The American Vision

Reading the Bible Through Scofield

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 07:10:26 -0400

Gary is interviewed by Pastor Greg Chacon about eschatology and how dispensationalism has influenced prophetic interpretations.

The Bible requires that Christians “always [be] ready to make a defense to everyone who asks [us] to give an account for the hope” that is in us, “yet with gentleness and reverence” (1 Peter 3:15). We are to be “ready in season and out of season; [to] reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction” (2 Tim. 4:2).

Paul “reasoned with” the Jews from the Scriptures in their own synagogues, “explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead” (Acts 17:3). He followed a similar procedure with “some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers” in Athens (17:18). Jude called on us to “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). We have an obligation, therefore, to ask whether the theological position advocated by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins in Left Behind “was once for all delivered to the saints.”

Some people might be critical of my attempts to scrutinize the theology of Left Behind with the rejoinder that Christians should not fight with one another. Let me say that Tim LaHaye understands the need and obligation to defend what he believes the Bible teaches. In his Rapture Under Attack (1998), LaHaye shows that he is not opposed to answering some of his critics against charges of “false teaching,” “cultish beliefs,” and even “heresy.” The very nature of the book’s title and its polemical style demonstrates that he does not object to scrutiny and debate between Christians of goodwill. Therefore, it is neither unbiblical nor unloving to address doctrinal disputes by appealing to the Bible.

When Paul believed that Peter was in error, the Bible says that Paul “opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned” (Gal. 2:11). Those in Berea held Paul to the standard of biblical integrity by “examining the Scriptures daily, to see whether” the things he was saying “were so” (Acts 17:11). None of us should be held to any less of a standard.

Left Behind: Separating Fact from Fiction

With confidence based on years of biblical study, DeMar carefully examines eleven major components of the pre-tribulation rapture theology and offers clear, convincing alternatives to the interpretations of Bible prophecy presented in Left Behind. What difference does it make what we believe about the end times anyway? DeMar addresses that question as well, showing 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 could revolutionize the life of the church.

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Gary is interviewed by Pastor Greg Chacon about eschatology and how dispensationalism has influenced prophetic interpretations. In this first part of a multi-part discussion, they discuss the dominant view of evangelicalism and how it shapes many Christians’ outlook on the future.

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Episode 106: Leaving Preterism for Dispensationalism (Part One)

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 08:24:41 -0400

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 106

Gary begins a response to an individual who says he left partial preterism for dispensationalism.

What did the church in Philadelphia think Jesus meant when He told them, “I am coming soon [ταχύς]; hold fast what you have, so that no one will take your crown”? (Rev. 3:11) Who is Jesus addressing? A local church in Asia Minor. He told them to “hold fast.” It was their “crown” that was in jeopardy of being taken. A passage like this has meaning for every generation, but we don’t know how to apply it until we determine what it meant to the people to whom it was first written, something that would happen “soon” for them.

With these numerous proximate time indicators in the book of Revelation and the rest of the New Testament, how is it possible to believe they mean something different from their obvious meaning when compared to how they are used elsewhere in the New Testament? Brock Hollett’s answer is something he calls the “Prophetic Perspective” where two mountain ranges look to be near but in reality there’s a valley of great distance between them. There’s nothing in the text that intimates that this is the process by which these events are to be interpreted. Where does this type of speculation end?

The Great Tribulation mentioned by Jesus in Matthew 24:21 happened before the generation to whom He spoke passed away. He was not speaking about a near and far fulfillment since the use of “this” in “this generation” (24:34) refers to what’s near. John said that he was a “fellow partaker in the tribulation and kingdom” (Rev. 1:9; also 2:22; 7:14), a kingdom that John the Baptist said was “near”: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15; also Gal. 4:4; Eph. 1:10; 1 Tim. 2:6; Titus 1:3). John the Baptist said the following to the Pharisees and Sadducees: “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? [μελλούσης/about to come]” (Matt. 3:7). This was not a wrath in the distant future. It was a wrath on their generational horizon (1 Thess. 1:10; 2:13–16), a wrath that could be avoided (1 Thess. 5:9).

Debunking a Debunker of Preterism

Former preterist Brock Hollett wrote a book titled Debunking Preterism. In it he claims that God spoke to his heart one night, and he repented of his preterism. He wrote Debunking Preterism to set forth what he claims is a "proper biblical eschatology." In his brief 50-page response to Dr. Hollett's book, Gary DeMar shows that nothing in Debunking Preterism is new, novel, or even proper eschatology. Dr. Hollett, like most futurists, looks for ways to ignore the time statements and impending-judgment language in what the Bible says will "soon" befall Jerusalem in the first century.

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Gary begins a response to an individual who says he left partial preterism for dispensationalism. Gary rehearses his own path to preterism and how the Bible is what led him there. Reading the NT in the context of the OT, in addition to the historical context of first century Israel in subjection to Rome (not to mention the traditions of the Judaizers), has to be taken into account when reading the letters of the NT and the four Gospels.

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“Is Your Church Worth Invading?”

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 04:56:12 -0400

Albert Mohler asked this question in the July 2006 issue of TABLETALK, a monthly devotional published by Ligonier: “Is Your Church Worth Invading?” Good question. What will your church leadership do if the Federal Government and your state government and their courts tell your pastor to stop preaching against homosexuality and abortion or any other concocted political evil? Now is the time to discuss and plan for it.

In the book of Acts, the NT ekklēsia was a threat to the religious establishment and later to Rome. At one point, someone declared, “‘These men who have upset the world have come here also; and Jason has welcomed them, and they all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.’ They stirred up the crowd and the city authorities who heard these things. And when they had received a pledge from Jason and the others, they released them” (Acts 17:6-9).

If Christians kept the peace (and paid the fine), Rome was not concerned with them. They were not revolutionaries. The Jewish zealots were, and they paid a heavy price when they decided to go to war against Rome. But when Christians declared that Jesus was Lord, including all existing lords, trouble ensued. Nazi Germany is a perfect example. Don’t ever say it can’t happen here when it happened in Germany, where the Reformation was born.

Once we adopt a quietist and radical separationist perspective on Christ and culture, the tyrannical shoe will drop. In time, churches in Nazi Germany were “confined as far as possible to the performance of narrowly religious functions, and even within this narrow sphere [they] were subjected to as many hindrances as the Nazis dared to impose.” This assessment is from a 1945 report published by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA. The Nazi Master Plan: The Persecution of the Christian Churches was prepared for the War Crimes Staff. It offered the following summary: “This study describes, with illustrative factual evidence, Nazi purposes, policies and methods of persecuting the Christian Churches in Germany and occupied Europe.”

Where did the strategic plan begin? “Implementation of this objective started with the curtailment of religious instruction in the primary and secondary schools with the squeezing of the religious periods into inconvenient hours, with Nazi propaganda among the teachers in order to induce them to refuse the teaching of religion, with vetoing of . . . religious textbooks, and finally with substituting [a] Nazi Weltanschauung [worldview] and ‘German faith’ for Christian religious denominational instruction…. At the time of the outbreak of the war … religious instruction had practically disappeared from Germany’s primary schools.” This describes what has happened to our nation’s education system. A materialistic worldview and “secular” faith replaced the once Christian worldview that served as the foundation of education in America. Public (government) education in the United States is anti-Christian and anti-reason.

The next step was to neutralize the impact churches might have on politics. “Under the pretext that the Churches themselves were interfering in political and state matters, [the Nazis] would deprive the Churches, step by step, of all opportunity to affect German public life.” How often do we hear that the “separation between church and state” means churches must remain silent on social and political issues and that pastors cannot use their pulpits (unless they’re liberal) to influence legislation? The sad thing is many Christian pastors are OK with this and believe it’s the biblical way. See my book Myths, Lies, and Half Truths.

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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When Martin Niemoeller used his pulpit to expose Adolf Hitler’s radical politics, “He knew Nazi spies and secret agents reported every word spoken.”[1] Leo Stein’s book I Was in Hell with Niemoeller describes how the Gestapo gathered evidence against Niemoeller:

Now, the charge against Niemoeller was based entirely on his sermons, which the Gestapo agents had taken down stenographically. But in none of his sermons did Pastor Niemoeller exhort his congregation to overthrow the Nazi regime. He merely raised his voice against some of the Nazi policies, particularly the policy directed against the Church. He had even refrained from criticizing the Nazi government itself or any of its personnel. Under the former government his sermons would have been construed only as an exercise of the right of free speech. Now, however, written laws, no matter how explicitly they were worded, were subjected to the interpretation of the judges.[2]

In a June 27, 1937, sermon, Niemoeller made it clear that those in attendance had a sacred duty to speak out on the evils of the Nazi regime no matter the consequences: “We have no more thought of using our own powers to escape the arm of the authorities than had the Apostles of old. No more are we ready to keep silent at man’s behest when God commands us to speak. For it is, and must remain, the case that we must obey God rather than man.”[3] He was arrested a few days later. His crime? “Abuse of the pulpit.”

The “Special Courts” set up by the Nazis made claims against pastors who spoke out against Hitler’s policies. Niemoeller was not the only one singled out by the Gestapo. “Some 807 other pastors and leading laymen of the ‘Confessional Church’ were arrested in 1937, and hundreds more in the next couple of years.”[4] A group of Confessional Churches in Germany, founded by Pastor Niemoeller and other Protestant ministers, drew up a proclamation to confront the political changes taking place in Germany that threatened the people “with a deadly danger. The danger lies in a new religion,” the proclamation declared. “The church has by order of its Master to see to it that in our people Christ is given the honor that is proper to the Judge of the world…. The First Commandment says ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me.’ The new religion is a rejection of the First Commandment.”[5] Five hundred pastors who read the proclamation from their pulpits were arrested. People protesting pro-abortion policies have been arrested in the United States while pregnancy centers have been attacked and some firebombed.

The Bible tells us that civil rulers are ministers of God. The Greek word translated as “ministers” is the same word used to describe church leaders and is often rendered as “deacon” or “servant.” Both serve as God’s servants toward the people within their jurisdictions, one civil (State) and the other ecclesiastical (Church). It is unbiblical to assume that civil rulers are autonomous and can legitimately rule independently of God’s designed limiting authority. It is a grave mistake to take Paul’s instructions in Romans 13 and claim that the citizenry cannot challenge the actions of civil rulers. James Willson makes the point in his book The Establishment and Limits of Civil Government, [6] “For surely none but an atheist can deliberately affirm that even the law of the land can set aside, weaken or nullify the authority of the law of God. To the best government, obedience can be yielded only in things lawful; for there is a ‘higher law’ to which rulers and subjects are alike amenable.”[7]

The Establishment and Limits of the Civil Government

As civil government continues to increase in authority, power, and scope, too many Christians are under the false impression that they are obligated to endure the legislative acts handed down by government officials no matter how evil they may be. This is a simplistic and dangerous reading of Paul's instructions in Romans 13. Elected officials are as equally bound to distinguish between good and evil in the area of civil government as are unelected citizens. Being a ruler offers no exemption. James Willson's exposition of Romans 13 is a much-needed antidote to both the advocacy of passivity and rebellion that some are inclined to take.

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One of the reasons King James I wanted a new English translation of the Bible was that he did not like some of the notes found in the Geneva Bible. These notes condemned rulers who adopted a divine right perspective. For example, a marginal note for Exodus 1:19 stated that the Hebrew midwives were correct to disobey the Egyptian king’s order to kill the Hebrew babies. King James reasoned that if it was legitimate to oppose a ruler in one case, then it might be legitimate to oppose him in others.

Civil authorities are to rule in terms of “good and evil.” Those who rule are bound by the same laws as the rest of us. That’s why there is no divine right of kings in the Bible. The Hebrew midwives disobeyed an order from Pharaoh (Ex. 1:17). The prophet Nathan challenged King David to do right (2 Sam. 12). Daniel was not a revolutionary when he opposed the king’s law (Dan. 6). John the Baptist rebuked King Herod for his sexual sins (Matt. 14:3-5). Jesus called Herod a “fox” (Luke 13:32). Peter continued to preach, obeying God rather than those in authority, even though he was commanded to stop by those in charge (Acts 5:29). Paul used his Roman citizenship to challenge the Roman Empire (Acts 16:22-40; 22:25-30) and even appealed to Caesar (25:11; 28:19). Paul spent a great deal of time in prison because he was seen as a possible threat to the Empire, even being bound by a chain (Acts 28:20)

To obey Romans 13 is to call our civil officials to uphold their oath of office, an oath that nearly all of them took by affirming “So help me God!” Once a civil ruler takes political office, he has the “power of the sword,” that is, he has civil authority and the claim of governmental legitimacy to enforce the law using civil sanctions. By not limiting the power of civil government with our voices and votes, we give a free hand to officials to act independently of any human restraint to tax our income at any level, confiscate our property, send our children to war, and even execute us. And who gets to determine what constitutes a crime? Civil rulers alone unless they are held accountable for their actions by the electorate. But only an informed electorate is in the position to act as a brake on the unbridled power of the State.

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.”[8] Of course, this too is an expression of humanist “neutrality” designed to silence Christians but allow for every other conceivable worldview to find expression in the public and political arenas.

Let’s apply the neutrality logic to Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. Should the churches have remained neutral because they were churches, and their denouncement of Hitler and his policies would have been fundamentally religious? In fact, this is exactly what many churches did do and for what they believed were sound theological reasons. “Religion was a private matter 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 discernible laws.”[9]

Christians were told they had to submit to this external order because the State was seen as the autonomous authority for public order. The church’s sole concern was man’s spiritual life. The church followed one set of religious rules, while the State took a religiously “neutral” position. “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.”[10] It was because of this disjunction—built on the myth of neutrality—that Hitler could carry out his devilish schemes unhindered by most religious people. The “Confessional Church,” however, 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.[11]

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 “landed them in the arms of Hitler” anyway. So much for neutrality and being at peace with the world.

[1] Basil Miller, Martin Niemoeller: Hero of the Concentration Camp, 5th ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1942), 112.

[2] Leo Stein, I Was in Hell with Niemoeller (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1942), 175.

[3] Quoted in William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), 239.

[4] Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, 239.

[5] Quoted in Eugene Davidson, The Trials of the Germans: An Account of the Twenty-Two Defendants before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, [1966] 1997), 275.

[6] James Willson’s The Establishment and Limits of Civil Government was originally published in 1853 as Civil Government: An Exposition of Romans XIII. 1–7.

[7] Willson, The Establishment and Limits of Civil Government, 22

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

[9] 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

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

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

Fighting the War on Truth (Part Two)

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 07:05:37 -0400

Gary continues his comments on a recent interview with author and apologist Frank Turek. He talks about worldview, culture, history, and “Grape Juice Christianity.”

During my talk that morning, after describing how Christians might teach on Paul’s actions after he was beaten and imprisoned by the Roman government in Acts 16 as “Grape Juice Christianity” that grape juice does not burst old wineskins. Too many Christians believe that their lot in life is to be persecuted for Jesus. Persecution is good while triumphalism is bad. The sole goal is to lead people to Jesus, something that Paul did with a wonderful result (Acts 16:31–34).

The point I was making is that grape juice does not burst old wineskins. Putting new wine in old wineskins will burst the wineskins. The New Covenant is new wine designed to burst old wineskins. Is it coincidental that Jesus’ first miracle was making a whole lot of new wine (John 2:1–12)? The New Covenant was about to do some bursting!

“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear results. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost and the skins as well; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins” (Mark 2:21–22).

The New Covenant bursts the old wineskins of the power structures of the day. Jesus was relentless in doing this. The book of Acts is a history of burst wineskins.

Many Christians today are afraid of new wine theology because it often bursts their traditional, and I dare say, unbiblical passive and pietist theology. They like the first part of what Paul did in Acts 16 but not what followed. That is way too controversial and confrontational.

God and Government

The battle today is over lordship. The issue of politics today 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. What is the relationship of 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 only faithful answer that a Bible believing Christian can give is this: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Psalm 33:12).

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Gary continues his comments on a recent interview with author and apologist Frank Turek. He talks about worldview, culture, history, and “Grape Juice Christianity.” If Christians aren’t getting answers to the issues of the day in church or from the pulpit, they will get those answers elsewhere.

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Legislating Morality is an Inescapable Concept

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 07:45:32 -0400

In an earlier article and two-part podcast, I responded to a Facebook post regarding the application of God’s law in the NT, including laws found in what is described as the “law of Moses.” The Mosaic Law is God’s Law that was revealed to Moses. Moses did not initiate it.

The FB poster went on to write: “[Gary DeMar] also believes [God’s laws] should be legislated in secular government.”

There is no neutrality. If God’s laws should not be legislated, whose laws should? Someone’s laws are going to be legislated. It appears that this person prefers any law to those found in the Bible, and that will include Islamic law if the Islamists gain control of the government of the United States. That is their intention. The Bible has prohibitions against murder, theft, unjust weights and measures, perjury, man stealing, and property rights, to name just some laws that come directly from the Bible and have been written into our nation’s laws.

In a list of those who do evil, the book of Job includes those who “remove the landmarks” and thereby “seize and devour flocks” (24:2). In 1 Kings 21, Elijah reproved Ahab and Jezebel for the murder of Naboth and the theft of his vineyard. These property laws protect every homeowner in the United States. The New Testament codifies the Eighth Commandment, “You shall not steal” (Rom. 13:9). This commandment applies not only to individuals but also to civil governments. If the civil magistrate is a “minister of God,” as Paul wrote, how does the magistrate determine what is “good” or “evil” (v. 4)?

Additionally, there has been legislation against polygamy (two Supreme Court cases in the 19th century), homosexuality (until Lawrence v. Texas in 2003), incest, and abortion (first approved in 1973, then disapproved in the Dobbs opinion of 2022). Now that our nation is officially atheistic, we have laws protecting every type of evil. Should Christians sit back and let the atheists legislate away? Dr. Gary North asks a fundamental question that applies to the claim that biblical law has no business being applied to civil law:

There is a school of Biblical interpretation that says that unless an Old Testament law is repeated in the New Testament as legally binding, it is no longer legally binding. Such a doctrine is not explicitly taught in the New Testament; it is a generally unstated presupposition that commentators bring with them when they begin to study the Bible. They assume what they ought first to prove.[1] There is no mention in the New Testament of bestiality. This raises a significant problem of interpretation for those who argue that the Old Testament law system was annulled by Christ. On what basis is the civil government to prosecute bestiality? Natural law? But nature is hardly a guide in sexual matters…. Animals do all sorts of things sexually that the Old Testament regards as an abomination. The Marquis de Sade, from whom we get the term sadism, was a great defender of natural law theory that is based self-consciously on nature, for nature is filled with murder and destruction. But if natural law theory is an unreliable foundation, then the question remains: What is the civil government to do about bestiality (or any other crime)? On what moral or legal basis?[2]

That’s the question. All laws are the legislation of someone’s view of morality. I cover this topic in the chapter “You Cannot Legislate Morality” in my book Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths.

Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths

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In addressing the Texas legislature, Chuck Colson 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.” Several legislators came up to Colson “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.’”[3] These laws apply to wrongdoing. But how does the civil magistrate know?

The goal of Christian involvement is to restrain the authority and power of civil government so that it stays within its jurisdictional boundaries. Ignoring the civil sphere only empowers it and those who have used it in a Mafia-like manner for their own gain at the citizenry’s expense. “The Saturday Evening Post once ran a cartoon showing Moses on the mount, holding the tablet of the Ten Commandments in his hands. He looks up to heaven and says, ‘Maybe there’s only ten of them now, but just wait till the bureaucrats get to work.’”[4] In the absence of objective standards, the State manufactures laws and regulations, thereby empowering itself.

Most people who have only seen the 1956 film The Ten Commandments on television have likely not seen Cecil B. DeMille’s opening monologue. DeMille had something more in mind than just making a film about Moses. He considered his production to be so important that he came out on stage to deliver a short but powerful statement on the nature of freedom under the law of God:

The theme of this picture is whether men ought to be ruled by God’s laws or whether they are to be ruled by the whims of a dictator like Rameses. Are men the property of the State or are they free souls under God? This same battle continues throughout the world today.

You can watch it here.

The elaborate film Souvenir Book that was made available in theaters includes a preface with the title “The Law by Which Men Live”:

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS are not laws. They are THE LAW. Man has made 32,000,000 laws since they were handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai more than three thousand years ago, but he has never improved on God’s law.[5]

The FB poster goes on to comment:

I think he [Gary DeMar] needs to revisit the Sermon on the Mount, especially the part where Christ warned the Jews not to cast their pearls before swine. In the modern vernacular, we refer to “turn and tears to pieces” as “blowback” which I believe we are today experiencing from the Christian Fundamentalists’ practices in government in the 20th century.

There is always blowback when preaching and applying God’s Word. Consider the following from Mark’s Gospel:

[Jesus] entered a synagogue again; and a man was there whose hand was withered. And they were watching Him closely to see if He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. He said to the man with the withered hand, “Get up and come forward!” And He said to them, “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath or to do harm, to save a life or to kill?” But they kept silent. After looking around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, He said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately began conspiring with the Herodians against Him, as to how they might put Him to death.

“Blowback” for healing a man with a withered hand! There was “blowback” from nearly everything Jesus said or did. Jesus healed the sick, raised the dead, and fed the multitudes, and He was still hunted down, persecuted, defamed, prosecuted, and put to death. Maybe Jesus did it all wrong. Too much “blowback.” But we know better: “It is enough for the disciple that he becomes like his teacher, and the slave like his master. If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign the members of his household!” (Matt. 10:25).

The book of Acts is filled with examples of the disciples being attacked for preaching God’s Word. Paul and Silas were beaten and imprisoned (Acts 16:22-40). They were driven out of Thessalonica when “some wicked men from the marketplace formed a mob and set the city in an uproar,” looking for Paul and Silas. When the mob could not find them, their friend Jason was dragged out of his home and taken to the civil magistrate, where Paul and Silas were accused of an insurrection against Rome: “they all acted contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying there that there is another king, Jesus” (17:1-8). Without God’s law, you get Caesar’s laws.

If the opposition is made up of “swine” who can “tear us to pieces,” then it seems that there needs to be some legal restraints on these destroyers. The FB poster added the following:

The law has not only failed to maintain civility among people, but it has also failed to produce anyone righteous. On the contrary, significant evils are often committed under the guise of the law, even the law of God, as demonstrated by the Pharisees.

The law was never designed to make people righteous. It was designed to identify when a person was being unrighteous (1 Tim. 1:9). God’s law serves as a restraint. The law curtails the manifestation of unrighteousness in external acts. This is why Paul states that the civil magistrate “does not bear the sword for nothing” (Rom. 13:4). We’re seeing the breakdown of “civility among people” because we live in a secularized society where many people believe they can do what is right in their own eyes (Judges 17:6). They do not believe in God’s law because they do not believe in God.

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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What does this FB poster think will happen if our nation continues down this path? What’s his solution? He’ll say it’s “God’s law written on our hearts and minds.” We’re back to law again. It can’t be escaped. Does he want the “swine” to legislate in terms of Animal Farm? “All men are equal, but some men are more equal than others.” What made the United States attractive to the world? Equality under the law. I suggest he read the chapter “Morality” in Vishal Mangalwadi’s book The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization. “In 1738, two centuries after the Reformation, Bishop [George] Berkeley declared that religion and morality in Britain had collapsed ‘to a degree that was never before known in any country.’”[6] Several factors contributed to the precipitous decline, but the Gospel, linked to fixed moral standards, catalyzed a new moral revolution. What’s particularly instructive is the impact that John Wesley and others had in transforming England, which led to William Wilberforce’s work to abolish the slave trade without sparking a bloody civil war. Also see the chapter “The Bible and the Law” in What if the Bible Had Never Been Written?

The FB poster ends with the following:

What involvement did Christ and the early Christians have with law and government? Weren’t they opposed for nearly 200-some-odd years until the compromise with Constantine?

These early Christians were under the boot of Rome. Paul was an exception, being a Roman citizen. The Bible, “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27), laid the foundation for the transformation of law and government that had nothing to do with Constantine (c. 272-337).[7] Compromise did not start with Constantine. It can be found throughout the Bible. In the period of the Judges, the people worshipped “Baal-berith” (Judges 9:4), a god compromised by combining the covenant (berith) God made with Israel with Baalism.

If you can actually show me a true Christian human government in history that operated under the law, I will show you a government whose fruits are worldly and devilish.

Of course, governments have rotten elements just like individuals because civil governments are made up of people, but if Christians let the “swine” take over the farm, everything will be eaten. The goal is to restrain the swine. To claim that all nations are morally equal is a drastic misreading of history. Mangalwadi writes, “The [Global Corruption Perceptions Index] confirms what I saw in Holland—that the Bible is the only force known in history that has freed entire nations from corruptions while simultaneously giving them political freedom. The most secular nations—that is, ex-communist, atheistic nations, which teach that no man or machine is watching you, then no one is watching you—are among the most corrupt nations, not too different from Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim nations.”[8] While the Netherlands was a global pioneer for LGBTQ+ rights, including legalizing same-sex marriage in 2001, current data suggests a decline in social acceptance rather than moral progress. What is the foundation of that decline?

[1] Gary North, 75 Bible Questions Your Instructors Prays You Won’t Ask (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press,[1984]1987), Part II.

[2] Editor’s Introduction to Ray Sutton’s book Second Chance: Biblical Blueprints for Divorce and Remarriage (Ft. Worth, TX” Dominion Press, 1988), ix.

[3] Charles Colson, “The Kingdom of God and Human Kingdoms,” Transforming Our World: A Call to Action, ed. James M. Boice (Portland, OR: Multnomah, 1988), 154-155.

[4] D. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe, What If the Bible Had Never Been Written (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1998), 43.

[5] The Ten Commandments Souvenir Book, Paramount Pictures Corporation (1956, 1957), was published by The Greenstone Company, New York, N.Y.

[6] Mangalwadi, The Book that Made Your World (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2011), 259.

[7] See Peter J. Leithart, Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom (Westmont, IL: IVP Academic, 2010).

[8] Mangalwadi, The Book that Made Your World, 255.

Fighting the War on Truth (Part One)

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 06:11:06 -0400

Gary discusses a recent interview in World magazine with author and apologist Frank Turek.

The assumption that all existence-claims are questions about matters of fact are all answered in the very same way is not merely oversimplified and misleading—it is simply mistaken. The existence, factuality, or reality of different kinds of things is not established or disconfirmed in the same way in every case.

We might ask, “Is there a box of crackers in the pantry?” and we know how we would go about answering that question. But that is a far, far cry from the way we go about answering questions or determining the reality of, say, barometric pressure, quasars, gravitational attraction, elasticity, radioactivity, natural laws, names, grammar, numbers, the university itself that you’re now at, past events, categories, future contingencies, laws of thought, political obligations, individual identity over time, causation, memories, dreams, or even love or beauty.

In such cases, one does not do anything like walking to the pantry and looking inside for the crackers. There are thousands of existence or factual questions and they are not at all answered in the same way in every case. Just think of the difference in argumentation and types of evidence used by biologists, grammarians, physicists, mathematicians, lawyers, logicians, mechanics, merchants, and artists.

It should be obvious that the types of evidence which one looks for in the existence of factual claims will be determined by the field of discussion, and especially by the metaphysical nature of the entity mentioned in the claim under question.

Dr. Stein’s remark that the existence of God is answered in the same way as any other factual question mistakenly reduces the theistic question to the same level as a box of crackers in the pantry, which we will hereafter call the “crackers in the pantry” fallacy.

The Great Debate: Does God Exist?

This book presents the full debate with included commentary, offering the reader a front-row seat to one of the most compelling philosophical showdowns in Christian history. It showcases not only the transcript of the debate but added explanations and insights throughout for an in-depth understanding of the presuppositional apologetic enterprise. The Great Debate: Does God Exist? will offer powerful and impactful explorations of faith, reason, and the foundations of your worldview in every area.

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Gary discusses a recent interview in World magazine with author and apologist Frank Turek. Many of the answers Turek gives during the interview sound “presuppositional” which makes Gary reflect on the Great Debate between Drs. Gordon Stein and Greg Bahnsen in 1985.

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Episode 105: Burning Up the World is Not an Option

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 07:30:38 -0400

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 105

Gary dismantles a popular end-time belief, exemplified to an extreme in a Facebook video, about the Earth being burned to a cinder in the end in order to be remade.

The language of 2 Peter 3 is certainly apocalyptic and world ending, but is Peter describing the end of the space time universe as we generally conceive it or is he describing the end of a different type of world? The only way to know is to study similar language found in the Old Testament. In Micah 1:1, a prophetic word was revealed “to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.” Micah’s prophecy isn’t about a time in the distant future. Rather, it’s about “the rebellion of Jacob and for the sins of the house of Israel” because of “the high place of Judah” (1:5). The prophecy is about a time when idol worship dominated the nation (1:6–7). Notice how the imminent judgment is described:

Hear, O peoples, all of you; Listen, O earth and all it contains,
And let the Lord GOD be a witness against you,
The Lord from His holy temple.
For behold, the Lord is coming forth from His place.
He will come down and tread on the high places of the earth.
The mountains will melt under Him
And the valleys will be split,
Like wax before the fire,
Like water poured down a steep place.

God is calling the world as a witness against His covenant people who had the law against idols and graven images given to them in a personal way, in commandments written on stone (Rev. 20). God is described coming down that has the effect of melting the mountains, splitting the valleys, and flooding the land with the melted debris. This language is used elsewhere to describe similar local events (Judges 5:4; 2 Sam. 22; Ps. 18:7–10; 68:8; Isa. 64:1–2). It’s the language of decreation. Did the mountains melt? No more than the “foundations of the world were laid bare” (Psalm 18:15) when David battled “all his enemies” (see the Prologue to the Psalm).

We find something similar in the book of Zephaniah. A local judgment that has national consequences for Judah and Jerusalem (1:4) is described in a way that depicts the end of the earth and every living thing on it…

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 dismantles a popular end-time belief, exemplified to an extreme in a Facebook video, about the Earth being burned to a cinder in the end in order to be remade. This belief is often proved by using 2 Peter 3, as well as the last chapters of Revelation. Gary brings sanity to the earth-burning insanity.

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Read David Chilton’s article on 2 Peter 3

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Socialism and Communism Violate the 8th Commandment

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 07:55:59 -0400

“You shall not steal” is a fundamental biblical commandment that’s found in both Testaments (Ex. 20:15; 21:16; Lev. 19:11, 13; Matt. 19:18; Rom. 13:9). If property is theft, as one Christian stated on his Facebook page, then every person in the world is a thief because everyone owns something. Let’s stop using words like socialism and communism. People are advocating theft by using the power and authority of civil governments to confiscate wealth so the State can grow in power and wealth. And with theft comes the loss of freedom, prosperity, and movement. Think of the Berlin Wall, a microcosm of what Communism becomes. Communist East Berlin was so good that a wall needed to be built to keep people from fleeing the tyranny. Watch this short video.

The Berlin Wall went up on August 13, 1961. Construction began overnight on August 12-13, 1961, when East German soldiers and police encircled West Berlin with barbed wire and concrete, physically dividing the city and halting the mass exodus of East Germans to the West. At this moment in history, we can move freely from state to state. There are no walls. But if the Federal government is taken over by Socialists, Communists, and Islamists, there will be no freedom of movement.

Christian Economics in One Lesson

Christian economics must begin with the issue of ultimate ownership. This sets it apart from modern economic analysis, which begins with the issue of scarcity. Second, this leads to the issue of theft, which in turn raises the issue of ethics. The ultimate form of causation in human history is ethical: right vs. wrong. Modern economists do not share this view. In fact, it goes beyond this. They openly reject it. They proclaim economic analysis as value-free—this is self-deception. It is a variation of an ancient temptation: “Hath God said?” Yes, He has. “Thou shalt not steal.”

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Property rights are fundamental in the Bible, so much so that they’ve been written into our nation’s laws:

Iron pins are a common and useful means of identifying property corners and they and other similar monuments serve a useful purpose. The installation and maintenance of permanent monuments identifying land corners even preserves the good order of society itself. From earliest times the law not only authorized but protected landmarks. Interference with landmarks of another was a violation of the Mosaic law. See Deuteronomy 19:14; 27:17; Job 24:2; Proverbs 22:28; 23:10. (256 Ga. 54, International Paper Realty Company v. Bethune. No. 43092. Supreme Court of Georgia, June 10, 1986).

In a list of those who do evil, the book of Job includes those who “remove the landmarks” and thereby “seize and devour flocks” (24:2). Note that theft by government is not an exception.

In 1 Kings 21, we read the story of the prophet Elijah who rebuked Ahab and Jezebel for the murder of Naboth and their theft of his vineyard. Did Elijah say that this was a way to achieve economic equality by diminishing the wealth of some for the benefit of others? He pronounced severe judgment on Ahab and Jezebel for their theft.

If property is theft, and civil governments take property from some people and give it to others, then these governments are guilty of theft by holding the property and transferring it to people who don’t have any right to it. Those who receive the property and those who vote for politicians who support taking property from some people so that it can be given to others are engaged in violating the Eighth Commandment.

The great Walter Williams described theft in a way that most people would not consider such actions to be theft, and, unfortunately, that includes Christians.

I do not believe the government has a role whatsoever in getting rid of inequality. The point you have to recognize is that there’s no tooth fairy or Santa Claus giving the congressmen the money. So the only way the government can give one American citizen one dollar is first, through intimidation, threats, and coercion, confiscate that dollar from some other Americans. Now, you should not confuse my disagreement with the redistribution with my saying that you should not take care of people who are in need. I believe in helping your fellow man by reaching into your own pockets; doing so is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into somebody else’s pockets to help your fellow man in need is despicable. And for the Christians among us, when God gave Moses the commandment, “thou shalt not steal,” He did not mean “thou shalt steal” unless you got a majority vote in Congress.

Tyrannical regimes always promise a better life. What tyrants ever said they would make things worse for people? Has socialism created a better life for mankind? It hasn’t. Economic liberty has. Economic liberty is based on the operating principle of “You shall not steal,” even if it’s by majority vote to promise free stuff to people who demand it but did not earn it.

Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators

In Productive Christians: A Biblical Response to Socialist Economics, David Chilton exposes the follies and fallacies of socialism, but he also systematically outlines the biblical alternative — an alternative that lays the groundwork for real justice, progress, prosperity, and freedom for the rich, the poor, and everyone in between. First published nearly half a century ago, it is more relevant and more prescient than ever. Chilton’s crystalline prose and take-no-prisoners style is as entertaining as it is informative. This is the way books on economic issues should be written: biblical, understandable, and practical.

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The man who imagined a world with “no religion” and “no possessions” left an estate worth more than $275 million, “not bad for one who referred to himself as an ‘instinctive socialist,’ for one who believed in the abolition of ‘all money, police, and government.’” His early flirtation with socialist theory was naive. John Lennon’s estate is currently valued between $800 million and $1 billion. Lennon’s estate continues to make millions of dollars every year.

Maybe he was persuaded to change his tune by the lyrics from fellow ‘Beatle’ George Harrison’s “Taxman” song. Its lyrics attack the high levels of progressive taxation taken by the British Labour government. At the Beatles’ income level, it was 95 percent. In the January 22, 1981, Playboy interview, Lennon admitted that he “threw in a few one-liners to help the song along.” In a later version of the song, Harrison added: “If you’re overweight, I’ll tax your fat.”

Lennon knew that sending money to poor nations was counterproductive.

When it was pointed out that a Beatles reunion could possibly raise $200 million for a poverty-stricken country in South America, Lennon had no time for it. “You know, America has poured billions into places like that. It doesn’t mean a damn thing. After they’ve eaten that meal, then what? It lasts for only a day. After the $200,000,000 is gone, then what? It goes round and round in circles.”

Cutting USAID from foreign countries will save the USA money, and it will force socialist countries to free up markets for people. It’s happened in Argentina. It’s also happening in other South American nations. Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile have all elected leaders who are more conservative or centrist than the governments they replaced, while Cuba and Venezuela are collapsing.

Eschatology and Worldviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

Myths, Lies, and Half-Truths

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

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

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Who and When Were the ‘Last Days Scoffers’?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Destruction of Jerusalem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A precious cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed.

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

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

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

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

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

R. T. France points out the following:

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

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

And It Came to Pass

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

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

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

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

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

Working Inside the System

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

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

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

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

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

God and Government

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

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

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

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

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 104

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

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

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

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

Last Days Madness

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

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Is Homosexuality ‘Like Being Left-Handed’?

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

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

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

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

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

Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thinking Straight in a Crooked World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Justice Gorsuch and the American "Creed"

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

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

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

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

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

The Case for America's Christian Heritage

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

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

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Atheism’s Nuremberg Trial Problem

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor

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

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

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

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

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

• It is “an evolving body of ideals.”

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

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

The Impossibility of the Contrary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They Always Fail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 103: How to Talk to Dispensationalists

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

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 103

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

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

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

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

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

House Divided: The Break Up of Dispensational Theology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Great Tribulation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Importance of Understanding History (Part Two)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Case for America's Christian Heritage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revelation and the First Century

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Albert Barnes offers a similar interpretation.

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

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

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

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

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

Wars and Rumors of Wars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• the ultimate in pain: 5.442-45;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Importance of Understanding History (Part One)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Case for America's Christian Heritage

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

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