Jesus and the 'Parousia': Clarifying Tommy Ice's Clarifications

Tommy Ice continues in his article “Answers and Clarifications for Gary DeMar” with a discussion of the Greek word parousia. (You can read the first part of my response here.) Tommy states that parousia is “used four times in Matthew 24 (verses 3, 27, 37, 39). The leading Greek Lexicon of our day says, parousia means “arrival as the first stage in presence, coming, advent,” and “of Christ, and nea [...]

Clarifying Tommy Ice's Clarifications

Twenty-five years ago Tommy Ice and I engaged in debates over eschatology. Tommy is a dispensational premillennialist. I’m not. One would think that in 25 years of debates (nine in all) and numerous books and articles by me and other non-dispensationalists that Tommy would get what I believe about eschatology right. A friend sent me a link to Tommy’s article “Answers and Clarifications for Gary De [...]

Preoccupied with the Antichrist

Dr. Michael Yousseff is an Egyptian-born American and founding rector of The Church of The Apostles. His messages are broadcast 3,800 times a week into 200 countries through Leading the Way Ministries. He holds a PhD from Emory University in Social Anthropology. Church of the Apostles is a magnificent church that has an old-world cathedral look about it. It’s located just north of Atlanta, Georgia [...]

Thank God for Schizophrenic Christians

The following ad copy appeared in World magazine for Joel C. Rosenberg’s new book Implosion: Is America an Empire in Decline or a Nation Poised for a Historic Renaissance? This ad copy startled me. I’ve read most of Rosenberg’s books and debated him on the meaning of Ezekiel 38 and 39. (He wasn’t up for a second debate.) He’s a dispensationalist. Dispensationalists don’t believe in a Renaissance. [...]

Panel Discusses Bible Prophecy on Atlanta Live TV Show

After the interview with the Atlanta Live television program, each guest was invited to come together for a panel discussion about our differing views on Bible prophecy, the cultural implications, as well as what we have in common. You can view these panel discussions in the video embedded above. I think one thing everyone of us on the program agreed about was the need for Christians to get out th [...]

Atlanta Live TV Show Interviews Gary DeMar about Bible Prophecy — Why Bother if We're Living in the Last Days?

I was recently interviewed on the Atlanta Alive television program about my book Last Days Madness and Bible prophecy. You can see the interview above in the embedded video. WorldNetDaily goes a great job in directing readers to articles and topics that show where America has gone wrong. In fact, there is so much of this material that one can get information overload. This is one side of the coin. [...]

"The World Is Getting Better" Says Triangulation—Earthquakes and the End Revisited

If you like to form your eschatology from the newspaper and are persuaded that the world is getting worse, you may want to consider what technology expert Byron Reese had to say in this recent video interview on Triangulation about the breakthroughs on the verge of being made in medicine, energy, etc. Byron has spoken at our conferences and he is Chief Innovation Officer at Demand Media. My Decemb [...]

Will the World End in Your Lifetime?

Dr. Jim Denison, in his article “Will the World End in Your Lifetime?” published on the Christian Post web site, concludes with these words: “The last recorded words of Jesus are, ‘Yes, I am coming soon’ (Revelation 22:20). Early believers lived every day in expectation of the imminent return of our Lord. Secular cultures discount such beliefs as outdated superstition, but each of us is one day cl [...]

Timing and Audience Relevance and Interpreting the Bible

Yesterday I received a review copy of Eric J. Bargerhuff’s The Most Misused Verses in the Bible: Surprising Ways God’s Word is Misunderstood (2012) published by Bethany House. The author writes that common biblical phrases like “an eye for an eye” and “do not judge, or you will be judged” — “derived from the bestselling book of all time, the Bible — have often been misunderstood and mi [...]

How Differences in the Gospel Accounts Support the Bible’s Integrity

An article written by someone named Lynda O, who describes herself as “Christian, Calvinist, Premillennial, Dispensational, and a Biblical Creationist,” is not a preterist. She does not believe that the Olivet Discourse describes events leading up to and including the destruction of Jerusalem that took place in A.D. 70. One of her arguments is there are significant differences in the gospel accoun [...]

The Charge of Replacement Theology is a Cover for Fuzzy Theology

Joseph Farah of WND (WorldNetDaily) has written the following in an article titled “To those Israel-rejecting Christians. . .”: “[A]n evil doctrine known as Replacement Theology, every bit as ugly as Liberation Theology, has taken root in the church. I’m sorry to say it, but you’ve got to discard or allegorize much of the Bible to adopt either one of these views and still call yourself a Chr [...]

Does the Bible Teach an Israel-Church Distinction?

Gaining a proper understanding of the Greek word ekklēsia, most often translated “church” in the New Testament, ((The Greek word ekklēsia is used 115 times in the New Testament, and in most translations it is translated as “church.” Exceptions are often found in Acts 7:38, 19:32, 39, 41, and Hebrews 2:12.)) is the key in answering the charge that non-dispensationalists teach that the church replac [...]

Chuck Smith Says the End is Near – AGAIN!

Chuck Smith is predicting that the end is near – again! At a three-day conference, with 8000 in attendance and the usual suspects misinforming thousands about Bible prophecy, Smith, the founder of Calvary Chapel, delivered “a strong message of hope in a fallen world,” the Christian Post reported. And what is the message of hope? “We’re on the verge of, it looks like, a war in the Middle East [...]

Is Damascus About to be Destroyed in a Nuclear Holocaust?

A number of websites are pushing the belief that Isaiah 17 is being fulfilled in the events of the Middle East. Their claim is that the events prophesied in Isaiah 17 about Damascus were never fulfilled in history. Here’s an example: Damascus in Isaiah 17 is going to be destroyed in 1 day. This is about to occur in our lifetime in just a matter of months. It’s in the news and everywhere you [...]

Dispensationalist says Pendulum Has Swung against Dispensationalism

The following is from Michael Vlach’s article “My Thoughts on the Dispensational Study Group at ETS.” (ETS is the Evangelical Theological Society that meets yearly.) “The panel discussion was interesting. [Bruce Compton, of Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary] believes there is a pendulum swing against Dispensationalism today, but he is hopeful the pendulum will swing back toward Dispensati [...]

Young Earth Creationism and Gap Theology

Young Earth Creationism (YEC) is all about interpreting the Bible literally. They take the days of creation literally as well as the genealogies. YECs are very critical of Old Earth Creationists (OEC) for not taking the Bible literally on these and other creation issues. For years I have tried to get YEC organizations that push for literalism on creation issues to insist on the same hermeneutical [...]

When Prophecy Books Go Bad

“The single best-selling nonfiction book of the 1970s was not The Joy of Sex or even The Joy of Cooking; it was Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth.” ((Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: The Free Press, 2001), 93.)) It was declared by the New York Times to be the “no. 1 non-fiction bestseller of the decade.” ((Quoted in Nan [...]

Interpretive Gymnastics

I’ve been reading through the book The Big Three: Major events that Changed History Forever written by Dr. Henry Morris III, the son of Henry Morris who co-authored The Genesis Flood with John C. Whitcomb in 1961. In The Big Three, Morris has a chapter with the title “Interpretive Gymnastics.” A good title. He writes: “No one has the right to change the words of God to suit his idea of what [...]

Did the Old Testament Predict 9-11?

Jonathan Cahn, a messianic rabbi from the Jerusalem Center-Beth Israel Congregation in Wayne, N.J., writes that there is a prophetic connection between Isaiah 9:10 and the events of 9–11. He’s not the first person to make such a claim. Did you know that a dollar bill can be folded to show the World Trade Center going up in smoke? The character set of Wingdings can be manipulated to show a plane cr [...]