On February 23, 2013 I participated in a Symposium on the book of Revelation with Sam Waldron (SW) who holds to an Idealist interpretation and James Hamilton (JH) who holds to a Futuristic Premillennial (non-dispensational) interpretation. I represented the Preterist position. We each had 55 minutes to present our case. We then had 20 minutes to offer a critique of the other two positions. This wa [...]
One of the arguments used against a preterist interpretation of Revealtion 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 and was published a year after his death. “In this work dedicated to the Catholic Church, he made a new attempt to interpret the Apo [...]
In preparation for the Reno Symposium on Revelation, I did a lot of preparation work. Some of it I was able to use (some of which you can find here). The following concerns the claim that Revelation should be interpreted in a consistently literal way. Nobody interprets the book of Revelation literally, as the word is normally understood. Hal Lindsey, for example, is best known for his claim that t [...]
The other night I saw Penn & Teller do their magic show. It was lots of fun. In addition to their stage ‘magic,’ they are also known for exposing quacks, frauds, and claims of the supernatural. In addition, they are big believers in doing the moral thing. That’s what Penn says since Teller doesn’t say much of anything. They are libertarians and atheists. According to an article in [...]
On February 23, I participated in a Symposium on the book of Revelation in Reno, Nevada (you can find supplemental study material here), with Dr. James M. Hamilton, Jr. Dr. Hamilton is the author of Revelation: The Spirit Speaks to the Churches. He serves as Associate Professor of Biblical Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He took an eclectic, non-dispensational, premillennial vie [...]
Revelation was written to seven first-century churches as a spiritual wake-up call because of events that were “about to take place upon the whole world [oikoumenē]” (Rev. 3:10). The use of oikoumenē instead of kosmos indicates that the events that were about to unfold were confined to the Roman Empire. The same word is used in Matthew 24:14, Luke 2:1, and Acts 11:28. Revelation is not describing [...]
The minimum wage is about freedom. Think about it. The government is forcing employers to pay people a certain amount of money. It’s no wonder that a majority of voters have no problem with the government taking ever higher amounts of money from workers in the form of taxes. When the minimum wage goes up, union wages and benefits also go up. That’s why unions are always behind an increase in [...]
Evolutionists get more desperate every day. They spend billions of dollars to send space probes to distant places in the universe to find signs of life so they can once and for all declare that God does not exist. If they can show that Earth is not the only place where life could have evolved, then it proves that there is no god. So while one group of atheists is trying to find life out there so t [...]
In preparation for “Revelation: An Evangelical Symposium” to be held on February 23, 2013 in Reno, Nevada, that will explore three different views of the book of Revelation, I’m developing a series of questions that people might ask about the preterist view of Revelation. All three positions (preterist, futurist, and idealist) will consider when prophetic events were to take place and how they wou [...]
A short video clip of me putting my finger on one of the main reasons America is in spiritual, moral, educational, and political decline is that more than 90 percent of Christian parents send their children to government-regulated, State-run schools. I’ve been asked by a few people to comment on objections that are often raised against abandoning the government school system in America. The no-pub [...]
Atheists are always trying to be clever but rarely are. Their new advertising campaign carries this line: “Atheism: A Personal Relationship with Reality.” What’s real in a materialistic, evolutionary, and amoral worldview? These atheists are begging the question. That is, they are assuming what they first must prove. They are assuming there is no God, that God is not real. Their idea of reality is [...]
I’ve been following prophecy speculators for almost exactly 40 years. They all have one thing in common. They’ve been consistently wrong for nearly 2000 years. In the 1970s, Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth was a mega-best seller. It was the No. 1 non-fiction book of the decade. (Some would put it in the fiction category.) Lindsey predicted that it would all fall apart by 1988 based on th [...]
Rep. Rush Holt from New Jersey wants to give Charles Darwin a special birthday celebration on February 12, 2013 to acknowledge the atheist icon’s 204th birthday. He wants to call it “Darwin Day.” Every day is Darwin Day in the United States. Darwinism is taught in our nation’s government schools. It’s America’s unofficial State religion. Any competing theory is hauled into court and dismissed as b [...]
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 [...]
Christians are riled up that Louie Giglio, pastor of the Passion City Church in Roswell, Georgia, was dumped by Obama’s people to give the benediction at the President’s inauguration ceremony. I’m shocked that more Christians aren’t riled up that Louie Giglio agreed to do it in the first place. Don’t get me wrong. I believe Giglio has a great ministry. This year’s Passion event turned [...]
Daniel Darling, the senior pastor of Gages Lake Bible Church in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, is saying that some people might think “we love our guns more than our neighbors.” Pastor Darling is not saying that keeping and bearing arms is sinful. While Jesus told Peter to put away his sword (Matt. 26:47–56; Mark 14:47; John 18:10–11), He did not tell him to destroy it. Jesus did not propose an [...]
Crystal Dixon, formerly employed at the University of Toledo, was fired “after she wrote a personal letter to the editor of a local newspaper objecting to the characterization of homosexuality as being the same as race.” I thought our nation’s universities were bastions of diversity. They are not. They are cesspools of forced conformity to a radically liberal moral, social, cultural, and political [...]
The theory of evolution is posited as an established scientific fact even though there is no empirical evidence of how inanimate matter came into existence and evolved into highly complex living organisms. There is no empirical evidence demonstrating where organized information came from to give structure and development to evolved matter. Finally, there is no empirical evidence showing the millio [...]
To name something is to define it. Liberals have learned this lesson a long time ago. The word ‘liberal’ sounded like ‘liberty.’ When the word ‘liberal’ fell out of fashion among the American people, liberals resurrected the word ‘progressive.’ ‘Progressive politics’ sounds positive, while ‘conservative politics’ conjures up images of stagnation and old ideas. Those who are anti-homosexual are des [...]
It’s 2013, and to the surprise of many, we’re still here. We don’t know what the future will bring. With that in mind, many people are nostalgic for the past. Not so fast. The writer of the biblical book Ecclesiastes puts the past in perspective when he writes: “Do not say, ‘Why is it that former days were better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this” (7:10). [...]
