Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 90 Gary responds to continued feedback from his recent online debate with prophecy writer Joel Richardson about Gog and Magog (Ezekiel 38-39). Jesus tells His disciples that when the temple’s approaching desolation became evident, it would be time to head for the hills. Most roofs in Israel were flat wit [...]

Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here Gary discusses his recent debate with Joel Richardson about Ezekiel 38-39, the famous Gog and Magog chapters. Nearly every book being published today points to the Gog and Magog alliance as evidence that we are living in the last days and the world is on the eve of destruction. Ezekiel 38 and 39 are being used by today’s prophecy writers as a mode [...]

Gary and Robert Cruickshank discuss how questions they had about what they were reading in the Bible led them to where they are today. Preaching about the soon coming of Christ has long been used by Christian prophecy teachers as a way of pleading with the lost to commit themselves to Jesus Christ. Such a motivating device can backfire on even the most well–intentioned evangelist. What happens if [...]

Please help us meet a $15K matching challenge here Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 89 Using the analogy of a puzzle, Gary points out that many prophetic systems try to fit biblical facts into their system, but without having the full picture from the front of the puzzle box. Who does Jesus say will see “all these things”? Certainly not a future audience. “So, you too, when you see all [...]

No matter how much prophetic material you cover, there are always people who ask, “But what about this verse and that verse?” My first foray into dealing with Bible prophecy was The Reduction of Christianity: Dave Hunt’s Theology of Cultural Surrender, published in 1988. This was followed by The Debate over Christian Reconstruction that same year. It was a response to a debate that Dr. Gary North [...]

Joel Richardson posted the following on Facebook: “Why Millennial Sacrifices Do Not Undermine the Cross.” There are several problems with this claim. First, Revelation 20 does not say Jesus will reign on Earth for the symbolic thousand years, that another temple will be built (I’m losing count), or that animal sacrifices will take place. Everything the premils say about Revelation must be imported [...]

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 88 Gary discusses current Facebook speculation about the war in Iran, Islam, and Ezekiel 39-39. My library is filled with books that attempt to make the case that the events predicted in Ezekiel 38 and 39 are on our prophetic horizon, and it seems that each month a new book appears insisting that “given the current world situation, nuclear war is inevita [...]

In this third and final part of his interview with Canadian television program, Thrive, Gary points out several aspects of how most modern prophetic teaching doesn’t fit with what the Bible actually says. In Matthew’s gospel we read about “those days which were before the flood” and “the day that Noah entered the ark” (Matt. 24:38). Similarly, there were days before the coming of the Son of [...]

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 87 Gary responds to a recent bestselling book by author John Bevere called “The King is Coming.” What Jesus declared on the Mount of Olives and what Matthew records for us was a prophecy about the future of Israel’s then-living generation. Jesus spoke to His present audience around AD 33, and the temple was destroyed in AD 70. The destruction [...]

It’s being argued that the dried-up Euphrates is the marching route of a 200-million-man army from China on horseback (Rev. 9:13-21). The drying up of the Euphrates takes place after “the stars fell from heaven to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs … [a]nd the sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places” (Rev. [...]

In this second part of his recent interview on a Canadian television show, Gary continues the conversation by taking a closer look at the context of the New Testament. What about world conditions? Aren’t we seeing prophecy being fulfilled right before our eyes? This protest is offered when people are hit with an interpretation that does not fit their long-held doctrinal views. They shift from the [...]

Once again, the Bible is being interpreted through the lens of current events. “All the signs are in place,” prophecy “experts” tell us. Nearly eight out of 10 Evangelicals say they believe the ongoing violence in the Middle East is an indication that the rapture is on the horizon, a new survey … shows. Research conducted by the Brookings Institute’s Center for Middle East Policy on A [...]

In this first part of his recent three-part interview on the Canadian television show, Thrive, Gary recounts his own history with Bible prophecy. The interpretive methodology outlined in Last Days Madness is not innovative. For nearly 200 years Christians have been sidetracked by a novel interpretive methodology known as dispensational premillennialism. While Last Days Madness is not primarily dir [...]

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 86 Gary responds to another video by Joel Richardson and his claims about the “abomination of desolation.” The abomination of desolation is mentioned in one Old Testament book (Dan. 9:27; 11:31; 12:11). The book of Maccabees, a non-inspired book written during the intertestamental period, mentions the abomination of desolation and its relatio [...]

“Therefore, when you see the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place—let the reader understand—” (Matthew 24:15). “When you see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place.” Joel Richardson claims that Matthew 24:15 has not been fulfilled. The temple was still standing when Jesus issued this dire prediction. To be fulfilled [...]

If The Road to Holocaust is unfamiliar, it is the title of a book Hal Lindsey wrote in 1989, published by secular publisher Bantam Books (666 Fifth Avenue, NYC). Lindsey claimed that if you did not believe in a pre-tribulational rapture but believed instead that God’s Word applied to all areas of life and Christians should work for that goal, then you believed it “could lead us—and Israel— to disa [...]

Gary responds to an interview with author Jerry Jenkins of Left Behind fame. “But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Pet. 3:8). This means, it is said, that “God’s arithmetic is different from ours,” so that when Scripture uses terms like “near” and “shortly” (e.g., Rev. 1:1, 3) or “at hand” (e. [...]

Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 85 Gary responds to a recent video from Joel Richardson where he claims to refute preterism. Eschatological ideas have consequences, and many Christians are beginning to understand how those ideas have shaped the cultural landscape. A world always on the precipice of some great and inevitable apocalyptic event is not in need of redemption but only of esc [...]

In Joel Richardson’s podcast “The One Prophecy that Debunks Preterism, Replacement Theology & the Lies of the Anti-Semites,” he began with comments about “the day of the Lord.” He then tried to show that Ezekiel 38 cannot be interpreted as fulfilled prophecy. It’s the only way it can be interpreted, as I point out in my book The Gog and Magog End-Time Alliance. Richardson claimed that I argue [...]

The conclusion of Gary’s interview with Alex Bernardo of The Protestant Libertarian Podcast. Today’s speculative madness related to repeated failed attempts at predicting the end must be attributed to a gross misunderstanding of Bible prophecy. As I soon learned, I was not alone in coming to this conclusion. For centuries great Bible expositors had taught that many New Testament prophecies h [...]