If someone burps in the Middle East, the end-time speculators come out of the woodwork and claim that this time it’s the end. People said the end was near more than 100 years ago when Europe went to war, and 51 years ago when Hal Lindsey wrote The Late Great Planet Earth, and 20 years ago when the Sabbath Millennium was said to start. The rapture and the antichrist have once again taken center sta [...]

“1. Preterists. The prophecies contained in the Apocalypse were fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem and the fall of heathen Rome.”[1] If today’s prophetic theorists are to be believed, Jesus will be returning “soon.” Dave Hunt’s book How Close Are We?, written nearly thirty years ago, claimed to answer the question in the subtitle: Compelling Evidence for the Soon Return of Christ.[2] On t [...]

Sam Waldron who teaches at Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary has been writing on the topic of postmillennialism. In his “DatPostmil? #4: Does the Growth of the Kingdom Require Postmillennialism?” he discusses some of the parables of Jesus. While he agrees with the growth imagery of the parables, he dismisses “postmillennial implications of these passages,” in particular “the Parable of the Whe [...]

A plain reading of Matthew 16:27–28 gives the distinct impression that what is being described by Jesus was going to take place within the time frame of that generation, their generation. (See Part One: “What Did Jesus Mean about His Coming in Matthew 16?”) Some would still be alive but most would have died before Jesus came in judgment against Jerusalem, an event that took place in AD 70 and prop [...]

Matthew 16:27–28 has been interpreted in numerous ways over the centuries. A plain reading of the text gives the impression that what is being described by Jesus was going to take place within the time frame of that generation—their generation. This is Part One of a two-part series titled “What Did Jesus Mean When He said, ‘There are some of those who are standing here who shall not ta [...]

A popular end-time prediction is that Daniel 12 is referring to events in our day, more than 2600 years from the time the prophecy was given to Daniel. For example, Hal Lindsey claims the following: “When Daniel emerged from the vision, the angel instructed him, ‘But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase [...]

A popular argument for a pre-tribulation rapture is the claim that while the “church” is mentioned 19 times in the first three chapters of the book of Revelation, in chapters 4–18, dispensationalist Mark Hitchcock writes, “there is absolute silence.” Similar to the way dispensationalists place a gap in time between the 69th and 70th weeks of Daniel 9:24–27, they place a gap between the last verse [...]

If this past election has taught us anything, it tells us that facts don’t matter. Showing an image of a nearly full-term baby in his mother’s womb to members of Congress did not dissuade the Democrats from supporting abortion until and even after a baby’s birth. Democrats ignore the science and the empirical data behind the transgender movement. The ACLU has declared that there is no advantage fo [...]

Eschatology is still big business. It’s not that a lot of people are making money with it, although some are, but because many Christians can’t seem to think in other terms. When things go bad, many Christians immediately conclude that we’re living in the last days even though this type of thinking has been around for many centuries with the same results. We’re still here fighting the same battles [...]

Through a comment on Facebook, I learned that Ed Dingess posted a 45-minute critique of a message that James White gave on the topic of postmillennialism that served as a response to a sermon that John MacArthur gave. You can listen to the Dingess’ “rant” (as he calls it) titled “James White’s New Dance with Postmillennialism” here. I’m not going to offer a response to it. James White is more than [...]

A popular metaphor for prophetic irrelevance is the sinking Titanic theme. “This metaphor was made famous, of course, by the 1950s radio preacher J. Vernon McGee, who warned his listeners with the rhetorical question, ‘Do you polish brass on a sinking ship?’ (Quoted in Gary North, Rapture Fever: Why Dispensationalism is Paralyzed (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1993), 100.) Apparent [...]

Most Christians have a limited view of what constitutes a biblical worldview. I suspect that many believe that the Christian’s earthly life is a holding pattern for heaven. Earth serves as a way station for true living after death. Is this why God created us? We’re born, we live out our lives the best we can, and then we prepare for heaven. In the interim, the Christian’s goal is to evangelize the [...]

I came across the following post on Facebook: “Prof. D. J. Engelsma gives a devastating rebuke to the Postmil notion of ‘Christianizing the world.’” The poster asked for comments. Here was my first comment: “David Engelsma is fixated on the common grace argument. That’s a Christian Reformed Church amillennial problem. Engelsma uses almost no Scripture. His eschatology is closer to dispensationalis [...]

God tells Israel that He will not bring another calamity on Jerusalem like the one He brought in Ezekiel’s day: “And because of all your abominations, I will do among you what I have not done, and the like of which I will never do again” (Ezek. 5:9). One commentator who believes that there is yet to be a future Great Tribulation to surpass all the tribulations brought upon Israel writes the follow [...]

One of the stumbling blocks to a preterist interpretation of the Olivet Discourse is Jesus’ statement about the Great Tribulation “such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall” (Matt. 24:21). Critics of a preterist interpretation of the Olivet Discourse maintain that such a tribulation has never occurred even though Jesus made it clear that all the events He [...]

One of the arguments used against preterism is that it was developed by Spanish Jesuit Luis De Alcazar (1554–1613) who wrote a commentary titled Vestigio Arcani Sensus in Apocaplysi or Investigation of the Hidden Sense of the Apocalypse in which “he proposed that all of Revelation applied to the era of pagan Rome and the first six centuries of Christianity.” Here’s a typical example: “The Praeteri [...]

It all started with comments that Grace Community Church Pastor John MacArthur made where he “warned that today’s world is ‘perfectly suited for the Antichrist to come’ amid the chaos and ‘lawlessness’ stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.” MacArthur went on to say: Now we are a global world. And that is a setup that we’ve been waiting for through redemptive history since the Lord promised that the [...]

Frequently, around Christmas time, we are treated to yet another (often just a repeat of previous “findings”) naturalistic explanation of the biblical “Star of Bethlehem.” Natural explanations of biblical phenomena can sometimes have their place, but they can also be diversions—for unbelievers and believers alike. A far better approach for believers is to know and receive the deep, rich biblical m [...]

I’ve been putting an outline together in preparation for two talks I did for the December 18–19 online “A Purchased Victory: A Conference on the Bright Hope of Postmillennialism.” My two talks deal with biblical and cultural impediments that are often raised against postmillennialism. One topic I did not mention is the place of Israel in prophecy at it relates to postmillennialism. The following i [...]

The following is the introduction to two talks I produced for the “A Purchased Victory” online conference that will be available to view December 18–19 at CruciformMinistries.org. There’s a scene in the 1993 film Searching for Bobby Fischer where Josh Waitzkin, played by Max Pomeranc, is being taught that the complexities of chess require knowing more than where the pieces on the board are at any [...]