The American Vision

Episode 103: How to Talk to Dispensationalists

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

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 103

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

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

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

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

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

House Divided: The Break Up of Dispensational Theology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Great Tribulation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Importance of Understanding History (Part Two)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Case for America's Christian Heritage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revelation and the First Century

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Albert Barnes offers a similar interpretation.

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

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

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

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

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

Wars and Rumors of Wars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• the ultimate in pain: 5.442-45;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Importance of Understanding History (Part One)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Case for America's Christian Heritage

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

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

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

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 102

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

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

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

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

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

The Hope of Israel and the Nations

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

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

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Early Documents in the Debate Over Preterism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revelation and the First Century

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

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

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

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

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

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

[5] Niederwimmer, The Didache, 53.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The (Sad) State of Education

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whoever Controls the Schools Rules the World

Whoever Controls the Schools Rules the World shows how education can be used as a vehicle for social change from Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler to secular humanism and radical Islam. Our worldview opponents understand that education is where the war of ideas is fought. If Christians are serious about securing the future for our children, they must understand the nature of the war we are fighting. If you have children, want children, or know someone who has children -- you need to get this book and read it before it becomes too late to save the generation to follow us from the ruins

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

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How Good Were the ‘Good Old Days’?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thinking Straight in a Crooked World

We live in a crooked world of ideas evaluated by crooked people. Left to our crooked nature, we can never fully understand what God has planned for us and His world. God has not left us without a corrective solution. He has given us a reliable reference point in the Bible so we can identify the crookedness and straighten it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1] Sylvia Strum, 1950.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Rod and the Staff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God and Government

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

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

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Episode 101: The Seven Churches of Revelation

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

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 101

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

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

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

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

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

The Rapture and the Fig Tree Generation

Since the national reestablishment of Israel in 1948, countless books and pamphlets have been written defending the doctrine assuring readers that it could happen at any moment. Some prophecy writers claimed the “rapture” would take place before 1988. We are far removed from that date. Where are we in God’s prophetic timetable?

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

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

On What Are You Standing?

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

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

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

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

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

Pushing the Antithesis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thinking Straight in a Crooked World

The nursery rhyme "There Was a Crooked Man" is an appropriate description of how sin affects us and our world. We live in a crooked world of ideas evaluated by crooked people. Left to our crooked nature, we can never fully understand what God has planned for us and His world. God has not left us without a corrective solution. He has given us a reliable reference point in the Bible so we can identify the crookedness and straighten it.

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

• Rationalism: reason rules

• Mysticism: unknown forces rule

• Hedonism: pleasure rules

• Relativism: we get to make up our own rules

• Post-modernism: there are no rules

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

• Materialism: only matter matters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God, Government, and America's Christian Heritage

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

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

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

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

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

God and Government

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

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The Consequences of Not Preaching Politics from the Pulpit

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 07:44:53 -0400

I heard a pastor say that the Session of the church where he was being considered as a pastor would not be permitted to preach on politics. He agreed with the restriction. This was troubling to me. No one can preach through the Bible and ignore politics. The Bible is filled with politics. There are two books of the Old Testament named Kings. The books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and First and Second Samuel include political content. Politics is a synonym for civil government that includes rulers as “civil servants.” They are described by Paul as “ministers [διάκονός/diakonos] of God (Rom. 13:4). There are ecclesiastical ministers and civil ministers. Civil ministers are under obligation to follow God’s law as it relates to civil affairs. ‘Caesar’ must also render unto God (Matt. 22:21).

Paul encountered the Roman government. He appealed to his Roman citizenship when he was jailed. Here was the Roman response when it was learned that Paul was a Roman citizen who had been beaten by government officials:

Now when day came, the chief magistrates sent their officers, saying, “Release those men.” And the jailer reported these words to Paul, saying, “The chief magistrates have sent word that you be released. So come out now and go in peace.”

I can hear a preacher saying, “Praise God! God worked a miracle here because of Paul’s attitude, and the Roman government let them ‘go in peace.’” Many Christians might argue that this is the way Christians should handle disputes with the government. Stay silent, keep your head down, and take what the civil magistrates dish out. Notice what Paul said to the civil officials:

But Paul said to them, “After beating us in public without due process—men who are Romans—they threw us into prison, and now they are releasing us secretly? No indeed! On the contrary, let them come in person and lead us out.” The officers reported these words to the chief magistrates. And they became fearful when they heard that they were Romans, and they came and pleaded with them, and when they had led them out, they repeatedly asked them to leave the city. They left the prison and entered the house of Lydia, and when they saw the brothers and sisters, they encouraged them and departed. (Acts 16:35-40)

Our ‘Caesar’ is the Constitution. There are numerous protections in our Constitution that were fought for by Christians. Christian pastors in the colonial era and following preached politics from their pulpits. Colonial-era preaching was the primary vehicle for political education and revolutionary ideology in America, with ministers delivering approximately 8 million sermons over the colonial period.

Religious and political themes were deeply intertwined, as clergy viewed the Bible as the ultimate authority for civil government and societal order. Ministers such as Jonathan Edwards, John Witherspoon, and George Whitefield used the pulpit to challenge British authority, framing political liberty as a divine mandate. See Alice M. Baldwin’s book titled The New England Pulpit and the American Revolution: When American Pastors Preached Politics, Resisted Tyranny, and Founded a Nation on the Bible. Commenting on the classic paraphrase of “life, liberty, and property,” Baldwin declared,

No one can fully understand the American Revolution and the American constitutional system without a realization of the long history and religious associations which lie behind these words; without realizing that for a hundred years before the Revolution men were taught that these rights were protected by divine, inviolable law.

The New England Pulpit and the American Revolution

Dr. Baldwin illustrates how the preachers of the early American era thought and practiced just the opposite as today. Mountains of research in colonial sermons, tracts, pamphlets, and other publications, reveals how the pulpits of colonial America rang constantly on all aspects of the public square: good rulers, good laws, good forms of government, and the blessings of liberty. We especially hear of those choice values of biblical order that became the battle cries of American independence.

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Also see the two-volume series Political Sermons of the American Founding Era: 1730-1805, published by the Liberty Fund. Volume I is a collection of sermons written between 1730-1805 by people such as Jonathan Mayhew, John Wesley, Moses Mather, John Witherspoon, Richard Price, Jonathan Edwards, and Noah Webster. John Wingate Thornton (1818-1878) stated, “To the Pulpit, the Puritan Pulpit, we owe the moral force which won our independence.”

Of the several vehicles for expounding political theology available to American ministers, the most venerable were the election sermons preached for 256 years in Massachusetts and 156 years in Connecticut. The practice began in Vermont in 1778 and in New Hampshire in 1784 in the sermon by Samuel McClintock…. These were sermons preached annually to the governor and legislature after the election of officers. To be chosen for the task was an honor, and the sermons were published and distributed to each official with an extra copy or two for the ministers of the official’s home district…. [V]ery few of the sermons preached were published; thus Samuel Dunbar, an Old Light minister from Stoughton, Massachusetts, wrote out some eight thousand sermons during his long career but published only nine of them. (Source)

No one can claim that political preaching and exhortation were exclusive to the Old Covenant when we read the following from 2 Timothy 3:16-17.

All Scripture is God-breathed and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work.

The Bible addresses all areas of life. No exceptions. Training our senses to discern good and evil requires practice based on God’s Word (Heb. 5:11-14), but if pastors ignore politics, I guarantee you that Christians will get their ‘sermons’ elsewhere. I suspect many of them do. In addition, secularists and Islamists have no problem preaching politics from their pulpits, and there are many of them. No ‘rapture’ will save us from the consequences of silent pulpits.

God and Government

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Sacred, Secular, and the Myth of Neutrality

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 07:07:21 -0400

Gary is interviewed by Pastor William Ochoa from Guatemala about presuppositional apologetics.

All of us think in terms of worldviews. A worldview is the way each of us looks at and evaluates everything that is seen, experienced, or thought about. Worldviews have been described as a web of beliefs that we carry around in our heads that becomes an “interconnected system of all that we believe. Tied together more or less coherently in this web are all of the beliefs we hold as true. These include the basic beliefs (such as ‘I exist’ and ‘life is worthwhile’) and the more trivial ones (such as ‘I hope we won’t have liver again’). No belief exists in isolation; each belief is connected with all others in one big network.”[1]

Every person has a worldview that daily systematizes and organizes tens of thousands of bits of seemingly unrelated pieces of information and varied experiences. In fact, without a coherent worldview, these informational fragments would remain unrelated, disjointed, and ultimately meaningless.

A person’s worldview is the collection of his presuppositions or convictions about reality, which represent his total outlook of life. Nobody is without such fundamental beliefs, and yet many people go through life unaware of their presuppositions. Operating at the unconscious level, their presuppositions remain unidentified and unexamined. The result is that people generally fail to recognize how their world views govern every dimension of their lives: the intellectual life (what they believe is true about themselves and their place in history); the physical (how they treat or mistreat their bodies by eating, sleeping, and exercising); the social (how they interact with friends and enemies, the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak); the economic (why they work and how they spend their wages); and the moral (what ethical guidelines and obligations direct their thinking about justice and issues such as abortion and euthanasia).[2]

As worldviews develop and mature over time, they sort and interpret familiar information instantaneously. New information is evaluated in terms of what is already known and thought to be true. If some new facts or experiences do not fit within the boundaries of our already established worldview, they are either rejected, ignored, or reinterpreted to make them conform. Someone who understands the finite nature of all creatures, might put aside any unfamiliar findings until additional information can be gathered and evaluated to make sense of the new data in light of what is already known. After some time of thoughtful consideration, adjustments might have to be made to our worldview web to accommodate the new information.

Thinking Straight in a Crooked World

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Gary is interviewed by Pastor William Ochoa from Guatemala about presuppositional apologetics. William has been translating some of Gary’s books into Spanish, and he is currently working on Thinking Straight in a Crooked World. The conversation begins there and continues through why it is important for Christians to have answers to objections to the Christian faith.

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[1] Winfried Corduan, No Doubt About It: The Case for Christianity (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1997), 66.

[2] W. Andrew Hoffecker, “Preface: Perspective and Method in Building a World View,” Building a Christian World View: God, Man, and Knowledge (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1986), ix–x.

Important Facts in the Book of Revelation

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 06:59:54 -0400

Gary gives an overview of the book of Revelation and helps readers to put the confusing book into perspective.

From the very beginning, cranks and crackpots have attempted to use Revelation to advocate some new twist on the Chicken Little Doctrine: The Sky Is Falling! But, as I hope to show in this exposition, St. John’s Apocalypse teaches instead that Christians will overcome al opposition through the work of Jesus Christ. My study has convinced me that a true understanding of this prophecy must be based on the proper application of five crucial interpretive keys:

• Revelation is the most “Biblical” book in the Bible. St. John quotes hundreds of passages from the Old Testament, often with subtle allusions to little-known religious rituals of the Hebrew people. In order to understand Revelation, we need to know our Bibles backward and forward.

• Revelation has a system of symbolism. Almost everyone recognizes that St. John wrote his message in symbols. But the meaning of those symbols is not up for grabs. There is a systematic structure in Biblical symbolism. In order to understand Revelation properly, we must become familiar with the “language” in which it is written.

• Revelation is a prophecy about imminent events that were about to break loose on the world of the first century. Revelation is not about nuclear warfare, space travel, or the end of the world. Again and again it specifically warns that “the time is near!”

• Revelation is a worship service. St. John did not write a textbook on prophecy. Instead, he recorded a heavenly worship service in progress. One of his major concerns, in fact, is that the worship of God is central to everything in life. It is the most important thing we do.

• Revelation is a book about dominion. Revelation is not a book about how terrible the Antichrist is, or how powerful the devil is. It is, as the very first verse says, The Revelation of Jesus Christ. It tells us about His lordship over all; it tells us about our salvation and victory in the New Covenant, God’s “wonderful plan for our life”; it tells us that the kingdom of the world has become the Kingdom of our God, and of His Christ; and it tells us that He and His people shall reign forever and ever.

The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation

A biblical and scholarly exposition of Revelation is laid out for readers to soak up and begin to view the world with renewed hope and optimism. Chilton skillfully shows in detail that Christians will overcome all opposition through the work of Jesus Christ. The book of Revelation is not about the antichrist, the devil, microchips, or bar codes. It is, as the very first verse says, "The Revelation of Jesus Christ."

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Gary gives an overview of the book of Revelation and helps readers to put the confusing book into perspective. Context is key, and the timing of the events discussed in this last book of the Bible must be taken into consideration. Internal clues about when it was written also need to be taken seriously.

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Are Only Laws Repeated in the NT Applicable Today?

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 07:52:59 -0400

Are we to believe that while laws regarding incest (Lev. 18:8; Deut. 22:30; 27:20) apply in the New Testament (1 Cor. 5:1-2), but laws against sex with animals (Ex. 22:29), abortion (21:22-25), kidnapping (Deut. 24:7), arson (Ex. 22:6), or cursing the deaf or tripping blind people (Lev. 19:14) do not apply? Some might say that most of these are common-sense prohibitions. If this is the argument, then they were common-sense regulations in Moses’ day, so why include them then?

How about “just weights and measures” (Lev. 19:35-36; Deut. 25:13-16)? This law is repeated in Proverbs (11:1; 20:10) but not in the NT. I suppose this law would come under the commandment not to steal, the Eighth Commandment. But why mention these specific laws from the OT if they are reasonably covered by the Eighth Commandment? The Apostle Paul writes:

It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife. You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst (1 Cor. 5:1-2; cf. 7:1-3).

Some sexual impropriety had taken place in the Corinthian church. Paul references Old Testament law (Lev. 18:8; Deut. 22:30; 27:20). The Bible required that the unrepentant person be removed from the church and treated as an unbeliever (see Matt. 18:15-20). This would have been done by the elders after all remedies for reconciliation had failed. Paul writes, “I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Cor. 5:5). The old leaven was to be cleaned out so the new leaven would not be affected (5:6-7). I guess the accused should have told Paul, “That’s ‘Jewish Law.’ It doesn’t apply under the New Covenant.” Some preterists today would say, “That law was still in effect, but it was done away with when Jesus returned to put an end to the Old Covenant Law” in AD 70. This makes no sense since we learn from various examples that specific Old Covenant laws were done away with before the judgment coming of Jesus before their generation passed away, circumcision being the most evident example.

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

God's Law is Christianity's tool of dominion. This is where any discussion of God's law ultimately arrives: the issue of dominion. Ask yourself: Who is to rule on earth, Christ or Satan? Whose followers have the ethically acceptable tool of dominion, Christ's or Satan's? What is this tool of dominion, the Biblically revealed law of God, or the law of self-proclaimed autonomous man? Whose word is sovereign, God's or man's?

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Some years ago, I participated in a discussion with a group of dispensationalists about the kingdom of God. Naturally, the subject of the law came up. Dr. Harold Hoehner, at the time a professor of New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary, said: “Well, if something isn’t repeated in the New Testament, it’s not applicable today.”

David Chilton asked this pointed question in response: “So if your pastor was found to have had sex with an animal, what would you say?” Hoehner responded, “Since it’s not repeated in the New Testament, it’s not a sin.”

The other DTS professors backed away from Hoehner’s claim. They remarked, “The prohibition comes under laws governing fornication. The New Testament forbids fornication.”

I responded, “I agree with you. It is covered under the provision regarding fornication. How do you know what constitutes fornication from the New Testament alone?”

They knew they were trapped. “The Old Testament defines fornication,” they said.

What do we do with an Old Covenant law (Ex. 21:17; Lev. 20:9) that Jesus uses against the Pharisees concerning the death penalty for “he who speaks evil of father or mother” (Mark 7:10)? Of course, Jesus was not addressing little children. He was condemning the way the Pharisees were manipulating God’s law to avoid its practical applications and thereby “neglecting the commandment of God” and setting it aside “in order to keep [their] tradition” (vv. 8-9). Jesus not only rejected their unbiblical traditions, but He also quoted a law from the Torah to condemn them.

Jesus repeated the commandment in the NT. Is it still applicable? Jesus applied it to adults. What do we make of the woman caught in the act of adultery? Did Jesus overturn the sanction for this prohibition? Some scholars believe He did. Then why not the commandment regarding rebellious children?

Paul freely uses Old Covenant law in the NT. He applies a law about the mistreatment of animals (Deut. 25:4) to “the laborer is worthy of his wages” (1 Tim. 5:18). See an expanded application in 1 Corinthians 9:7-10 where Paul references what is written in “the law of Moses” (v. 9) and broadens its application by stating that it was written “for our sake” (v. 10).

He makes a similar application from the OT about different animals being yoked together for work (Deut. 22:10) with believers and unbelievers being bound together, that is, being “unequally yoked” (ἑτεροζυγέω=hetero [differently] + zugeó [yoked]) (2 Cor. 6:14).

The Old Testament is filled with such applicational laws that did not pass away with the coming of the New Covenant. That’s why Paul could write the following: “All Scripture is God-breathed [θεόπνευστος/theopneutos] and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17).

Reproof, correction, and training in righteousness are moral categories. Paul commended Timothy because “from childhood” he had “known the sacred writings” (v. 15). Paul is referring to the Old Covenant by using the terms “sacred writings” (ἱερὰ γράμματα/hera grammata) and “scripture” (γραφὴ/graphē). They were, and still are, applicable today, though in different forms.

The Law of the Covenant

If we take a man-centered approach to these laws, we might say that the purpose of this legislation is only to ensure human prosperity. Such an approach to the law of God misses the most basic point. These laws show us God's own genuine personal care for His world, and as such these laws cannot be altered by human whim. To be sure, the Bible is man-oriented, and thus obedience to these laws will improve human life; but the laws are God's, and cannot be changed by man. Thus, as we examine the laws in Exodus 21-23, our first concern must be the glory of God, not whether these laws seem right to us sinful men. If we start with God, we will soon see how these laws also improve human life.

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What about Hebrews 8:13? If the moral law from the OT was no longer applicable except for those laws repeated in the NT, which most people did not have access to, then why did God promise to put His “laws into their minds and write them upon their hearts” (8:10) in the New Covenant? What laws are these? They seem to be biblical laws— “elementary principles of the oracles of God”—that were to become second nature by way of study, practice, and application (Heb. 5:11-14).

The writer to the Hebrews explains in what way the first covenant was “obsolete … and growing old” and “near [ἐγγὺς/engus] to disappear” (8:13). He was referring to the “regulations of divine worship and the earthly sanctuary” (9:1). Jesus is the Word that “became flesh and tabernacled” among the Jews during His earthly ministry (John 1:14). He is the lamb of God (John 1:29, 36), the temple (2:13-2), and the once for all sacrifice (Heb. 10:10). These are the laws that passed away because they found their fulfillment in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ:

But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, He went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but He entered the Most Holy Place once for all by His own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God! For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that He has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant (Heb. 9:11-15).

There is nothing about the passing away of the moral application of the law to the individual and society at large. The moral law was designed for the nations (Deut. 4:1-8).

We cannot live within the fluid boundaries of legal relativism. There must be a definitive and final legal standard of appeal to justify moral decisions at the personal and governmental levels. If not, then one judge’s opinion is as good (or as bad) as another. “Everyone did what was right in their own eyes” (Judges 17:6)

The debate over the applicability of the whole law of God to Christians has been addressed in numerous places. Before you critique the position, learn what all the factors are. The following materials will help:

• Greg L. Bahnsen, By This Standard: The Authority of God’s Law Today.

• Greg L. Bahnsen, No Other Standard: Theonomy and Its Critics.

• Greg L. Bahnsen, “M.G. Kline on Theonomic Politics: An Evaluation of His Reply.”

• Greg L. Bahnsen and Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., House Divided: The Break-Up of Dispensational Theology.

• Kenneth L. Gentry, God’s Law Made Easy.

• Kenneth L. Gentry, Covenantal Theonomy: A Response to T. David Gordon and Klinean Covenantalism.

• Gary North, ed., Theonomy: An Informed Response.

• Gary North, Victim’s Rights: The Biblical View of Civil Justice.

• James B. Jordan, The Law of the Covenant: An Exposition of Exodus 21-23.

The Purpose of Church

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 06:43:09 -0400

Gary discusses the need for biblical and worldview teaching and preaching that helps Christians to understand how God’s truth applies and informs every area of life.

Does the Bible have a clear standard of ethical behavior that should be followed by sinners everywhere? Why the need to go to general revelation if the Bible already gives an answer? When you lead someone to Christ, do you point him to general revelation or special revelation? What book did you use for daily devotions this morning? What law have you adopted for the governance of your family? What principles should govern your mind as you enter the voting booth?

Westminster Seminary graduate Kenneth A. Myers has gone so far as to argue that “there is a biblical mandate for not attempting to solve all cultural problems with deductions from Scripture.” What about some cultural problems? The theonomist asks: Wouldn’t it be legitimate to exhaust the Bible of all that it says about answers to “cultural problems” before we lay aside Scripture for the less clear statements of general revelation? He deserves a forthright answer.

My guess is that advocates of a general revelation ethic are viewing general revelation through the corrective lens of special revelation. For them general revelation is clear only because special revelation is clear.

It is one thing to talk about the ethical requirements easily distilled from general revelation, but theonomists are still waiting for someone to demonstrate that this can actually be done. Theonomists often catch general revelation advocates borrowing from the theonomist’s garden, similar to the way humanists borrow from the Christian’s garden. But as our nation moves steadily from an ethic that most Americans recognize as being Bible-based, any ethic based on general revelation will dissipate as quickly as a morning fog vanishes at the appearing of a blazing sun.

Theonomy: An Informed Response

Christendom is a civilization—the kingdom of God in history—that is governed in every area, every nook and cranny, by God: a society whose lawfully anointed rulers govern in terms of God’s revealed law. In this view, God is not in retirement or on vacation; He is a King who has delegated to His officers the authority to exercise command. There are three covenantal institutions: family, church, and state. To deny that God’s covenant law applies to civil government in New Testament times is necessarily to abandon the ideal of Christendom.

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Why do Christians go to church every week? Gary discusses the need for biblical and worldview teaching and preaching that helps Christians to understand how God’s truth applies and informs every area of life. No aspect of life is “off limits” to a biblical worldview; all of life is to be claimed for God’s glory.

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The Date of Revelation: What Do the Sources Say?

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 07:54:28 -0400

When you debate a subject, it is incumbent upon you to consider the strongest argument for the opposing position. Anything less than this approach is fundamentally flawed. In addition, failing to inform readers about works on the topic that support the opposing view is nothing less than sloppy scholarship. An example of this is Joel Richardson’s podcast about when Revelation was revealed to John. Was it written before AD 70, around the time of Nero, who died by suicide in AD 68, or around AD 95, during the reign of Domitian, who died in AD 96? Joel gives the impression that the late date has been the agreed-upon view for nearly two millennia, and that it was only recently claimed that Revelation was written before AD 70.

The first to plead his case seems right,
Until another comes and examines him (Prov. 18:17).

Let’s put Joel’s claims to the test. In addition to his claim that “the majority of the church has believed that Revelation was written roughly 25 years after 70 AD,” he also claims “the early church for the first 300 years overwhelmingly” was premillennial. What does he mean by “the church”? No church council discussed or determined the date. The Nicene Creed, composed in AD 325, and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in AD 381, never mention the millennial question. The 17th-century Westminster Confession and Catechisms do not address the topic. To use the word “church” is misleading. For example, attendance at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD ranged between 250 and 318 Bishops, and yet we do not have anything from them about their views on the dating question or the thousand-year period mentioned in Revelation 20. Charles E. Hill comments:

To many Christians today, premillennialism is the very mark of Christian orthodoxy. But there was a period of well over a “millennium” (over half of the Church’s history), from at least the early fifth century until the sixteenth, when chiliasm [thousand-year-ism][1] was dormant and practically non-existent. Even through the Reformation and much of the post-Reformation period, advocates of chiliasm were usually found among fringe groups like the Münsterites. The Augsburg Confession went out of its way to condemn chiliasm (Art. XVII, ‘Of Christ’s Return to Judgment), and John Calvin criticized “the chiliasts, who limited the reign of Christ to a thousand years” (Institutes 3.25.5). It was not until the nineteenth century that chiliasm made a respectable comeback, as a favorite doctrine of Christian teachers who were promoting revival in the face of the deadening effects of encroaching liberalism….

The problem with the advocacy of early pre-millennialism is the sources that some of its advocates used to promote it. For example, Irenaeus promoted his millennial view by an appeal to Jewish sources.

Irenaeus cites a tradition from a book written by Papias of Hierapolis about the millennial kingdom. … It is the famous report about each grapevine in the kingdom having ten thousand branches, each branch ten thousand twigs, each twig ten thousand shoots, each shoot ten thousand clusters, and each cluster ten thousand grapes, etc., with talking grapes, each one anxious that the saints would bless the Lord through it. As it turns out, this account seems to be a development of a tradition recorded in the Jewish apocalypse 2 Baruch in its account of the Messiah’s earthly kingdom (Ch. 29).

I discuss this important point in my book, New Testament Eschatology: What the Early Church Believed about Bible Prophecy, with Francis X. Gumerlock. As we’ll see in a future article, Joel uses Irenaeus as his lynchpin for the late date of Revelation and a key advocate for premillennialism. Joel is not telling the whole story. There is no straight line from the Bible to these early writers and their claims. Let’s keep in mind that we have writings from (1) people who wrote down their views, (2) writings that survived, (3) writings that have been translated for English readers, (4) no surviving works by maybe other Christians from the first three centuries, and (5) the views of Christians who never wrote anything.

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

It has been maintained by some modern writers that the early church was predominately premillennial and exclusively futuristic on Bible prophecy. New Testament Eschatology challenges this prevailing futurist view with a careful study of the historical record. The evidence shows that many early church writers understood the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 to be the end of the Old Covenant world.

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In the earliest period of the church, “nothing with certainty can be found of Revelation in the Apostolic Fathers.” The “first explicit mention of the Revelation is in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho” (ACCS 12: xix). Trypho was a non-believing Jew. Justin wrote: “I admitted to you formerly, that I and many others are of this opinion [of chiliasm], and that such will take place, as you assuredly are aware; but, on the other hand, I signified to you that many who belong to the pure and pious faith, and are true Christians, think otherwise.” There was no unified “church” opinion on the millennial question.
In fact, the earliest surviving commentary on Revelation we have is by Victorinus, which is in Latin, around the year 300.
I could write a book dealing with these and other claims Joel makes in his video. But I don’t have to because this topic has been covered by many sound scholars for centuries. Here are some recent examples that Joel ignores.

• James Glasgow’s 1872 commentary on Revelation: The Apocalypse: Translated and Expounded, in which he spends a considerable amount of time on the dating issue. He wrote, “There is reason to believe that John was banished from Rome and went to Patmos about A.D. 51.” Note what John wrote in Revelation 1:9. He described himself as a “fellow-partaker in the tribulation,” most likely under Nero and when the temple was still standing (Rev. 11:1-2). There is a debate over whether Domitian was a persecutor of Christians. Nero certainly was. More recent scholarship shows that there was no wholesale persecution under Domitian. See Did Domitian Persecute Christians?: An Investigation by Arthur M. Ogden and Ferrell Jenkins. Also see here and here.

• There is the timing issue: the events were to happen “soon” (1:1; 22:6) because “the time is near” (1:3; 22:10). What “soon” took place after AD 95 that fits the context?

• There are many reputable scholars throughout the centuries who argued that Revelation was revealed to John before the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. John Owen, J.B. Lightfoot, Adam Clark, James Glasgow (The Apocalypse: Translated and Expounded, 1872),[2] John Lightfoot (1602-1675), James Stuart Russell, Alfred Edersheim, Philip Schaff, John A.T. Robinson’s Redating the New Testament (1976) and Jonathan Bernier’s Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament: The Evidence for Early Composition(2022), Moses Stuart, F.J.A. Hort, B.F. Westcott, F.W. Farrar, R.A. Torrey, Cornelius Vanderwaal, Albert A. Bell, C.F.D. Moule, James M. Macdonald, Milton Terry, F. F. Bruce, E. Earle Ellis, Joseph Fitzmyer, Robert Young, author of Young’s Literal Translation and Young’s Analytical Concordance, argue that Revelation was written before the fall of Jerusalem. Many modern-day scholars, such as Jay E. Adams, Frank Turek, and Kenneth Gentry, hold to a pre-AD 70 date. Zane Hodges, a dispensationalist, believed Revelation was written during the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero (AD 65). John Weldon and John Ankerberg wrote, “Indeed, it is becoming an increasingly persuasive argument that all the New Testament books were written before 70 A.D. — within a single generation of the death of Christ.”[3]

• For a recent (February 5, 2024) scholarly approach to the dating question, see A Defense of the Neronic Date of the Book of Revelation: A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the School of Divinity in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy” by Jason L. Quintern. There are others.

• The definitive work on the dating question is Kenneth L. Gentry’s dissertation Before Jerusalem Fell: Dating the Book of Revelation, first published in 1989. It’s gone through five printings and three editions. The latest edition includes a new Preface where he responds to some objections.

• There’s also Gentry’s two-volume Commentary on Revelation that is necessary reading.

• The same is true of Peter J. Leithart’s two-volume commentary.

• Francis X. Gumerlock’s book Revelation and the First Century: Preterist Interpretations of the Apocalypse is must-reading. It’s a real historical eye-opener. Gumerlock has translated several very early Latin texts that explicitly state that Revelation was written before AD 70.

• Also see the book that Frank Gumerlock and I wrote: New Testament Eschatology: What the Early Church believed about Bible Prophecy. It includes a discussion of Irenaeus and how a single sentence from him is used to support the late date of Revelation.

Revelation and the First Century

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Joel should have at least mentioned the amount of material available on the dating question. The topic is more complex than Joel maintains. When debating, especially in a Christian context when truth matters, it is incumbent that both sides be discussed honestly.

[1] Derived from the Greek word for “thousand.” Mille is the Latin word for “thousand.”

[2] “THERE IS REASON TO BELIEVE THAT JOHN WAS BANISHED FROM ROME AND WENT TO PATMOS ABOUT A.D. 51” (page 9). “Now if John went to Patmos in A.D. 51, or even early in 54, the Apocalypse might have been written within the period (50-54) during which Lucius Domitius, who received the title of Nero, was associated as Caesar with Claudius. In that case, the opinion of Epiphanius, that the book was written in the reign of Claudius, is in harmony with that expressed in the title of the Syriac version, that it was written in the reign of Nero Caesar; while the meaning of the phrase used by Irenaeus — ‘the Domitian reign,’ or ‘the reign of Domitian,’ on which so much stress has been laid, as if Irenaeus were inspired — is a vexed question, whether it was the reign of Domitian or of Domitius Nero, — in other words, whether δομετιανου [dometianou] is a noun or a derivative adjective.” (10-11)

[3] John Ankerberg and John Weldon, Ready With An Answer: For the Tough Questions About God (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1997), 364-365.

Christians, Politics, and the Apostle Paul

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 07:15:08 -0400

Political liberals are more than willing to use every means necessary to get their message out, even breaking tax laws they supported.

When, in 1800, President John Adams received a letter from Germany, proposing to send over to this country “a company of schoolmasters, painters, poets, etc., all of them disciples of Thomas Paine,” he made prompt and emphatic reply as follows: “I had rather countenance the introduction of Ariel and Caliban with a troupe of spirits the most mischievous from the fairy-land.”

And in a proclamation shortly thereafter, setting forth the dangers threatening the young republic, he thus reannounced the national faith: “The most precious interests of the United States are still held in jeopardy by the hostile designs and insidious arts of a foreign nation (France), as well as by the dissemination among them of those principles subversive of the foundation of all religious, moral, and social obligations, that have produced incalculable mischiefs and misery in other countries.”

The one man whose coming to America was more to be deplored than any other was Thomas Paine. His political writings gave him fame and influence, but his coarse and vulgar skepticism made him in the end the shunned and despised of all American decency…

I come now to study the federal charter—the “supreme law of the land”—adopted by the historic convention of 1787 in the city of Philadelphia, and its relation to the Christian religion. Was any action taken by that grave body of great statesmen that was intended directly or indirectly to repudiate the pronounced Christian faith of the colonial fathers? Their courage had been tested in the storm of war, and now their ambitions could only be inspired by the loftiest patriotism—the completion of a work so gloriously begun. James Madison, who preserved the debates of that memorable convention, and who was conspicuous in its deliberations, said that “there never was an assembly of men, charged with a great and arduous trust who were purer in their motives, or more exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them, than were the members of the federal convention of 1787 to the object of devising and proposing a constitutional system which should best supply the defects of that which it was to replace, and best secure the permanent liberty and happiness of their country.”

Christianity and the American Commonwealth

Originally published in 1898, Christianity and the American Commonwealth is a collection of five brilliant lectures given by Dr. Charles B. Galloway at the Chapel of Emory College in Oxford, Georgia. The arguments made in his book, although written more than 100 years ago, are persuasively modern and need to be heeded by today’s church. More than a hundred historical images from all over the world have been added to bring Galloway’s text to life.

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One from the archives and the tactics remain the same. Political liberals are more than willing to use every means necessary to get their message out, even breaking tax laws. Conservatives and Christians seldom have this boldness. In fact, many Christians don’t even see the reason to be involved. The Apostle Paul would not agree.

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Episode 100: Dating the Book of Revelation

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 08:56:29 -0400

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 100

Gary discusses the date of the writing of the book of Revelation.

Quite a bit of diversity existed in early Christianity regarding the date that John wrote the book of Revelation, and the dominance of one opinion is not synonymous with unanimity of opinion.

Several writers in recent years have noted that markedly different opinions about the date of Revelation abounded among early Christian writers. For example, Adela Yarbro Collins took notice of “traditions about the date of Revelation” that “were apparently independent of Irenaeus.” More recently George Wesley Buchanan wrote that in the church fathers “there is no consistent agreement on the precise time when John lived and wrote.” In an earlier book (NT Eschatology), I categorized these various opinions regarding the date of Revelation under different headings, from “very early,” e.g., the time of Claudius, (41–54 A.D.) to “very late” during the reign of Trajan (98–117 A.D.). This chapter and the next expand significantly upon that research.

These two chapters will provide passages from ancient and medieval texts, showing that there were at least ten different traditions favoring a date of the book of Revelation before 70 A.D. These interpretations all predate the seventeenth-century commentary of Luis Alcasar, which is regarded by many as the first preterist commentary of Revelation.

Revelation and the First Century

Criticisms against preterist interpretations of the book of Revelation elicit questions: Did any early and medieval Christian writers interpret the visions of Revelation in a preterist manner? Are preterist interpretations of the book of Revelation a modern, seventeenth century invention, as is claimed by some? This book answers these questions by providing selections from ancient and medieval commentaries on the book of Revelation, writings composed long before the seventeenth century. Many of these selections are translated into English here for the first time. All of the selections reflect the fact that some Christians in ancient and medieval times interpreted visions in the book of Revelation in a preterist fashion.

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Gary discusses the date of the writing of the book of Revelation. Joel Richardson recently claimed that the historic church has primarily been premillennial in its eschatology and has held to a “late date” (around AD 95) for the writing of the book. Is this correct?

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