A Practical Postmillennialism: An Interview With Gary Demar
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TRANSCRIPT FROM THE INTERVIEW
Kendall Lankford (00:02)
Well, hello everyone and welcome back to a very special episode of the broadcast. As you know, for the last couple of weeks, we've been looking at post-millennialism, which, and we've been trying to really look at what does that mean practically? Post-millennialism is an eschatological view. It's a view of the end times. And we want to unpack what that means practically for our lives and for us as men, women, as the church and all of those things. What a day. I am incredibly excited to have a brand new friend of mine. I just met.
A few minutes before we clicked start Dr. Gary Demar. And one of the cool things about Gary Demar is that he's been influential in my life for about 10 years now. I was, I started out as a pre-millennialist. I started out as trying to figure out what the mark of the beast is and trying to all those things. And I stumbled upon a lecture that Gary Demar gave on Matthew 24. And then since then and with others,
I've really come to the post-millennial view and it's created so much hope in my heart that I wanted to share Dr. Demar with you. I wanted you to hear from him on how he got started on these things. So without further ado, I'm so thankful, so grateful. Welcome to the show, Gary Demar.
GARY DEMAR (01:15)
Well, thanks for having me.
Kendall Lankford (01:17)
Now, tell us about who you are brother, because maybe someone like me 10 years ago doesn't know who you are. They don't know the work you've been doing, how you got into this crazy world of eschatology. Tell us about you.
GARY DEMAR (01:28)
Why? Well, I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. And I graduated from high school in 1968. Didn't really want to know, didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. I was really involved in athletics. I wanted to coach at the college level. I had done very well in high school in track and field. And I was on a track and field scholarship. And then my senior year.
in college, I went to Western Michigan University. I ran into a high school friend who presented the gospel to me. And it came with my senior year. And I kind of gave up my scholarship in my last year. And really, from that point on, I was trying to learn as much as I could about what the Bible had to say about everything. I was especially interested in the area of apologetics.
And remember, this is early 1970s. And at that particular time, the late great planet Earth was very, very popular. It was written by Hal Lindsay, sold 20-some million copies of the 1970s. All the types of things that people are hearing today about Bible prophecy. Hal Lindsay was talking about more than 50 years ago. That book was published in 1970.
And so you're looking at a half a century for people looking at the same Bible passages that people are looking at today and came to the conclusion that they were living in the last generation, how Lindsay called it the terminal generation. And at that point in my life, I really wasn't that interested in eschatology. I was trying to get my life kind of back on track. And in 1974, I ended up going to seminary in Jackson, Mississippi.
at the reformed theological seminary. And there I met one of the professors there was Dr. Greg Bonson, who taught apologetics. And that was really my interest was apologetics. And when I finally graduated, moved to the Atlanta area, taught school for a few years, and then got involved in the ministry that I'm involved in now, and that's American Vision. And I started working on a series of books called God in Government.
because by this time, this is 1980. And we just went through Jimmy Carter's administration. Ronald Reagan was running for president. He won in 1980. He won again in 1984. There's a landslide in both cases. And the moral majority had gotten started. And what I wanted to do was to put all of this into perspective so Christians would understand that government isn't synonymous with politics, that the Bible talks about
God being the governor of all things, and then there's self-government, family government, church government, civil government. And I outlined this in a three-volume set called God in Government, which is available today in a single volume. Any book I talk about that I've written and others have written for us, you can get them at americanvision.org. And in that book, I essentially laid out a biblical worldview of
how the Bible applies to the individual, to the family, to the church, and to the civil area of government, which we call the state. And as I went out and started teaching on this, and invariably somebody would raise their hand and say, why are we bothering with this? We're living in the last days. Now Jesus is, you know, we're on the precipice of the rapture of the church, because in the late great planet Earth, in...
that came out in 1970, Hal Lindsay made something of a prediction. He said, Israel becoming a nation again in 1948 was extremely important, eschatologically and nationally. And he was saying that Matthew chapter 24, verse 34 says, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. A generation was 40 years. And so you add 40 to 1948, and people were literally looking for the 1980s as to be the final generation.
before something called the rapture was going to take place.
And so between 1981 and 1988, there was this great enthusiasm for the rapture of the church and so forth. Well, here we are, 2024. We're still here. And people are making the same interpretive mistakes that they were making in the 1970s and in the 1930s and 40s. And in the 19th century, in the 18th century, in the 17th century.
Kendall Lankford (05:54)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (06:20)
using the same Bible verses, trying to convince people that Jesus was coming soon. And as a result of that, it's my belief that many, many Christians, millions and millions of Christians have laid aside their kind of cultural, social responsibilities because they didn't believe that we were going to be around much longer. And as a result of that, I think that's one of the reasons we're in the condition we are in today.
Kendall Lankford (06:42)
Wow.
GARY DEMAR (06:47)
Because on the one hand, a lot of people don't believe that the world in which we live today is anything that we should be involved in. And on the other hand, they believe that we're living on the precipice of some great end time event. And those two things are kind of like a witch's brew of Christian inactivity, a lack of responsibility, and a lack of optimism of what can be done if Christians were really to believe the Bible and apply the Bible to every area of life.
Kendall Lankford (07:02)
Yeah.
So good. It sounds like you've been busy for
GARY DEMAR (07:19)
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I didn't get in, I can say I didn't get involved in eschatology as kind of an independent study. It became a necessity based upon what I was reading in the literature at the time. And also, as I went out to speak, you know, I'd listen to people and the same thing is happening today. You go online, Facebook, and anytime, you know, something happens internationally, it's, you know, AI is the new thing. Hey, that's going to be the
That's going to be the movement of the Antichrist. And this new global order, this great reset, all of these things are then turned around to say this is this is. And then people try to find Bible verses to go along with that. And people need to realize that, again, this isn't a new phenomenon. In Daniel chapter 12, it talks about you're going. You know.
to and fro and knowledge will increase. And people said, oh, that was the locomotive. The locomotive. This was the sign of this idea of the transportation going into all the world and so forth done speedily. And it was the locomotive. The locomotive was maybe going 60 miles per hour. Because before that, the fastest thing
that was a horse. And today we've got jets and so forth, but people are still making the same type of mistakes, taking Bible passages, which I believe have already been fulfilled, and then trying to make them fit within our modern day context. And it has just been a complete perversion of the scriptures.
Kendall Lankford (09:05)
Yeah. Well, why don't we, why don't we jump into that? Um, would you say that tends to be prevalent in eschatological positions that are more focused on futurism and, and with futurism, maybe let's jump into what does that mean? Uh, how does that get applied? Um, and then maybe we'll circle back and, and talk about premillennialism.
GARY DEMAR (09:29)
Well, everybody wants to know about the future. That's just kind of built into us. The stock market wouldn't be what it is if people weren't interested in the future. And so people want to know what's going to take place. And many Christians, when they see world conditions deteriorate, they start, you've got so-called prophecy experts out there, who will come and say,
Here's a Bible verse for that. Jesus talks about wars and rumors of wars, false prophets, earthquakes, famines. And they'll say, look, all of those things are happening today. And Israel has become a nation again in 1948. That's a prophetic sign. And there's talk about rebuilding the temple. And then there's talk about there's a red heifer. And so look, most Christians don't have time to study all of this on their own.
They're dependent on people who are, they wouldn't claim to be experts, but they come across as experts. They write many, many books on the topic. And these books are very repetitive. And essentially, the big name evangelicals who are pushing this end time stuff are very popular. They have international ministries. And as a result, we got Christians today who have never studied this on their own.
They have not taken the procedural advice of the Bereans who search the scriptures daily to see whether these things are so. And so what I did was I wanted to know what does the Bible actually say about these things. And so I did my own independent study. I came across a book that was published in 1948. When I was in seminary, it was republished in about 1977.
And it was by a fellow named Marcellus Kick, as the last name is spelled, K-I-K. And the title of the book was Matthew 24. In Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 17, Luke 21, give the impression of the end of the world, that the terminology that's used, the illustrations that are used.
That's where you hear about wars and rumors of wars and famines and false prophets and the abomination of desolation and the sun, moon and stars and the son of man coming on the clouds of heaven, etc. Is that this is the generation that's seen all these things take place. But as my investigation was after reading Marcelus Kik's book, who just and Kik, all he did was read the Bible. He looked at the Bible. Let's see what the Bible has to say about these things on the basis of what the Bible says.
That's how we need to build our eschatology and ultimately to build our entire Christian worldview.
Kendall Lankford (12:21)
Yeah. What would you say to someone who's dispensational or premillennial and say, but we are reading the Bible and we are seeing these things or saying this and such and so, how do we respond to that maybe hermeneutically or how do we respond to that and show them that, no, they're actually not reading the Bible correctly?
GARY DEMAR (12:47)
I think we got cut off again.
Kendall Lankford (12:49)
I still have you, thankfully.
GARY DEMAR (12:50)
Okay, well, of course, everybody appeals to the Bible for it. And so that's not the problem, that's the solution. So what you have to start asking yourself is some questions about this. Let's look at Matthew 24. And you really, to understand Matthew 24, which is the Olivet Discourse, Jesus gave this prophetic pronouncement on the Mount of Olives.
And that is where Jesus was when he delivered this message that includes wars and rumors of wars and so forth. But you have to go all the way back to chapter 21, which is when Jesus enters Jerusalem. And he's at the Mount of Olives when this takes place. So chapters 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25 are a unit.
And you can't just take one verse out of the Bible and say, hey, the Bible talks about wars and rumors of wars. We're seeing wars and rumors of wars today. Therefore, that prophecy must be about our time. And so you have to pay attention to some very important things when you interpret the Bible, especially when you start dealing with Bible prophecy. And the first thing you have to ask is, who's the primary audience?
Kendall Lankford (14:16)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (14:16)
To whom was Jesus speaking? And if you follow Matthew 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, you will find, in most cases, the second person plural is used. You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars when you see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place. Jesus has that audience in mind. In Matthew 21, Jesus says, you know,
He said, I'm going to remove you from this nation, and I'm going to give this to a nation producing the fruit of it. And the Pharisee says, oh, he's talking about us. Jesus wasn't talking about some future generation. He was talking about that generation. And the religious leaders of Jesus's day understood it. But unfortunately, a lot of Christians today hear a prophecy speaker or preacher.
say, no, this all applies to the end of the world. This leads up to the rapture or the second coming or the millennial reign or whatever the case might be. But when you look at the original audience, if Jesus had a future audience in mind, Jesus said, when they see these things, they will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. When they see the abomination of desolation, then no, Jesus uses the second person plural.
It makes it very clear that he was talking about that particular generation. And I could spend, I could go through every detail of this. I've written a couple of books, one is Wars and Rumors of Wars, which is on Matthew 24, part of Matthew 23 and 24. And then I've written Last Day's Madness, which is much more comprehensive. And so all you have to do is stick to the text of scripture, search the scriptures daily to see whether these things are so.
Kendall Lankford (15:52)
Yep.
GARY DEMAR (16:07)
to whom it was Jesus addressing when he was talking about these prophetic events. And it's obvious he had that generation in mind. In fact, in Matthew chapter 24, verse 34, Jesus says, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. And then you ask yourself the question, well, what's the meaning of this generation?
just by using the Bible, go to chapter 10, go to chapter 11, chapter 12, every time, every single time, the phrase this generation is used in the gospels, it always means the generation to whom Jesus is speaking. It never refers to a future generation. And so you'll have people say, well, what Jesus meant was the generation that sees these signs will not pass away until all these things take place.
Well, look what I just did there. I added words to a passage. It says, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. And so people say, well, what Jesus really meant was the generation that sees these signs will not pass away until all these things take place. So here you have to add words to a text of scripture in order to make it mean what you need it to mean for your interpretation. But if you look at the previous verse, verse 33, Jesus tells.
Kendall Lankford (17:14)
Right.
Right.
GARY DEMAR (17:35)
his own audience, that when they see these things, this is about them. This is their generation. In fact, earlier in Matthew chapter 16, verses 27 and 28, Jesus says, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. Well, there's audience there. So another thing is, so after audience relevance,
And then there's the timing factor, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Then you have to ask yourself just exactly what is on the table that Jesus is describing there, and he's talking about the coming of the Son of Man. Now listen to what this text says again. There are some who are standing here. Now that's the audience to whom Jesus is speaking. There are some who are standing in that audience who will not taste death, that is, who will not die.
until they see the Son of Man coming in this kingdom. So that means that when Jesus is describing His coming, some of them would live long enough in order to see that happening. So now we have to ask the question, how does the Bible use the phrase, the coming of Jesus, the coming of the Son of Man? When you put the audience relevance and you put the timing relevance in there,
And then you look at how this generation is used repeatedly. And now we need to look at what does Jesus mean by His coming. And when you do that, you're left with no other explanation that Jesus was describing His coming in judgment upon that generation before He passed away. Now, this is not an interpretation that's unique to me. I didn't come up with it. There are many, many Bible scholars throughout history who have taught the same thing.
So it's not anything new. But once you adopt that particular view, then you are immune to all of those prophecy writers, prophecy preachers who are trying to tell you, this is the last generation, this is the terminal generation, Jesus is coming in your generation, the rapture's right around the corner, et cetera. And all you have to do, you don't need any special apparatus in order to determine this. It's all in the Bible if you just pay attention to some very important
clear interpretive principles, you can figure out what the Bible is saying and when it's saying it about. And that's the important case when it comes to Bible prophecy.
Kendall Lankford (20:10)
I remember listening to a lecture that you gave or it was a podcast episode with something and you said, I think it was Matthew 22 or Matthew 21, Jesus comes to the fruitless city that offered him only leaves and he curses the fruitless tree that only gave him leaves. And it blew my mind when I heard that because I didn't really understand why Jesus was rebuking the tree the way that he was rebuking it. I didn't understand why he said, if you say to this mountain be...
be brought up and thrown into the sea. And just that idea of reading the context and what it meant to the original people who were standing there watching it, just opened up the Bible in so many ways. Same thing for Matthew 22, I think it's 14, but it's in the parable of the wedding feast, where he says, I'm gonna send my armies and set your city on fire. I never understood what that meant until I saw that this is about Jerusalem. So,
You're right, that is a unit. And if we understand that correctly, it will bring hope and immunity to some of the pessimism and doom and gloom that we're seeing.
GARY DEMAR (21:16)
Yeah, you make a great point here. All of a sudden, first of all, Jesus cleanses the temple earlier in that same chapter, chapter 21. This was his second cleansing of the temple. And a lot of liberal scholars saying, oh, Jesus, the gospel writers got this all mixed up and so forth. It was, you got two different temple cleansings at different periods of time in Jesus's ministry.
Kendall Lankford (21:30)
Mm-hmm.
GARY DEMAR (21:43)
This is obviously a mistake. We can't trust the Gospels. But if you understand the Bible, you understand very clearly what Jesus was doing based upon something in the Old Testament. I think it's Leviticus chapter 14, or the leprous house. The priests come in and they evaluate the house. And they say, OK, we need to clean this house out. And we're going to come back and examine it later on. And if the leprosy.
And when it talks about leprosy, it's not talking about Hansen's disease, what do we know and call a leprosy today. And no one really knows what the significance of it was, other than the fact that it was created something as being unclean. And so the priests come the first time to check it out and says, there's leprosy in the house. And then they said, we're going to come back later on and see if this is still unclean. And if it is, that house is to be torn down and burned. So Jesus takes that and applies that.
Kendall Lankford (22:38)
Wow.
GARY DEMAR (22:41)
to what was having taken place. He goes to the temple the first time, then he evaluates it. Then he goes to the temple a second time and throws out the money changers and so forth. That was the second time as Jesus as a priest was evaluating the house. And it was, in fact, unclean. And so then you say, well, this whole context, these aren't just little stories within a bigger story. These are little stories within a bigger story.
Kendall Lankford (22:59)
Mm.
GARY DEMAR (23:11)
But these are not independent stories. So then Jesus comes down to the fig tree. And many believe that the fig tree was representative of Israel. He sees a tree with leaves only, no fruit on it. And Jesus essentially curses the fig tree. Now, you think, that's a strange thing for Jesus to do. I mean, why would he do something like that? Well, if you understand the context and what's coming, it's very clear as to what Jesus is doing. He's.
He's making a case for the judgment that's going to come upon Jerusalem before that generation passes away. And then the mountain, what mountain is he talking about? What's this mountain? And he's talking about either Mount Zion or the Mount of Olives, this mountain into the sea. It was a judgment that took place. So you have the judgment upon the temple. They have the judgment upon Israel as the fig tree. You have the fig tree.
judgment upon that mountain that's going to be cast into the sea. And I had mentioned earlier in here, if I can read this, therefore I say to you, this kingdom, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and be given to a nation producing the fruit of it. This was this in itself. So think of this, the fig tree did not find any fruit on it.
Matthew 21, 43, therefore I say to you, he's talking about this is the religious leaders. The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and be given to a nation producing the fruit of it. So you make all these connections and you begin to see that there's some really devastating thing to take place. And it goes on and it says, and when the chief priests and the Pharisees,
heard the parables, they understood that he was speaking about
them, not some future generation, that generation. And then you mentioned about the burning of the city, which is in the next chapter, chapter 22. And then you go, then Matthew 22 goes into Matthew 23. And Matthew 23 is a stark indictment upon that particular generation of religious leaders. OK, keep in mind.
Kendall Lankford (25:09)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
GARY DEMAR (25:33)
The entire nation of Israel did not reject Jesus as the promised Messiah. It was mostly the religious leaders that did. And you see this in the Book of Acts as well. The people who were persecuting the early Christians were the religious leaders of the day. Those who were, you know, took Jesus in the middle of the night to, you know, to Herod and finally later to Pontius Pilate, they were the religious leaders. They were the religious leaders who cried out.
Kendall Lankford (25:41)
Yeah.
Hmm.
GARY DEMAR (26:01)
that they wanted Barabbas rather than Jesus as their king. And remember, what did Pilate say? Did you want me to crucify your king? And what did these religious leaders
say? We have no king but Caesar. So this is a unit. This is not describing our time. It was describing the events leading up to and including the destruction of the temple that took place within a generation in AD 70.
Kendall Lankford (26:12)
Yeah.
Right.
GARY DEMAR (26:30)
Because at the end of chapter 23, what does Jesus say to his disciples? Your house or the religious leaders, your house is being left to you desolate. And then they come out of the temple, chapter 24. Keep in mind that the Bible never had chapter divisions or verse division. So just because there's a 24 in front of 20, what we know today is chapter 24, that wasn't the case. 24.
is dependent upon 23 and everything else that followed. And then the disciples asked the question, you mean this temple, this grand temple that was being rebuilt? And Jesus says, not one stone here will be left upon another. They'll all be torn down. And then they asked Jesus, when is this gonna happen? And so Jesus goes through Matthew 24 and it explains to them it was gonna happen in their generation before their generation passed away.
Kendall Lankford (27:13)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (27:27)
And what you find here is Jesus gave a 40-year warning to that particular generation to repent or perish. And you didn't even have to repent. All you had to do is leave the city, escape the city, and you would, in fact, not be caught up in the conflagration that the Romans brought. And the temple ended up being burned and torn down where literally not one stone was left upon another.
Kendall Lankford (27:54)
Yeah, it makes so much sense of the immediate context. It also makes sense. I had never heard anyone. I've heard many people quote Matthew 24, but not Luke 21, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, which makes so much sense of the context and also the larger context of the Bible. Like when Amos talks about a shepherd that's coming to replace the false shepherds, and he talks about the remnant that's going to be saved. You said earlier that
Not all of Israel rejected Jesus or not all of Judah rejected Jesus. It was the leadership. It was the false shepherds
GARY DEMAR (28:30)
Right, yeah, Zechariah talks about them as well. And yeah, because of the day of Pentecost, what you have on the day of Pentecost is a reinstitution of what you find in Exodus, the pillar of fire, which was a national pillar of fire. But when you get to the book of Acts, you begin to see that the tongues of fire are on individuals now. This isn't just, this isn't a national.
Entity Israel it is in fact a new entity as Jesus said this is going to be You know given to somebody who's producing the fruit of it and the first believers in the in the book of Acts were Exclusively Jews there were Jews living in Jerusalem from every nation under heaven Acts chapter 2 verse 5 There were thousands of Jews who came to Christ and the first persecutors of the Jewish ecclesia the Jewish Church was a religious leader the
What we know today is the Apostle Paul. He had Stephen executed in chapter seven, chapter eight. He persecuted the church, put some of them into prison, and there was a persecution so extensive that the people left Jerusalem. Well, they had gotten a previous indication of this when Jesus in the Oliveta Scores, hey, look, your city is gonna be destroyed. Your temple is gonna be torn down. In fact, if you...
read on in Matthew chapter 24, it's a local judgment, a local judgment that could be escaped on foot. All you had to do was go to the mountains outside of Jerusalem to Judea and stay there and you wouldn't have been killed by the Romans. So this was for their time. This is what this was all about. And when you start with that, so many other things make sense.
Kendall Lankford (30:26)
Yeah, let's take that for a second and let's zoom out. How did, how did we get a view like dispensationalism, which takes all the passages we've just talked about, which has, which have clear historical reference and make sense of the context. And in so many ways, how did they, how did we get to a place where all of these things are future and, and there's so much confusion, like how, how did this happen?
GARY DEMAR (30:50)
Well, that's a question in and of itself that takes book. In fact, there's a new book out. I'm looking on my shelf over here. It's a book on kind of the history, the rise. I think it's the rise and fall of dispensationalism. But dispensationalism, as we understand it today, is a 19th century phenomenon. And people say, well, what's dispensationalism?
hold that there are two peoples of God. There is Israel. And then when you get into the New Testament, there's a new thing because Israel rejected Jesus as the Messiah. Well, as we saw, the Jews didn't reject Jesus as the Messiah. The first converts were in fact Jews, thousands and thousands and thousands of them. And the dispensation was claimed that there's two peoples of God. God works with Israel one way, and he works with
Kendall Lankford (31:36)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (31:47)
non-Jews another way. And so what the dispensations have claimed is that there's Israel and then there's this thing called the church. And what the prophecy clock stopped when the religious leaders, well they would say the nation of Israel rejected Jesus as the Messiah. And so we're in what is today called a parenthesis. And God is then gonna deal with Israel sometime in the future again.
after the church has taken off the earth in what is called a rapture. There is nothing, nothing in the Bible to support that view. It's completely made up. There's not a single verse in the New Testament that says anything about a temple being rebuilt. You just don't, you don't find it anywhere or circumcision being, you know, reinstituted. And Paul makes a huge effort, puts forth a huge effort.
Kendall Lankford (32:31)
Right.
GARY DEMAR (32:42)
in the book of Galatians and other places, where circumcision is no longer a factor. It's part of the whole old bloody sacrificial system of the Old Testament, which the book of Hebrews shows has been done away with the sacrifice of
Jesus. And so there is no distinction between Israel and the church. The church isn't anything new. It's unfortunate that when they...
Kendall Lankford (33:00)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (33:12)
They translated the Greek word ekklesia as church, where Tindale, William Tindale in his translation, translated it as assembly or congregation. It's not anything new. It's a common word. Ekklesia is a common word. It was a common word under the Old Testament when it was translated into Greek. The first believers were Jews who made up the ekklesia in Matthew chapter, I mean, Acts chapter 5.
And again, in Acts chapter eight. And so this idea that there are two peoples of God is just as destructive of the Bible. To the Jew first, Paul writes. The gospel came to the Jew first. Paul, I mean, Jesus in Matthew chapter 10 talks, says, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel until the Son of Man comes. And they were only to go to the cities of Israel. They weren't supposed to go to the Gentiles. Why? To the Jew first.
Kendall Lankford (33:49)
Yeah.
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (34:10)
And then once the gospel went to Israel, Gentiles were grafted in to an already existing believing Jewish or Israelite church. There's the dividing wall between Israel and non-Israelites was broken down in Ephesians chapter 2. There's only one people of God. There aren't two. And really, I cannot explain.
Kendall Lankford (34:36)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (34:40)
what the reason was that they would come up with such a strange, strange system that prior to the 19th century, no one was teaching at all. This is just completely out of touch with what the New Testament teaches and even historically. But it's become popular because what these prophecy writers were doing was going around telling people, we're gonna tell you what's gonna happen.
Kendall Lankford (34:47)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (35:09)
We're giving you a timeline for all of this. And then when Israel became a nation again in 1948, something that people have been working on since the 19th century, the Balfour Declaration in 1917. And so Israel finally becomes a nation again in 1948. And yet the New Testament doesn't say anything about Israel becoming a nation again. And you would think that being one of the most important
Kendall Lankford (35:32)
Right.
GARY DEMAR (35:39)
legs of the dispensational system that the New Testament would say something about it. It doesn't say anything about it. Same thing with the rapture. There isn't a single verse in the Bible anywhere where it says God is going to return and he's going to remove the church off the earth before, during, after, or right before God pours his wrath out. There's not a single verse in the Bible that says anything like that. It's a manufactured doctrine.
Kendall Lankford (35:45)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (36:06)
But it's very popular.
Kendall Lankford (36:06)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (36:08)
The reason it's popular is that people don't do their own study to check these things out for themselves.
Kendall Lankford (36:13)
It sounds like that a misunderstanding of the Jewish people and how they received the Messiah, because you hear this all the time, the Jews rejected Jesus. It was the Jews who rejected Christ and crucified Him and all of that. It seems like that misunderstanding of not seeing the remnant come to Christ and not seeing that it was the Jewish leaders really who were primarily the ones who were persecuting Christ.
that we've taken all of these very clear prophecies that are near term events and we've booted them into the uncertain future because we can't reconcile the fact that, well, Israel is the people of God and they've got to come back. Is that sort of what happened maybe?
GARY DEMAR (36:58)
Well, again, I think you find that the early church, especially if you go to the book of Acts, there was always this debate that was taking place, whether Jesus was the promised Messiah.
And many Jews came to Christ as a result of that. I saw Jesus as the promised Messiah. And so the gospel had, in fact, gone out to the Jewish nation first. And these Jews embraced Jesus as what the Old Testament said he was. But it's like anything else. There are people who have a, they have to hold on to their jobs, so to speak.
It would have changed so much among the religious establishment. And then when they said, oh, Gentiles are included in these promises, that is when things, that's when the dam really broke. No, no, no. They have to be circumcised. They have to follow the dietary laws. They have to do all the things related to what the old covenant was
all about. And when, yeah. And, you know.
Kendall Lankford (38:04)
We see them struggling in that way in the New Testament.
GARY DEMAR (38:09)
Who was persecuting the apostle Paul throughout the book of Acts? It was the religious establishment, early on with the execution of Stephen. And then the Herodians, you have to keep in mind the Herodians also, it was a political power play for the Herod's going all the way back to the birth of Jesus. The birth, think of that, that birth of Jesus, the execution of John the Baptist.
Kendall Lankford (38:16)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (38:37)
one of the Herod's involved in one of the trials with Jesus. And then you got, I think it's Acts chapter 12, where James, the brother of John is executed. And it's interesting what it says that when Herod found, when he did this, he noted that it pleased the Jews. Now, it's not talking about all Jews, talking about the religious establishment. Their jobs were threatened in essence.
Kendall Lankford (38:57)
Yeah.
Right.
GARY DEMAR (39:05)
And read through the book of Acts even later on, you find there was a plot devised by the religious establishment in order to kidnap apostle Paul and execute him. And then if you go to, I think it's 2 Corinthians 12, Paul outlines all of the stuff he went through, all the persecutions and the stonings, being left for dead.
being lashed with 39 lashes. Who was doing that? It wasn't the Romans. There wasn't the Romans who were doing it. The Romans, in many cases, were trying to keep the peace. They didn't care about this dispute between these two Jewish factions, as they were usually assessed. If you go to Acts, Chapter 16,
the apostle Paul is arrested by the Romans and even beaten, not because of his religious views, because he was considered to be someone who was a political rebel. As soon as he declared that he was a Roman citizen, they let him go. Later on, Paul feels he was about to be strung up and beaten by the Romans. He says, no, you can't do this. I'm a Roman citizen. They immediately cut him down.
There is this tension taking place during that time period here. But modern-day dispensationalism just wrecks the Bible from the get-go, misses the timing factors,
keeps the Old Covenant intact. When you read the New Testament, when the Old Covenant was passing away in terms of its sacrificial system, its bloody rites like circumcision and so forth, that's what the Book of Hebrews is all about.
Kendall Lankford (40:44)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (41:00)
And so it's always been a mystery to me how dispensationalism grew up. But it always grew up in terms of predictive prophecy, because we had all these prophecy conferences. And the focus had become on the last days. And the problem was the last days that the Bible talks about were the last days of that old covenant order that was coming to an end. It's very, very specific in scripture.
Kendall Lankford (41:25)
Yeah, yeah. Hebrews says, in these last days, I've chosen to speak through my son.
GARY DEMAR (41:33)
Exactly. And so he's not talking about our last days, he's talking about that last days. And I think 1 Corinthians 10, 11, Paul is rehearsing Israel's history. And he's going through and he says, man, don't be like old covenant Israel. And so you get to verse 11. So he outlines just briefly Israel's history.
Stephen had done the same thing. That's what got Paul and religious leaders so angry, because what he was doing was bringing up Israel's past and how they had disobeyed and rejected. And it's the same thing that happened in Matthew chapter 23. Jesus was rehearsing what was happening in his own day. And Jesus said, you're just like your forefathers here who killed the prophets. So in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 11, it says,
Kendall Lankford (42:18)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (42:31)
Now, these things happen to them. That is talking about the Israelites under the Old Covenant as an example, as a type. And they were written for our instruction. Now listen to this, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. What's Paul talking about? The Old Covenant order. The Old Covenant order was passing away. Jesus was the fulfillment. He was the lamb of God who took away the sins of the world.
Kendall Lankford (42:50)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (43:00)
He was the temple, destroy this temple in three days, I'll raise it back up again. He was the high priest. Everything in that Old Testament were types. That is, they were put in place in order to look forward to the coming anti-type, the one who would, in effect, fulfill all these prophecies. The temple was supposed to be temporary. Animal sacrifice is temporary.
Kendall Lankford (43:22)
Right.
GARY DEMAR (43:29)
human priesthood, all temporary. Jesus came and fulfilled them all. Well, the Jews who, under the new covenant, they saw their whole world being changed as a result of this, and they didn't like it. And, you know, dispensationalists today, unfortunately, many of them have very good intentions.
There's a lot to protect in terms of the dispensational system. There are seminaries, there are colleges, there are ministries. And I've been doing this a long time, for 40 years. I've heard every argument under the sun. And it's embarrassing sometimes to listen to some of the argumentation I hear from very prominent men on these views. You had mentioned earlier that I had debated Thomas Ice. I debated Thomas.
Nine times I've debated Dave Hunt. I've debated others. And you know, they really can't sustain their belief system. And this is all beginning to change. I think you had asked this question. Do I see a change? Yes, 40 years ago when I started doing interviews like this on radio stations and so forth, oh, I got some nasty, nasty calls. But today,
If I were to do an interview on the radio, it'd be amazing how many people who would call in and say, hey, I used to believe this. I don't anymore. I read your books, or I read R.C. Sproul's book, or I read this book, or I read that book. And there's a significant change going on in terms of Bible prophecy today. But the more popular view is still out there, and it has a huge sway.
Kendall Lankford (45:09)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (45:17)
over the American public, but I believe there's a better system and I think that better system is much, I believe, much more biblical than the system that is popular today.
Kendall Lankford (45:29)
Yeah. Um, I know that we're, uh, we're at 45 minutes now and brother, I am riveted. I could have this conversation for, uh, until you and I are both blue in the face probably, but, um, just as a summary of where we've covered many, and, and let's just say many, uh, many of these that are normally counted as future events we've already shown have historical basis for being viewed as first century events. Um,
So that means that the wars and the rumors of wars, the famines, the plagues, Jesus returning on the clouds even, and there's good evidence from the language of the Old Testament on why that's already happened. We're saying that all of that has already occurred in the first century coming of Christ, and what the dispensationalist or even the historic premillennialist would say is still future. There is no biblical warrant for.
hunting those things out into the future like they do. Is that correct?
GARY DEMAR (46:32)
Yeah, look, I think you find a couple of things in, take Matthew 24. Like I said, I've written a book called Wars and Rumors of Wars, where I go through this verse by verse,
but wars, yeah, wars. And again, you can get it at Americanvision.org. Wars and rumors of wars. There have always been wars and rumors of wars. I, they were, it's not really an end time sign. And I think Jesus in the first part of Matthew 24 is dealing with things that aren't truly...
Kendall Lankford (46:42)
Highly recommended by the way.
GARY DEMAR (47:02)
signs regarding events leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, because there were wars and rumors of wars throughout the Roman Empire. You've got famines. All you have to do is read Acts chapter 11. Read Acts chapter 11. There was a famine throughout the whole world in that century. And when we get to verse 14, I'll explain a little something about that.
Earthquakes. There were earthquakes throughout that region at that time. In fact, at the time of Jesus' crucifixion, there was an earthquake. There was an earthquake that ended up releasing Peter from prison. So earthquakes weren't significant. People say, oh, it's the number and the intensity of earthquakes. No, it doesn't say that. It says there will be great earthquakes. And there were, in fact, what's that?
Kendall Lankford (47:42)
I think even Su-
I think even, I think even Suetonius said, or maybe it was Tacitus, that they were of such frequency during that period that they considered it an omen of judgment.
GARY DEMAR (47:58)
Oh yeah.
Exactly. And you had actually Halley's Comet passing over Jerusalem prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Which, by the way, is an event that happens about every 70 some years. The famous thing about Mark Twain said he came in on Halley's Comet and he would go out on Halley's Comet. And he was born in the year that the passage of the coming of Halley's Comet.
And then the year he died, Halley's Comet returned. It comes every 70 or 73 years. And so you go down that list, and people say, well, wait a minute. Hold on a second here. It says there will be false prophets. Look at 1 John chapter 4, verse 1. Many false prophets have gone out into the world. Well, what about the Antichrist? I said, OK. I always do this. I said, give me a biblical definition of Antichrist.
Kendall Lankford (48:52)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (49:01)
And people think about that. And they say, well, somebody, an end time figure who opposes Jesus. I said, give me a biblical definition of Antichrist. And they said, what do you mean? I said, tell me how the Bible actually defines Antichrist. And a lot of people have to think about it. In fact, I've got books written by people who talk of books on the Antichrist. And they don't spend much time actually dealing with the passages that use the word.
An antichrist, a biblical antichrist, 2 John, verse 7 says, an antichrist is somebody who denies that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. That is a biblical definition of antichrist. It's not a political leader. It's somebody who denies Jesus, which is most likely the Jews of that time,
because you get Revelation chapter 2, 9, and 3, 9. It talks about the synagogue of Satan.
Kendall Lankford (49:50)
Right.
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (49:57)
Those who opposed the church in that day were religious leaders, Jewish religious leaders. How many anti-Christ were there?
Kendall Lankford (50:03)
Even 1 John says that the spirit of the Antichrist is alive and well and that there are many.
GARY DEMAR (50:07)
Yeah, in that day. And then he also talks about, you've heard about this Antichrist. He said, no, there are many Antichrists. And what John says is, by this you know it is the last hour. So John, when John was talking about these Antichrists, that was a true sign, different from earthquakes and famines and so forth. That was a true sign.
Kendall Lankford (50:21)
Wow.
GARY DEMAR (50:34)
that particular generation was about to pass away. He says, this is the last hour. And this is in 1 John chapter 2, verse 18. And then look at verse 22. There were some of those who were among us who left us because they denied the biblical definition of Antichrist. So if you want to get a biblical definition of Antichrist, the only place you're going to find it, it's not even mentioned in the book of Revelation, the only place you're going to find it where the word is actually used is in 1 John.
And in 2 John, there is the man of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2. But the man of lawlessness was alive in Paul's day. You know what restrains him now. The man of lawlessness was alive because those people knew what was restraining him. You don't even have to know who the man of lawlessness was in order to. It was already taking place. So then you get to Matthew 24, 14.
Kendall Lankford (51:17)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (51:33)
So are you saying, Gary, are you saying that Matthew 24 of 14 has already been fulfilled? And that says that this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world, and then the end will come. And my question is, how would you determine whether or not it had been fulfilled? Tell me. How would you do that? Well, the gospel would have to be preached in the whole world so that everybody would have heard the gospel. And I said, well, OK.
But let's look at this a little more clearly. To me, it said the only way I would be convinced is if the Bible told me that it had been fulfilled. That's what would convince me. If the Bible literally said that the gospel had been preached in the whole world in Paul's day, that's what I would believe. And he said, well, how can you say that? Because that's what the Bible actually teaches. And what's interesting, it says this gospel shall be preached in the whole world.
Kendall Lankford (52:23)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (52:34)
And the word that's translated world in most translations is not the typical word. It's cosmos. That's the word you would expect. But the word that's used there is oikoumene. It's a Greek word that's used elsewhere in the New Testament. I'll give you two examples. One most people are familiar with. Isn't that some Luke chapter 2, verse 1? That a decree went out from Caesar, and God said the whole world be taxed.
Rome couldn't, as much as Rome would have liked to have taxed the whole world, they could only tax within their domain, within their empire. And the Greek word that's used there is
oikoumene. And then you get to, we already looked at Acts chapter 11, verse 28. This is, there'd be famine over the whole what? The whole oikoumene. So was the gospel preached throughout the whole world? Well, Romans chapter 1, verse 8 says the gospel had gone into the whole world.
Kendall Lankford (53:14)
Yeah.
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (53:32)
Colossians 1.23, listen to this one. Colossians 1.23, it says that the gospel had been preached to all creatures under heaven. And in Romans chapter 16, Paul says that the gospel had been preached to all the nations. So when you look at Matthew chapter 24, you know, it's again, the very next verse, verse 15, it says, when you see the abomination of desolation.
Kendall Lankford (53:59)
Right.
GARY DEMAR (53:59)
standing in the holy place. And then you mentioned Luke 21. So when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, you put those two things together and you see that was a local judgment upon Jerusalem of that day. And remember, when you see the abomination, desolation, talking about the people living then. Then what follows that? What follows that is, hey,
Kendall Lankford (54:05)
Yeah.
Right.
GARY DEMAR (54:27)
When you start seeing these things, especially about the abomination of desolation, is leave your homes. Don't spend your time on your rooftops anymore. Go into your house and get your cloak, et cetera. Pregnant women in those days and so forth, they said, wait a minute. What are you saying about cloaks? And what did you say about flat roofs? Read the context of it. That's what it talks about.
Kendall Lankford (54:53)
Mm. Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (54:55)
I don't know the last time you were on a flat roof or you had a flat roof, but it's not talking about our day. It's talking about that day. What about this thing about a cloak? Cloak was very important. It was a form of collateral, if you go back to the Old Testament. That was the local judgment. And you could also talk about the Sabbath there as well. Pray that's not on the Sabbath, because there were travel restrictions on the Sabbath.
Kendall Lankford (55:04)
Right.
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (55:24)
And so all you had to do in order to get around not being caught up in the destruction of Jerusalem was to head for the hills outside of Jerusalem to the mountains of
Judea. And so it goes on. People say, oh, well, what about the sun, moon, and stars? That language. That hasn't happened yet. I don't know if you know who Kirk Cameron is. Most people, I think.
Kendall Lankford (55:37)
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (56:05)
No, no, no
So he would put the DVD in and he would say, well, okay, the wars and rumors of wars and famines and even the gospel going to the whole world and the local judgment of being on flat roofs and the cloak and the Sabbath and all that sort of thing. But there's no way he could ever convince me that the sun and moon and stars, sun and moon going dark and the stars falling, no way he could convince me that had already taken place yet.
And of course, I follow the same procedure. What would convince you that Jesus was describing events related to that day? And the only answer is, because I kept repeating it, unless the Bible told me. All those passages about the sun, moon going dark, and the moon going dark, and stars falling, all come from the Old Testament. You will find it in Isaiah chapter 13, which was a judgment upon Babylon. And what would happen?
Kendall Lankford (57:04)
All right.
GARY DEMAR (57:21)
The moon would go dark. You've got other places in Isaiah. You've got places in Ezekiel. You've got places in the book of Joel. You've got first the book of Micah, Micah chapter 1. You've got Zephaniah. All of these Old Testament passages talk about the creation. That is, the creation is being disturbed, going dark.
And Jesus takes those passages and applies them to new t-
Kendall Lankford (57:46)
Mm.
GARY DEMAR (57:51)
New Testament, first century, that apostolic generation of Israel and applies those things just like those nations in the Old Testament were in fact judged and this type of symbolic language is being used. It's going to happen to you. And think of this. How is Israel described in Genesis chapter 37? Sun, moon, stars. Joseph has a dream. Sun.
Kendall Lankford (58:17)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (58:20)
moon and 11 stars bow down in front of him. It's a depiction of Israel. You got it in chapter 12, where this woman is standing on the moon. She's clothed with the sun and she has got a crown of 12 stars around her head. So this, yeah, this all fits, this all fits in terms of that generation coming under judgment and Jesus giving a warning for 40 years to repent or perish.
Kendall Lankford (58:25)
Right.
Yeah, Revelation 12.
GARY DEMAR (58:48)
And if you don't repent, at least get out of town. And that's the, and this, to me that just makes much more sense. It's biblical. You don't need anything else in order to make that case.
Kendall Lankford (58:55)
Yeah.
Two quick questions. Do you think this is an easy one or a short one? Do you think that is why in the book of Acts that the Christians were selling their property because they knew it was good?
GARY DEMAR (59:11)
Yeah, that is an argument. They didn't sell all of it, but they sold probably parcels of land that they had because they knew Jesus predicted this is going to be overrun and judgment was going to be coming. But I want to go back one time, back to the reason I brought up Kirk, that when he changed his eschatological view, it changed everything about his life. Because what's he doing today? He's taking on the secularists of the day by putting on a show.
by publishing these books and going into libraries and reading his books, countering the drag queens and so forth. It's made a tremendous, tremendous impact on him, including the film Monumental. Watch the film Monumental, because it's pulling all this together in terms of history. And you'll see the fellow who influenced Kirk, his name is Marshall Foster, who died a couple of years ago.
He's the one who introduced Kirk to my video series. Because we really were talking about all this. And the reason I got involved in all this, because too many Christians have had a defeatist inevitable and as part of their worldview and as a result, have allowed the world to go bust in terms of, hey, you can't polish brass on a sinking ship. You can't rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. It's all going down.
Jesus is coming back soon. All the signs are there. I guarantee you, you change your eschatological view, you will change the future.
Kendall Lankford (01:00:45)
Yeah. Let's ask one last question just about what you just started talking about, brother. Over 40 years you've been doing this and you've heard every argument and you've really, with broad strokes even, showed how so much of this is the greatest prediction and fulfillment of prophecy that's ever been given has already happened. Now, building upon that, and in light of what happened to Kirk, his whole life changed in the way that he had done.
that he's approaching things. How would you say, and to the person who's watching this, who's maybe hearing some of these things for the first time, what would you say that, about post-millennialism being practical, about this view of these things happening, because it seems like they happened in the past. How is this relevant to my life today? If you could sketch that out for us, that would be amazing.
GARY DEMAR (01:01:37)
Yeah, that's a good question. I wrote a response to the Left Behind series. It was originally, well, it's called Left Behind, Separating Fact from Fiction. And it was originally published by Thomas Nelson as the book End Times Fiction. And when I wrote the book in terms of evaluating it, they asked the same question. OK, Gary, what does this mean for us today? I don't like to use the.
the word millennium, post-millennialism, because it's built too much on Revelation chapter 20, which in no way describes anybody's view of a millennium, even a premillennial view. Revelation 20 doesn't say anything about Jesus reigning on the earth for 1,000 years, or circumcision be reinstituted, or animal sacrifices, or a period of peace, and on forth, and so forth, and so on. If you read the book of Acts, the last chapter of the book of Acts, Acts chapter 28,
Paul is talking about the kingdom. He's preaching the kingdom. And throughout history, kingdom has been described as Christendom. That is the application of the Bible to every area of life. And that's the vision we should have. How does the Bible apply to me as an individual, to my family, to my church, to the area of civil government? The Bible has a great deal to say about civil government. I wrote a book. I mentioned it earlier.
called God and Government, the 30 chapters, how the Bible applies to every area of government, self, family, church, and civil government. It's simply applying the Bible to every area of life. And there's a book that was written by Vishal Mangowaldi called The Book That Made Your World. It's published by Thomas Nelson. And in that book, he shows the West, the Western world.
with all of its success and productivity and progress and so forth, grew out of a Christian worldview. Science grew out of a Christian worldview. Education grew out of a Christian worldview. Literature, music, and art, all of that. And what's happening today in our culture is that it's being destroyed. It's being done away with Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. These were schools, Columbia University were schools that started by Christians. We gave up on these institutions.
Because number one, we didn't think this world was important. And number two, we thought we're living the last days. And so your eschatological view affects the way you are going to handle the world in which we live. And so when you see bad things taking place, the goal should be, how do we fix these things? Take God's word seriously and make the application. Want to fix families? Bible has a lot to say about that. You want to fix education? Take control of it again. Don't turn it over to the state. You want to make a living?
Start your own business. The woman, the Proverbs 31 woman, she used her gifts and talents in order to help in the household. She didn't neglect her family in doing that. There's just entrepreneurial opportunities. We need to cut down the power of the civil government, return it to its constitutional limitations.
Kendall Lankford (01:04:59)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (01:04:59)
turn, get things back over. They let the states exercise their particular constitutional prerogatives based upon the ninth and 10th amendments. I've written in that area as well. I have a book called The Case for America's Christian Heritage, which deals with America and the impact that Christianity had on America. Again, these are all available at americanvision.org.
Kendall Lankford (01:05:24)
It's incredible. And yeah, I'm encouraged, brother. I hope that other people who are listening to this are encouraged. And you've given plenty of opportunities for further study in some of the things that you've shared. Anything that you want to leave us with as sort of parting wisdom or guidance for us just to think about how do we retake the world, the world that Christians have pulled back from? The Bible says we're supposed to be salt. And in the ancient world, if you didn't put salt on meat, it rotted.
well, look at the world around us. It's rotted because we've pulled back. So what encouragement, what wisdom would you give us as we seek to repent from that and go a different course?
GARY DEMAR (01:06:04)
One of the first things I tell after something like this is people look at it and say, oh man, there's too much to have to change. And that becomes part of a problem. It's too overwhelming. And you feel guilty, you feel defeated because things didn't change overnight. And I always tell people, grasp the areas of responsibility that you have right now and fix those first. Keep your family intact.
work within your family, the education of your children, and so forth. Develop friendships. Your church shouldn't be just a place where someone preaches to you, but it should be a community where gifts and talents are shared, that's where successes are shared, where people who have problems, we work within, we help them with them. Take back the responsibilities that we've turned over the state, and we take responsibility for that and finance those things. That means education.
get your kids out of government schools. They're government schools.
They're only gonna teach a secular governmental aspect of it. The nine of people say, oh, our schools are better than that and so forth. Well, you might have, they might be, everybody makes excuses for education. And I know it's expensive to do that, but churches, churches are vacant 90% of the week. Now there's, it's all there. It's right in front of us in order to make these changes. So.
Kendall Lankford (01:07:06)
Yeah.
GARY DEMAR (01:07:32)
Don't feel like you've got to change everything at once. Pick a few areas outside of your own personal life. Like my wife and I support financially a pregnancy center where women who come in, who've had children, don't know how to raise a family, don't know how to do a budget, they don't know how to do any of that. It's easy to say, well, you need to keep your baby. And James talks about that. You know.
Kendall Lankford (01:07:45)
Hmm
GARY DEMAR (01:08:01)
Be filled and so forth, and then move on to something else.
And so they're involved in actually helping young women and couples get their lives back together again. So there's a lot of stuff out there, but don't get too worked up over too many things that you neglect the things that God has created in what I call a circle of responsibility. Determine your circles of responsibility. Work within those, and then work without. Don't feel guilty because you're not changing everything or fixing everything.
Kendall Lankford (01:08:04)
That's good.
GARY DEMAR (01:08:31)
Fix the things that God has put in front of you and work from there and work out. With millions of Christians doing that, we could change the world within a generation.
Kendall Lankford (01:08:39)
Yeah, and it's so important to use that term generation because we tend to think we need to change everything by tomorrow Um, if this could be this could be a multi-generational work and probably will be Um, we have to have the right timeline perspective as well
GARY DEMAR (01:08:50)
Yeah.
Yeah, let me think about it. Harvard was started in the 17th century, the early part of the 17th century, I think 1636. It took hundreds of years for it to fall apart. And same thing with Yale. Yale was actually instituted because Harvard was drifting away from its original moorings. So if this didn't happen overnight, it's not going to be fixed overnight. Like I said, I was born in 1950. I began to see things deteriorate the college campuses in the late 1960s.
But it didn't just start there. There was a whole history of this. There's a lot that has to be changed. But you've got to start with yourself and start with your family and your church in order to make those kind of changes. And don't be afraid of politics. The goal of politics is to diminish its power, not increase its power. And so that would mean diminishing the power of the national government, return it to its limited governmental function in the Constitution of the United States.
and then get state government, county government, city government. We need to be involved in every facet of society. The reason the left wins and anti-Christians live and win is because they're actively participating in making those types of changes. They're not in the minority, the majority we are. But we don't exercise that ability because we have a faulty view of the world in which we live and also we have a faulty view of.
what the future holds for us because of some eschatological view.
Kendall Lankford (01:10:28)
That's so good. So good. Brother, thank you for your time that you gave to us. Thank you for all the wisdom and the 40 years of study that you just were able to so succinctly boil down in this podcast. I'd love to have you on again sometime. Brother, thank you so much.
GARY DEMAR (01:10:43)
Sure. All right, thank you, Kendall,
appreciate it.
Kendall Lankford (01:10:46)
God bless you.
