Kim reveals his paradigm in visual form with a chart called, The Structure of the Covenants. Drawing from the influence of Geerhardus Vos, Kim shows how the covenants unfold and come to pass in history and, ultimately, through the life and work of Jesus Christ. Here’s the chart needed for this episode: Click here to listen to this episode [...]
You may have heard that the folks in Moscow, Idaho—Canon Press, Fight, Laugh, Feast (FLF), and Christ Church and the CREC denomination—have deplatformed Gary DeMar’s books on Bible prophecy that have been in print since 1988! (See the letter sent to me below) We suspect that Gary’s prophecy books are now considered an eschatological “gateway drug” to full preterism unlike those of Ken [...]
The following is an introduction to an 80-page discussion dealing with controversies regarding preterism. It’s not designed as a published work. It’s more of an accumulation of material to help people work through the debate. It goes along with two abbreviated talks I gave at Berean Bible Church’s conference “How Shall We Then Live?” You can read and/or download a copy of the 80-page study here. * [...]
When we study the history of prophetic speculation, we soon realize that we’ve heard all of this before.For nearly 2000 years uninformed but assured Christians have predicted that “they were the generation that would see the end times … and the return of Christ.” In each and every case the prophetic prognosticators have been wrong. Seemingly not learning from this dismal t [...]
Jesus warned the Church at Ephesus that He would come and remove their lampstand “unless you repent” (Rev. 2:5). He issued a similar warning to the church at Pergamum: “Repent therefore; or else I am coming to you quickly, and I will make war against them [i.e., the Nicolaitans] with the sword of My mouth (2:16; see 19:15). Sardis is forewarned using similar judgment language: “If therefore you wi [...]
John Nelson Darby, the founder of dispensational premillennialism and the pre-tribulational “rapture” of the church doctrine, the basis of The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) and the multivolume Left Behind prophecy series, taught that “the imminent return of Christ ‘totally forbids all working for earthly objects distant in time.’”[1] This would have included the study of mathematics, medicine, ar [...]
Not long ago, I received an email from a woman who asked me if I could direct her to some information that refutes Gnosticism. She wrote that a friend of hers “claims to be on an extraordinarily intense spiritual ‘pilgrimage’ of ‘really pressing in to know God intimately’—but this guy has in effect divorced himself from the material world and from all relationships (including his wife and 10 child [...]
Gary interacts with a short video by Jack Hibbs discussing what’s happening in the Middle East and claiming it’s a fulfillment of Ezekiel 38 and 39, Gog and Magog. Getting the interpretation of prophecy right will help in dealing with those who are not familiar with the topic and see danger in some of the talk about an inevitable nuclear holocaust. When a prominent prophecy writer asso [...]
I love reading older commentaries that have not been tainted by elements of dispensationalism and where the authors had the freedom to publish their works without being shunned or denounced. Lightfoot is hard to go up against since his academic bona fides are difficult to question. Lightfoot was one of the original members of the Westminster Assembly that produced the Westminster Standards. His be [...]
In this conversation between Gary and Kim Burgess, the two discuss their other podcast, Covenant Hermeneutics and Biblical Eschatology. The people in Jesus’ day saw the kingdom of God only in externals. They visualized the kingdom of God as coming, not through regeneration, but by revolution. Jesus said of His followers: “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but beca [...]
War! What is it good for? As Edwin Starr’s classic song says: “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” But for the purveyors of modern pop-prophecy, war is good for bringing about God’s plan and purpose in our own day and age. War is the key ingredient in their speculative scenario that will yield the finished product–the much-anticipated rapture of the Church. The more news about wars and rumors of war in [...]
Gary discusses an article and interview by Pastor Greg Laurie where he claims it is ridiculous to blame the Jews for Jesus’ death. Preterists believe that the events described in Matthew 24:1-34 were fulfilled in the events leading up to and including the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. “The guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of [...]
Gary looks into many verses in the New Testament about whether or not Jesus drank wine with his disciples after His resurrection. Jesus gave us the meal as a New Covenant meal. And He specifically said the covenant was in the cup—not bread, or meat, or water, or anything else, but the cup which He held. It contained “the fruit of the vine”—that is, wine. This wine was “the new covenant in my blood [...]
Since I’ve been studying eschatology, there has been a great deal of pushback. First it came from dispensationalists. This was expected since it’s where I spent most of my time and effort. It’s the dominant view today. In fact, it’s dominated the prophetic landscape for nearly 200 years. End-time thinking, and prophetic prognostication goes back further as Francis X. Gumerlock demonstrates in his [...]
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. [...]
Gary answers two listener questions Matthew 24:3 reads more accurately, “the end of the age” (aiōn), not the “end of the world” (kosmos) as some translations have it. The “end of the age” refers to the expiration of a period of time that specifically applied to the passing away of the Old Covenant era (Dan. 9:24-27; Matt. 15:24; Luke 24:27, 44). The writer of Hebrews described this time as “these [...]
One of the few chapel messages I remember from my seminary days was delivered by Dr. Jack Scott. He began by outlining all the supposed orthodox statements made by Job’s “friends.” He then asked: “Right or wrong?” Not waiting for a response, he nearly shouted, “Wrong!” Some of the comments I’ve received in emails, private messages, and on Facebook come from “miserable comforters.” Eliphaz, Bildad, [...]
The first-century church had to live within the confines of the existing laws of the Roman Empire. The Apostle Paul had to confront the Roman institution of slavery when he had led a runaway slave, Onesimus, to Jesus Christ (Phil. 10). Should Paul have called for the abolition of slavery by petitioning the Roman government? Should the apostle have encouraged Onesimus to lead a rebellion against th [...]
I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church. My Catholic upbringing included Catholic school through the fifth grade and serving as an altar boy through my teen years. My first dose of a foreign language was Latin, a prerequisite if you were an altar boy in the 1950s and 1960s. After becoming a Christian in 1973, I began to question several Catholic doctrines based on the Bible. It was sola scriptur [...]
God’s Kingdom does not break into this world without opposition. Paul wrote: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). While Paul’s first-century readers were enduring suffering, they were also the ones that would have “the glory” revealed to them. The temporary gl [...]
