The American Vision

Government Schools and Bogus History Books Have Corrupted Young Minds

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

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

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

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

The Case for America's Christian Heritage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Flat-Earth Culprit

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

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

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

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

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

History 101: Lessons from the Past

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[15] Boorstin, The Discoverers, 100.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 112

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

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

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

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

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

The Gog and Magog End-Time Alliance

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

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

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The Rise of “Sheilaism” and Beyond

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Progressives and Presuppositionalists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths

Like the Bereans of Paul’s day (Acts 17:11), Christians should check the veracity of all opinions against the only reliable standard of authority that God has placed in our hands: the Bible. This may mean a change in belief systems for some. There is no novelty in this. God confronted Peter directly about the inclusion of Gentiles into the household of faith (10:9–16). Paul confronted Peter “to his face” on a similar matter (Gal. 2:11–14). There are times when we all need to be knocked off our horse of mistaken opinions (Acts 9:4). “Testing” is a biblical mandate (2 Cor. 13:5; 1 John 4:1).

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

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Confronting the Myth that Pastors Must Stay Out of Politics

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

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

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

God and Government

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

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

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

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

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

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

Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whoever Controls the Schools Rules the World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transgenderism Weighed, Measured, and Found Wanting

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

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

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

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

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

Thinking Straight in a Crooked World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 111

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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We All Live by Faith

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

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

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

Man in the Dock

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

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

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

The Fool and His Folly

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

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

Against All Opposition

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

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

We All Believe in Something

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[6] Sagan, Cosmos, 4.

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

[8] Sagan, Cosmos, 257.

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

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

[11] Sagan, Cosmos, 5.

[12] Sagan, Cosmos, 30.

The Inescapable Fact of Religion

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths

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

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

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

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

The Case for America's Christian Heritage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The First Principles of Every Debate

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

We must always begin with first principles in any debate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Restoring the Foundation of Civilization

There are many Christians who will not participate in civilization-building efforts that include economics, journalism, politics, education, and science because they believe (or have been taught to believe) these areas of thought are outside the realm of what constitutes a Christian worldview. Nothing could be further from the truth.

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

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

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

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 110

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

Quite a bit of diversity existed in early Christianity regarding the date that John wrote the book of Revelation, and the dominance of one opinion is not synonymous with unanimity of opinion. Several writers in recent years have noted that markedly different opinions about the date of Revelation abounded among early Christian writers. For example, Adela Yarbro Collins took notice of “traditions about the date of Revelation” that “were apparently independent of Irenaeus.”

More recently George Wesley Buchanan wrote that in the church fathers “there is no consistent agreement on the precise time when John lived and wrote.” In an earlier book, The Early Church and the End of the World co-authored with Gary DeMar, I categorized these various opinions regarding the date of Revelation under different headings, from “very early,” e.g., the time of Claudius, (41–54 A.D.) to “very late” during the reign of Trajan (98–117 A.D.).

This chapter and the next expand significantly upon that research. The two chapters provide passages from ancient and medieval texts, showing that there were at least ten different traditions favoring a date of the book of Revelation before 70 A.D. These interpretations all predate the seventeenth-century commentary of Luis Alcasar, which is regarded by many as the first preterist commentary of Revelation. In this chapter I have arranged the texts starting with those that portray the earliest dating of the Apocalypse around 30 A.D. to those which dated it about 53 A.D.

Revelation and the First Century

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

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

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Signs, Signs, Everywhere Signs!

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

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

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

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

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

The Day and the Hour

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

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

Plagues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Signs in the Heavens

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

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

Jupiter Effect

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

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

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

Left Behind: Separating Fact from Fiction

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

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

[2] Weber, Apocalypses, 102.

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

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

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

Four Views of Revelation

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

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

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

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

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

The Rapture and the Fig Tree Generation

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

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

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

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

Twisting Scripture to Accommodate the ‘Spirit of the Age’

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whoever Controls the Schools Rules the World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths

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

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

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

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

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

It's Just Not There

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

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

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

At the end of the year 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future. Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science, and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through studying the pagan past. [1]

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

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

Last Days Madness

In this authoritative book, Gary DeMar clears the haze of ‘end-times’ fever, shedding light on the most difficult and studied prophetic passages in the Bible, including Daniel 7:13-14; 9:24-27; Matt. 16:27-28; 24-25; Thess. 2; 2 Peter 3:3-13, and clearly explaining a host of other controversial topics.

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

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

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

Episode 109: The One Way to Interpret "This Generation"

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 06:31:33 -0400

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 109

Gary responds to a critic who challenges his interpretation of “this generation” in Matthew’s gospel.

In Matthew 24:33, the word “you” (plural) is used twice: “so, you too, when you see all these things, recognize [lit. know] that He is near, right at the door.” Who does Jesus say will see “all these things”? Certainly not a future audience. “So, you too, when you see all these things.” The first “you” is obviously Jesus’ present audience as is the second “you.” No one reading Matthew 24:33 could conceive that either use of “you” by Jesus refers to an audience different from the audience to whom Jesus was addressing.

There is a third use of the second-person plural in verse 33. The Greek word ginōskete is also a second-person plural and means “you know” or “you recognize.” If Jesus had a future generation in mind, He could have eliminated all confusion by saying, “even so they too, when they see all these things, they will recognize that He is near, right at the door. Truly I say to you, that generation will not pass away until all these things take place.”

We can follow the way Matthew uses the near demonstrative “this” throughout his gospel to see that he has his present audience in view and not one in the distant future: “this way” (6:9), “this day” (6:11), “this fellow” (9:3), “this news” (9:26), “this city” (10:23), “this place” (12:6), “this man” (13:56), “this people” (15:8); “this rock” (15:18), “this desolate place” (15:33), “this little child” (18:4), “this mountain” (21:21), “this stone” (21:44), “this image” (22:20), “this gospel” (24:14), “this generation” (24:34), “this woman” (26:13), “this night” (26:31). “This” refers to what’s near.

If Jesus had wanted to identify a future generation, He could have chosen the adjective that to distinguish the generation to whom He was speaking from a future generation (e.g., Matt. 7:22 [“that day” is in the future]; 8:12 [“that place” refers to the place of judgment distant from our place and time]; 10:19 [“that hour” refers to a future time]; 24:10 [“and at that time” refers to a future time but within the time parameters of “this generation”]; 24:36 [“that day and hour” refers to a future day and hour that was near the end of their generation (1 John 2:18; Heb. 10:25), not their present day and hour]; 26:29 [“that day” refers to a time when Jesus is in the kingdom, a future time]). The texts that govern the timing of the Olivet prophecy—Matthew 23:36 and Matthew 24:34—make it clear that Jesus was speaking of the events leading up to and including the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.

If we abandon these clear time statements, then these signs can be applied to any generation. As history attests, this is exactly what’s happened. There have always been wars, false prophets, famines, tribulation, lawlessness, and persecution. If people fail to recognize the timing of these events set by Scripture and the historical context of Jesus’ words, they will always be led astray by those who keep insisting that it’s our generation that will experience the end times.

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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Gary responds to a critic who challenges his interpretation of “this generation” in Matthew’s gospel. The critic claims Gary is assuming what he has to prove, but Gary shows the opposite. Words like “generation” can be somewhat arbitrary, but when this phrase is read in other parts of the NT, especially Acts 2, it becomes clear that it is not about many generations, but about a very particular one: those hearing Jesus’ words in the first century.

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Hiding the Truth is the First Step for Control

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 07:56:06 -0400

Propagandizing, media bias, and selective fact-finding to manipulate people have a long history. It’s much more sophisticated today. Keeping people in the dark about the issues of the day is a practice used by both sides of any debate. Socialism is all the rage, and yet rarely do we find today’s media outlets examining the actual impact of socialist policies. The same is true of communism, abortion, Islam, same-sex sexuality, and transgenderism. The Bible has something to say about this:

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

But what if the neighbor is given a rigged book? What if specific facts have been hidden from him?

Charles Babbage (1791-1871), an English scientist and mathematician who conceptualized the idea of a programmable computer, understood that scientists often manipulated evidence to add credibility to a theory. Babbage described three types of misconduct: forging (the outright invention of data), trimming (the cosmetic ‘massaging’ of data to display them to the best advantage), and cooking (discreetly losing the data that were out of line or did not help the hypothesis).[1]

For years, many critics of the Bible have claimed that the Bible supports slavery as it was practiced in the United States and the Caribbean. If this is true, then why was a special “trimmed” Bible created for slaves to read?

According to NPR, Parts of the Holy Bible, Selected For the Use of the Negro Slaves, in the British West-India Islands, is on display at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., and is one of only three known copies of this abridged version of the King James Bible. Printed by the Missionary Society For the Conversion of Negro Slaves, the text of the Bible was used by missionaries from England to convert slaves to Christianity.

The edited version left out anything “that might lead slaves to turn on their masters. For instance, Moses doesn’t even exist until he is an old man in the ‘Slave Bible.’”

Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths

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They cut everything from Genesis 45 to Exodus 19. Anthony Schmidt, the associate curator of Bible and Religion in America at the museum, explained, “What they’ve cut out is the story of the Israelites’ captivity in Egypt and their eventual liberation and journey to the promised land.”

The censored version removed 90 percent of the Old Testament and 50 percent of the New Testament, eliminating potentially seditious passages such as Exodus 21:16, which reads: “And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.”

Exodus 21:16 is a key anti-chattel slavery passage. Many of this nation’s earliest settlers paid for their passage as indentured servants. Indentured servitude is neither unbiblical nor unconstitutional. A thief who was unable to make restitution for a property crime could be sold into servitude for his theft (Ex. 22:3b). Even after the abolition of slavery, indentured servitude was retained by the Constitution as a legitimate form of punishment: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction” (Amendment XIII, Section 1). We should, therefore, distinguish between slave (man stealing) and bondservant (indentured servant). We should also keep in mind that the word “slave” appears only once in the King James Bible (Jer. 2:14a), as does the word “slaves” (Rev. 18:13). This may surprise you, but the word slavery does not appear anywhere in the King James Bible. [2]

Robert L. Dabney, the most articulate defender of Virginia and the South, commented:

It need hardly be said that we abhor the injustice, cruelty, and guilt of the African slave trade. It is justly condemned by the public law of Christendom…. It is condemned by the law of God. Moses placed this among the judicial statutes of the Jews: “And he that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.”[3]

While Dabney makes a biblical case against man-stealing, he defended the legitimacy of owning slaves that were once procured through theft. He based his argument on property laws. Joel McDurmon had this to say about Dabney’s argument:

Dabney’s analogy to land titles reveals the deep flaw in what was an oft-repeated defense of slaveholding in light of its indefensible origins. With land disputes, we are discussing that which is already indisputably property and can be nothing else. With the slaves, the discussion is nothing of the sort. Instead, the discussion is of that which should never have been property to begin with. Justice in this case is not a discussion of property, but life and liberty. This is not a discussion of property disputes. It is a question of manstealing. Justice is not restored by monetary values or sums; it requires, according to God’s law, the death penalty and the release of the wrongfully enslaved person.[4]

Exodus 21:16 does not indicate that it applies only to Israelites, as some argue. If it does, then verse 12 would also only apply to Israelites since its language is identical to what we find in verse 16:

• “He who strikes a man so that he dies shall surely be put to death” (21:12).

• “And he who kidnaps a man whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death” (21:16).

James B. Jordan offers a good summary of the issues involved: “The Bible punishes all man-stealing with a mandatory death penalty. In Deuteronomy 24:7, the kidnapping of covenant members is particularly forbidden, but in Exodus 21:16, all man-stealing is prohibited. It might be maintained that if we read v. 16 in context of v. 2, it is only Hebrews who are protected and avenged by this law. The text simply says ‘man,’ however, and there is no indication in the immediate context (vv. 12, 14) that ‘man’ is restricted to covenant members.”[5]

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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We know that in the New Testament Paul condemns slave traders (kidnappers) in 1 Timothy 1:10:

But we know that the Law is good, if one uses it lawfully, realizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching.

The book of Revelation considers those who traffic in “slaves and human lives” to be immoral and destined for judgment (18:13). Nowhere does the New Testament support trafficking in slaves. Paul’s letter to Philemon does not support the notion that the New Testament tolerated chattel slavery. Onesimus was probably a bondservant who owed a debt to Philemon. Paul encourages the runaway Onesimus to return to Philemon and encourages Philemon to release Onesimus upon his arrival. Paul promises to pay Philemon if Onesimus “owes you anything” (Phil. 18). Paul’s mention of a debt seems to indicate that Onesimus was an indentured servant.[6]

Charles Colson applied the principles of Old Testament law regarding restitution and property crimes to today’s judicial system:

Recently I addressed the Texas legislature…. I told them that the only answer to the crime problem is to take nonviolent criminals out of our prisons and make them pay back their victims with restitution. This is how we can solve the prison crowding problem.

The amazing thing was that afterwards they [the legislators] came up to me one after another and said things like, “That’s a tremendous idea. Why hasn’t anyone thought of that?” I had the privilege of saying to them, “Read Exodus 22. It is only what God said to Moses on Mount Sinai thousands of years ago.”[7]

The history of the enslavement of African blacks has impeded the gospel. Gary North writes: “Slavery as a system came to North America in the early eighteenth century, and it was grounded in the racist prejudices that increased with every shipload of victimized blacks. Racism seems to have been the foundation of slavery rather than the reverse.”[8] With the coming of Christ, Christians are to preach the gospel to make disciples of the nations; making them “slaves to Christ,” not slaves to other men.

[1] Walter Gratzer, The Undergrowth of Science: Delusion, Self-Deception and Human Frailty (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000), vii.

[2] Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), 121.

[3] Robert L. Dabney, A Defence of Virginia, [And Through Her, of the South] (New York: Negro University Press, [1867] 1969), 288. Reprinted by Sprinkle Publications, Harrisonburg, Virginia, 1977.

[4] The Problem of Slavery in Christian America (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2017).

[5] James B. Jordan, The Law and the Covenant: An Exposition of Exodus 21-23 (Powder Springs, GA American Vision, [1984] 2022), 104.

[6] See Brian J. Dodd, The Problem with Paul (Downers Grove, IL: InterVaristy Press, 1996), 81-110.

[7] Charles Colson, “The Kingdom of God and Human Kingdoms,” James M. Boice, ed. Transforming Our World: A Call to Action (Portland, OR: Multnomah, 1988), 154-55.

[8] North, Tools of Dominion, 180.

Audience Relevance and Time Indicators

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 07:21:17 -0400

Gary continues his lesson on hermeneutics by looking briefly at the context and time words that bookend the book of Revelation.

The past fulfillment of most of the prophecies in Revelation 4-19 is compellingly suggested by the various time indicators contained in its less symbolic, more didactic introduction and conclusion.

Revelation 1:1 opens the prophecies of Revelation and prepares the reader to understand them: “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass.”

Does not John specifically say the things “must shortly come to pass”? And in case you miss it he repeats it, using different, though synonymous, terminology in Revelation 1:3c: “The time is at hand.” And in case the reader skipped the introduction, he repeats these ideas as he closes. Revelation 22:6: “These sayings are faithful and true: and the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly be done.” Revelation 22:10: “And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand.”

House Divided

The book that started a revolution. Bahnsen and Gentry stir the hornet's nest with this comprehensive refutation of Dispensationalism. The two pillars of law and eschatology are dealt with evenly, fairly—and most importantly—biblically.

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Gary begins to discuss the book of Revelation and points out important details that most modern Christians dismiss. Although the Bible is written FOR us, it wasn’t written TO us. The vast majority of the New Testament is recording historical events and their significance. These past events still have great importance and meaning, especially for vindicating Jesus’ authoritative claims about His identity.

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Did John MacArthur Make His Case on the Olivet Discourse?

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 07:24:23 -0400

Jonathan Sedlak, author of Reading Matthew, Trusting Jesus: Christian Tradition and First-Century Fulfillment within Matthew 24-25, told me in a recent phone call that it was John MacArthur’s book The Second Coming: Signs of Christ’s Return and the End of the Age (2006) that led him to investigate preterism because it mentioned several preterists, including me (although my name is misspelled as Demar rather than DeMar).

In The Second Coming, MacArthur seems to go out of his way to avoid dealing with the inherent problems of his prophetic system. Here’s just one example:

[N]otice Christ’s only explicit remarks about the destruction of the temple are those recorded in verse 2 [of Matthew 24], as Jesus and the disciples were departing from the temple (v. 1). In the Olivet Discourse itself He makes no clear reference to the events of A.D. 70. His entire reply is an extended answer to the more important question about the signs of His coming and the end of the age. Virtually ignoring their initial question, He said nothing whatsoever about when the destruction of Jerusalem would occur. That is because those events were not really germane to the end of the end of the age. They were merely a foretaste of the greater judgment that would accompany His return, previews of what is to come ultimately. (SC, 80)

This is a remarkable statement, given that nothing in the context of the Olivet Discourse indicates that Jesus is “ignoring their initial question.” How does MacArthur know this? He doesn’t. This is not exegesis. He is reading his dispensational system into the text. He scrupulously avoids the heart of the debate over the time texts, especially regarding “this generation” (24:34).

Last Days Madness

In this authoritative book, Gary DeMar clears the haze of "end-times" fever, shedding light on the most difficult and studied prophetic passages in the Bible, including Daniel 7:13-14; 9:24-27; Matt. 16:27-28; 24-25; Thess. 2; 2 Peter 3:3-13, and clearly explaining a host of other controversial topics.

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“Virtually ignoring their initial question, He said nothing whatsoever about when the destruction of Jerusalem would occur.” Nothing whatsoever? MacArthur (or whoever edited this book) had to say this because to admit that Jesus was describing what was going to happen to the temple that was standing there—“not one stone here shall be left upon another” (24:3)—would mean Jesus had a great deal to say “about when the destruction of Jerusalem would occur.” It would occur before that existing generation passed away (24:34).

I could say a lot about MacArthur’s comments on Matthew 24, but I’ve said them repeatedly elsewhere. I found this comment surprising.

Notice, moreover, that the great tribulation Christ described involves cataclysm and suffering on a global cosmic scale (vv. 29-30)—not a local holocaust in Jerusalem only. (SC, 78)

If Jesus isn’t describing “a local holocaust in Jerusalem only,” then how is it that it can be avoided by escaping to the mountains outside of Judea (24:16-20)?

The cosmic language of 24:29-30 is typical of cosmic language used to describe a judgment on Babylon (Isa. 13:1-11) and “Judah and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem” (Zeph. 1:1-4). See R.C. Sproul’s comments in Matthew: An Expositional Commentary (2019). For example, “In Old Testament prophecy, there is a very clear use of cosmic phenomena in descriptions of judgment. In other words, when God promised to send judgment, He often spoke in highly figurative language” (653-654). Sproul then quotes Isaiah 13:9-10, 13, and 34:4. He notes that while “Jesus’ language was figurative, … He was describing a judgment event that literally happened within that generation.” (654) Sproul goes on to note that “Josephus writes that certain signs were observed between the years AD 60 and 70, one of which was a blazing comet.” (655). Josephus described a comet, a “star resembling a sword,” that passed over Jerusalem in AD 66, which many might have believed was a sign of an approaching calamity.

MacArthur’s The Second Coming reads as if it was written in a hurry or maybe edited in a hurry. For example, in one place MacArthur writes that preterists “ultimately depart from and nullify the strict literal sense of Matthew 24:34,” while on the previous page he chides preterists for insisting that Matthew 24:34 should be interpreted with “wooden literalness.” (SC, 81, 80) MacArthur should have studied how “this generation” is used elsewhere in the New Testament. “This generation” always refers—without exception—to the generation to whom Jesus is speaking.[1] Since the meaning of “this generation” is crucial for establishing the proper time setting for the Olivet Discourse, MacArthur should have spent considerable time justifying his interpretation. See my books Last Days Madness and Wars and Rumors of Wars, John Bray’s Matthew 24 Fulfilled, and James Jordan’s Matthew 23-25 for a thorough discussion of this topic.

MacArthur described the preterist interpretation of “this generation” a “misunderstanding” (SC, 219) without addressing the extensive arguments preterists use to defend their position. Preterists are not the only ones who have this “misunderstanding.” Here are three examples from commentators who would not describe themselves as preterists:

• [T]he obvious meaning of the words “this generation” is the people contemporary with Jesus. Nothing can be gained by trying to take the word in any sense other than its normal one: in Mark (elsewhere in 8:12, 9:19) the word always has this meaning.[2]

• [This generation] can only with the greatest difficulty be made to mean anything other than the generation living when Jesus spoke.[3]

• The significance of the temporal reference has been debated, but in Mark “this generation” clearly designates the contemporaries of Jesus (see on Chs. 8:12, 38; 9:19) and there is no consideration from the context which lends support to any other proposal. Jesus solemnly affirms that the generation contemporary with his disciples will witness the fulfillment of his prophetic word, culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem and the dismantling of the Temple.[4]

I could quote many more examples. See the list in my book Wars and Rumors of Wars. Why didn’t MacArthur attempt to refute these non-preterist scholars? Do they misunderstand Scripture’s clear teaching?

Wars and Rumors of Wars

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In addition to an incomplete study of how “this generation” is used in the gospels, MacArthur morphed “near” and “shortly” into “imminent” without ever making an exegetical case for it. If the Holy Spirit wanted to convey that Jesus could return at “any moment” over nearly 2000 years (so far), He would have directed the biblical writers to use Greek words meaning “any moment,” not “near” or “shortly.” He didn’t.

Consider James 5:8-9, a passage MacArthur uses to support his contention that Jesus could come “at any moment” but was near to those who first received and read his letter. (SC, 51) “You too be patient; strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand” (5:8). The “you” (plural) referred to them. “At hand,” or “near,” cannot be made to mean “any moment.” The next verse defines “at hand”: “Behold, the Judge is standing right at the doors” (5:9). “At hand” = “right at the doors.” How far from the door is Jesus in Revelation 3:20? Being “right at the door” means being close enough to knock. Compare James 5:9 with Matthew 24:33, “even so you too, when you see all these things, recognize that He is near, at the doors.”

MacArthur’s short commentary on Revelation, Because the Time is Near: John MacArthur Explains the Book of Revelation, is a problem historically since nearly 2000 years have passed since the events were said to take place soon” (1:1; 22:6) “because the time is near” (1:3; 22:10) for those who first read the Apocalypse (1:1). MacArthur is either oblivious to the debate surrounding this issue or he tactically decided to steer his readers around the topic so as not to raise a very big red flag.

David Chilton, author of Paradise Restored, The Great Tribulation, and The Days of Vengeance, told me that he listened to a series of talks by MacArthur on hermeneutics and biblical interpretation. David was impressed by how helpful it was. Then he listened to some messages that MacArthur gave on Bible prophecy and could not understand why MacArthur was not following the interpretive principles he fleshed out in his short course on hermeneutics.

MacArthur states that interpreting “this generation” in a “wooden literalness” fashion would mean that “the rest of the Olivet Discourse must be spiritualized or otherwise interpreted figuratively in order to explain how Christ’s prophecies could all have been fulfilled by A.D. 70 without His returning bodily to earth.” (SC, 80) Do preterists spiritualize (a word not often defined) the events Jesus described in Matthew 24 and elsewhere in the gospels? Not at all! There were literal earthquakes (Matt. 27:54; 28:2; Acts 16:26) and literal famines (Acts 11:28; cf. Rom. 8:35), just as Jesus predicted (Matt. 24:7). The same is true of literal “false prophets” (1 John 4:1).

What do we make of Paul’s statement that the “gospel” had been preached “throughout the world [kosmos]” (Rom. 1:8), “to all the nations” (Rom. 16:25-26; 1 Tim. 3:16d), “in all creation under heaven” (Col. 1:23; also 1:6), just as Jesus predicted would take place (Matt. 24:14) before that generation passed away? Jesus used the Greek word oikoumenē in verse 14. When compared with how it’s used in Luke 2:1 and Acts 11:28, the gospel only had to be preached throughout the then-known world to be fulfilled, and it was. Then there are Jesus’ specific words that the literal temple the disciples asked about would be destroyed before the last apostle died (Matt. 16:27-28), before their generation passed away (24:34).

Last Days Madness and Wars and Rumors of Wars answer every argument MacArthur raises, and his books avoid addressing. Some might claim that MacArthur is unaware of the work done in this area. This debate has been around for centuries. Anyone writing on this topic should be aware of the current literature. He knew what was going on. He (or his editor) quotes an internet article of mine and references other preterist sources like Ken Gentry.

[1] See Gary DeMar, Last Days Madness: Obsession of the Modern Church and Wars and Rumors of Wars at AmericanVision.org

[2] Robert G. Bratcher and Eugene A. Nida, A Translator’s Handbook of the Gospel of Mark (New York: United Bible Societies, 1961), 419.

[3] D.A. Carson, “Matthew” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, gen. ed. Frank E. Gaebelein, 12 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1985), 8:507.

[4] William L. Lane, Commentary on the Gospel of Mark (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974), 480.

An Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics

Mon, 14 Sep 2026 07:04:58 -0400

Gary begins a short course on hermeneutics—the art and practice of interpretation—on today’s podcast.

The Bible can be an intimidating book, but it doesn’t have to be. We must be like the Bereans who examined “the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11).

Too often, Christians rely on so-called Bible experts and complicated charts that include gaps in time, outrageous literal interpretations, and numerous claims that current events are prime indicators that the end is near. Many Christians are unaware that the same Bible passages have been used in nearly every generation as proof that the end or some aspect of the end would take place “soon.”

For nearly 2000 years Christians have attempted to read and interpret Scripture through the lens of current events without paying close attention to audience relevance, specific time indicators, the literal translation and comparison of specific words found in prophetic texts, and the transition between the Old and New Testaments.

A Beginner's Guide to Interpreting Bible Prophecy

With so much prophetic material in the Bible—somewhere around 25% of the total makeup of Scripture—it seems difﬁcult to argue that an expert is needed to understand such a large portion of God’s Word and so many ‘experts’ could be wrong generation after generation. A Beginner’s Guide to Interpreting Bible Prophecy has been designed to help Christians of all ages and levels of experience to study Bible prophecy with confidence.

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Hermeneutics is the art and practice of interpretation. We use hermeneutics every day whether we realize it or not. We interpret not only the words people say, but how they say them and in what context. Understanding the Bible requires the same carefulness and deliberateness that we apply to the words and actions we encounter and interpret in our everyday lives.

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