Zacchaeus, the Tyranny of Taxation, and Fleecing the Sheep

Zacchaeus, the Tyranny of Taxation, and Fleecing the Sheep

In a sermon this past Sunday, we heard about Zacchaeus, who climbed a tree to see Jesus as He passed by. Our pastor, uncharacteristically, even sang the first few lines of ‘Zacchaeus Was a Wee Little Man.’ Zacchaeus was a wee little man And a wee little man was he He climbed up in a sycamore tree For the Lord he wanted to see Zacchaeus may have been a “wee little man,” but he was complicit in bein [...]

Bob Beamon Exegesis

Bob Beamon Exegesis

Gary gives an update on what he’s been working on lately, and responds to an article about the antichrist by Jase Robertson. No matter what century you study, prophetic speculation was prevalent. There have been numerous antichrist candidates. Early Christian thinkers like Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Hippolytus speculated on the topic, sometimes linking the Antichrist to the Roman Empire and t [...]

How Well Do You Know the Bible?: Take this Simple Quiz

How Well Do You Know the Bible?: Take this Simple Quiz

Americans revere the Bible—but, by and large, don’t read it. And because they don’t read it, they have become a nation of biblical illiterates. This lack of Bible-reading explains why Americans know so little about the Bible that is the basis of the faith of most of them. For example, eight in ten Americans say they are Christians, but only four in ten know that Jesus, according to the Bible, deli [...]

You Can’t Beat Something With Nothing

You Can’t Beat Something With Nothing

It was Saul Alinsky in Rules for Radicals who wrote, “Do one of three things. One, go find a wailing wall and feel sorry for yourselves. Two, go psycho and start bombing—but this will only swing people to the right. Three, learn a lesson. Go home, organize, build power and at the next convention, you be the delegates.”[1] It could be argued that, because we have limited our application of the Bibl [...]

The Necessity of Fulfilled Prophecy

The Necessity of Fulfilled Prophecy

Gary is interviewed by UK Pastor Alex Gillan about biblical eschatology and fulfilled prophecy. Hal Lindsey argued that Revelation was written in the form of an ancient code that needed a time machine to speed to the right prophetic era where the original Revelation symbols could be understood. “You might say,” Lindsey writes in There’s A New World Coming, “that John was put into a ‘divine time ma [...]

Abolish the Minimum Wage

Abolish the Minimum Wage

California just implemented a law requiring many businesses to pay employees at least $20 per hour. First, like so much government regulation, this is theft. Only governments (and the mafia) can force people to pay more money for work they don’t do. Second, it’s a job killer for young people seeking work experience. If you listen to Democrats, most Americans are working at jobs for minimum wage. I [...]

How Free Markets Should Work

How Free Markets Should Work

Gary uses a recent trip to a pizza restaurant (two actually) to teach a lesson about free-market economics. The call for government intervention into market pricing is ancient. This call was resisted politically in the West until the decade before World War I began. After that war ended in 1918, the West saw the triumph of the isms: Communism, Fascism, National Socialism, Fabianism, and the smalle [...]

Failure to Reject Prophetic Speculation: No 6

Failure to Reject Prophetic Speculation: No 6

Note: This is the sixth and final article on worldview concepts that Christians have failed to overcome. (First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth) George Will called 1968 “perhaps the worst year in American History” and called the sixties “the most dangerous decade in America’s life as a nation.”[1] This is not surprising because of the continued escalation of the Vietnam War, the draft, and the assas [...]

How Much More Irrational Can People Get?

How Much More Irrational Can People Get?

Gary discusses some of the logical consequences of the craziness being espoused by certain people lately. What people often object to is the legislation of morality that affects them personally. Some women want abortion to be legal so they can choose the procedure if a birth control device fails. They object to any legislation that would make abortion illegal and infringe on their personal choices [...]

Why Hermeneutics is Like Interpreting ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and ‘American Pie.’

Why Hermeneutics is Like Interpreting ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and ‘American Pie.’

Hermeneutics is often defined as the science and art of interpreting what people write (mostly) and speak. R.C. Sproul writes: “The purpose of hermeneutics is to establish guidelines and rules for interpretation. It is a well-developed science that can become technical and complex. Any written document is subject to misinterpretation and thus we have developed rules to safeguard us from such misun [...]

Apologetics is the Seed of Regeneration

Apologetics is the Seed of Regeneration

Gary continues his interview with artist Dan Riedel about his friendship with Dr. Cornelius Van Til. Without the Christian worldview, Van Til says: Our argument, then, is that those who come apparently ever so near the Christian position but stop short or maintaining the fundamental conceptions of an absolute Christ, an absolute Scripture, and regeneration, reduce experience to an absurdity. Here [...]

The Artist and the Theologian

The Artist and the Theologian

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 [...]

To Serve Man

To Serve Man

Politicians constantly boast about how they are helping people. Gary disagrees. The only functions allowed to the state by the Bible are defense of its people and punishment of criminals. To go a step beyond this is forbidden. Biblical law works to prevent power being concentrated in any one institution, by creating and sanctioning many institutions—family, church, community, voluntary association [...]

An ICE-Y Situation in Minnesota

An ICE-Y Situation in Minnesota

Gary discusses ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. He explains when and why it began and what its jurisdiction and purpose is. Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) establishes the proper definition of the word “right”: “Conformity to the will of God or to his law, the perfect standard of truth and justice. In the literal sense, right is a straight line [...]

Default Dispensationalism Is Holding Back the Church

Default Dispensationalism Is Holding Back the Church

I love the monthly news magazine World. You can thank David Chilton for contributing to its existence. He used his influence to help launch World with editor Joel Belz and wrote a monthly column for the publication for years. You should subscribe. You can do it here. Gary North wrote the following in his article “David Chilton Made the Case for Long-Run Christian Optimism.” “From the very beginnin [...]

Secret Decoder Ring Bible Interpretation

Secret Decoder Ring Bible Interpretation

Gary continues his discussion with Bob Cruickshank about the biblical usage of the word “antichrist.” (Click here for Part One.) You will not find the word antichrist in the book of Revelation. This is significant since the John who defines antichrist for us in his first two letters is the same John who penned the book of Revelation. Second, according to the Bible antichrist is not a s [...]

Failure to Expose the Fraud of Red-Letter Christianity: No. 5

Failure to Expose the Fraud of Red-Letter Christianity: No. 5

In the Foreword to Tony Campolo’s book Red Letter Christians, Jim Wallis tells a story about a secular Jewish country-music songwriter and disk jockey who told him that a new social movement was being birthed as a result of Wallis’ God’s Politics and other “social conscience” books. Here’s how Wallis tells it: “I love your stuff and have been following your book tour.” Then he told me he believed [...]

Popular (Mis)Conceptions About the Antichrist

Popular (Mis)Conceptions About the Antichrist

Gary interviews his friend Bob Cruickshank about a few recent articles he has written about the “antichrist.” The word “antichrist” appears only in John’s epistles (1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3; 2 John 7). John’s description of antichrist is altogether different from the modern image. John’s antichrist is • Anyone “who denies that Jesus is the Christ” (1 John 2:22). • Anyone who “denies the Fa [...]

The "Wait" of Glory

The "Wait" of Glory

Gary and Kim Burgess return to the conversation of 1 Corinthians 15 by discussing parallel passages in 2 Corinthians. GARY: When one studies Shakespeare, for example, one has got to go back to Shakespeare’s time to understand Shakespeare properly, but, somehow, odd as it is, when it comes to the Bible, it is more or less treated like a magic book for many people; a book somehow immune from these s [...]

Failure to Abandon Gnosticism: No 4

Failure to Abandon Gnosticism: No 4

Recently, I received an email from a woman who asked whether I could direct her to sources that refute 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 children) which h [...]