October 12, 2017 Show with Gary DeMar on “Wars & Rumors of Wars”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister

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George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 12th day of October 2017.

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Well, it's been nine years since I've had the guest who I am interviewing today, it's been nine years since I've had

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Gary DeMar on the program. Gary DeMar, who received his Master of Divinity at Reform Theological Seminary and who is

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Founder and Senior Fellow of American Vision. He is the author of countless essays, news articles, and more than 27 book titles, who has been featured by nearly every major news media outlet and has hosted the

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Gary DeMar Show, History Unwrapped, and Gary DeMar's Vantage Point web show.

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He is also a regular contributor to americanvision .org, and today we are going to be discussing his new book,

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Wars and Rumors of Wars. And it is my honor and privilege to introduce to my

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience for the first time in nine years, Gary DeMar. Hey Chris, how you doing?

02:24

It's great to have you on the program today, Gary. After nine years and the last interview that we had on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio was when

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Sarah Palin was running for president and the theme was, Should Women Ever Lead Our Nation?

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That was the theme of our program and you were supporting Sarah Palin in that presidential race at that time.

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This is before she became the vice presidential candidate for John McCain and I often wondered if you came to that conclusion that women could lead our nation merely because your wife was standing near you in the room where you're conducting the interview.

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Well, I just thought that John McCain was a much worse candidate and Sarah Palin could do a whole better, a much better job.

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Yes, and in studio with us is somebody who is more excited than a child at a carnival today.

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It's my co -host the Reverend Buzz Taylor who is an enormous admirer of you,

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Gary, and this is the first time that Reverend Buzz Taylor, my co -host, has ever worn a tuxedo in the studio even though he's on radio and no one can see him.

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Well, I don't want to get him too excited about this but I read, of course, years ago

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I read Last Day's Madness and I listened to cassettes, if you remember those, of your

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Bosselian lectures and of course I found you on wordmp3 .com.

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So yeah, I've been familiar with your work for many years. And I want to let our listeners know our email address if they have any questions for Gary today.

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Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, chrisarnsen at gmail .com, that's c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

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Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA and only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter.

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For instance, if you disagree with your own past or on eschatology or something like that, we understand that you might want to remain anonymous and we will grant your wish.

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But other than that, please at least give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence. Well, you know,

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Gary, since it's been so long since I've had you on the program and you're not technically a first -time guest,

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I still would like you to give a summary of your personal testimony of salvation because I typically do that with first -time guests.

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But since it's been nine years since you've been on the program and we have a whole slew of new listeners who are loyal to this program that are not familiar with the old show that I conducted out of New York, and I know that the likelihood is that the vast majority of our listeners are totally familiar with you, but there may be some who are not.

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I have listeners from all kinds of backgrounds that might not necessarily know about you or American Vision.

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I have listeners that aren't even Christian. I have Muslim listeners and listeners from all types of backgrounds.

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So if you could, let us know something about the religious atmosphere of your home while you were being raised, if any, and how you providentially came to Christ as your

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Lord, God, and Savior, and also how you finally adopted Reformed theology and even post -millennialism, partial preterism, and theonomy and Christian reconstruction, for that matter.

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Wow, how much time do we have here? Well, it's a two -hour show. Okay, I was, well, you're located in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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I was born in Carlisle. That's right. I was in the service. I was born in 1950, and I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the suburbs of Pittsburgh.

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I was raised in a Roman Catholic Italian home. Both my grandparents, sets of grandparents, were born in Italy, and I was really involved in...

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I was an older boy. I went to Catholic school up through the fifth grade, eventually went to public school in the sixth grade. I was really interested in athletics, spent most of my time doing that.

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I used to hold the Pennsylvania state record in the shot put and wanted to coach at the college level, was on a track and field scholarship to Western Michigan University.

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And athletically, the shot put, you have to be, these days, about six feet three and weigh about 260 pounds, and I wasn't willing to do that, and I didn't have the height to do that as well.

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So I kind of lost interest in the athletic side of things because there was just no way

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I was going to be able to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish athletically. And I was kind of lost throughout college.

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I didn't really have a real indicator as to what I ought to do, and I don't know if my life was falling apart by the time of my senior year, but I was not headed down the right road.

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Providentially, I ran into an old high school friend in December of 72 in a pub in Pittsburgh, near the

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University of Pittsburgh, and kind of caught up on things. He was in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and I had a track meet in Ann Arbor, and we decided to kind of hook up and ran into him and ran into another friend there providentially.

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I missed my bus back to Kalamazoo, where Western Michigan is, and this other friend from high school sat down with me and presented the gospel to me.

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He actually presented the, he was talking about the late great planet Earth and how the world was going to come to an end, and Jesus was coming before this generation passed away, and so forth.

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I didn't know anything about that. I didn't know anything about the Bible, but I did hear the gospel from him.

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So I graduated from Western Michigan University and moved down to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, another providential thing, and ended up moving within a few blocks of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.

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I had no idea who D. James Kennedy was, and the place that I rented, and I didn't really know where to go to church.

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Here I was with a college degree. I had no car. I had a bicycle for transportation, and I was renting a place, and I heard somebody outside presenting the gospel to my landlady, and I just went out and introduced myself.

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I said, look, I'm new in town. I'm a brand -new Christian. I didn't know where to go to church, and she said, well, the best place to go in church in Fort Lauderdale is

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Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, and so I went to Coral Ridge and got involved in an outreach program called

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The Greenhouse, which met every Tuesday, and from there I was encouraged to go to seminary.

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So this was 1973, and so 1974, I was a student at Reform Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, getting a seminary degree, and it was there that I took up the...and

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there, of course, was Reform Theology was the basis of the...that's why it was called Reform Theological Seminary.

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It was not a Reformed school. It was just a very, very good theological education, and D.

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James Kennedy, of course, was Reformed, and I learned a lot there within that year.

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I took a little bit of Greek while I was there, and while I was in seminary, I got re -engaged in the eschatological side of things, because that was 1974, and Hal Lindsay's book,

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The Late Great Planet Earth, came out in 1970, and everybody was talking about eschatology in the 1970s, because Hal Lindsay had predicted that before that generation passed away from 1948 to 1988, that the

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Rapture would take place within that period of time. But as I began to read the

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Bible, especially the Gospel of Matthew, it just did not line up with what

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I was reading in Scripture, especially in Matthew's Gospel, and when I finally got to Matthew chapter 24, there was, you know, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place, and I was reading through the

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Matthew's Gospel, and this generation all, you know, seemed to refer to the generation to whom Jesus was speaking, and at that point,

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I was stymied. I didn't really know what to make of all this, and again, providentially, the librarian of the seminary was selling some of his books, and one of the books he was selling was by J.

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Marcellus Kick, K -I -K, and it was just on Matthew 24, and I picked it up, and it was life -transforming.

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Kick took Matthew chapter 24, and by comparing Scripture with Scripture, showed that the

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Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21, applied to the generation to whom

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Jesus was speaking, and that book was originally published in 1948. It was later republished by Presbyterian Reform Publishing Company, and it was eventually republished and combined with Kick's commentary on Revelation 20, and it's called an

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Eschatology of Victory. It's still available today, and so with that, with Reformed Theology and the application of the

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Bible to every area of life, and then with a better understanding of Eschatology combined with studies with Dr.

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Greg L. Bonson, who was a professor there at the time, I got in worldview ministries at American Vision after I graduated from seminary in 1979, moved to the

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Atlanta area, and I was involved, taught school for a couple of years, then got involved with American Vision in 1980, and have been with American Vision since 1980.

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Now, you eventually became the president of American Vision. Did you found American Vision, or is that already an existing ministry?

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No, it was already in existence. It was started by a fellow named Steve Shiffman, and he was involved.

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He was a Jewish Christian. I don't know if you know who Marshall Foster is, but Marshall Foster was involved in the

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Christian America thesis, and Steve Shiffman was too, and he was doing these seminars around and happened to come to the school where I was teaching, and he needed a writer and a researcher to help him with things, because he really wasn't that knowledgeable.

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He was just kind of a good front man for the organization, and so he hired me, and eventually, he left the ministry, and I took over the ministry probably in the mid -1980s, and so I was president of American Vision and have since turned the presidency over to Joel McDermott.

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I'm still on the board and still write for American Vision and do conferences and so forth. Right. Well, my apologies for—well, it's actually no reason to apologize, because it's actually an elevation of your status.

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I said you were the founder of American Vision at the beginning of the program, but I'm glad that you cleared that up.

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Just before we go on to the major theme that we have, wars and rumors of wars, I just wanted to have you clarify a couple of things prior to that.

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For instance, going back to D. James Kennedy, because there are people who ask me from time to time where he was eschatologically, and I believe he was an amillennialist, but I know that many, if not most, theonomists really valued his ministry very much, and I believe he also wrote the foreword to a couple of books by theonomists, so can you tell us where D.

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James Kennedy was on that issue? Yeah, Dr. Kennedy didn't talk much about eschatology.

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I think there were a couple of sermons. I haven't listened to everything that he did, but I've heard he was an amillennialist, and he and Jerry Newcomb wrote a book on,

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I think Jerry wrote the book on eschatology, but he said this was basically Dr. Kennedy's views, and it was amillennial, but the thing with Dr.

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Kennedy is he was deeply involved in Christian worldview ministry, and so Dr.

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Kennedy applied the Bible to every area of life. He used to hold conferences on worldview issues.

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He was involved in the Christian history. That's where we kind of worked together. I wrote a book for Coral Ridge Ministries on America's Christian heritage.

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He wrote the foreword to one of my God and Government books, so even though he was an amillennialist, he was not someone who saw doom and gloom in the future.

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He believed that the gospel was effective in every area of life, and that was the thing that attracted me to Coral Ridge because one of the things

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Dr. Kennedy did was he preached the gospel to everybody. I remember going out to lunch with him one time, and he immediately just engaged the server in the presentation of the gospel.

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He was so easy and so good at it. It was remarkable to see him in action.

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I don't know if he ever ran into anybody, talked with anybody, that he didn't present the gospel to them. Then, of course, the

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Evangelical Explosion, I was involved in that ministry down there through the greenhouse.

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We would go to the beach every Sunday. First, we'd go for some training at the greenhouse, and then we would go into threes with a trainer and two trainees.

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I started out as a trainee and then eventually became a trainer. We would go to the beach and engage people in the gospel.

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We would ask them the question, if you were to die tonight, do you know if you would go to heaven?

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A lot of people would say yes, and some people would say, I don't know. The next question was, if you were to die tonight, and you stood before God, and God asked you, why should

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I let you into my heaven, what would you say? That was an engagement into the gospel.

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For years, I used to get a letter from a woman named Grace about that.

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On the anniversary of her new birth, she would send me a little note card while I was in seminary, just wishing me well and so forth and so on.

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She was growing in the faith. I really got started in everything that I'm doing from Coral Ridge, and I was well -grounded early on.

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A lot of guys, you know, they get started and they get into some weird stuff. I got grounded very, very early, and I'm very thankful that with Dr.

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Kennedy and the ministry of Coral Ridge and the greenhouse and, of course, Reformed Theological Seminary, I was on the straight and narrow right from the start.

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Well, Reverend Buzz Taylor had a question. I was going to say, for a non -millennialist, I think D. James Kennedy wrote a very post -millennial book.

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Years ago, I read What If Jesus Had Never Been Born, where he was showing the impact that Christianity has already had over the last 2 ,000 years, and it was amazing.

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Well, even Ian Murray's The Puritan Hope is like a handbook for post -millennialists, but Ian Murray is a non -millennialist.

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A lot of people don't know. I think they call Ian Murray the post -millennial variety at Banner of Truth, which

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I guess its American headquarters are also in Carlisle. Yes, they are about three blocks from where I'm sitting.

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Yeah, two famous entities, Banner of Truth and Gary DeMar, had their base of operations in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and let's not forget

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Jim Thorpe. That's right. Hey, let's not forget Chris Arms in here. Yeah, Chris Arms, too.

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That's right. But Banner of Truth, and I think

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Ian Murray would be considered kind of a pietistic post -millennialist, not so much a worldview reconstructionist -type post -millennialist, and I think there's kind of a difference.

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Very little comes out of the Banner of Truth dealing with the cultural application of the Gospel, and yet, of course, it's very solid in their commentaries and other books and so forth.

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But The Puritan Hope is a terrific book because it does in fact show post -millennialism and the impact it's had on missions throughout the world.

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The missions generally was a post -millennial enterprise, and seeing the

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Gospels transformed through the work of Jesus Christ and the power of His Spirit to bring change to those nations.

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And by the way, when I met Dr. Murray in person when he preached at the church where I used to be a member before moving to Pennsylvania, Grace Reform Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York, Dr.

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Murray told me that he was a millennial. That was back in the 90s or the early 2000s,

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I believe. Well, I think most of the post -millennial works that come out of Banner of Truth aren't of the reconstructionist variety.

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Right. And if you could also, before we go on to the specific topic of wars and rumors of wars,

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I think it might be helpful for you to give an abbreviated summary of, was that a redundancy, an abbreviated summary?

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If you could give a summary of not only post -millennialism but partial preterism, and you might as well, and of course

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I am saying a summary of theonomy and Christian reconstruction because of the fact that there are a lot of disagreements and there's a lot of confusion and there's a lot of misrepresentation going on in regard to all of those topics and unfortunately the hyper -preterists don't help matters who have declared that everything in the scriptures has been already fulfilled and there will be no future visible return of Christ, there will be no future resurrection of the dead, and that kind of a thing.

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So if you could give us a summary of those highlighted views of yours. Well, the different millennial positions are based upon Revelation chapter 20 and the most popular view today is premillennialism and its, oh,

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I guess its cousin, recent cousin, dispensational premillennialism. So there's classical premillennialism, for example

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Francis Schaeffer was a classical premillennialist, George Elton Ladd was a classical premillennialist.

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Charles Spurgeon and the Bonar brothers. Yeah, yeah, they would be considered classical premillennialists and there's a long, long history of the classical premillennialism.

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Essentially premillennialists believe that Jesus will return, the return that you were talking about, Jesus will return prior to the 1 ,000 year indicator in Revelation chapter 20, that's why it's called premillennialism,

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Jesus comes before the 1 ,000 years, before the millennium. An amillennialist does not take the 1 ,000 years literally, because the numbers in the book of Revelation themselves are often symbolic numbers, for example the number seven appears 50 or 60 times and it's obviously a symbolic number, number 12, 12 times 12 times 1 ,000, 144 ,000.

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The number 1 ,000 is a symbolic number in the Bible when there's not a specific adjective ascribed to it, like 2 ,000, 3 ,000, 4 ,000.

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God owns cattle on 1 ,000 hills, one day in the court of the Lord is better than 1 ,000 anywhere else, and so the amillennialist takes the 1 ,000 years as beginning with the time of Christ with his crucifixion and resurrection and ascension and continues on to an undisclosed time until Jesus will return at the end of history.

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So that 1 ,000 years there is symbolic of just a long period of time. But like the premillennialist, the amillennialist does not really believe that there can be cultural transformation to take place, very pessimistic about what is going to happen in the future just like the premillennialist.

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The dispensational premillennialist, like the classical premillennialist, believes

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Jesus is going to return prior to the 1 ,000 years, but they have this little bump in the road called the tribulation period, which is a seven -year period which precedes that 1 ,000 years where Jesus raptures his church prior to a seven -year period and the church is taken to heaven and God's going to deal with Israel during that seven -year period where there will be the rise of Antichrist, the temple will be rebuilt, there will be animal sacrifices reinstituted, and two -thirds of the

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Jews living in Israel are going to be slaughtered, and then Jesus will return at the end of that seven -year period and he will set up his millennial reign with a rebuilt temple, another temple to be rebuilt, and animal sacrifices and circumcision established.

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The postmillennialist, like the amillennialist in most cases, sees the 1 ,000 years as symbolic of a long period of time where the gospel will be successful throughout during this period of some time in the future.

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The Jews will be called, the nations around the world will be called, and Jesus will return at the end of that symbolic 1 ,000 -year period, and we don't really have any idea when that will take place.

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Their view of the future is a bit more optimistic. They believe that the gospel will be effective, that the nations will be called to Christ, that the nations will be discipled, and there will be transformation around the world and it'll be noticeable.

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It's not that everyone will be a Christian, but that it will be so infused with the gospel and the claims of Christ that even the unbelievers will be appreciative of a type of world that Christians would bring about.

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Yes, and just to interject as an optimistic amillennialist, there are those of us in that camp that have a little more hope for cultural transformation than you let us all have that label of being totally pessimistic.

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Well, there are some of us that are more optimistic than that, and there are even different levels of optimism within postmillennialists because I've interviewed typically when

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I do my week -long, and this will be, I'm going to hopefully do one in December or January, and I'd love to have you a part of it.

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I have done a week -long eschatology examinations where I have a representative from each of the major views describe and defend their view.

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Typically they are all Calvinists, and typically when I have done this, in fact every time

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I've done this, I've had to have at least three different shows on postmillennialism because of the differences, and there is a theonomist postmillennialist that does believe before Christ returns that every single human that is alive on the earth will be saved.

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Well, that's possible. I mean, I'm certainly not going to shorten what the

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Holy Spirit can do, but typically postmillennialism is very optimistic.

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Things will change significantly. There'll be a growth in the gospel and the advancement of the church and so forth.

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Every phase of life will be changed. It would be great if everybody believed, and of course that's not beyond the realm of possibility since with God, everything is possible.

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And it was interesting for me to find when I had Martin Silbretti as a part of one of my eschatology weeks that he is a theonomist and a reconstructionist, but he's not at all a preterist.

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That was very surprising to me. Yeah, you know, I don't understand that.

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In fact, one of the problems with dealing with postmillennialism and amillennialism, although J.

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Adams, for example, is an amillennialist, but he's a preterist on the book of Revelation and a preterist on other passages of Scripture.

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I think one of the things that you always have to end up kind of dealing with when you deal with defending postmillennialism, people will bring up something like Matthew chapter 24, and they say, well, see, this can't be because of passages like Matthew 24 or 2

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Thessalonians 2 and so forth. Preterism solves that problem because it says, look, these things don't have anything.

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This isn't describing something that's going to be in a distant future. This is describing things leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in A .D.

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70. And Martin may be, I don't know, I haven't really talked to him about it, but I'm not sure that Rush was much of a preterist, although he did write,

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I think, either the preface or the foreword to an eschatology of victory, which was

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Kick's book. But his commentary on Revelation and Daniel, I do not believe it was consistently preterist in that regard.

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There might have been some preterist elements of that, and since Martin follows

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Rush on a lot of different things, that may be the case. And I know Martin likes the work of B .B.

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Warfield on Revelation chapter 20, and I'm not sure Warfield was much of a preterist either.

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Again, I'm not a great student of Warfield and all of his works, and he didn't really write much in terms of commentaries of the

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Bible, like, say, J. A. Alexander and Charles Hodge and so forth, so it's hard to tell sometimes where certain reformed guys were eschatologically.

29:22

All right, Reverend Bud Stiller, you're going to have to remember your question because we're going to a break right now. And before we get into your book,

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Wars and Rumors of Wars, if you could just clarify some things about preterism when we return from the break, and then we'll have our discussion primarily focused on Wars and Rumors of Wars.

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And we'll also be taking audience questions. We've already got a number of them coming in, and we will get to as many of you as we possibly can,

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God willing, before the end of the second hour. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

30:03

USA. And please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter. Don't go away, God willing, we will be right back after these messages with Gary DeMar of American Vision.

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And not only will you be fed spiritually by him and physically by Firehouse Subs and Wenger's Meats, you are going to leave there, if you attend, you're going to be leaving there with a very heavy sack of books, brand new books that have been donated by nearly every major Christian publisher in the

34:21

United States and the since the 1990s. Publishers have been so generous to support this event, this annual event.

34:30

Actually, it's become a bi -annual event, sometimes a tri -annual event that was started by my late wife

34:36

Julie in the 1990s. My precious wife had a burden upon her heart to have pastors given the honor and respect that they are due, and since I had so many pastor friends due to my involvement with Christian radio for many years, she came up with the idea that instead of exchanging

34:55

Christmas gifts, every year we start treating my pastor friends to lunch, and this grew to such a large event that I needed corporate sponsorship for it because we were having over 100 people attend the event.

35:09

And so after my wife went home to glory with Christ back in 2011, I decided to pick up the mantle and continue on with this tradition, and this will be,

35:22

I believe, my fourth Carlisle Pastors Luncheon, and if you would like to register and attend, it's absolutely free, remember?

35:29

There's nothing for sale, there's no ulterior motive, there's no hidden agenda. This is just to treat you who are in the ministry, whether you're a pastor, an elder, a deacon, a leader in a parachurch organization, and if you're a man, this is exclusively for men, then please register at chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

35:47

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com, and I would love to see you there. The deadline to register is

35:54

Monday, October 23rd, so please try to get your email in as soon as possible.

36:00

And now we are back to our discussion with Gary DeMar, who is

36:05

Senior Fellow at American Vision and the author of 27 books, and we are going to be discussing his newest book,

36:14

Wars and Rumors of Wars. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

36:19

chrisarnsen at gmail .com, and the Reverend Buzz Taylor had something he wanted to say before. Yeah, well, before we get too far away from the whole optimism argument here,

36:29

I just think it shouldn't go without saying that I don't think any of us actually choose our eschatology because we want to be optimistic or we're not optimistic, you know.

36:42

I chose my post -millennialism because I was convinced from the scriptures that it was true, whether it's optimistic or not, and I trust the same is true.

36:51

You know, I don't like to use the argument against even the amillennials, that they're negative and we're positive. It just kind of washes out anyway.

36:58

It's like, it's what we're convinced of from the scriptures. Amen, and by the way, I am also, even though I'm an amillennialist,

37:04

I am a partial preterist, and Gary was a part of my coming to that conclusion of God using

37:12

Gary, and Ken Gentry's book, The Beast of Revelation, was something that really was an eye -opener for me as well, and so I'm one of those oddballs that's amillennial and partial preterist, but that takes me to a very important point, is that I am very opposed to hyper or full preterism, and it's been sad to see some of those folks that identify themselves as either just preterists, or realized eschatology is another way of describing that, or another way they, the adherents of what

37:48

I would call hyper preterism, describe it as realized eschatology, and they also call it covenant eschatology.

37:55

There's other labels that they have come up with, but that has actually become, for a number of those folks, their gospel.

38:03

That seems to be more important to them than anything, and the things that they disagree on amongst themselves, which sometimes involve very serious and I think salvific matters, seem to be far less important than their understanding that everything written in the scriptures has already been accomplished.

38:22

But if you could comment on that a bit, Gary, and perhaps differentiate what you are saying about preterism from what some of those men are saying.

38:32

Well, the reason I kind of got involved in the eschatology issue from the start, because I started off just with basic, you know,

38:39

Christian worldview issues and America's Christian heritage, but really my area of deep interest is apologetics, and so the reason

38:50

I've dealt with eschatology so much is because it has an impact on people's perspective regarding worldview issues.

38:57

I would go out and speak on worldview issues, and I wrote a series of books called God and Government, and invariably someone would stand up and say, you know, why are we bothering with this?

39:05

Because, you know, we're living in the last days. Jesus is coming soon. This is the final generation.

39:11

Israel has become a nation again. So I had to deal with the eschatology issue from an apologetic side.

39:18

I had to defend, you know, why that particular argument was bad, because that's not what the

39:26

Bible teaches. The passages they were using to try to defend their position were passages that had nothing to do with the end of the world.

39:35

Those passages were related to the events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem in A .D.

39:41

70, and that was my position since seminary, since the, you know, 1970s.

39:49

So I didn't get involved in the eschatological side of things because of the eschatology.

39:57

I got involved in it because it was an apologetic issue. And then secondly, of course, it became the integrity of the

40:04

Bible. I mean, there were just certain passages in Scripture that people were using, and of course going out and saying, well, here's evidence.

40:16

We're living in the last days. Jesus is coming soon, and so forth. And so they were going out there, and the unbelieving world was using that as a way to say the

40:27

Bible doesn't offer any credibility. Jesus said he was going to return before that generation passed away, and he didn't.

40:36

And you have written a book that is your classic book on eschatology called

40:43

Last Days Madness. Quite a substantial work, a very large work, thorough work.

40:51

What was lacking in that book that you saw a need to bring about wars and rumors of wars?

40:59

Well, I've written a number of books dealing with specific eschatological issues. As those issues come up,

41:06

I feel the need to, you know, answer them, because people ask me to. There are millions and millions of dispensational end -time advocates out there, and that's a huge, huge audience.

41:19

I really don't deal much with all millennialism. I hate to say this, but there just aren't as many of them.

41:25

And I really don't deal much with the millennial issue, because until you deal with the preterist issue, you really can't deal with the millennial issue.

41:36

So I wrote Last Days Madness, and I just found out that over the years, people are at different levels in their understanding of things.

41:47

And while some people who are more scholarly bent would read a book like Last Days Madness, it was a hard book to give to somebody who was just starting out.

41:58

So I thought what I would do is write something smaller. So the first one after Last Days Madness I wrote is

42:04

Jesus Coming Soon. So it's a short exposition of Matthew 24.

42:10

And the reason I picked Matthew 24 is because it's the one most people are familiar with. And so it's a relatively short book.

42:18

It's easy reading. It's got images in it and so forth. You can get through it easily in a day.

42:25

Then I just felt that I needed to come up with something that was just on Matthew 24, and I wanted to do a fresh treatment of it.

42:33

So I didn't actually look at what I wrote in Last Days Madness. I wanted to do a fresh treatment of it.

42:39

And there were some issues after doing lots of debates, lots of exchanges on Facebook and email, critics of my particular preterist position.

42:54

I felt I needed to incorporate all of those in this particular book to kind of be, this deals with almost every single argument

43:02

I've heard on the Olivet Discourse. And I wanted to put it in one place.

43:10

And then the very back of the book I put a verse -by -verse short exposition from Matthew 20, the portion from Matthew 23, all the way through chapter 24, verse 34.

43:25

So I call those radio answers. If someone were to ask you specifically and you had to give a very short answer,

43:32

I supply that in the back of the book. So I've tried to cover all the different audience relevance regarding this particular topic, where people are, where some people aren't, getting people started.

43:45

So I don't have Last Days Madness. That's just too much for me. I'm just not going to sit down and read all that.

43:53

So that's why I've written kind of the different sized books for different audiences and the different levels people are in their

44:01

Christian walk. And the Rev. Buzz Taylor has something to say. Just to give my commentary on Last Days Madness, I used to tell people all the time, if you haven't read

44:09

Chilton's Paradise Restored and Gary DeMar's Last Days Madness, you haven't yet earned the right to discuss

44:16

Bible prophecy. Yeah. Well, let's have you explain exactly why the title

44:25

Wars and Rumors of Wars, and why this is a view that you have that is possibly and actually probably quite different than the majority of professing evangelical

44:38

Christianity. Well, I wanted to pick a topic, a title for it, where I wouldn't immediately, you know, turn off people who hold a different position.

44:50

I didn't want to come up with a critical title. I mean, Last Days Madness is kind of a critical title. But it's sold very, it has sold very, very well over the years.

45:03

That's a great book. And of course, war is all, you know, right now wars are always in the, you know, in the news.

45:10

I could have called it, you know, earthquakes and famines, but I thought Wars and Rumors of Wars was a better title.

45:16

Definitely is. Yeah. And if you look at the cover, of course, your listeners can't see the cover, but on the cover,

45:25

I've got, you know, two soldiers, one, a modern soldier and one, an ancient Roman soldier. And they're essentially battling for this position.

45:33

And that position is, okay, was this something that's for the distant future? Or is this something that was already in the past?

45:38

Now, most people would not get that. But that was the image that I picked for this.

45:45

So it's designed to engage people. And if they go on Amazon, and they just, you know, look for a book on Wars and Rumors of Wars, if they come across this book, they'll be either pleasantly or infuriatingly surprised by the content of the book.

46:03

Yeah, and a lot of the disagreements that those who are partial preterists have with those who have more of a futuristic understanding of eschatology, where none of the, or very little of the contents of the

46:21

Book of Revelation has yet to occur, a lot of it is really focused on what happened in AD 70, at the

46:32

Temple in Jerusalem, if you could explain that a little bit. Well, the

46:37

Olivet Discourse in Matthew's Gospel, the Olivet Discourse, or at least the circumstances surrounding the

46:44

Olivet Discourse begin in chapter 21, Jesus is coming up to the

46:50

Mount of Olives. And so you really to get the full impact of what Jesus is going to say in Matthew chapter 24, you've got to get the entire context.

47:03

And so you read chapter 21, chapter, you know, 22, chapter 23. And in chapter 23,

47:10

Jesus lays down an indictment against the religious leaders of the day. And, you know, he talks about, you know, filling up, filling up the wrath, because of all of your sins, you're just like your fathers, and what you did to the prophets, and so forth, and so on.

47:29

And when you get to the end of chapter 23, Jesus very clearly says, your house is being left to you desolate.

47:38

And the, you don't know what, you know, specifically what he's, what he's, what he's talking about.

47:45

But, you know, verse 32 says, fill up then the measure of the guilt of your fathers, you serpent, you brood of vipers, how shall you escape the sentence of hell?

47:55

Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of them you will kill and crucify, some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city and city, that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood on earth, from the blood of righteous

48:10

Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

48:15

Truly, I say to you, all these things shall come upon this generation. The audience relevance there is, it's striking.

48:24

Jesus is talking about what's going to happen to them. And he tells them in verse 36, truly, I say to you, this, all these things shall happen to this generation.

48:33

And every time this generation is used in the gospels, it always refers to the generation to whom

48:38

Jesus is speaking. And then, verse 38, he says, behold, your house is being left to you desolate, for I say to you from now on, you shall not see me until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the

48:53

Lord. And Jesus came out from the temple. So Jesus is saying this, what's going to happen to them and their generation.

49:03

He was in the temple when he said this. So now we have the audience relevance here, and we have the context.

49:12

And it's no wonder that when Jesus came out from the temple and was going away, when his disciples came up to point out the temple buildings to him, they immediately understood what

49:20

Jesus was saying. The house that he was saying was going to be left to them desolate is the temple that was standing there that was still in the rebuilding process by Herod the

49:33

Great, that would eventually be destroyed in AD 70 when the Romans came in and literally tore down the temple stone by stone.

49:42

And so Jesus answered and said to his disciples, do you not see all these things?

49:48

Truly, I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another which will not be torn down. So that's the context here.

49:55

Jesus isn't describing something that's going to take place in the distant future. Jesus is describing what was going to take place to their generation, and in particular to that temple, the temple that was standing right in front of them, the temple that was going to be one of the most magnificent edifices that the world had ever seen, and within a generation it would be destroyed.

50:18

I mean, that was an astounding thing for Jesus to pronounce, you know, to his disciples.

50:25

Amen, it certainly was. And now the Jews, in fact for centuries, have had very shaky ground as to how they can claim they have an atonement for their sin when they have no sacrifices, and now are merely offering up prayers with no shedding of blood.

50:45

It's really a very poor ground to stock your future in eternity on.

50:55

Do you think that one of the reasons why the more futurist views of eschatology are so captivating to the majority of Christians is because they really enjoy the excitement of believing that they are a part of biblical prophecy that they believe is unfolding right before their eyes, and that they really believe that they are a part of activities that were predicted long ago by inerrant prophets speaking by the

51:34

Holy Spirit through the scriptures? Could that be one of the real reasons why people get angry even when you tell them that certain of these things have already been fulfilled?

51:46

Yeah, I think a lot of people, the crux of their theology, the axle of their theology is eschatological.

51:59

And if someone comes along and pokes a hole in it, there's too many other things attached to it that are affected.

52:09

And so there's a little bit of fear. Look, if I'm wrong about this eschatological thing and all these other things that are kind of wrapped up in it,

52:18

I have to make a tremendous change in the way I view the Bible.

52:23

I understand that that's a hard thing to even consider.

52:30

And I think you're right that a lot of people view the Bible in a very provincial way.

52:36

The Bible is only speaking about us in our time. In fact, in the United States, it's like the Bible is only speaking to America.

52:43

There are people who are going through periods of tribulation, executions, martyrdom around the world.

52:50

And we say, well, this great tribulation. And they're saying, hey, look, remember over here, we're going through a very, very big tribulation.

52:59

You guys think this rapture is going to get you out of it. Well, how do you explain what's going on with us right now?

53:05

And then they take that and they say, look, I can't understand how we can live much longer with these earthquakes and the wars that are going to be taking place.

53:16

And there's volcanoes and tsunamis and hurricanes.

53:23

And this has got to be the last days. I mean, how could it not be the last days? I mean, can't you just look out your window, read your newspaper, go on the

53:30

Internet and see how bad things are? And again, I think people have a short, you know, short memory.

53:36

Just take just one example, the Houston flood. Well, you know, there was a worse

53:42

Houston flood in 1935. There was a worse hurricane in 1900 in Galveston, Texas, where 8 ,000 people died.

53:52

There was a terrible tsunami that took place in 1755 in Lisbon.

53:59

And if you go into Japan, there were actually stones that were placed and says, do not build below these stones, because a tsunami had hit in that period long, long, long ago.

54:14

We have had earthquakes and famines and wars and rumors of wars throughout our history.

54:21

What we're seeing today isn't anything new. And we've had two world wars in the last century, the

54:29

Korean War, the Vietnam War. We have undeclared wars taking place today.

54:36

We have, of course, a moral decline. But look what's happening with that moral decline. That moral decline is beginning to catch up with them.

54:44

You know, the Apostle Paul says, they will not make any more progress, for their folly will be obvious to all.

54:54

And as unbelieving thought becomes more and more consistent with itself, it begins to eat its own.

55:00

And that's what's happening. Now, this is why I believe that a better understanding of eschatology takes in.

55:07

What should we Christians do when we see this collapse of culture taking place around us?

55:13

Instead of thinking about you're going to be raptured out, which I believe the Bible does not teach, we need to follow

55:20

Paul's instruction in 2 Timothy chapter 3, where he tells

55:27

Timothy, but you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, law of perseverance, persecutions, suffering, such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra.

55:40

What persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord delivered me. And indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

55:48

But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. Now listen to this.

55:54

You, Timothy, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings, which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.

56:08

All scripture is God -breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be adequately equipped for every good work.

56:18

So instead of being preoccupied with a rapture taking us out of the world, we should be taking the word of God and applying it to every area of life, like our ancestors did.

56:31

Great universities, Harvard, Yale, and what is today Princeton, almost every founding university, probably except for the

56:39

University of Pennsylvania, were founded by Christians. Art, invention, you know, the telegraph, the transatlantic cable, music, whatever you think of,

56:52

Christians were the ones that were at the forefront, even science. We've gotten away from that because we don't, number one, don't believe that this world really counts for much, that Satan is the god of this world, and things are supposed to get worse and worse and worse, and Jesus is going to come back to rapture us.

57:09

One of the reasons we're in the mess we're in is because Christians have backed off from applying the word of God to every area of life, because they've been taught and been convinced of it.

57:17

They're living in the last generation. We're a sinking Titanic. Why are we rearranging the deck chairs on the

57:24

Titanic when it's going down? And we'll have you pick up right where you left off. We're going to our midway break.

57:30

It's a bit longer than our normal breaks because we have to comply with the regulations of Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

57:37

FM in Lake City, Florida, who requires that our program be given to them in two 54 -minute chunks, so we're going to have a bit of an elongated break in the middle, but we are going to be back with Gary DeMar, God willing, after our messages from our sponsors.

57:51

Please, if you have a question, I would highly advise you send it now because you're already going to be waiting on a line.

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We've got quite a number of people who have submitted questions, so if you have one of your own, send it as soon as you can to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

58:06

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Gary DeMar and wars and rumors of wars.

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That's ironsharpensironradio .com. Click on support and you'll have the address where to send your checks. Now we are back with our conversation with Gary DeMar of American Vision on his new book

01:12:33

Wars and Rumors of Wars. And if you'd like to join us on the air and if you want to get online, the email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:12:42

And before I start taking our listener questions,

01:12:48

I just wanted to say one thing that I found interesting. In fact, Reverend Buzz Taylor brought it up to me. I believe he learned this from you that even

01:12:56

Richter, whom the Richter scale is named after, does not or should

01:13:03

I say he knows that earthquakes are not getting more frequent or more serious.

01:13:12

They actually have been less frequent than times past. Could you can confirm that,

01:13:17

Gary? Yeah, it's interesting that the passage says all it says is there will be earthquakes in various places.

01:13:24

It doesn't say there will be greater earthquakes or more frequent earthquakes. It just says there will be earthquakes in various places.

01:13:30

And all you have to do is read the gospels and know that there were earthquakes. And you have to read the book of Acts to know that there were earthquakes.

01:13:37

And all you have to do is read the history from A .D. 30 to A .D. 70 to know that there were earthquakes.

01:13:44

I mean, again, this is nothing new about earthquakes.

01:13:50

But you're right. There's been there have been studies about the frequency and the intensity of earthquakes going back decades.

01:13:58

And also, one of the reasons why we hear so much about earthquakes today is because of our communication system.

01:14:05

I mean, in the 19th century, the way communication came was either by on horseback or train.

01:14:12

And then finally, with the telegraph. Today, we have instant news from around the world.

01:14:19

Who would ever have imagined you can turn on a computer and click on the news cycle and read news from all over the world?

01:14:29

And so we get a funnel approach of news where years ago you just you didn't.

01:14:35

There may have been an earthquake in Mexico or in China somewhere, but rarely did anybody ever hear about it.

01:14:42

OK, I'm going to start taking some of our listener questions now. We have a first time questioner from Buffalo, New York, Winnie.

01:14:51

And when he says, I met you years ago at a conference in Buffalo. As I was new to this view,

01:14:58

I didn't understand much then. But I do now. And you autographed a copy of Last Day's Madness for me.

01:15:07

Has much changed since then on the prophecy scene? Is dispensationalism dwindling?

01:15:18

That's a good question. In fact, I just got back from a conference in Idaho, and someone had asked the same question.

01:15:24

And today, rarely do you find a scholarly defense of dispensationalism.

01:15:30

There's still a lot of popular expositions of dispensationalism. You're still writing the same kind of fantastic titled books.

01:15:41

But there I have not seen a real solid scholarly defense of dispensationalism in years.

01:15:50

There were those within the dispensational camp who were trying to move away from dispensationalism.

01:15:56

They came out with a called Progressive Dispensationalism. It didn't take the hard line between the

01:16:02

Israel and church distinction and other things. I know from the interviews

01:16:09

I've done over the years, anytime I do a show, just like this person who sent you sent this particular email and this message in.

01:16:20

When I first did this, I was attacked everywhere. And not too many years ago, I do a show on eschatology, and everybody who called in had abandoned their dispensationalism and had adopted some form of preterism.

01:16:36

And by the way, you'll find a lot of prophecy books that come out today that they have to deal with the preterist argument.

01:16:43

It is everywhere. And once Ken Gentry's two -volume commentary on the book of Revelation comes out early next year, it's been laid out.

01:16:56

I mean, it's going to be a very, very difficult thing for anyone to ignore what he has written on the book of Revelation from a preterist perspective.

01:17:04

Well, thank you, Winnie. And guess what? You are a winner of today's book,

01:17:11

Wars and Rumors of Wars by Gary DeMar, Compliments of American Vision, and also compliments of our

01:17:17

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com. CVBBS .com,

01:17:23

who are going to be mailing that out to you. So you'll need to give us your full mailing address there in Buffalo so we can have

01:17:32

CVBBS .com ship that book out to you as soon as possible. And by the way, not only are you getting this book, but since you are a first -time questioner, you're also getting a brand -new

01:17:42

New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the NASB.

01:17:47

So get that mailing address to us right away. We have Sterling in Greensboro, North Carolina.

01:17:57

I'm bothered by a few references to pre -tribulationists being self -focused and disinterested in evangelism.

01:18:05

Is this broad -sweeping comment a reaction to the lack of evangelism in general, or have you specific references that provide the foundation for this comment?

01:18:13

Perhaps I have misunderstood. And he has another question, but I'll let you deal with that one first.

01:18:20

I didn't say anything about there being a disinterest among dispensationalists about evangelism.

01:18:26

I don't think I ever brought up evangelism with D. James Kennedy. I think what he was possibly talking about, why are we even bothering rearranging the furniture on a sinking ship?

01:18:38

Perhaps that's what he means, I'm not really sure. Yeah, that wouldn't be evangelism. I think the dispensationalists have been very good at evangelism.

01:18:45

That would be a cultural change, I believe. Yeah, cultural change is what I'm talking about. Okay, once somebody is saved, now what?

01:18:54

I mean, I've got these quotations from a number of dispensationalists, you know, how

01:19:01

Lindsay said, you know, God didn't send me to clean up the fishbowl, he sent me to fish.

01:19:10

And the problem with that is, if you don't clean up the fishbowl, the fish die.

01:19:19

And so I have a collection of those types of statements. There's one fellow who said he encountered this young lady at a conference he was doing, and it's not that she was upset about this, she says, but this interest in helping the poor, and she says, if we spend time helping the poor, maybe this will curtail

01:19:39

Jesus's, you know, his soon coming. So, you know, look,

01:19:45

I mean, I am not indicting all dispensationalists. I'm just taking issue with the particular position and some of the effect that it has.

01:19:53

Tim LaHaye, for example, I wrote a book called Left Behind, Separating Fact from Fiction, which was an exposition, a critique of the

01:20:02

Left Behind series. But, you know, Tim LaHaye and I were friends, and he was involved politically.

01:20:09

He got involved on the political side of things. His wife, Beverly LaHaye, did a book called

01:20:17

Concerned Women of America, which was, you know, trying to get women involved in the political process.

01:20:38

So not all dispensationalists, you know, have abandoned all this, but there have been a lot of them who have really, you know,

01:20:46

I don't know, pushed for, why are we bothering with this sort of thing?

01:20:51

I don't want to name any names in this regard, but I've been doing this a long time. I've seen it happen where a lot of dispensationalists have no concern whatsoever to be involved politically, and yet, hey, there are a lot of Reform people who have taken up this two -kingdom idea, which has been just as devastating for the same result.

01:21:15

It is kind of interesting. This actually proves the sovereignty of God, that as awful as the late, great planet

01:21:20

Earth was, I can't even tell you how many Reformed Christians I have met who are not at all dispensationalists or pre -tribulationalists, that it came to Christ through that book.

01:21:32

It is amazing what God does. Yeah, it came out at the right time.

01:21:37

People were questioning. After the 60s and so forth, people were questioning, and for me, it got me interested in reading the

01:21:44

Bible. It's just that when I read the Bible, I couldn't reconcile what was in the late, great planet Earth with what the Bible actually said.

01:21:51

And Sterling's second question is, I prefer the pre -wrath rapture position, and I certainly do not do any navel -gazing while I await

01:22:04

Christ's return and evangelize in many arenas. Notably, our business who presents the gospel even in the retail world,

01:22:13

Gasp, what a horror, and he's saying it sarcastically. He has a little face with a wink on it.

01:22:19

Good show. I appreciate the work each are doing. So that wasn't really a question, that was a comment. Do you care to say anything?

01:22:25

Yeah, there are five rapture positions. Pre -trib, mid -trib, post -trib, partial, and the latest one is the pre -wrath.

01:22:35

They all depend on separating the 70th week from the 69th week, and every pre -tribulationalist will admit that there isn't a single verse in the

01:22:48

New Testament that says that the Church is going to be raptured before a tribulation period, there's no verse that says in the middle of a tribulation period, there's no verse that says right before the wrath of God is poured out.

01:23:00

There's no, this whole idea of a rapture where the Church is taken to heaven prior to a thousand year millennial period just is not taught in Scripture.

01:23:12

And I have a little booklet I've written on the real truth about the rapture, which deals with this and puts this in perspective for people.

01:23:21

What the Church has always taught is that sometime in the future in what is described as what

01:23:28

I call a consummating coming of Christ Jesus will return sometime at the end of history. All the rapture positions put a different, you know, coming in there prior to that, which has given us this so -called rapture position.

01:23:45

And the Bible just does not teach any of the rapture positions, you know, it's just, you can't make a case for it.

01:23:54

I've looked at the pre -wrath position, I've looked at all of them, I've dealt with all of them. It's very, very simple, you know, these particular verses that people use in order to make that case about the wrath of God and so forth, this is all related to the first century and that generation before and leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in A .D.

01:24:16

70. Now when many post -millennialists and amillennialists refer to the final day when there is a resurrection of the dead and Christ's true followers will be caught up in the air with him, and they refer to that as the rapture, do you think that they should not be referring to that as the rapture?

01:24:39

No, I don't think they should be referring to that as the rapture, because the rapture thing is, this is why when people say, you don't believe in a rapture, and the first question

01:24:46

I ask is, what do you mean by the rapture? And I find a lot of people, most people don't, they really can't articulate what

01:24:55

I just outlined, you know, what is this rapture? What is it? Someone said, what's a pre -wrath rapture?

01:25:02

And most Christians don't. They do kind of equate the rapture with what has traditionally been called the general resurrection of the second coming.

01:25:10

They are not the same thing. A rapture is something completely different, and I believe is completely fabricated.

01:25:17

Even though the word, doesn't it mean caught up? And if you're talking about those being caught up in the air, wouldn't that be applicable?

01:25:23

Well, that's 1 Thessalonians 4 and the dispensationalists and all the rapture positions, they see that as something distinct from the second coming.

01:25:32

The dispensationalists certainly do. They see the, they say that, you know, the two -stage coming.

01:25:38

So 1 Thessalonians 4, 13 through 18, that particular passage for them is the pre -tribulational rapture.

01:25:44

The church has taken off the earth so God can deal with Israel again. But we would say that, you know, most traditional amillennialists and postmillennialists will say, no, that is the general resurrection at the end of history.

01:25:58

Right. Well, thank you, Sterling. And you have won a free copy of Wars and Rumors of Wars.

01:26:06

Make sure you get us your full mailing address and let us know if you change your eschatological position after you read Gary's book.

01:26:11

We would love to hear an update from you. We have Joey in Clifton, New Jersey.

01:26:18

Hi, Gary. In principle, does the amillennial view need to be seen as contradictory to the partial preterist view?

01:26:25

I see strong arguments for both. And unless I'm missing something, I do not see anything that in principle precludes them from both being true.

01:26:33

That's basically where I am. I believe that they're both true. In other words, can we apply a partial preterist view to Matthew 24, acknowledging that Christ came in judgment in 80, 70, and yet an amillennial interpretation to Revelation 20?

01:26:46

This still holds to the future return of Christ, with the Church Age viewed symbolically as the thousand years.

01:26:55

That's a good question. We have to keep in mind that a preterist...

01:27:02

Preterism in and of itself isn't the same as a millennial position. Look, there's some preterist premillennialists.

01:27:12

J. Barton Paine was a premillennialist, and yet he was a preterist on dating the book of Revelation.

01:27:21

There's J. Adams. I guess he's still alive. I think he is.

01:27:31

J. Adams is a preterist when it comes to dating the book of Revelation, but he's an amillennialist when it comes to the millennial position.

01:27:39

So preterism in and of itself deals specifically with passages that people relate to the end times.

01:27:51

It doesn't necessarily deal with the millennial position at all. So you will find amillennialists who are preterists.

01:27:57

You will find some premillennialists, probably not that many, who are preterists on certain passages. And you will find a lot of postmillennials who aren't necessarily preterists.

01:28:07

You had mentioned Martin Selbready. So you need to be careful not to mix the two.

01:28:13

They are not equated. Preterism and millennial perspectives are not dealing with the same thing.

01:28:19

Well, thank you, Joe. You've also won a copy of Wars and Rumors of Wars. Please make sure you get us your mailing address in Clifton, New Jersey.

01:28:25

We have Daniel in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. With all the rich history of the

01:28:30

Reformed faith, how did the Church get all entangled with dispensationalism and its bizarre prophecy?

01:28:40

Oh, wow. Now we're dealing in the realm of psychology. You know, the 19th century cultism came on the scene.

01:28:56

You had the Jehovah's Witnesses, which was an eschatological cult. You had the

01:29:02

Seventh -day Adventists, the Millerites, in the 19th century.

01:29:07

You had the Mormons, which was an eschatological cult as well. And before that, postmillennialism was vibrant.

01:29:18

And also, if you look at all these older commentaries, especially on Matthew 24, you will find that most of those were preterists on Matthew 24.

01:29:25

I don't know. I'd have to think about it in a little more detail.

01:29:35

Let me give you something that's analogous and maybe you'll understand. If you ask me to come in and talk about investments, and I talk to you about a stock that I purchased that I made a million dollars on, and I spent an hour talking to you about how

01:29:52

I made a million dollars on that stock, you would get a little antsy and someone near the end would say, hey, can you tell me how

01:30:00

I can make a million dollars on a stock? And I just think that there is much more excitement when somebody gets up and says, look,

01:30:08

I'm going to tell you what the future holds for you. I'm going to tell you who the Antichrist is.

01:30:14

I pinpointed him. Oswald J. Smith did this in 1926. He said it was Mussolini, and then

01:30:19

Mussolini looked like the Antichrist. Then it was Hitler. Then, of course, Gorbachev.

01:30:24

I mean, even some said Ronald Reagan, because Ronald Wilson Reagan was 666, the letters in his name.

01:30:30

I just think that there's just something about people wanting to know what the future holds, and somebody who's articulate and enthusiastic and can go through the

01:30:41

Bible and point things out and say, look, I'm going to outline for you what's going to happen. And then, not only that, but I'm going to tell you that you're going to be able to avoid this because Jesus is going to return before any of this stuff happens and take you out.

01:30:54

I just think it's exciting. I just, anytime someone can come in and tell you what the future holds, I just think that this came at the right time.

01:31:04

And we are going to our final break. It's going to be brief. And Reverend Buzz Taylor, I believe you have a question, but hold onto it until we come back.

01:31:11

If anybody would like to join us, now is the time because we are rapidly running out of time. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

01:31:17

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01:35:10

Welcome back. This is the last 25 minutes of our interview today with Gary DeMar.

01:35:16

We are talking about his book, Wars and Rumors of Wars. If you'd like to join us on the air, now is the time to get us a question immediately at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:35:27

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And we have David in Ada, Ohio.

01:35:35

David says, my question has to do with the dispensational concept of the Age of Grace.

01:35:40

I was talking to a pastor and I said, there is no difference between a Jew and a Gentile.

01:35:45

And he said, I agree in this Age of Grace, there is no difference between a Jew and Gentile. I then asked him about the

01:35:50

Old Testament Jew, and he said, that is another matter. Could you explain what he means and how to deal with someone that responds in like manner?

01:36:00

Does Ephesians chapter 2, 12 through 14, remember that you were at the time separate from Christ, excluded from the

01:36:08

Commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

01:36:15

But now in Christ Jesus, you who formerly were far off, have been brought near by the blood of Christ, for he himself is our peace, made both groups into one, and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall.

01:36:27

Teach that all believers, Old Testament Israel and the Gentiles from all ages are the same in Christ, now called the church.

01:36:35

Wasn't Abraham a Gentile when he was saved? Wow, this is a little far afield, but let me just try to do this as quickly as possible.

01:36:45

This is a big deal within dispensationalism, because they see that there are two peoples of God. God has his earthly people,

01:36:52

Israel, and he has his heavenly people, the church, and the church was a kind of plan

01:36:57

B when supposedly the Jews rejected Jesus as the Messiah, and then Jesus inaugurated,

01:37:02

God inaugurated the so -called church age. Now we're now living in the church age, and God isn't dealing with Israel at this moment.

01:37:11

The prophecy clock has been postponed, has been stopped, and it won't start back up again until the rapture of the church, which then starts off Daniel's 70th week, the last seven years of the 70 weeks of years prophecy.

01:37:26

I think that's one of the most dangerous doctrines that has ever, ever been developed.

01:37:33

If you look at the book of Acts on Pentecost, Acts 2 5, it says there were

01:37:40

Jews living in Jerusalem from every nation under heaven. Israel did not reject

01:37:45

Jesus as the Messiah. Some did, many did not. The first believers were, in fact,

01:37:53

Jews. They embraced Jesus as the promised Messiah. This idea that the church is a new entity is just bogus.

01:38:00

The Greek word ekklesia simply means assembly or congregation.

01:38:07

In fact, if you look at the King James translation in Acts chapter 7, it talks about the ekklesia that was in the wilderness.

01:38:14

There's only one people of God. To the Jew first, the first believers in Jesus were, which fulfilled the promises that were made to Israel, were

01:38:24

Jews. Gentiles, the nations, were grafted into an already existing Jewish ekklesia.

01:38:30

And it's interesting that William Tyndale, when he translated the Bible into English, when he came across the

01:38:36

Greek word ekklesia, he translated it as congregation or assembly. The church is not a new thing.

01:38:43

What we see in the New Testament is fulfillment of God's promises to Israel. Jesus was the promised

01:38:49

Messiah. A remnant was to be saved. They came to Christ. The first church, Acts chapter 5, made up exclusively of Jews.

01:38:56

The church in Acts chapter 8 made up exclusively of Jews. Gentiles grafted in. There aren't two peoples of God.

01:39:04

Well, thanks. You've received a free copy yourself of Wars and Rumors of Wars by Gary DeMar.

01:39:11

Please make sure we get your full mailing address in Ada, Ohio. We have Gordy in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

01:39:18

In your opinion, what has been the most harmful effect dispensationalism has led on biblical

01:39:24

Christianity, and how can we best dialogue with proponents of it? I think the most harmful effect has been just the way you end up trying to interpret the

01:39:36

Bible. Near doesn't mean near. Shortly doesn't mean shortly. This generation ends up being this race or this type of generation.

01:39:48

For the interpretive system that claims to interpret the

01:39:53

Bible literally, it is amazing how much they don't interpret literally. The basic premise of Matthew chapter 24 is that particular temple, they are no other temple.

01:40:05

This generation always means the generation of Jesus speaking. To me,

01:40:11

I'll give you a good example of what happened with this. Doug Wilson and Christopher Hitchens debated the existence of God.

01:40:19

This was a number of years ago. You can watch it in a video called Collision. They were at Westminster Theological Seminary, and Christopher Hitchens brought up Matthew 24.

01:40:29

This generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Doug Wilson, in less than a minute, stopped the debate at that particular point because Doug Wilson said

01:40:42

Jesus was speaking to that particular generation. That's what this generation means. The language is found in the

01:40:49

Old Testament about judgment and so forth, and Christopher Hitchens didn't have an example.

01:40:54

He didn't have a comeback to it. And dispensations would have a very difficult time trying to make that verse fit.

01:41:05

Bart Ehrman, who's been a critic of Christianity, one of the reasons he left the Christian faith was reading stuff like Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye, because of the way they just try to manipulate the

01:41:17

New Testament in order to fit their particular eschatological position. Well, thank you very much, and you've also won a free copy of Wars and Rumors of Wars.

01:41:28

Please make sure we have your full mailing address so we can get that free copy out to you. That's Gordy in Mechanicsburg.

01:41:35

And by the way, why don't you just go to cvbbs .com and pick it up tomorrow, because, well, actually, yeah, tomorrow's

01:41:41

Friday, because you live about 10 minutes away, I'm assuming, since you're in Mechanicsburg. We have

01:41:49

Osinachi in Lagos, Nigeria. Great topic today. Would you please, as your guest, would you please, as your guest, ask,

01:41:58

I'm assuming is what he meant, which of the three eschatological positions, amil, premillennial, and postmillennial, he thinks is more in line, well, obviously, we know it's postmillennialism.

01:42:09

I don't think that we need to have you answer any further, because you believe it's, postmillennialism is more in line with New Testament teaching.

01:42:16

Well, thank you anyway, Osinachi. Go ahead. Just to do a little bit of justice to that question, perhaps,

01:42:25

Gary, you could explain a little bit about the difference between millennialism and postmillennialism, because that would be a lot of the major question there, besides the optimism issue.

01:42:34

But what would you say is the major difference between the two? Oh, wow.

01:42:40

I don't even think there is one other few. To remove the optimism, what is the difference? There is really none. Yeah. If a person is a preterist, and you read

01:42:52

Matthew 24, and you read my book, Wars and Rumors of Wars, and you say, I agree with everything Gary says, but I'm still an amillennialist.

01:42:58

I'm not going to have much of a problem with it, because... But what ends up happening with a lot of the amillennialists who aren't preterists, they oftentimes will try to make a case for the lack of impact that the worldview application will take place based upon passages which

01:43:21

I believe refer to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. That's why I don't deal much with the millennial issue until I've kind of cleared the deck on the preterist issue, because people will say, well, what about the man of lawlessness in 2

01:43:36

Thessalonians 2? How do you deal with that? Well, how does that fit your postmillennialism?

01:43:42

So I have to go through an exposition on 2 Thessalonians 2, or someone will say

01:43:48

Ezekiel 38 and 39, that's mostly premillennialists, and Ezekiel 38 and 39, so I've got to give my interpretation of that.

01:43:56

So I think that's why I spend so much time on the preterist argument, because once you deal with preterism, a lot of the other arguments related to the millennial issue are satisfied, and then you have to get specific as to what are the differences?

01:44:12

What is the basis of a millennial position? What is the future for the gospel and worldview

01:44:20

Christianity, and how do you get there? And that's a debate that, you know, I leave that to Ken Gentry.

01:44:26

You know, everybody has their specialty, and that's Ken's, and this is kind of mine. Now, don't you and Ken disagree in some significant way about Matthew 24?

01:44:37

Yeah, he makes the division like Marcellus Kick did in Matthew 24, where the division between verses 34 and 35 in New Heavens and New Earth.

01:44:47

I held that position for a while, but after further study, and especially with a parallel passage in Luke chapter 17,

01:44:57

I just said, no, I think Jesus is describing the events of the destruction of Jerusalem, verse 34.

01:45:07

I deal with that in my book, Last Day's Madness. I also deal with it in another book that I did where I have a chart showing

01:45:14

Luke 17, and you can see where some of the events in Luke 17 that appear after verse 34 actually appear, you know, first, and those who appear in Matthew 24 at earlier refer to later.

01:45:34

But that would take some time for me to go through all that. So, Ken and I disagree there. There may be a couple of other places where we disagree, but not probably that many.

01:45:42

Buzz Tiller has another comment. What you just mentioned in Luke, isn't that kind of the proof that the disciples weren't asking three separate questions because it's all mixed up?

01:45:57

People say, well, you know, the disciples were asking them, what will be the sign of the destruction of Jerusalem?

01:46:04

And then they go eschatological and start asking about the end of the world. You know, they'll say it's three separate questions.

01:46:10

Yeah, and I think, of course, it says the end of the age rather than the end of the world, and there are passages which talk about the ends of the ages have come upon us.

01:46:23

And there's a single article in the Greek that combines the last two of those three.

01:46:31

And I don't, the end of the age, the last days and so forth, again, I believe that those are referring to the events of that particular generation, because what we have is a transition from the

01:46:43

Old Covenant to the New Covenant, and what was coming to an end was the end of the Old Covenant age and the

01:46:49

New Covenant age coming in. And I think the book that really describes that in the greatest detail is the book of Hebrews.

01:46:55

See, the transition has taken place with the destruction of the temple. It is finalized.

01:47:02

Jesus is now the temple. Jesus is now the high priest. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

01:47:08

You don't need an outward expression of that. Jesus has, in fact, fulfilled all of those promises. He is the fulfillment of all those types in the

01:47:15

Old Testament, and that, to me, is the settled issue. Now, one thing just popped into my head.

01:47:22

It is amazing how some people leap from a post -millennialist partial preterist into full or hyper -preterism, because, in my opinion, that's jumping from the highest of optimism into the darkest of pessimism, because they believe this world as it is going to continue forever.

01:47:46

How depressing is that? Yeah, that's one of the biggest things with these full preterists.

01:47:53

It's like, okay, so what is there after AD 70? I haven't seen anybody outline that for me.

01:48:02

Okay, so now what do we do? In fact, the dispensationalists always ask, okay, so what do we do now?

01:48:08

That's always the question. But yeah, there are these full preterists out there, and they haven't laid out a

01:48:15

Christian worldview. And again, one of the reasons I got into this was because there was this lack of cultural application to God's Word.

01:48:24

And then these full preterists come along, and they don't have any application beyond that. At least, I haven't seen any of it.

01:48:31

And like, Chris, as you had mentioned, there are, I think

01:48:37

I counted, I don't know, 12 different full preterist positions out there. Right, some of them don't even believe that the

01:48:44

Church exists anymore. Yeah, or marriage, and so forth.

01:48:51

It's a bit bizarre. There are some who are less crazy about these things.

01:48:57

I've got a very good friend I went to seminary with who calls himself a consistent preterist, and his main objection to these full preterists has been their lack of the kingdom, the application of, you know, the operation of the kingdom now in this world at this particular period of time, and what we do in terms of this kingdom.

01:49:18

He's been very, very, very critical of their lack of distinctions in these types of things.

01:49:25

We have Linda in Hilltop Lakes, Texas, enjoying today's program very much like Brother Buzz.

01:49:33

We're great fans of Gary DeMar, and appreciate his work very much. So thankful for his wonderful ministry on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and we would like to know who

01:49:45

Rush is that Gary DeMar was talking about. Obviously, I knew that I should have had you clarify that the moment you said it.

01:49:51

It's obviously John Roussos Rush Dooney, not Rush Limbaugh. Yeah, yeah,

01:49:58

Rush Dooney has instituted biblical law, messianic character of American education, nature of the

01:50:06

American system, written a ton, ton of stuff, very influential in the cultural application of the

01:50:11

Bible. He wrote two works on eschatology, one on Daniel and one on Revelation.

01:50:19

They're very short. They don't take necessarily a preterist perspective. It's more of an idealist approach.

01:50:24

That's one position we haven't talked about, the idealist approach, which the book of Revelation is more about principles, not necessarily actual historical events.

01:50:37

And of course, we all, no matter what position we take on the book of Revelation, we would all say there's all these, there are these all these ideals that are applicable throughout history.

01:50:46

Just because a prophecy has been fulfilled does not necessarily mean it still doesn't have application today.

01:50:53

Yet three, you know, 300 or so prophecies about the first coming of Christ, and yet we wouldn't say that even though that they're fulfilled, that that doesn't have any application for us today.

01:51:03

So idealism is another perspective, and I think Rush would be in the idealist perspective.

01:51:10

Martin Celebrity knows Rush's position a whole lot better than I do. Well, whatever Rush's position is now, it's the perfect one, because he's in glory for eternity.

01:51:21

Buzztell. Oh, what was it now? I gotta talk faster. I forget what it was. Yeah, it slipped my mind.

01:51:28

All right. Well, thank you, Linda from Hilltop Lakes, Texas. You have won the final copy,

01:51:33

I believe, of the books that we are giving away, Wars and Rumors of Wars by Gary DeMar.

01:51:39

And please give us your full mailing address so we can make sure we have Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service ship that out to you.

01:51:46

In fact, yeah, Rush Dooney was quite an interesting brother in Christ. He was actually a client of mine in the 1990s because he was a part of a program that I had called

01:51:59

The Voice of Sovereign Grace. There was a different host of that every night of the week,

01:52:04

Monday through Friday, and Roussos John Rush Dooney was the

01:52:11

Friday night host of The Voice of Sovereign Grace. And so I remember that every single night, maybe not every single time, nearly every single time

01:52:22

I sent him a book that I liked after reading it. He wrote a positive review of it in the

01:52:28

Chalcedon Report, and these books were from a wide variety of conservative evangelical

01:52:35

Christians. They weren't all post -millennialist or anything like that, which showed me his charity. He wasn't some kind of narrow, bigoted sectarian that some people might categorize somebody who is a

01:52:48

Reconstructionist as being. He enjoyed gleaning truth from different sources, if you will, within conservative,

01:52:58

Bible -believing Christianity. Yeah, he read everything. He read like a book a day.

01:53:04

He took notes on all those books. Very, very well read art, music, poetry, and so forth.

01:53:12

He was a real Renaissance man. He was a missionary to the Indians for many years before he got into the work at the

01:53:19

Chalcedon Foundation. So he knew what was going on, very prescient in what he saw was going to take place in the future, and it wasn't because he was clairvoyant, but he just picked the application of the

01:53:32

Bible and saw these things coming down the pike. And he was a Calvinist Armenian. He was not an

01:53:38

Armenian. Yeah, right. He was Armenian. Yes, and I always enjoy telling that to people, he was a

01:53:45

Calvinist Armenian. And I'm assuming you meant not the David Brainerd type of Indians, you mean the

01:53:52

India Indians? American Indians. Oh, really? Oh, wow. Oh, yes.

01:53:58

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Okay, we have... Go ahead. I'm sorry. No, go ahead.

01:54:04

It's all right. We have Seth in Greensboro, North Carolina. How does the Olivet Discourse and Daniel's 70 weeks line up together with your eschatology viewpoint, or how do you see the last week's fitting?

01:54:18

Well, the last week is finished, and the 70th week follows right after the 69th week.

01:54:24

The first... The 70th week, Jesus is...

01:54:30

The first three and a half years of the 70th week is Jesus' ministry. Jesus is cut off in the middle of the 70th week, and then the last three and a half week, or three and a half years, takes us to the time that Peter is instructed by God to take the gospel to the

01:54:46

Gentiles, and that's the end of the 70th week. There is no break between the 69th week, 483 years, and the 70th week, the last seven years, which is a total of 490 years.

01:55:01

Oh, and Daniel's... Jesus does mention the abomination of desolation in Matthew 24 -15, which takes you back to Daniel's 70 weeks as well.

01:55:14

We have Chris in Morton, Illinois. I would like to ask Gary what his thoughts are on a person attending a church that teaches dispensationalism when

01:55:24

I identify as somewhere between postmill and aumil. I haven't been fully convinced, which

01:55:29

I align with, but lean postmill. Is it worth bringing up to my pastors, or should

01:55:35

I go along with it and not say anything? That's Caleb, but I don't know.

01:55:42

Caleb, perhaps he should have been anonymous there. Be careful. You've got to speak very carefully when you talk about it sometimes.

01:55:48

But you have an answer? Yeah, look, if your church is feeding you well, and there really aren't many options,

01:55:55

I would stay where you are. If you're going to talk to your pastor, don't be confrontational. I always like to take the

01:56:01

Columbo approach. Yes. You know, you go in there and just ask some questions.

01:56:08

I've got a question about this, and if you come up with something, you say, okay, how would I deal with this? You just need to be circumspect when you deal with this.

01:56:18

A lot of dispensational churches, if that's all they're dealing with, that's a different story. But if it's not the whole enchilada about what they're doing, and it's just part of it,

01:56:30

I'm okay with it if you don't have very many other options. You're not going to find that many postmillennial churches.

01:56:37

You'll probably find more amillennial churches. And depending on where you are, I guess you could go online and just say, hey,

01:56:44

I'm looking for an amillennial church with amillennial eschatology, and see what you can find. And by the way,

01:56:49

I think it might be wise for me to interject here that one of my largest sponsors who loves this program, even though he knows

01:56:56

I'm not a dispensationalist, is Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church on Long Island.

01:57:02

He is a thoroughgoing Calvinist and dispensationalist. And I can tell you that as being one, along with Rev.

01:57:10

Buzz Taylor, who edits his sermons for a radio program that he airs, he very rarely brings up those things that are unique to dispensationalism.

01:57:22

The things that he primarily preaches on are things that all three of us on this radio program would agree upon.

01:57:30

So not every dispensationalist pastor is a hobby horse or a sectarian.

01:57:37

Some of the guys in the fundamentalist fringe who have a very loony idea that if you don't believe in their pre -trib scenario, you're a heretic.

01:57:47

But that's not the description of many, many, many dispensationalists.

01:57:53

And look, we would say the same thing. Some guy was going to a church where the pastor is a preterist or post -malonialist, and that's all he talked about.

01:58:02

I would give him the same advice. I said, look, that's not feeding you. It's like you eat too many carrots, you're going to get orange.

01:58:09

You know, you go to the church and that's all you hear. That's not a good thing. That's not a well -rounded diet.

01:58:16

Right. By the way, Chris in Morton, Illinois, since you're a first -time questioner, you have won a free

01:58:22

New American Standard Bible. We don't have any more War and Rumors of War books, but we do have an

01:58:29

NASB for you, a beautiful one. So give us your full mailing address and we'll have that shipped out to you by cvbbs .com.

01:58:36

cvbbs .com. So thank you very much for that question. And we are running out of time.

01:58:41

I want to make sure that our listeners have all of your contact information. First of all, the website for American Vision is

01:58:55

AmericanVision .org. AmericanVision .org. You can't get easier than that. Do you have any other contact information that you care to give,

01:59:01

Gary? That's the best one. I'm on Facebook if people want to engage there. I'm generally a pretty happy fellow on Facebook.

01:59:09

Just don't yell at me and say bad things about me. If you need something, you can contact me through AV.

01:59:20

I generally answer them. You can go on American Vision, Last Days of Madness, 10 Popular Prophecy Myths, Prophecy Wars.

01:59:27

There's a bunch of stuff. Plus other topics. I've written 30 books on various topics. And so I have a lot of stuff on there, articles every day and so forth.

01:59:34

Well, if you could wait on the line when we go off the air, I'd like to schedule you for another interview if you don't mind.

01:59:40

Sure. I don't feel like waiting nine years again. All right.

01:59:46

And I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who wrote in. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater