Pastor Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills, California, stated that according to the Bible, Israel is a “prerequisite” for the End Times. He made this claim by denouncing something called “Replacement Theology” as “heresy.” Replacement Theology is said to be a false doctrine that declares that the church has replaced Israel, and that God is done with the Jews. (I’ll deal with the particulars [...]

Gary interviews his long-time friend, Dan Riedel, who painted the artwork for the cover of the new book, The Objective Proof for Christianity. [T]he process of knowledge is a growth into the truth. For this reason we have spoken of the Christian theistic method as the method of implication into the truth of God. It is reasoning in a spiral fashion rather than in a linear fashion. Accordingly, we h [...]

Last Sunday’s sermon (3/10/2024) at our church was from Mark 15. Verse 21 caught my attention: “They pressed into service a passer-by coming from the country, Simon of Cyrene (the father of Alexander and Rufus), to bear His cross.” Biblical skeptics call for historical proof that Jesus existed and that the NT record is authentic. Many of these critics contend that the Gospels were written very lat [...]

Gary answers a listener’s question about how Luke 17 differs from Luke 21, and how both chapters relate to Matthew 24 and the events spoken of by Jesus in the Olivet Discourse Bahnsen and Gentry argue, along with many others, that verse 35 refers to the physical heaven and earth while I and others believe it refers to the making and breaking of the covenant relationship with Israel (e.g., Is [...]

Gary interviews the late Dr. Gary North about his own personal history and how he came to know and be mentored by Dr. Rousas Rushdoony. Eventually, men confess their true faith, even men who do not expect to win. This is an important theological point. Men’s ability to remain confessionally lukewarm is drastically limited. They cannot always remain silent. Rushdoony has called this the pheno [...]

Eschatology continues to be a hot button topic. In addition to the popular prophecy theorists who can’t help themselves from claiming the rapture is near, there are Facebook posters who add grist to the eschatology mill by critiquing arguments that are grounded on solid biblical study by people who should know better. I saw the following post on Facebook post: I sent my friend information related [...]

Gary discusses an article that makes the claim that Hamas attacked Israel in order to stop the sacrifice of the “red heifer.” Remember how Jesus had described the temple to the Jews as “your house” and how it would be left to them “desolate” (Matt. 23:38). Earlier Jesus had inspected the temple (21:12-17). There He called it “My house” (21:13) and cited two passages from the Old Testam [...]

Gary continues his discussion of the confusion over how God’s law should be understood and applied in modern times. The righteousness and perfection toward which the “commandments” of “the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 5:17-19) guide us was identified by Jesus when He said, “you shall therefore be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (v. 48). God is [...]

Gary responds to an Advent devotional in Christianity Today regarding Matthew 24. A failure to understand the symbolic nature of these passages has led many popular writers (and, surprisingly, not a few scholarly ones) to assume that such expressions as “the sun turned to sackcloth and the moon to blood” can only be understood as referring to the collapse of the physical cosmos. Nobody takes these [...]

Gary responds to a video where a pastor claims you must “rightly divide the Bible,” based on 2 Timothy 2:15. By this he means that you must rightly divide the “people” of God into Jew and Gentile and understand New Testament passages in light of “the Church age.” How could Christians believe that Jesus could come at any moment and also believe that He would not [...]

Now that the first volume of the book is available, this recap from the initial episodes of Covenant Hermeneutics and Biblical Eschatology was due for a re-run. New Testament eschatology is the eschatology of Old Testament Israel. Israel’s eschaton is what is being discussed there. But, of course, Israel’s eschaton was a subset of the greater world history. OT Israel was not the end of the road. I [...]

A few years ago, I spoke at a conference on postmillennialism in Torrance, California, on the topic, “Evidence that Postmillennialists are Winning the Prophecy Debate.” I only got through a small portion of what I prepared. Ken Gentry also spoke. Kirk Cameron was there at my invitation. He gave a great talk about his prophetic pilgrimage. Sorry to say, the recording of my talk did not turn out. Th [...]

God created trees. He made them for us: for home building, decoration, shade, construction of fences, tables, chairs, sheds, and so much more. We can easily visualize a tree as a ladder to heaven, with the bottom as the beginning of the ladder, the trunk as the ladder proper, and the leafy crown on top as the glory-cloud of heaven. Is this a Biblical image, however, or is it just one that we have [...]

Every Christmas there is the inevitable talk about a “war on Christmas.” Not all opposition comes from secularists, atheists, and Muslims (see here and here). Some Christians believe the Bible does not set aside the birth of Jesus as a special calendar day to honor His birth because such a celebration violates the “regulative principle of worship.” Acknowledging the birth of Jesus is biblical. Chr [...]

What does the incarnation of Jesus mean? For Simeon and Anna, it was a confirmation of God’s faithfulness to act on behalf of His people. They believed that the incarnate Jesus WAS God’s plan of salvation for the world. They weren’t bothered by the fact that their hope for Israel was bound up in the helpless frame of a baby. Quite the opposite; they were overjoyed. Simeon and Anna rejoiced to see [...]

In the first article on this topic, I pointed out that a prominent pastor told his congregation and viewing audience the following: “In your Bible, right next to Isaiah 66:8, you can write down May 14, 1948.” It’s obvious that Isaiah 66 describes a time when the sacrificial system was operating (v. 3), the ancient people of Tarshish, Put, Lud, Meshech (the archers, those who draw the bow: Ezek. 27 [...]

I received an email from a pastor that stated the following: “I keep hearing … that Isaiah 66:8 is fulfilled in modern-day Israel. I have looked at these verses in every way and cannot get that reading even with a dispensational hermeneutic…. Can you tell me how they might see this verse to use it in this way and can you give me some help with what Isaiah is actually saying? [...]

Gary continues responding to Pastor David Jeremiah’s interview and book, The Great Disappearance. All of the texts used to support the rapture theory presuppose the validity of the theory, a theory that does not have a single text to support it. The doctrine has been constructed before texts have been evaluated. This unsound approach to Bible interpretation has done little to dissuade the ad [...]

A daily double: an article and a podcast! The article is from the July 1991 issue of James Jordan’s Biblical Horizons newsletter. It shows how Jordan’s thinking and views of the whole debate over ancient and modern Jews and the state of Israel changed from his previous views that essentially followed the Puritans and the Westminster Divines. It is vital that Christians understand this [...]

Part Two of Two. Gary continues his response to Answers in Genesis’ Ken Ham. Ham uses 2 Peter 3 to show that we are in the “last days.” John Owen asks the question that so many expositors fail to ask: Where had God promised to bring “new heavens and a new earth”? The answer, as Owen correctly states, is only in Isaiah 65 and 66—passages which clearly prophesy the period of the Go [...]