In a debate I had with Dr. Michael Brown, I asked him what he thought of the supposed future Jewish holocaust that’s part of premillennialism’s prophetic system based on Zechariah 13:8-9: “It will come about in all the land,” Declares the LORD, “That two parts in it will be cut off and perish; But the third will be left in it. And I will bring the third part through the fire, [...]

There’s a great deal of confusion today regarding the last days and the role that Israel is said to play. I hope the following will clear up some of the mischaracterizations of Israel and the last days. Are we to believe that one last-days generation will be grafted into the olive tree mentioned by the Apostle Paul in Romans 11 after 2000 years, and that’s what Paul means when he wrote that “all I [...]

Homosexuals have been able to convince many Americans that homosexual behavior is normal using some bad logic. Since most public schools do not teach students how to think, it’s no wonder they fall for fallacious arguments. Homosexuals have also been adept at using pop culture to their advantage, placing homosexual characters in non-stereotypical roles. Then there is the normalization of homosexua [...]

Personally, I don’t care much about the names of buildings or sports teams. If residents of a city, municipality, or state want to rename a building after Barack Obama, as some in a town in NJ want to do, I’m fine with it so long as it doesn’t cost me any money. The name change won’t do one thing for black people. They won’t get a better education (see test scores Baltimore Maryland public schools [...]

We’re entering a time when operating assumptions about the real and unreal are being put to the test. All ideas have consequences, good or bad. There is no third way. Those who deny the existence of God must experiment with operating assumptions. They can never know what will work because their worldview does not operate in terms of fundamental truths. Their “truths” are manufactured as we seen wi [...]

It’s not hard to find people who are ignorant about other people’s beliefs. All you have to do is watch man-in-the street interviews. A good portion of the population is ignorant about a whole range of topics. Even students at some very prestigious universities are more familiar with the latest Taylor Swift event and love interest than with what’s happening with Ukraine, the Bidens, the plummeting [...]

It seems everyone is getting into the “last days craze.” The latest entry is Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis. I’m surprised at this since AiG has stayed away from the topic. I wrote two articles about the importance of eschatology in the same way Ham wrote about the importance of creation (see here and here). I’m a big proponent of showing how the origin of life is impossible no matter how many year [...]

If there is a single doctrine that both excites and divides Christians, it’s the ‘rapture.’ The doctrine of the ‘rapture’ deals with a future event where the church is said to be taken off the earth in one of five different times related to a seven-year period described as the Great Tribulation: before (pre-trib), at the mid-point (mid-trib), partial, just prior to God pours out His wrath (pre-wra [...]

Does Isaiah 11:11-12 refer to a distant return of Israel back to their land, or did it have a past fulfillment in view? No Jew reading Isaiah 11 in Isaiah’s day, during the time of the exile, and the return under the decree of Cyrus (2 Chron. 36:22-23; Ezra 1:1-4), would have considered such an interpretation given that the chapter mentions Assyria, Shinar, the Philistines, Edom, Moab, “and the so [...]

I’ve debated Michael Brown several times. He believes that God’s promises for Israel have not been fulfilled even though the Bible specifically says they have, at least that’s what Zacharias believed: And [John’s] father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Spirit, and prophesied, saying: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people, And has ra [...]

Oliver Thomas, a retired Baptist minister, wrote that “American churches must reject literalism and admit we got it wrong on gay people.” It appeared in USA Today where he is a member of USA Today’s Board of Contributors. He wrote something similar in 2006 article asking the following question: “What if Christian leaders are wrong about homosexuality?” His later article was similar but with an add [...]

With some variations, those who hold to a biblical economic model share many fundamental principles with advocates of an unregulated free market, or, as I hope to demonstrate, free marketers share many fundamental economic principles with advocates of a biblical worldview. John W. Robbins writes, in his critique of Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy, “That the structure of knowledge that she erecte [...]

“Nobody knows anything.”[1] William Goldman, not to be confused with William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, sums up the problem of attempting to be certain about the success of a film—“Nobody knows anything.”[2] Goldman should know. He was a successful novelist and screenwriter with several Academy Awards and big screen blockbusters to his credit.[3] Goldman was not saying that Hollywood ty [...]

In a survey that Left Behind publisher Tyndale did, “More than 50 percent of respondents … said ‘I’m anxiously expecting his return.’” Jan Markell, president of Olive Tree Ministries, writing for a large worldview ministry, argued that “the church is not in the business of taking anything away from Satan but the souls of men.”[1] Hal Lindsey said something similar: “I don’t like clichés but [...]

In an earlier article and podcast, I responded to a Facebook Post related to the application of God’s law in the NT, including laws found in what is described as the “law of Moses,” actually God’s law. The Mosaic Law is God’s Law that was revealed to Moses. The FB poster went on to write the following: [Gary DeMar] also believes [God’s laws] should be legislated in secular government. There is no [...]

I saw the following on a Facebook post indirectly aimed at me. “It frustrates me when people insist that the New Covenant has Torah requirements, i.e., that we are still under the law. Paul pitted law against grace. Grace is not the adapter that connects us to the law; it actually frees us from that slavemaster. We don’t live by an external force like the law; rather, we live by an internal nature [...]

How authoritative are man-man confessions of faith? Can they ever be revised or updated? How sacrosanct is historical theology? No one should despise the work of the church over its many centuries or the work it has produced over nearly two millennia. My many published works show great respect for historical works. In some circles, when there’s a disagreement, appeals are made to agreed-upon seemi [...]

In his book The Population Bomb, first published in 1968, the year I graduated from high school, Paul R. Ehrlich made several predictions about the future of our planet based on his understanding of population growth and food supplies. Ehrlich’s projections were not new. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834), a British political economist and mathematician, proposed that population growth would outstr [...]

Skeptics of the Bible nitpick different accounts of similar events. If the four gospels don’t align exactly at every detail, the claim is made that there are mistakes in the Bible. It seems to me that when the Gospels were put together, the compilers would have noted differences and fixed them if they were thought to be a problem historically. They didn’t. The different Gospels are an interrelated [...]

Most Christians cannot read and translate Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the languages of the Bible. As a result, for most of us, we are dependent on translations. Vernacular translations began early. The Latin Vulgate was mostly the work of Jerome (345-420). The Vulgate was adopted as the Bible translation of the Western Church. It was the first book printed using JohannesGutenberg’s printing press [...]