In 2 Timothy 4:1, the Apostle Paul picks up the theme of judging the living and the dead: “I solemnly exhort you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is [about] to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom.” The Greek has “about to judge” (μέλλοντος κρίνειν/mellontos krinein). This reads a lot like what is found in Matthew 16:27-28, Acts 17:31, and Psalm 96:13. [...]
Now that the eclipse has come and gone, prophecy speculators have refocused their attention on the Middle East. There is no need to speculate beyond the historical boundaries of Ezekiel’s day to force the names of these ancient nations to find a place on a modern-day map to conform them to today’s geo-political landscape. Iain Duguid’s comments are helpful in accounting for the historical realitie [...]
In this episode, Gary discusses recent health issues, as well as giving a few hints and tips about getting and staying in physical shape. For nearly 2000 years the church has believed in the life-transforming power of the gospel, the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, the sufficiency of Scripture as “an Instruction Book on how to live,” the Sovereignty and Providence of God in time and in hist [...]
The following is from Episode 16 of the second volume of The Hope of Israel and the Nations with Kim Burgess and me. Discussions regarding God’s law and its application in the here and now has a long history. Preterism did not stop the applicability of God’s Word in AD 70. It’s all about redemption accomplished and applied. Before preterism became a hot topic, biblical law was a subject of discuss [...]
Gary discusses recent logic being dropped regarding abortion on the daytime TV show, The View, by resident theologian Whoppi Goldberg. Secularists says human life is expendable if the cause is good enough. Who defines “good enough”? We kill animals for food. Man is only a highly evolved animal. Therefore man can be killed for any number of “socially acceptable reasons”: over-population, high medic [...]
One of the advantages of being operated on April 15th was that I was under anesthesia and could not hear or read anything about the latest prophetic nonsense being churned out by end-time prophecy teachers and preachers. What a relief! Unfortunately, it didn’t last long. The usual suspects like John Hagee, Ray Comfort, Jack Hibbs, Joel Richardson, Joel Rosenberg, and many more are revving up the p [...]
Gary discusses tactics of Christian resistance that can be learned from Saul Alinsky. When students graduated from the Academy in Geneva, they were assigned various posts, sometimes in France. These were dangerous trips; so dangerous that when the permanent ministers of Geneva went to France they left their families behind, and the city allowed those families to keep the ministerial house and even [...]
The passing of Ronald Sider in 2022 presented an opportunity for Gary to tell the sad history of Christian socialism in America. The mark of a Christian movement is its willingness to submit to the demands of Scripture. Not, mind you, merely to “principles” abstracted from their context and loaded with new content; but rather the actual, concrete, explicit statements of God’s wor [...]
Dr. Michael Brown and I debated the topic of Replacement Theology about five years ago. He agreed with my argument that the church/ekklēsia is not a new concept in the New Testament. The use of the Greek word ekklēsia, unfortunately translated “church” instead of “assembly” or “congregation,” was not a new word in the New Testament. It was common in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testamen [...]
Gary responds to a recent post by Dr. Michael Brown on “replacement theology.” Dr. Brown (and most evangelicals with him) are under the impression that God still has promises to fulfill to Israel. The temple was a constant reminder that a wall separated Jew from Gentile. In Christ, the wall was removed (Eph. 2:11–22). There is no longer any need for the blood of “bulls and goats” (Heb. [...]
Every time American Vision promotes the 1864 book The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States on Facebook, the historical know-it-alls come out of the woodwork. They spew the typical cliches. • The United States was founded as a secular nation. • Our nation’s founders were deists, and they used deistic language instead of biblical language. Long before 1776 and [...]
Gary responds to a recent article that discusses Matthew 24:22. The majority of today’s prophecy writers see today’s “wars and rumors of wars” as clear evidence that we are living in the last days. A study of the period before Jerusalem’s destruction in A.D. 70 tells a different story. The Roman historian Tacitus (A.D. 56–117) writes in his history of the period that there were “disturbances in Ge [...]
Gary continues his talk about teaching history and how to make it relevant and interesting. Probably the most famous product placement story is how Reeses Pieces got an advertising boost from a loveable alien. “Stephen Spielberg asked the makers of M&Ms if they would grant him permission to use their product in the 1982 film E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, but was turned down. Spielberg then turne [...]
It’s been embarrassing reading and listening to Christians who pushed the belief that the April 8, 2024, solar eclipse was an end-time event sign. Why do so many Christians fall for these types of end-time hoaxes? I first saw it in 1973 with Hal Lindsey’s mega-bestseller The Late Great Planet Earth. Long before Lindsey, prophetic speculation was rampant, and it’s no less true today. It’s all over [...]
In a talk from a few years back, Gary discusses how to teach history so that it’s relevant, memorable, and applicable. Much of what we remember sticks in our mind because of repetition. That’s how we learned to speak, read, and write. Learning to ride a bicycle, drive a car, play a musical instrument, or learn a sport came by way of repetition. We struggled when we first got on a bicycle, bu [...]
Bart Ehrman, a New Testament scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has a bone to pick with Jesus and Bible prophecy. He has written on the topic of Jesus and prophecy in Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (1999), Misquoting Jesus:The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (2005),and his most recent book Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says About the End (2 [...]
Gary discusses the claim that the end times are finally upon us because three eclipse paths are writing Hebrew letters across the United States. During World War II biblical references to falling heavenly bodies were thought to be bombs dropping on the cities of Europe. Supposedly there was even a Russian postage stamp to support the interpretation. The stamp showed apocalyptic symbols—lightning a [...]
In his final response to “eclipse fever,” Gary discusses the importance of using the Bible to interpret itself, rather than eclipse patterns and town names and a few scattered verses that seem to affirm the modern interpretation. It is because the heavenly bodies show God’s glory that we delight in looking at beautiful pictures of them in astronomy books. We live in a happy age, [...]
In an earlier article, I mentioned Jack Hibbs and his claim that “replacement Theology” is the theory that the Christian Church has replaced Israel as the people that God no longer has a prophetic plan for Israel. He said the following: “Friends, that’s false doctrine. Any ministry, any pastor, any group that says ‘Israel as a nation and the Jew doesn’t matter,’ that is a doctrine of heresy, pure [...]
Gary continues his response to a video promoting “eclipse mania” about the April 8 event. Archaeological, biological, astronomical, and geological evidences do not speak except to inform us that all we see are not accidents that materialized out of the void of nothingness. The Psalmist tells us, “The heavens tell of the glory of God; and their expanse declares the work of His hands” (P [...]
