to embrace a new view of Christianity and the world. Kirk explains how he met Marshall Foster, how he came in contact with Gary DeMar, and what he is doing now. Spoiler Alert: He is taking his victorious Christian faith to the streets and libraries near you.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/a-worldview-of-optimism-and-victory-0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here to browse all episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast</a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/episode-91-the-esther-connection-to-gog-and-mogog/Fri, 08 May 2026 08:11:08 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/episode-91-the-esther-connection-to-gog-and-mogog/<p><strong><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></strong></p> <hr> <p><strong>Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 91</strong></p> <p><em>Gary <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/the-esther-connection-to-gog-and-mogog" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">interviews</a> Bob Cruickshank, Jr. and Daniel Harden about Ezekiel 38-39 and how the book of Esther connects to it.</em></p> <p>The Gog and Magog prophecy was an ancient battle fought with ancient weapons — horses, chariots, bows and arrows, swords, clubs, and shields — and has nothing to do with our time. There is no mention of Iraq, Iran, Russia, or any other modern-day nation. It’s true that “Gog and Magog” are mentioned in Revelation 20:8. This can’t be the battle that modern-day prophecy writers claim refers to modern-day Russia and current nations in the Middle East since in their view the “Gog and Magog” battle don’t appear until 1000 years after their version of the Great Tribulation. Greg Laurie and others believe the Gog and Magog alliance of Ezekiel 38 and 39 is very near to our time, not more than 1000 years in the future.</p> <p>The careful reader of the book of Revelation will note that there are many references to the Old Testament. Jerusalem is described as “Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified” (Rev. 11:8). Jezebel (2:20), Sodom, Egypt, Babylon (Rev. 17:4-6), and Gog and Magog are used as symbols of judgment because Israel had become like them and would be judged as they were judged. In the way that God judged these unbelieving cities, people, and nations, God would do the same to Jerusalem because of its unbelief and conspiring with the Roman Empire and declaring, “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15).</p> <p>The New Testament does not predict the end of the world (<em>kosmos</em>); only the end of the old covenant order (1 Cor. 10:11; Heb. 9:26) otherwise Peter’s statement that “the end of all things has come near” to them (1 Pet. 4:7) and John’s assurance to his readers that “it is the last hour” (1 John 2:18) don’t make sense.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/gog_front_large.jpg?v=1453287902" alt="The Gog and Magog End-Time Alliance"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>The Gog and Magog End-Time Alliance</h3> <p>Countless authors attempt to make the case that the events predicted in Ezekiel 38 and 39 are on our prophetic horizon, and it seems that each month new books and articles appear insisting that “given the current world situation, nuclear war is inevitable” based on what we read in Ezekiel’s prophecy. What if we read Ezekiel 38 and 39 literally? Is it possible that the Gog and Magog alliance that was designed “to destroy, to kill and to annihilate all the Jews, both young and old, women and children” has already taken place? That’s exactly what The Gog and Magog End-Time Alliance attempts to show.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/the-gog-and-magog-end-time-alliance-israel-russia-and-syria-in-bible-prophecy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary interviews Bob Cruickshank, Jr. and Daniel Harden about Ezekiel 38-39 and how the book of Esther connects to it. Most Bible commentators make Esther stand alone, without any connection to the rest of the Bible. Gary, Bob, and Dan point out how seamlessly it describes the fulfillment of Gog and Magog and how the Messianic bloodline is kept intact, despite Haman&rsquo;s futile attempts to eradicate it.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/the-esther-connection-to-gog-and-mogog" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://americanvision.org/categories/microscope/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for all episodes of Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope</a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/should-the-olivet-discourse-be-divided/Thu, 07 May 2026 08:17:12 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/should-the-olivet-discourse-be-divided/<p><strong><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></strong></p> <hr> <p>I saw the following on Facebook: “The Sign of His Coming By Hugo Grotius: A Preterist Commentary on the Mount Olivet Discourse with Commentary by Dr. Kenneth L. Gentry and Jay Rogers.” The authors argue that the subject shifts from the judgment on Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple from Matthew 24:4-24:34 to a distant future coming of Jesus in Matthew 24:35-36 and following.</p> <p>Matthew 24:27 and 24:37 presented a problem for Gentry because they use the same language related to Jesus’ coming.</p> <p>• “For just as the lightning comes from the east and flashes as far as the west, <strong>so will the coming of the Son of Man be</strong>” (24:27).</p> <p>• “<strong>For the coming of the Son of Man will be</strong> just like the days of Noah” (24:37).</p> <p>At one time, Gentry believed Matthew 24:27 referred to the AD 70 coming of Jesus. He later changed his mind because he could not distinguish this from the use of “coming” in Matthew 24:37, 39, 42-44, and 25:31. He had to postulate two comings to avoid being charged with aiding and abetting full preterism. In his books <em>Perilous Times</em> (pages 72-73) and <em>The Great Tribulation: Past or Future?</em> (pages 53-55), Gentry interpreted Matthew 24:27 as referring to the judgment coming of Jesus in AD 70. Gentry needed at least a few verses to support his futurist view regarding Jesus’ Second Coming. The following is from his 2010 book <em>The Olivet Discourse Made Easy</em>.</p> <blockquote> <p>I should note that my interpretation of this verse [Matt. 24:27] has changed recently. In earlier works (<em>Perilous Times</em>; <em>The Great Tribulation: Past or Future?</em>) I argued that the lightning flash could refer to his spiritual judgment-coming in AD 70. This is certainly possible, given the dramatic nature of prophetic language. But I now reject that view because of grammatical and contextual reasons. The “for” (grammar) in v. 27 clearly gives the reason (context) why they should not expect that he may be off somewhere in a wilderness. His physical return will be visible to all. After all, the original question (24:3) shows the disciples’ conflating of the two events: AD 70 and the second advent. Just a few verses later (24:36ff), Jesus will begin focusing on that more glorious event.<strong>[1]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>How does Gentry’s interpretation square with his interpretation of Matthew 24:34? If one item before verse 34 has not been fulfilled, then why not the other items? This is quite the dilemma.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/files/CameToPass-cover_large.jpg?v=1770152820" alt="And It Came to Pass"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>And It Came to Pass</h3> <p>“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.” — R.C. Sproul (1939-2017), founder and chairman of Ligonier Ministries</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/and-it-came-to-pass" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>The appeal of Grotius (1583-1645) for Gentry and Rogers is that he divides the Olivet Discourse at verse 36.</p> <blockquote> <p>Grotius establishes a structural dividing line at Matthew 24:36, distinguishing between the historical events leading up to AD 70 and the timing of the final judgment, which is unknown. He interprets phrases like “this generation” literally as Christ’s contemporaries who witnessed the siege, and views cosmic imagery (such as the darkening of the sun) as symbolic language for the collapse of Jewish political powers. While he assigns Matthew 24:4-35 to the historical destruction of Jerusalem, he reserves Matthew 24:36 through Chapter 25 for the future, universal final judgment.</p> </blockquote> <p>At nearly the same time, Henry Hammond (1605-1660) published Paraphrase and Annotations on the New Testament in 1653. It has gone through numerous editions over the years. What does Hammond say about Matthew 24:27?</p> <blockquote> <ol start="27"> <li>All such deceits may prove ruinous to you; for this judgment and vengeance upon the Jews shall come so as that it cannot be avoided; but it shall at the same time fall upon several parts of the land, or at a moment, like lightning, fly from one corner to another; this day a great slaughter of Jews in this place, to morrow in another a great way off.</li> </ol> <p>*****</p> <ol start="36"> <li>But of the point of time when this judgment shall come (see note [a] on Heb. x., and 2 Peter iii. 10.) none but God the Father knows that, (see note [b] on Mark xiii.) and that must oblige you to vigilancy, and may sustain you in your trials, (when you begin to faint by reason of persecutions from the Jews, ver. 12, which this is to set a period to,) by remembering that how far off soever your deliverance seems to be, it may and will come in a moment unexpectedly.</li> <li>But this judgment on the Jews shall be like that on the old world in respect of the unexpectedness of it: see Luke 17:20.</li> </ol> </blockquote> <p>Hammond continues to apply these verses to events surrounding Jerusalem’s judgment before that generation passed away.</p> <blockquote> <p>Chap. XXV. 1 At that point of time last spoken of, the heavy visitation on this people, the condition of Christians will be fitly resembled by the parable of the ten virgins, which took hand-lamps, (then in use, and fit to carry abroad for night-lights,) and went out to fetch a bridegroom and the bride, and wait on them to the feast.</p> </blockquote> <p>For additional insight into Hammond’s comments and whether there is a transitional verse, see Jonathan E. Sedlak’s <em>Reading Matthew, Trusting Jesus: Christian Tradition and First-Century Fulfillment within Matthew 24-25</em>. Sedlak concludes that Hammond “interpreted all of chapters 24 and 25 as pertaining to first-century events and the assurance of their fulfillment in past history. According to Hammond, only the final judgment scene of Matt. 25:31-46 could possibly be interpreted in relation to a future state for humanity and a future ‘coming’ in judgment; even so, Hammond still interpreted Matthew 25:31-46 in light of its first-century context surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem, which is considered to be the most obvious way in which Jesus’ disciples would have understood the entire discourse” (279).</p> <p>Gentry believes that the use of “long time” is an important time indicator in Matthew 24:48 and 25:19. He’s not alone. A line of evidence offered by those who believe that events following Matthew 24:35 refer to the personal and physical return of Jesus is the meaning given to “delays” (24:48: <em>chronizei</em>), “after a long time” (25:19: <em>polyn</em>), and the “delay” (<em>chronizontos</em>) of the bridegroom (25:5). For some commentators, these examples indicate that different events are in view, one near (the destruction of Jerusalem) and one distant (a future physical coming of Christ). This is the view of Stephen F. Hayhow.</p> <blockquote> <p>Both parables, the parables of the virgins (vv. 1-13), and the parable of the talents (vv. 14-30), speak of the absence of the bridegroom/master, who is said to be “a long time in coming” (v. 5) and “After a long time the master of the servants returned…” (v. 19). This suggests, not the events of A.D. 70 which were to occur in the near future, in fact within the space of a generation, but a distant event, the return of Christ.<strong>[2]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>Notice that the evil slave says, “My master is not coming for a long time,” literally, is “delayed” (Matt. 24:48). The evil slave then proceeds to “beat his fellow-slaves and eat and drink with drunkards” (24:49). But to the surprise of the “evil slave” the master returned when he least expected him (24:50). The master did not return to cut the evil slave’s distant relatives into pieces (24:51); the master cut him in pieces. The evil slave was alive when the master left and when the master returned. In this context, a “long time” must be measured against a person taking a trip. A “long time” can be even shorter, “Now Herod was overjoyed when he saw Jesus; for he had wanted to see Him for a long time, because he had been hearing about Him and was hoping to see some sign performed by Him” (Luke 23:8). I cover this issue in my book <em>Last Days Madness</em>.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/LDM-front_large.png?v=1572279906" alt="Last Days Madness"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Last Days Madness</h3> <p>In this authoritative book, Gary DeMar clears the haze of "end-times" fever, shedding light on the most difficult and studied prophetic passages in the Bible, including Daniel 7:13-14; 9:24-27; Matt. 16:27-28; 24-25; Thess. 2; 2 Peter 3:3-13, and clearly explaining a host of other controversial topics.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/last-days-madness" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>The same idea is expressed in the parable of the “talents.” A man entrusts his slaves with his possessions (25:14). The master then goes on a journey (25:15). While the master is gone, the slaves make investment decisions (25:16-18). We are then told that “after a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them” (25:19). In this context, “a long time” is no longer than an average lifetime. The settlement is made with the same slaves who received the talents. In every other New Testament context, “a long time” means nothing more than an extended period (Luke 8:27; 23:8; John 5:6; Acts 8:11; 14:3, 28; 26:5, 29; 27:21; 28:6). Nowhere does it mean centuries or multiple generations. For example, Simon “had for a long time astonished them with his magic arts” (Acts 8:11).</p> <p>The delay of the bridegroom is no different from the “long time” of the two previous parables. The bridegroom returns to the same groups of virgins (25:1-13). The duration of the delay must be measured by the context, and in the context of the various comings, the audiences remain the same. Similar language is used in Luke 12:35-48. The Bible defines a long time in various ways: “Now a man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. Jesus, upon seeing this man lying there and knowing that he had already been in that condition for a long time [πολὺν … χρόνον], said to him, ‘Do you want to get well?’” (John 5:5-6).</p> <p>Grotius, Gentry, and Rogers have not offered compelling evidence for a long delay lasting nearly 2000 years! Those who first read the Olivet Discourse never would have considered such a delay.</p> <hr> <p>[1] <em>The Olivet Discourse Made Easy: You Can Understand Jesus’ Great Prophetic Discourse</em> (Draper, VA: Apologetics Group, 2010), 102, note 27. J. Marcellus Kik followed the same line of argument in his book Matthew 24 (page 66).</p> <p>[2] Stephen F. Hayhow, “Matthew 24, Luke 17 and the Destruction of Jerusalem,” <em>Christianity and Society</em> 4:2 (April 1994), 4. Robert Young in his comment on Matthew 25:1 about the Parable of the Ten Virgins: “THEN], that is, when the things mentioned in the preceding chapter are taking place among the unbelieving Jews in Palestine, the rule of the reign of the heavens shall be exercised on the believing ones in a manner similar to the way in which ten virgins were treated by the bridegroom they professed to honour” (<em><a href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/robert-youngs-concise-critical-commentary-on-the-new-testament" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Concise Critical Comments on the Holy Bible</a></em> [London: Pickering &amp; Inglis, n.d.], 25).</p>https://americanvision.org/posts/saving-women-and-babies-with-the-gospel/Wed, 06 May 2026 07:47:09 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/saving-women-and-babies-with-the-gospel/<p><strong><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></strong></p> <hr> <p><em>Gary <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/saving-women-and-babies-with-the-gospel" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">interviews</a> Eric Ogea about a ministry he and his wife run in the Dallas, TX, area.</em></p> <p>The family is a divinely ordained institution (Gen. 1:26–28; 2:24). God created the family and He alone defines it. The State does not create the family and therefore cannot redefine or control it. But believing it is God, the State is in the renaming and redefinition business (see Dan. 1:1–7).</p> <blockquote> <p>History’s verdict is that by defining marriage as monogamy and making extramarital sex immoral, the biblical tradition laid down a foundation for stable families, strong women, children, economy, and society. By keeping his vows to a woman, made before God and community, a man learns to keep his word in other situations. When keeping one’s word becomes a strong cultural value, then trust becomes the foundation for social life. [Vishal Mangalwadi, <em>The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization</em> (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2001), 294–295.]</p> </blockquote> <p>Sound family government follows the assumption that the family does not operate in isolation from God’s governmental canopy of sovereignty and that self-government under God serves as its necessary foundation. God’s Government =&gt; Self-Government under God =&gt; Family Government under God. Breaking this connection puts those with the most power in control.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/RFC-front_large.png?v=1603236877" alt="Restoring the Foundation of Civilization"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Restoring the Foundation of Civilization</h3> <p>There are many Christians who will not participate in civilization-building efforts that include economics, journalism, politics, education, and science because they believe (or have been taught to believe) these areas of thought are outside the realm of what constitutes a Christian worldview. Nothing could be further from the truth</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/restoring-the-foundation-of-civilization" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary interviews Eric Ogea about a ministry he and his wife run in the Dallas, TX, area. Eric and Karen help women who are considering abortion and teach them how to view all of life through a biblical worldview. Eric explains that while pro-life ministry is often viewed as &ldquo;women&rsquo;s work,&rdquo; there is a great need for men to get involved as well.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/saving-women-and-babies-with-the-gospel" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here to browse all episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast</a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/using-penguins-to-support-homosexuality/Tue, 05 May 2026 07:42:10 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/using-penguins-to-support-homosexuality/<p><strong><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></strong></p> <hr> <p>Scientists have claimed that same-sex coupling in nature offers prime evidence that homosexuality among humans is naturally and morally normal.</p> <p>• Whatever animals do in nature is natural.<br> • What’s natural is normal.<br> • What’s normal is moral.</p> <p>How can we mere mortals impose our rules of sexual behavior on what’s natural in the animal kingdom? Homosexuals extrapolate that what animals do naturally in nature applies to what higher “animals” can do naturally without any moral judgments attached.</p> <p>For example, <em>And Tango Makes Three</em> is an illustrated children’s book about two male penguins that raise a baby penguin. It’s based on a true story of two male penguins in New York City’s Central Park Zoo that “adopt” a fertilized egg and raise the chick as their own.<strong>[1]</strong></p> <p>In his book <em>Biological Exuberance</em>, Bruce Bagemihl claims “The world is, indeed, teeming with homosexual, bisexual and transgendered creatures of every stripe and feather…. From the Southeastern Blueberry Bee of the United States to more than 130 different bird species worldwide, the ‘birds and the bees,’ literally, are queer.”</p> <p>Here’s a typical unthinking response:</p> <p><img src="https://americanvision.org/images/uploads/kirsten.png" alt="Kirsten Michels" title="Kirsten Michels"></p> <p>The lower-animal/higher-animal model breaks down when other so-called natural behaviors in animals are considered. For example, the Bible states, “It has happened to them according to the true proverb, ‘A DOG RETURNS TO ITS OWN VOMIT’ [Prov. 26:11] and, ‘A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire’” (2 Pet. 2:22). These are natural behaviors of animals. These are not normal human behaviors. Gregory Koukl makes these striking points:</p> <blockquote> <p>It’s not unusual, for example, to see male dogs mount each other in an erotic way. There are two problems with this view, however…. [T]he observation is flawed because it assumes that erotic behavior in other mammals is the same as homosexual desire in human beings. Male homosexuals engage in sodomy because of an attraction to a gender. They are male erotic, and sodomy is an expression of that desire.</p> <p>Does the animal kingdom display this kind of same-gender eroticism? When a male dog mounts another male dog, is it because he’s attracted to the male gender of the other dog? I don’t think so. This same poor pooch will slavishly mount sofas or shrubs or anything else available, including the leg of your dinner guest. None of these things is the object of the canine’s sexual lust; they are merely the subject of it. The dog does not desire your unfortunate visitor. He simply desires to be stimulated. It doesn’t prove they have homosexual desire in any way parallel with humans.<strong>[2]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>Consider the case of Timothy Treadwell depicted in the movie <em>Grizzly Man</em>. He lived among bears for 13 years and considered them his “family.” In 2003, Treadwell and his companion, Amie Huguenard, were mauled and mostly eaten by one of the Alaskan grizzly bears he considered to be “All in the Family.” While he thought of the bears as his brothers and sisters, the bears thought of him as lunch.</p> <p>Then there’s the case of Armin Meiwes, who killed and ate 43-year-old Bernd-Jurgen Brandes.<strong>[3]</strong> What did Mr. Meiwes do that was wrong, given the premise that animal behavior is a normative model for human behavior? For a detailed telling of the story, see Nathan Constantine, “A German Revival,” <em>A History of Cannibalism: From Ancient Cultures to Survival Stories and Modern Psychopaths</em> (Edison, New Jersey: Chartwell Books, 2006), 186–191.) If the bears that ate Treadwell were only doing what came naturally, then how can the cannibal nature of Meiwes be judged as abnormal, given evolutionary assumptions?</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/files/neighfr_large.png?v=1695172157" alt="Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor</h3> <p>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.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/why-it-might-be-ok-to-eat-your-neighbor-book" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>What did Mr. Meiwes do that was wrong, given the premise that animal behavior is a normative model for human behavior?<strong>[4]</strong> If the bears that ate Treadwell were only doing what came naturally, then how can the cannibal nature of Meiwes be judged as abnormal, given evolutionary assumptions?</p> <p>A few years ago, I saw an ad for a television special on Turner Network Television titled “The Trials of Life.” The full-page ad showed a composite picture of six animals, one of which was the bald eagle, with the following caption: “Discover how similar the face of nature is to yours. The way you love, the way you fight, the way you grow, all have their roots in the kingdom we all live in: the animal kingdom.” The implication here is obvious: Humans are only an evolutionary step away from <em>other</em> animals. In biblical terms, men and women are not animals. God did not create Adam out of another pre-existing animal.</p> <p>While channel surfing, I came across the second installment of the six-part series “The Trials of Life.” I soon learned what Benjamin Franklin meant when he described the eagle as a bird of “bad moral character.” With two eaglets in the nest and not enough food to go around, the mamma allows the weakest eaglet to die. She then cannibalizes it and feeds it to the survivor.</p> <p>A 2002 article carries this title: “Bald eagle kills, eats its young”: “Wildlife biologists are baffled and intrigued by two incidents captured on videotape at a bald eagle nest in Portsmouth, Virginia —an eagle parent attacks, kills, then eats its two scrawny young.”</p> <p>Was this natural or unnatural? Is this moral animal behavior that we should emulate? How do we know? Should we follow the example of the eagles or just the supposed homosexual penguins?</p> <p>Do chimpanzees have a moral code or a justice system? Since they are supposedly so close to us genetically, should they be prosecuted for crimes? Naturalist and filmmaker David Attenborough was asked, “What has been your most distressing/upsetting moment in your career?” He answered, “Seeing chimpanzees kill monkeys. They do this to eat them. They chase them, set an ambush, catch them, and tear them apart.”<strong>[5]</strong> Watch <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7XuXi3mqYM" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">this video</a>. Attenborough is applying human moral standards to chimpanzees. The Bloodhound Gang’s song <em>Bad Touch</em> has this line (and a video to match): “You and me baby ain’t nothin’ but mammals; so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.”</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/bts-front_large.png?v=1601296021" alt="By This Standard"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>By This Standard</h3> <p>Millions of Christians have sadly not recognized the continuing authority of God's law or its many applications to modern society. They have thereby reaped the whirlwind of cultural and intellectual impotence. They implicitly denied the power of the death and resurrection of Christ. They have served as footstools for the enemies of God. But humanism's free ride is coming to an end. This book serves as an introduction to this woefully neglected topic.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/by-this-standard-the-authority-of-gods-law-today" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Animals rape on a regular basis. Should we make the leap the homosexuals want to make regarding penguins? If homosexual behavior in penguins is a template for human sexuality, then why can’t a similar case be made for rape among humans? As hard as it might be to believe, the connection has been made. Randy Thornhill, a biologist, and Craig T. Palmer, an anthropologist, attempt to demonstrate in their book <em>A Natural History of Rape</em> <strong>[6]</strong> that evolutionary principles explain rape as a “genetically developed strategy sustained over generations of human life because it is a kind of sexual selection—a successful reproductive strategy.” The authors claim that even though rape can be explained genetically in evolutionary terms, this does not make the behavior morally right. Of course, given Darwinian assumptions, there is no way to condemn rape on moral grounds. The same could be said for homosexual behavior, and everything else. If we are the products of evolution, then there can be no moral judgments about anything. If homosexuals want to use penguins as their moral model, then they need to take all animal behavior into consideration when they build their moral worldview. If we should follow the animal world regarding homosexual penguins and thereby regard human homosexual behavior as normal, then we must be consistent and follow the animal world regarding rape, eating our young, and eating our neighbors, and decriminalize these behaviors as well.</p> <hr> <p>[1] Cristina Cardoze, “They’re in love. They’re gay. They’re penguins&hellip;. And they’re not alone” (June 6, 2006).</p> <p>[2] Gregory Koukl, “Just Doing What Comes Naturally: Mother Nature’s Way.”</p> <p>[3] “German cannibal tells of fantasy,” <em>BBC News</em> (December 3, 2003).</p> <p>[4] Theodore Dalrymple, “The Case for Cannibalism” (January 5, 2005). For a more detail telling of the story, see Nathan Constantine, “A German Revival,” <em>A History of Cannibalism: From Ancient Cultures to Survival Stories and Modern Psychopaths</em> (Edison, New Jersey: Chartwell Books, 2006), 186–191.</p> <p>[5] Lauren Davis, “This is the Most Disturbing Animal Behavior David Attenborough Has Seen,” <em>Gizmodo</em> (January 9, 2014): Link <a href="https://bit.ly/43ooszK" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">here</a>.</p> <p>[6] Randy Thornhill, and Craig T. Palmer, <em>A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion</em> (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000).</p>https://americanvision.org/posts/questions-about-israel/Mon, 04 May 2026 06:59:06 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/questions-about-israel/<p><strong><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></strong></p> <hr> <p><em>Gary <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/questions-about-israel" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">answers</a> several questions about Israel from a regular listener.</em></p> <p>There is no indication that Matthew 25:31-46 describes a single event. Rather, the passage describes a judgment over time, related to Jesus’ dominion as an “everlasting dominion” (Dan. 7:14). Jesus was “exalted to the right hand of God” where He rules until all His enemies are made a “footstool for [His] feet” (Acts 2:33, 35). Paul writes that Jesus “must reign until He has put all of His enemies under His feet” (1 Cor. 15:25). Milton Terry writes that “the ideal of judgment presented in Matt. xxv, 31-46, is therefore no single event, like the destruction of Jerusalem.” Terry continues:</p> <blockquote> <p>The Old Testament doctrine is that “the kingdom is Jehovah’s, and he is ruler among the nations” (Psalm xxii, 28). “Say ye among the nations, Jehovah reigneth; he shall judge the peoples with equity. He cometh, he cometh to judge the earth; he shall judge the world in righteousness, and the peoples in his truth” (Psalm xcvi, 10-13). The day of judgment for any wicked nation, city, or individual is the time when the penal visitation comes; and the judgment of God’s saints is manifest in every signal event which magnifies goodness and condemns iniquity.</p> </blockquote> <p>Keith Mathison has a helpful take on Matthew 25:31-46, a passage often used to support the Second Coming. He asks, “which judgment is being described in Matthew 25:31-46?” He links it to Daniel 7 which he argues “is a prophecy describing the inauguration of the messianic kingdom rather than the second coming.” He goes on to state that Jesus is describing “the heavenly judgment of the nations that Daniel associates with the inauguration of Christ’s kingdom (Dan. 7:9-10).” The King of glory is continually judging and reigning among the nations. The judgment began in that generation (Matt. 11:21-24; Luke 10:13-15).</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/LDM-front_large.png?v=1572279906" alt="Last Days Madness"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Last Days Madness</h3> <p>In this authoritative book, Gary DeMar clears the haze of "end-times" fever, shedding light on the most difficult and studied prophetic passages in the Bible, including Daniel 7:13-14; 9:24-27; Matt. 16:27-28; 24-25; Thess. 2; 2 Peter 3:3-13, and clearly explaining a host of other controversial topics.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/last-days-madness" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary answers several questions about Israel from a regular listener. Genesis 12, Matthew 25, and John 8 are all discussed as Gary shows that the Bible doesn&rsquo;t have a special plan, apart from salvation in Jesus Christ, for those who claim to be Jews. All sinners, Jews and Gentiles alike, are saved through the finished work of Jesus, not through who they claim as an ancestor.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/questions-about-israel" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here to browse all episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast</a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/joel-richardsons-prophetic-glove-doesnt-fit/Fri, 01 May 2026 07:32:38 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/joel-richardsons-prophetic-glove-doesnt-fit/<p><strong><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></strong></p> <hr> <p><strong>Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 90</strong></p> <p><em>Gary <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/joel-richardsons-prophetic-glove-doesnt-fit" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">responds</a> to continued feedback from his recent online debate with prophecy writer Joel Richardson about Gog and Magog (Ezekiel 38-39).</em></p> <p>Jesus tells His disciples that when the temple’s approaching desolation became evident, it would be time to head for the hills. Most roofs in Israel were flat with an outside staircase (Mark 2:4) designed for occupancy (Deut. 22:8), storage (Josh. 2:6), and rest in the evening (2 Sam. 11:2). In addition, Jesus referred to the strict Sabbath laws in effect at that time. An acceptable distance for travel on the Sabbath was about three-fifths of a mile as determined by Pharisaical law (Acts 1:12), not enough travel-distance to get out of harm’s way during Jerusalem’s sign-laden destruction.</p> <p>History shows that Christian Jews did heed Jesus’ warning before the armies of Titus captured the city. Most who remained were slaughtered. Estimates put the number killed at more than one million! Thousands more were taken into captivity and enslaved by the Romans. “The Emperor Vespasian brought 20,000 Jewish slaves to Rome after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. The Arch of Titus depicts a menorah as part of the plunder from Jerusalem. Vespasian and his successor Titus used the slaves to build the Roman Coliseum.”</p> <p>The prophecy regarding pregnant (Luke 19:44: “your children within you”) and nursing mothers and young children (Matt. 24:19) fits the time parameters of the Olivet Discourse leading to the destruction of the temple in the generation of Jews to whom Jesus was speaking. Josephus, an eyewitness to the events, describes a horrific scene of “the cruel massacre of women and children” and “the painful famine in which the people suffered so terribly while Jerusalem was besieged.”<strong>[1]</strong></p> <p><a href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/matthew-23-25-a-literary-historical-and-theological-commentary" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">James Jordan</a> makes an interesting typological connection to Jesus mentioning leaving the cloak behind:</p> <blockquote> <p>The man working in the field is not to bother going back for anything, not even his cloak. The cloak is the one thing that is so precious and needful that it cannot be taken as a pledge during the nighttime hours, but has to be returned each night to its owner [Ex. 22:26-27]. Leaving the cloak behind, then, means leaving everything behind.</p> <p>Jesus had already made this point in the Sermon on the Mount, where He told his followers to be ready to give up their cloaks if that was demanded of them (Matthew 5:40).</p> <p>Did Jesus mean that the believers should literally leave their cloaks behind, even in winter, when they would need them on the road? I don’t think so. Again, I think we have to take Jesus’ command as an epigram. First, it means to be ready to leave everything behind, just as Jesus left his tunic at the foot of the cross and soldiers gambled for it [Ps. 22:18; Matt. 27:35; John 19:23]. But it probably has a deeper meaning also. In Matthew, Jesus has said that no one sews a patch of new cloth on an old cloak, but instead turns the old one into a rag and makes a new cloak of new cloth (Matthew 9:16)&hellip;. Leave behind the cloak of the Old Covenant. You won’t need it any longer.<strong>[2]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>With the destruction of the temple, its sacrifices, and sinful priesthood done away with and a new temple (John 2:19), perfect sacrifice (1:29), and new sinless priest (Heb. 7:26-28), the remnants of the Old Covenant were abolished at the cross and outwardly demonstrated with the destruction of the temple.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/WRWfr_large.png?v=1678474893" alt="Wars and Rumors of Wars"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Wars and Rumors of Wars</h3> <p>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.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/wars-and-rumors-of-wars" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary responds to continued feedback from his recent online debate with prophecy writer Joel Richardson about Gog and Magog (Ezekiel 38-39). Using the famous OJ Simpson trial defense line about gloves not fitting, Gary shows how Richardson&rsquo;s prophetic interpretive gloves also don&rsquo;t fit the biblical facts.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/joel-richardsons-prophetic-glove-doesnt-fit" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://americanvision.org/categories/microscope/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for all episodes of Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope</a></p> <hr> <p>[1] J. G. Matteson, <em>Prophecies of Jesus: The Fulfillment of the Predictions of Our Saviour and His Prophets</em> (Battle Creek: International Tract Society, 1895), 86.</p> <p>[2] James B. Jordan, <em><a href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/matthew-23-25-a-literary-historical-and-theological-commentary" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Matthew 23-25: A Literary, Historical, and Theological Commentary</a></em> (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2022), 128-129.<a href="https://americanvision.org/categories/microscope/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external"></a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/why-the-theory-of-something-from-nothing-evolution-is-based-on-magic/Thu, 30 Apr 2026 07:17:36 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/why-the-theory-of-something-from-nothing-evolution-is-based-on-magic/<p><strong><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></strong></p> <hr> <p>Lawrence M. Krauss is a renowned cosmologist and professor at the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including the best-selling <em>The Physics of Star Trek</em> and <em>A Universe from Nothing</em>, which includes an Afterword from atheist provocateur Richard Dawkins. Krauss is an outspoken atheist, evolutionist, and anti-Christian. The following is his starting point, upon which he builds his worldview:</p> <blockquote> <p>[M]ost of the energy in the universe resides in some mysterious, now inexplicable form permeating all of empty space. It’s not an understatement to say that the discovery has changed the playing field of modern cosmology.</p> <p>For one thing, this discovery has produced remarkable new support for the idea that our universe arose from precisely nothing.<strong>[1]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>He goes on to claim that “every day beautiful and miraculous objects suddenly appear.” Krauss mentions “miracles,” and Richard Dawkins, who wrote the Afterword to Krauss’ book, heaps abundant praise on it, describing evolution as “magic” in his own book, <em>The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True</em>.</p> <p>Evolutionists must believe in “miracles” and “magic,” such as spontaneous generation. An evolutionist like Krauss can’t explain how the world works except to descend into irrationality. The following is from the Preface to his book:</p> <blockquote> <p>In the interests of full disclosure right at the outset I must admit that I am not sympathetic to the conviction that creation requires a creator, which is at the basis of all the world’s religions. Every day beautiful and miraculous objects suddenly appear, from snowflakes on a cold winter morning to vibrant rainbows after a late-afternoon summer shower. Yet no one but the most ardent fundamentalists would suggest that that each and every such object is lovingly and painstakingly and, most importantly, purposely created by a divine intelligence.<strong>[2]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>I don’t know of a single “fundamentalist” who has ever claimed that God spends His time designing every snowflake. God did design the material (and everything else) and the necessary conditions that make up snowflakes, and the process by which they form. Dr. Krauss has not explained how water came into existence to make snowflakes, or the informational structure that constitutes the substance we call water, to explain how it always reacts the same way to temperature variations and predictable weather conditions.</p> <p>Here is the Kraussian “science” behind it all: “our universe arose from precisely nothing.” So, for Krauss, “nothing” must be “a kind of ‘something’” because “[a]bsolute nothingness means no laws, no vacuums, no fields, no energy, no structures, no physical or mental entities of any kind—and no ‘symmetries.’ It has no properties or potentialities. Absolute nothingness cannot produce something given endless time—in fact, there can be no time in absolute nothingness.”<strong>[3]</strong></p> <p>Dr. Krauss is engaged in some evolutionary sleight of hand. He needs energy to power his evolutionary machine. He must steal that energy from the theistic power plant that he ridicules, misrepresents, and claims doesn’t exist. Consider this bit of irrationality:</p> <blockquote> <p>In fact, many laypeople as well as scientists revel in our ability to explain how snowflakes and rainbows can spontaneously appear, based on simple, elegant laws of physics.<strong>[4]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>Snowflakes and rainbows don’t “spontaneously appear.” The material, conditions, and natural laws necessary for them to appear exist. What about the “laws of physics”? What makes them laws and keeps them as laws? No one has ever seen a law of physics. How does a materialist like Krauss account for non-physical entities like mathematics and physics in a cosmos that seemingly came into existence out of nothing and continues to operate in terms of fixed and predictable laws?</p> <blockquote> <p>In 1960 the Princeton physicist—and subsequent Nobel Prize winner—Eugene Wigner raised a fundamental question: Why did the natural world always—so far as we know—obey laws of mathematics?</p> <p>As argued by scholars such as Philip Davis and Reuben Hersh, mathematics exists independent of physical reality. … Despite the many other enormous advances of modern physics, little has changed in this regard. As Wigner wrote, “the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation for it.”</p> <p>In other words, as I argue in my book [<em>God? Very Probably: Five Rational Ways to Think about the Question of a God</em>], it takes the existence of some kind of a god to make the mathematical underpinnings of the universe comprehensible.<strong>[5]</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>Some evolutionists and non-religionists, like physicist Max Tegmark, have gone so far as to say that the cosmos—including us—“is nothing but mathematics.”<strong>[6]</strong> Does this mean that love, compassion, morality, and a whole host of human emotions are nothing but mathematical constructs? I can hear a biological unit on Valentine’s Day expressing his affinity for his partnered biological unit say, “You are my E = mc2.” Dr. Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon argues, using some of the imponderables in math as an example, that “God has given us all this light”<strong>[7]</strong> to understand the world. Without God, we mere mortals don’t have the capacity to understand our world.</p> <p>Krauss has stated that “Science is only truly consistent with an atheistic worldview…” I’m sure Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Johannes Kepler, Joseph Lister, James Young Simpson, Samuel F.B. Morse, Wilbur and Orville Wright, Werner von Braun, Raymond Damadian (inventor of the MRI), and many other scientists would be surprised to know this, since modern scientists stand on the shoulders of these Christian scientists.</p> <hr> <p>[1] Lawrence M. Krauss, <em>A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing</em> (New York: Free Press, 2012), xiii.</p> <p>[2] Krauss, <em>A Universe from Nothing</em>, xiii.</p> <p>[3] Abraham Varghese, “The ‘New Atheism’: A Critical Appraisal of Dawkins, Dennett, Wolpert, Harris, and Stenger,” in Anthony Flew with Abraham Varghese, <em>There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind</em> (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 170.</p> <p>[4] Krauss, <em>A Universe from Nothing</em>, xiii.</p> <p>[5] Robert H. Helson, “Existence of God: The Rational Arguments from Mathematics to Human Consciousness,” <em>Independent</em> (May 17, 2017): Online <a href="http://bit.ly/2w1Fcli" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">here</a>.</p> <p>[6] Max Tegmark, “The Great Math Mystery,” <em>NOVA</em>.</p> <p>[7] Dr. Soon states, contrary to mere mortal secularists like Al Gore who claim he is helping to “save the planet, that CO2 is “the gas of life.” Link <a href="https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1744777758507504061" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">here</a>.</p>https://americanvision.org/posts/connecting-the-bible-with-the-bible/Wed, 29 Apr 2026 07:05:47 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/connecting-the-bible-with-the-bible/<p><strong><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></strong></p> <hr> <p><em>Gary <a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/connecting-the-bible-with-the-bible" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">discusses</a> his recent debate with Joel Richardson about Ezekiel 38-39, the famous Gog and Magog chapters.</em></p> <p>Nearly every book being published today points to the Gog and Magog alliance as evidence that we are living in the last days and the world is on the eve of destruction. Ezekiel 38 and 39 are being used by today’s prophecy writers as a modern-day prophetic blueprint for our time. As we’ll see, these same prophecy writers almost never tell their readers that there has been a long history of failed predictions based on these two chapters and other prophetic texts. While the world is a dangerous place, this does not mean that Ezekiel was predicting prophetic events 2600 years removed from his time. As I hope to show, Ezekiel’s prophecy had a more immediate fulfillment. The accomplishment of this prophecy was to demonstrate to “the nations” at the time that “the house of Israel went into exile for their iniquity because they acted treacherously against” God (Ezek. 39:23; cp. 38:23). These witnessing nations are described by Ezekiel as Israel’s “adversaries” (39:23). Applying the prophecy of Ezekiel 38 and 39 to modern-day nations is contrary to the historical context. No nation today had any part in Israel’s exile 2600 years ago.</p> <p>The prophecy begins with instructions given to Ezekiel to set his “face toward Gog of the land of Magog” (38:2). Who is Gog and what is the land of Magog? The most popular interpretation is that Gog is modern-day Russia. Magog, a people group that first appears in Genesis 10:2, is thought to be an alliance of nations that join Russia in a failed end-time invasion of Israel. Added to the mix, a leader of this confederation is said to be the “prince of Rosh,” the leader of Russia. In 1972, Carl Johnson wrote <em>Prophecy Made Plain for Times Like These</em>, in which he includes a lengthy quotation from a message Jack Van Impe gave at Canton Baptist Temple in Canton, Ohio, sometime in 1969. Like so many who claim to know what’s on the prophetic horizon, Van Impe made his case for an imminent war with Russia on what the newspapers of 1969 were reporting. This war was so close, he charged, “that the stage is being set for what could explode into World War III at any moment.” The passage of more than half of a century hardly seems like “at any moment.”</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/gog_front_large.jpg?v=1453287902" alt="The Gog and Magog End-Time Alliance"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>The Gog and Magog End-Time Alliance</h3> <p>My library is filled with books that attempt to make the case that the events predicted in Ezekiel 38 and 39 are on our prophetic horizon, and it seems that each month new books and articles appear insisting that “given the current world situation, nuclear war is inevitable” based on what we read in Ezekiel’s prophecy. What if we read Ezekiel 38 and 39 literally? Is it possible that the Gog and Magog alliance that was designed “to destroy, to kill and to annihilate all the Jews, both young and old, women and children” has already taken place? That’s exactly what The Gog and Magog End-Time Alliance attempts to show.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/the-gog-and-magog-end-time-alliance-israel-russia-and-syria-in-bible-prophecy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary discusses his recent debate with Joel Richardson about Ezekiel 38-39, the famous Gog and Magog chapters. Joel believes these events are still future; Gary believes they were fulfilled in the events described in the book of Esther.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/connecting-the-bible-with-the-bible" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hnb0FMBLWN8" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here to watch Joel Richardson&rsquo;s podcast with Gary</a></p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here to browse all episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast</a></p>https://americanvision.org/posts/the-southern-poverty-law-center-is-not-interested-in-poverty-or-justice/Tue, 28 Apr 2026 07:20:01 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/the-southern-poverty-law-center-is-not-interested-in-poverty-or-justice/<p><strong><a href="https://subsplash.com/u/americanvision/give" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here</a></strong></p> <hr> <p>The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been indicted on federal fraud charges, with the U.S. Department of Justice accusing it of wire fraud, bank fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The charges stem from allegations that the SPLC funneled over $3 million in donor funds between 2014 and 2023 to individuals associated with extremist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist Party of America, while failing to disclose these payments to donors.</p> <p>Any time those in the liberal media want to disparage the right side of the political spectrum, they call on a pool of go-to guys and gals to make their case for them. It’s not news reporting; it’s ideological position-marketing designed to destroy the competition. One of their reliable sources is the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a money-raising machine for every known and unknown left-wing kook cause. It has gone from tracking the movements of violent racists, skinhead groups, and a brief resurgence of the KKK, to creating hysteria over mainstream value voters like those who are associated with American Vision. We’ve been on their list for years. We lost our PayPal and Stripe accounts. We were sent white powder during the Anthrax scare. Wanted posters of me were posted around our building to frighten AV’s landlord. He thought it was funny.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/mlht1_large.png?v=1365620692" alt="Myths. Lies, and Half-Truths"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Myths. Lies, and Half-Truths</h3> <p>Like the Bereans of Paul’s day (Acts 17:11), Christians should check the veracity of all opinions against the only reliable standard of authority that God has placed in our hands: the Bible. This may mean a change in belief systems for some. There is no novelty in this. God confronted Peter directly about the inclusion of Gentiles into the household of faith (10:9–16). Paul confronted Peter “to his face” on a similar matter (Gal. 2:11–14). There are times when we all need to be knocked off our horse of mistaken opinions (Acts 9:4). “Testing” is a biblical mandate (2 Cor. 13:5; 1 John 4:1).</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/myths-lies-and-half-truths" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>One of SPLC’s supporters assaulted the headquarters of the Family Research Council.</p> <blockquote> <p>“Family Research Council’s appearance on the list gained national attention in 2012 when a gunman, <a href="http://www.christianpost.com/news/shooter-opens-fire-at-family-research-council-offices-over-groups-policies-wounds-guard-80059/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Floyd Corkins, entered FRC headquarters</a> with the intent of killing everyone there. FRC&rsquo;s building manager, Leo Johnson, subdued Corkins and was shot in the process. Corkins targeted FRC after finding the group on Hatewatch. SPLC has continued to label FRC a hate group even after the shooting.</p> <p>“All the groups listed on Hatewatch, with the exception of black separatists, [George Yancey, professor of sociology at the University of North Texas] notes, are either political or religious conservatives. Yancey believes this is because SPLC is a liberal organization and it is using subjective criteria to choose which groups belong on the list.”</p> </blockquote> <p>If you don’t agree with the SPLC leftist litmus test, then you are probably a member of a “hate group.” With its new definition of what constitutes a hate group, the SPLC has become a fundraising machine. “The <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Times" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Los Angeles Times</a></em> reported that by 2017, the SPLC&rsquo;s financial resources ‘nearly totaled half a billion dollars in assets.’ In 2023, its endowment was $749 million, its revenue was $170 million, and its expenses totaled $122 million. In 2024, revenue and expenses were both $129 million, and the group&rsquo;s endowment grew to $822 million.” The tactic has been to strike fear in middle America, so the checks keep rolling in. Most communities don’t see skinheads or even KKKers, so the SPLC needs a larger tangible enemy.</p> <blockquote> <p>These new “hate groups” [added in 2024] are: Advocates Protecting Children in Virginia, the California Policy Council, the Center for Christian Virtue in Ohio, the Child and Parent Rights Campaign in Georgia, the Family Action Council of Tennessee, the Florida Family Policy Council, Frontline Policy Council in Georgia, the Louisiana Family Forum, Massachusetts Family Institute, the Montana Family Foundation, Pennsylvania Family Institute, and the Family Foundation of Virginia. (<a href="https://www.wnd.com/2024/06/splc-adds-gays-groomers-doctors-oppose-gender-affirming-care-hate-map/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">WND</a>)</p> </blockquote> <p>And medical doctors “who oppose <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/04/11/exclusive-doctors-expose-experimental-gender-affirming-care-truly-florida-medicaid-case/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">experimental “transgender” medical interventions</a> … euphemistically referred to as ‘gender-affirming care,’ involve drugs to block puberty, cross-sex hormones to make males seem female and vice versa, and surgeries to remove healthy reproductive organs.”</p> <p>The SPLC will do anything to keep the bucks rolling in. You might remember the census worker in Kentucky who was found hanging from a tree. Mark Potok, a former senior fellow at the SPLC, was Johnny-on-the-spot with his “expert” analysis. He blamed the incident on “anti-government sentiment very much whipped up by militia” types. Here’s the problem. The man wasn’t murdered by anti-government marauders. “Bill Sparkman, the late Census worker, had killed himself, and staged the homicide hoping to get life insurance for his family. Tragic, yes. Right-wing terrorism? Only in Potok SPLC fantasy-land.”<strong>[1]</strong></p> <p>Even the liberal <em>USA Today</em> got the story right. So, was Potok discredited enough that the media no longer called on him and published his “Hatewatch” list? You already know the answer. Of course not!</p> <p>According to the SPLC, hate has gone mainstream, so you’d better send a donation before these “haters” come and get you, too! Am I making this up? I counted a dozen or more categories of giving on their website.</p> <p>The SPLC is a fundraising industry designed to silence conservatives who want their country back, hold elected officials accountable to their Constitutional oath, and uphold certain moral values. There’s not much money in fighting real hate groups now that only a few of the real haters are still around, so the SPLC needs a bigger, more menacing group of haters — your next-door neighbors and the church down the street, and maybe even you!</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/products/world101_large.png?v=1564514059" alt="Worldview 101: A Biblical View of the World"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Worldview 101: A Biblical View of the World</h3> <p>Utilizing audio, video, and printed material, Worldview 101 will equip the student with the tools necessary to "think God's thoughts" about the world and the created order. It will reveal and redirect the humanistic thought patterns that exist in each of us. The Enlightenment promised freedom, but brought slavery to man's ideas instead. Worldview 101 points the way forward to true freedom of thought in Christ.</p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/collections/101-series/products/worldview-101-a-biblical-view-of-the-world" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Muslim extremists who kill soldiers in the name of Allah on an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Fort_Hood_shooting" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">army base</a> or plan to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/nyregion/02timessquare.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">blow up the streets</a> of New York City or blow the limbs off innocent spectators at the Boston Marathon are of little concern when there are bigger fish to fry and more money to bank. Violent illegal alien gangs aren’t on the list. Don’t expect any outrage from the SPLC for what happened in Boulder, Colorado. You won’t find violent transgender people on the list, like the young transgender woman who shot and killed six people at a Christian school.</p> <p>When stories about the Boston Marathon bombings started coming in, the media sycophants had their profile narrative in hand. It looked like American right-wing extremists were the likely perpetrators. Tax Day . . . Patriots Day . . . Waco Anniversary . . . Hitler’s birthday . . . Oklahoma City Bombing. It was a perfect storm of red meat journalism reasons why conservative anger finally had its release valve.</p> <p>David Sirota, a blogger at Slate, rendered this post soon after reports of the bombings came in: “Let’s hope the Boston marathon bomber is a white American.” It would have been the best of all possible worlds. Liberals would have used the incident to bludgeon conservatives 24/7. Gun control would be passed, and confiscation would most likely be the next move.</p> <p>CNN&rsquo;s Christiane Amanpour said, “How many of us feel this burden of association and hope beyond hope that this doesn’t turn out to be what it might be?” What it “might be” was someone associated with Islamic extremism.</p> <p>Amanpour has a history of wanting terrorists to be associated with the right wing. She has a history of sympathies with almost anything that’s not American.</p> <p>Amanpour compared Christian girls who wear long dresses to the Taliban in her six-hour “God’s Warriors” series. The last time I checked, young ladies with long dresses weren’t hiding explosives under them and praying that their children become self-initiated martyrs for Jesus!</p> <p>Amanpour “investigates” homeschooling families as well. What the connection is with Islamicists I’ll never know. Islamic terrorist expert Robert Spencer nailed the blatant, agenda-driven hypocrisy of the left when he wrote, “Homeschooling is evil too? Sheesh. Over 9,000 terror attacks <a href="http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">committed in the name of Islam</a> since 9/11, and Christiane Amanpour is spending her time demonizing homeschoolers.”</p> <hr> <p>[1] Lachlan Markay, “Newsweek Trots Out Discredited SPLC Lawyer Mark Potok to Decry ‘Patriot’ Groups” (April 12, 2010).</p>https://americanvision.org/posts/having-questions-about-the-bible/Mon, 27 Apr 2026 07:15:17 -0400https://americanvision.org/posts/having-questions-about-the-bible/<p><em>Gary and Robert Cruickshank</em> <em><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/having-questions-about-the-bible-0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">discuss how questions</a></em> <em>they had about what they were reading in the Bible led them to where they are today.</em></p> <p>Preaching about the soon coming of Christ has long been used by Christian prophecy teachers as a way of pleading with the lost to commit themselves to Jesus Christ. Such a motivating device can backfire on even the most well–intentioned evangelist. What happens if a listener shouts out, “Preachers like you have been telling us for centuries that Jesus is coming soon. Why should we believe you now?” By crying wolf and being wrong each time, the church is perceived as unreliable. Skeptics of the Christian faith are likely to conclude that since these self-proclaimed prophets were wrong on the timing of Jesus’ return when they seemed so certain (particularly of the nearness of the rapture, the rise of Antichrist, the Great Tribulation, and Armageddon), then maybe they are wrong on other issues which they teach with equal certainty. Maybe the entire Christian message is a sham.</p> <p>The New Testament does use the <em>near</em> and <em>soon</em> coming of Jesus <em>in judgment</em> as a way of spurring the church on to greater works. The near judgment spoken of in Scripture refers to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, not a distant future coming of Christ. Peter wrote, “The end of all things <strong>is at hand</strong>; therefore, be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer” (1 Peter 4:7). At hand for whom? If words mean anything, then Peter must have had his contemporary readers in mind. What end was he describing? In Luke’s Gospel we read Jesus saying, “But keep on the alert at all times, praying in order that <strong>you</strong> may have strength to escape all these things that <strong>are about to take place</strong>*,* and to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:36). John says in his first epistle, “Children, it is the <em>last hour</em>; and just as <em>you</em> heard that antichrist is coming, <strong>even now many antichrists have arisen; from this we know it is the last hour</strong>” (1 John 2:18).</p> <p>The Bible is not a book that can be taken lightly. The integrity of the Bible is at stake if we dismiss these clearly worded statements of time. As students of the Bible, we are obligated to take God at His word, even when it contradicts what we’ve been taught by popular prophecy writers.</p> <div class="product_card"> <div class="product_image"> <img src="https://store.americanvision.org/cdn/shop/files/z14fr_large.png?v=1776945869" alt="Making Prophetic Sense of Zechariah 14"> </div> <div class="product_info"> <h3>Making Prophetic Sense of Zechariah 14</h3> <p>Making Prophetic Sense of Zechariah 14 covers a lot of ground, including the history of interpretation going back centuries. As this volume points out, interpretations vary, and some are radically different, even when they agree on the time of fulfillment. There is no consensus, given the fact that it’s one of the most difficult prophetic sections found in Scripture, as many well-known and respected commentators have admitted. The unique feature of this work is that it contains commentaries by two people, Robert Cruickshank, Jr., and Gary DeMar. While they may differ along the way, they both agree that the prophecy has been fulfilled. </p> <a class="button" href="https://store.americanvision.org/products/making-prophetic-sense-of-zechariah-14" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Buy Now</a> </div> </div> <p>Gary interviews Robert Cruickshank at a conference in Virginia Beach. Gary and Robert have known each other for a long time through phone calls and email but had never met personally until this interview. The two discuss how questions they had about what they were reading in the Bible led them to where they are today.</p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/having-questions-about-the-bible-0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here for today’s episode</a></p> <p><a href="https://garydemar.libsyn.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="external">Click here to browse all episodes of The Gary DeMar Podcast</a></p>