How I Got into the Prophecy Thing

My first introduction to the topic of Bible prophecy came by way of Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth. That was in 1973 when I was in my final year at Western Michigan University. Having very little knowledge of the Bible, I was intrigued with the argument and the seemingly incontrovertible evidence that we were living in the last days. The signs, I was told, were all around us. It all seemed [...]

You're Not Getting Raptured Out of Here. Deal With It.

Because American Vision is a worldview ministry, we address issues that are broader in scope than most ministries. As a result, we take issue with a number of topics that many Christians hold dear. My discussion of eschatology gets the attention of many who first land on American Vision’s site. Some of them are shocked that I hold a position on prophecy that is not in the mainstream. Of course, th [...]

'Christians Just Want Jews Slaughtered and Converted’

You may have heard Mark Alan Siegel, chairman of Florida’s Palm Beach County Democratic Party, tell an interviewer the following about what he thinks about Christians and their relationship with Jews: “The Christians just want us to be there so we can be slaughtered and converted and bring on the second coming of Jesus Christ. “The worst possible allies for the Jewish state are the fundament [...]

John MacArthur: “There is No Hope for a Better World”

If you tell someone he can’t do something, in most cases that person will stop before he even tries. Of course, there are some people who take the impossible as a challenge and use the impossible as an incentive to work hard to disprove the critics. Many of the advances in science, technology, and everyday life are the result of people who fought against impossible odds. Life is full of impossible [...]

The Seven-Year Tribulation: Clarifying Tommy Ice’s Clarifications (7)

As I’ve shown in previous articles (they can be referenced here, here, here, here, here, and here), Tommy Ice has not supplied a single verse that supports either a pre-tribulational rapture or a rebuilt temple. Let’s move on to the third question that I ask of dispensationalists: 3. Where in Revelation is the seven-year tribulation found? Here is Tommy’s attempt to answer my question: The answer [...]

The Rebuilt Temple: Clarifying Tommy Ice’s Clarifications (6)

The second question that I often pose to dispensationalists after challenging them to give me a verse that teaches a pre-tribulational rapture relates to the rebuilding of the temple. Tommy Ice references it in his article “Answers and Clarifications for Gary DeMar.” You can reference the other five posts here, here, here, here, and here: 2. Can you point out one verse from the New Testament that [...]

Dating the Book of Revelation: Clarifying Tommy Ice’s Clarifications

This is the fifth installment of my response to Tommy Ice’s article “Answers and Clarifications for Gary DeMar.” You can reference the other four posts here, here, here, and here. Tommy brings up the dating issue of when Revelation was written. He takes the position that Revelation was written around A.D. 95 while I and many others believe with good exegetical and historical reasons that it was wr [...]

The ‘Rapture’: Clarifying Tommy Ice’s Clarifications

This is the fourth installment of my response to Tommy Ice’s article “Answers and Clarifications for Gary DeMar.” You can reference the other three here, here, and here. I don’t expect Tommy or Brannon Howse to read them as thoroughly as I tried to write them, but I don’t want it to be said that there is not an answer for the type of prophetic material out there that is passed off as s [...]

False Christs: Clarifying Tommy Ice’s Clarifications

In his article “Answers and Clarifications for Gary DeMar,” Thomas Ice has been trying to set me straight on issues related to the Olivet Discourse of Matthew 24. This is my third response. You can read the first and second responses here and here. Of all the signs listed in the Olivet Discourse, Tommy Ice points to Jesus’ comments regarding “false Christs.” He doesn’t say anything about the abund [...]

Jesus and the 'Parousia': Clarifying Tommy Ice's Clarifications

Tommy Ice continues in his article “Answers and Clarifications for Gary DeMar” with a discussion of the Greek word parousia. (You can read the first part of my response here.) Tommy states that parousia is “used four times in Matthew 24 (verses 3, 27, 37, 39). The leading Greek Lexicon of our day says, parousia means “arrival as the first stage in presence, coming, advent,” and “of Christ, and nea [...]

Clarifying Tommy Ice's Clarifications

Twenty-five years ago Tommy Ice and I engaged in debates over eschatology. Tommy is a dispensational premillennialist. I’m not. One would think that in 25 years of debates (nine in all) and numerous books and articles by me and other non-dispensationalists that Tommy would get what I believe about eschatology right. A friend sent me a link to Tommy’s article “Answers and Clarifications for Gary De [...]

Preoccupied with the Antichrist

Dr. Michael Yousseff is an Egyptian-born American and founding rector of The Church of The Apostles. His messages are broadcast 3,800 times a week into 200 countries through Leading the Way Ministries. He holds a PhD from Emory University in Social Anthropology. Church of the Apostles is a magnificent church that has an old-world cathedral look about it. It’s located just north of Atlanta, Georgia [...]

Thank God for Schizophrenic Christians

The following ad copy appeared in World magazine for Joel C. Rosenberg’s new book Implosion: Is America an Empire in Decline or a Nation Poised for a Historic Renaissance? This ad copy startled me. I’ve read most of Rosenberg’s books and debated him on the meaning of Ezekiel 38 and 39. (He wasn’t up for a second debate.) He’s a dispensationalist. Dispensationalists don’t believe in a Renaissance. [...]

Panel Discusses Bible Prophecy on Atlanta Live TV Show

After the interview with the Atlanta Live television program, each guest was invited to come together for a panel discussion about our differing views on Bible prophecy, the cultural implications, as well as what we have in common. You can view these panel discussions in the video embedded above. I think one thing everyone of us on the program agreed about was the need for Christians to get out th [...]

Atlanta Live TV Show Interviews Gary DeMar about Bible Prophecy — Why Bother if We're Living in the Last Days?

I was recently interviewed on the Atlanta Alive television program about my book Last Days Madness and Bible prophecy. You can see the interview above in the embedded video. WorldNetDaily goes a great job in directing readers to articles and topics that show where America has gone wrong. In fact, there is so much of this material that one can get information overload. This is one side of the coin. [...]

"The World Is Getting Better" Says Triangulation—Earthquakes and the End Revisited

If you like to form your eschatology from the newspaper and are persuaded that the world is getting worse, you may want to consider what technology expert Byron Reese had to say in this recent video interview on Triangulation about the breakthroughs on the verge of being made in medicine, energy, etc. Byron has spoken at our conferences and he is Chief Innovation Officer at Demand Media. My Decemb [...]

Will the World End in Your Lifetime?

Dr. Jim Denison, in his article “Will the World End in Your Lifetime?” published on the Christian Post web site, concludes with these words: “The last recorded words of Jesus are, ‘Yes, I am coming soon’ (Revelation 22:20). Early believers lived every day in expectation of the imminent return of our Lord. Secular cultures discount such beliefs as outdated superstition, but each of us is one day cl [...]

There May Be Hope for Some End-Time Prophecy Theorists

A few weeks ago I was asked to participate in a panel discussion on Bible prophecy. I had been on this program before. To my surprise, the audience reaction to the first show was very favorable. As a result, I was invited back. One of the participants is a behind-the-scenes producer who has been involved in a number of end-time film projects. He knew who I was, but it was obvious with our conversa [...]

Timing and Audience Relevance and Interpreting the Bible

Yesterday I received a review copy of Eric J. Bargerhuff’s The Most Misused Verses in the Bible: Surprising Ways God’s Word is Misunderstood (2012) published by Bethany House. The author writes that common biblical phrases like “an eye for an eye” and “do not judge, or you will be judged” — “derived from the bestselling book of all time, the Bible — have often been misunderstood and mi [...]