When I first learnt about the ministry of American Vision in the late 1990s, I was attracted by their often alternative view on a variety of topics, not least on the end-times. A culturally relevant gospel and an optimistic outlook towards the future, scripturally grounded, appealed to me. At the same time I became aware of the preterist interpration of many New Testament passages that had puzzled me before. A book like Last Days Madness (by Gary DeMar) was eye opening in many ways and has influenced how I read (and interpret) the Bible ever since.
Yet the tendency of Gary’s preterism to interprete biblical texts in their historical context has drifted into something that is beyond orthodoxy. While I am not sure what Gary’s position on preterism exactly was at the time of writing Last Days Madness, I had always thought of him being in the partial preterist (and orthodox) camp. Sadly, that is no longer (or maybe never has been) the case, since his refusal to answer the now famous three question letter about the resurrection and the Last Judgment has made clear.
A gospel confined to AD 70 with no Last Judgment and no physical resurrection does neither make sense scripturally, nor will it provide hope in any meaningful way.
Jason L. Bradfield (The Reformed Ember Lounge) in a recent article about Gary DeMar sums it up admirably:
“DeMar criticizes dispensationalism for making everything about heaven and for encouraging cultural withdrawal. That critique often lands. But his own system ends up flattening the future even more severely.”
Read Bradfield’s article here:
Gary DeMar’s Big Nothing Burger: Defending Creation While Denying Its Renewal