Eschatology and Economics (Part One)

0:00All right guys, welcome to another episode of the Protestant Libertarian Podcast. My guest today is Dr. Gary Demar. Dr. Demar is a prolific author, long-term president of American Vision and host of the Gary Demar Show. His interests include eschatology and economics, and we will be discussing his views regarding both issues on the show today. Dr. Gary Demar, welcome to the Protestant Libertarian Podcast. Hey, just call me Gary. No doctor. Okay, perfect, perfect. Well, Gary, I am really excited to talk to you today. I was doing some research on eschatology. I think on Matthew 24 last summer, and so I was looking up some podcasts and happened to stumble across your show, The Gary Demar Show, and listening to an episode or two, and I was like, oh, I really agree with a lot of what he has to say about this. And then from there, I've found out that you're really good on economics too. So I've been thinking for the last couple of months about inviting on the show, and I'm glad we were able to make this happen.

1:00But for my audience who is not familiar with you, just talk to us about yourself, your background and your work. I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I went to Western Michigan University on a track and field scholarship. I graduated in 1973, and went back to Pittsburgh for a while, ended up in the year going down to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And the job situation in Pittsburgh was pretty bleak back in the late 60s, early 70s because of the steel, the steel mills were shutting down, manufacturing was going away, this picked up since then. But so I left, I had really no ties at that point, so I ended up going to Fort Lauderdale, spent a year there and ended up going to reform theological seminary in Jackson, Mississippi,

2:02and that would have been in 1974. I had become a Christian in 1973 when I was a student at Western Michigan University. And so that really turned my whole world around, because the things I'm talking about today, I had no clue of back in 1973. Yeah, and you are interested in theology and economics, and you do a lot of podcasting on both of them, we've written books that intersect with those issues as well. So what got you interested in theology and economics, and then how would you describe your economic position? Well, I was always interested on how things work, especially mechanical things. I used to study the lives of inventors and love the history of invention and so forth. So when I became a Christian, it was like, okay, so this transformation that's supposed to take place on the inside, are there any ramifications for that externally?

3:02And so I began to, as I started reading scripture and so forth, I began to ask the question, so how does the Bible play to this, how does the Bible play to that, and while I was in seminary there, I was kind of a, almost a, a dunking process of catching up on what I did not know. That's why I went to seminary because I felt I was so far behind it, no much about theology, didn't know much about the Bible at all, and I figured I'll go to seminary, which I would not recommend, I would not recommend that to too many people after one year being a Christian. But turned out well for me, I got to meet some really great guys, you know, Ken Gentry was there, David Chilton was there, and Jim Jordan was there, I don't know if you know these guys, but just solid guys, and great Dr. Craig Bonson was a professor there, and he was teaching, he was teaching on apologetics, and he was pretty much a libertarian on economics as, as I am, and I got to know Gary North, who of course is, you know, that was his, his

4:06field, although his, his PhD is in history, his, his, most of his work has been done, at least on the political side has been done on the area of economics, and then he ties everything in in terms of scriptures, so you got to, you know, Gary North always had this one phrase, you can't change just one thing, you can't just go into economics and feel like you're going to change economics and everything else is going to change. There has to be a change among everything, because everything is, you know, as related to it, from human nature to, you know, the issue of what role the government, you know, plays in all of this, all of those things have to be considered when you talk about any topic, and that of course includes, includes economics. I wrote a series of books in 1982, 84 and 86, called God in Government, I started working at American Vision where I am now in 1980, and of course, you're probably too, you're too young, but that was, you know, Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter turned out, he was the first

5:09so-called born again Christian president, so he came into office in 1977, and that particular election was very disappointed for lots of Christians, because it was, eh, if the ontiology and not various stu-t when it came to economic policy, and then Ronald Reagan got in, and I just noticed that, you know, most Christians really have never studied the topic of government, and so I wrote a series of books called God in Government, which is not God in politics and this, basically to say, when you talk about government, you're talking about the multiplicity of governments, self-government under God, family government, church government, decentralized civil government, decentralized ecclesiastical government, and decentralized family government, and then what do those things have in relationship to God's government over all things? And that was, in fact, to this day, it's a very successful series, I've turned it into a single volume,

6:12heart-back volume that's used in Christian schools and across the country, and that's been in print since the 1980s. And I cover a lot, cover a lot of biblical economics in volume two of that series, which is, you know, still a single volume today. Yeah, well, it is really interesting how the way that one perceives eschatology does impact their understanding of government, and then that also impacts their understanding of economics as well. And I kind of want to break these up into two different sections on the show today. So I want to ask you a couple of questions about eschatology, and then a couple of questions about economics. And we'll kind of tie it all together at the end. But I'm very interested in eschatology. And I, like I said, after listening to a lot of your your podcast and kind of doing some research on my own, I think you and I have a lot of common ground in terms of our perspective on eschatology, you identify as a preterist. So explain to my

7:12audience what that term means. And then how does that differ from other eschatological models? I was not really aware of that phrase. When I was in seminary, you have to remember the 1970s, I went to seminary 1974, graduate from college 1973. And 1970s was the decade of the late great planet earth, which came out in 1970. And in that how Lindsay, and he would say he wasn't making a prediction. But he was, he was pretty close on it where he said, is there going to be a nation again in 1948 was a prophetic was a prophetic significance. I don't know how he could have done that because the dispensational system, he believes that states that there are no signs before something called the preacher of rapture. But anyway, and he said, the generation was 40 years. And so you add 40 to 1948, you get 1988. And so the rapture is going, it was supposed to take place sometime between 1981 and 1988. He was interviewed in Christianity today, April 15, 1977

8:21by Warg Gasquay. And he asked him, he said, help, what if you're wrong? And he says, well, there's just a split seconds difference between being right or wrong. He says, I guess if I'm wrong about this, I'll, I'll be a bomb. Then he went on to say, but I still, I do believe that Jesus is going to return before the turn of the next century. And this that was, that was 26, it was 26 years ago. So we are far beyond the 40 year generation that Lindsay proposed. And others Chuck Smith did the same thing and others did the same thing. We're past the 70 year marked as well. And we're coming up on the the 80th year, you know, since 1948. And you know, people confuse a generation with a light lifespan. And so, so that was big in the 70s. And I had heard about that in the 1970s. And while I was in seminary, I came across a book by Marcellus

9:23K. K. I K is a spelling of his last name. And on the spine, it just said, Matthew 24. And so it was a hard back. It was published by Presbyterian and Reform Publishing House. And I bought it. My librarian had, he was selling some of his books. And that was one of them. And that was transformational for me because all kick did was compare scripture with scripture. So he's going through Matthew 24. And everything in Matthew 24, he showed how it had to have been dealing with that particular generation because every time this generation appears in Matthew's gospel and Mark and Luke, it always refers to the generation to Jesus speaking. And then he went through, talked about wars and rumors of wars and families and families in various places, the gospel being preached in all the world, et cetera, all those all those items that many people say, well, those things haven't happened yet. Marcellus Kicks said they did happen. And that's because the phrase this generation means the generation to Jesus speaking. This is a near

10:28demonstrative. This, you know, Gunea means generation. It's not this kind of generation. It's not the generation that sees these signs, et cetera, this generation, every time it's used in the gospels that always refers to the generation to Jesus speaking. So it wasn't a new position kick, initially wrote that book in 1948. And since I've been doing all this research, it goes back centuries. This is anything I'm, I'm going to say about eschatology is, is not new. And what is new is this preoccupation with the end times, the anti Christ seven, seven year tribulation period, Israel going back to the land and all that sort of thing? Those are the real new things in eschatology. Yeah. And I would agree. I've identified as a partial preterist for a long time, which I guess brings me to the next question is that within, within preterism, there are partial preterist and then there are full preterist or hyper preterist or however you want to say that. How would you

11:29identify yourself within that tradition? And then what are the main differences between partial preterism and full preterism? Part of the problem with, you know, giving a name to something, to something, it's too much of a shorthand for, you know, if you say libertarian, you know, there's a spectrum of libertarians for sure. And so you, you know, it's a problem when someone defines something, you know, by the name and they've never really studied the issue. Preterist simply means, you've taken Latin, you know, preterist just means in the past. And so if, if, if, be a Christian and you study all the prophecies about the coming of Jesus and it ranges in between 300 or 400 prophecies in the Old Testament. So I'm very specific. He was born in Bethlehem, you know, how he would die and all those sorts of things. And when you, when you look at all those and you say those have been fulfilled and they have been

12:37fulfilled in the past, therefore you're a preterist. So every Christian is a preterist. If he or she believes that the prophecies in the Old Testament were fulfilled by Jesus during his ministry, you're a preterist. Jews who do not believe that are futurists. They're not preters. They do not believe those things have already taken place. But when you get to eschatology, a partial preterist would say, and again, there's a spectrum. So, and I would say, a partial preterist would say that the majority of New Testament texts dealing with prophecy have already been fulfilled. There are still things that are yet to be fulfilled. And that would be the physical return of Jesus at the end of history. And that separates, we would call partial preterists from a full preterist. And so for the longest time, I called myself a partial futurist because I believe that there were still some things that were yet to take place.

13:42You start to call yourself a partial preterist. You're not really identifying yourself as someone who believes that most of these things have already taken place. No, I think that's really helpful distinction. And I want to go through some of these eschatological passages with you. And this is an issue that's really important to me because, as you say, I was born in 1989. So, my first experience with the Bible was around the year 2000 with the left behind series. And I remember my mom bought me when I was in middle school, the left behind series for kids. And that was just what everyone believed. Everyone believed that there was going to be a rapture and that it was going to happen soon. And you know, whatever Tim Le Hei wrote was basically what the Bible said about that. And I remember I read those books before I actually started reading the Bible. And then when I read the Bible for the first time, I realized that the narrative that they were outlining in the left behind series was very much odds with what's going on in scripture. And I've kind of seen that over and over again where I think that in evangelical culture, we absorb the left behind models so much that for people that don't think about theology deeply,

14:44they kind of just assume that it's kind of happened that way. But they don't really have any integrative way of kind of addressing it with the Bible. So, I want to go over some of these as theological passages that we find in the Bible with you. And again, I've listened to you talk about them on your podcast. And I feel like you just knock these out of the park. And I want my audience to be able to hear it from you just how we should start thinking about these. So, I want to begin with the all of the discourse, which is Matthew 24 and then Mark 13 and Luke 21, as well. What is going on in Matthew 24 and parallels? Like, what is Jesus talking about? What's he actually addressing there? And how should that shape the way that we think about eschatology? Well, I mean, that's a good question. But, you know, too often people begin in Matthew 24. We have to remember that the original manuscripts didn't have chapter divisions or even verses. And then there, the that whole deal begins in chapter 21. He's on the mount of olives in Matthew in Matthew 21. So, Matthew 21, 22, 23, 24, and 25 is really the all-ovet

15:51discourse. And Jesus has a particular audience when you read it. There are people there he's talking to. Early on, he's talking directly to the religious leaders of the day. He's dealing with the temple. What's going on in the on in the temple because he ends up cleansing the temple for a second time. And he's and in fact, if you go to you got a 21, let's see, 21. Oh, it's here. 33 says, listen to another parable. There was a landowner. And you begin to you go through this, you go through this. And the religious leaders in verse 41 says, they said to him, this is in responding to the landowner about the heir and what, you know, they come, let us kill him, let us kill the heir, seize his inheritance. And they took him and cast him out of the vineyard

16:57and and and killed him. Therefore, in the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vine growers? And so the religious leaders, I mean, they walk right into this trap. So the religious leaders say said to Jesus, he will bring those wretched to a wretched to an end and will rent out the vineyard to other vine growers who will pay him the proceeds at the proper season. So they say, well, obviously here, but what's what's Jesus dealing with? He's dealing with Israel and the religious leaders here. It's very much what like Nathan and David, when Nathan confronts David, David condemns the guy and Nathan says, you're the guy. And Jesus is saying the same thing. You're the guys here. I'm talking about, and how do we know that? Look at verse 42. And Jesus said to them, did you never read the scriptures, the stone which the builders rejected? This became the chief

17:58cornerstone. This came about from the Lord and his marvelous in our eyes. Therefore, I say to you, this is important. The second person plural runs through this this narrative. And he says the stone which the builders rejected, this became the chief cornerstone. This came about from the Lord and his marvelous in our eyes. Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and be given to a nation producing the fruit of it. And he falls on this stone will be broken to pieces. But on whomever it falls, he will scatter him like dust. And when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they understood that he was he was speaking about them. And when they sought to seize him, they became afraid of the multitudes because they held him to be a prophet. So there are three there are three audiences here. They got the religious leaders. You have the multitudes. And as we'll see when we get to Matthew 24,

19:00we have a much smaller circle and that are Jesus disciples. But throughout this chapter, Jesus is not talking about something in the distant future. Talking about something that was going to happen fairly, fairly shortly. And I always tell people before you get to Matthew chapter 24, you need to read chapters 21, 22, 23 because then Jesus takes us right down to the end of chapter 23. And it's obvious again, who's he talking about here in chapter 23? First of all, he offers all these condemnations in chapter 23. And then verse 31, consequently, you bear witness against yourself, Jesus again, talking to the religious leaders that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets fill up them the measure of the guilt of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how shall you escape the sentence of hell? Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men inscribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify. Some of them you will scarge in your synagogues and persecute

20:02from city to city. That upon you may fall all the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth from the blood of righteous, able to the blood of Zachariah, the son of Barakaya, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all these things shall come about on this generation. So here's my question, who is Jesus talking to? He's not talking to some future generation. He was talking to that generation of people. And again, if you just start off with Matthew 24, so let's for just a moment, just say, I never read anything up to this point yet. And it says, and Jesus came out from the temple and was going away when his disciples came up to point out the temple buildings to him. And the answer and said to them, do you not see all these things? Truly, I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another, which will not be torn down. So if you didn't have the previous context, you're not aware of what went before and who

21:04Jesus was identifying as the theological problem. And so this is where the manipulation takes place in this passage. But if you didn't know that, and if you went back and you noticed how the second person plurals used throughout those chapters, we're going to see it again in Matthew 24. And so that's the starting point with this. Don't start at Matthew 24. Start with Matthew 21 and read all the way through and pay close attention to the audience. And also what it says in verse 36, truly, I say to you, all these things shall come upon this generation. And I did numerous debates with Thomas ice over the years and radio debate I did with him. He admitted every other time in the gospels where the phrase this generation is used, including in Matthew 2336, he said that referred to that generation. But when you got to Matthew 24 verse 34, he says, that's a different

22:11generation. And that's that's just plain arbitrary. But I understand why people do it because they just can't bring themselves to be honest with the text because it completely wrecks modern day even geologicalism. And I'll give you a good example. Do you know a Kirk Cameron? Yeah. Kirk Cameron starred in the left behind series. And we had a mutual friend, Marshall Foster, I know Marshall for years, and Marshall and Kirk kind of teamed up. And Marshall was very big on America's Christian heritage. He did tours. And he was what we'd call post millennialist. And he said, Kirk, you've got your eschatology is ruining your ability to think long term. And you know, Kirk didn't know what to say about that. He says, look, I have a friend Gary DeMar, I want you to watch this video series he did a number of years ago. And so Kirk dutifully did that. And I took

23:17him through Matthew 24. And then when he got to the sun moon and stars language in verse 2029, he said, there's no way that Gary DeMar is going to convince me that that language in verse 29 actually took place. Those events took place before that generation passed away. Well, he put the DVD in, he played it, listened to what I had to say. And he was convinced. I had made my case. I simply go into the Bible by comparing scripture with scripture because that language Jesus uses is taken from the Old Testament borrowed, borrowed from the Old Testament and referring to judgment language. And so, so Kirk's change in eschatology has transformed his worldview perception. And it's changed, it transformed his own ministry to the extent that he is, he wants to see change. And he says, eschatology will often get in the way of it as, you know, so many, so many, you know, preach a good friends of his, by the way, who have criticized him for his change

24:23in eschatology. And so, I mean, that's, I mean, that's what, that's what you have to do. You've got to look at the whole, all the wax, not just start in Matthew chapter 24. And once you get the audience relevance, then you go into Matthew 24. And now the focus of the focus of the, I turned that off. The focus of that, the focus of that deal is, you know, that particular generation where Jesus is addressing the disciples. Yeah, and it really is at the very beginning of Matthew 24, the question that Jesus disciples posed to him is that they, and this is 24 verses one and two, says Jesus came out from the temple and was going away when his disciples came up to the point, or to point out the temple buildings to him. And he said to them, do you not see all these things truly? I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another, which will not be torn down. And of course, like you would say that a lot of a lot of the rhetoric throughout the rest of Matthew 24 is really referring to the fall of the temple, which actually did happen in 80 70.

25:27Yeah, no one denies that. And in fact, if you go to Israel today, there's no vestige of the temple anywhere. Some people will say, well, the wailing wall, that wasn't part of the temple. It was a wall. And it was a wall to keep dirt out. Essentially, it's a retaining wall. So the temple doesn't exist anymore. And so Jesus tells them not one stone here will be left upon another. Then do you find people say, well, there'll be a rebuilt temple. And I said, where in the New Testament does it say anything about a rebuilt temple? And even those who believe that there's going to be a rebuilt temple will admit there's no verse in the New Testament that says there's a rebuilt temple. The Old Testament says there would be a rebuilt temple. And guess what? The temple was rebuilt. And it was, you know, it was, I don't want to say dismantled, but it was essentially left to abuse during the Maccabeean period. But you read the New Testament and you,

26:28you know, in John chapter two, the temple was being rebuilt. And it was almost finished by AD 62 or 64. I'm not sure the exact date. And so the temple, when the Old Testament talks about there's going to be a rebuilt temple. There was, in fact, a rebuilt temple. And then you need, then you would need another verse in the New Testament to say that the temple is going to be rebuilt. And there isn't one. And they'll say, well, the man of lawlessness has to take his seat in the temple. Second, that's the line is two. Or read second, that's the line is two. The temple was standing when Paul said that. And he would have had to say that the man of lawlessness will take his seat in the another rebuilt temple. He doesn't say that. Anybody reading that passage at that time would have understood it to be the temple that was still standing. Or they'll say something about this in the book of Revelation about the temple. Well, if you read book of Revelation chapter 11,

27:28the temple was still standing. Of course, I believe the book of Revelation was written before the temple was destroyed, which puts the book of Revelation having been written before the destruction of the temple. So they're always caveats to all of these things. With a lot of people, a lot of Christians unfortunately have never heard a different position. Yeah, I'm really glad you brought to the man of lawlessness because that is the perfect segue to my next question. This was one of those things that when I read the left behind series, the anti-Christ is such a prominent character in that way of thinking about eschatology. And you constantly hear people talk about this in evangelicalism today, trying to identify the anti-Christ, who is it Barack Obama Donald Trump? Everyone's got all these theories for this anti-Christ figure. And it's funny because everyone assumes that the anti-Christ is a character in the book of Revelation, but the word anti-Christ only appears in first and second John. So I want to ask you about this. My listeners are already primed for this because I did an episode on the anti-Christ a couple of months ago. But who exactly

28:29is the anti-Christ or maybe maybe to phrase this better? What does John mean when he uses the language of anti-Christ? And to what extent is that anti-Christ figure related to the man of lawlessness and second Thessalonians 2? Yeah, the the the the anti-Christ is someone who denies that Jesus has come in the flesh. That's second John 7. And first John chapter 2, the anti-Christ is someone who denies the relationship between the father and the son. Now that's that's obviously the Jews of that time. Now keep in mind, the first Christians were Jews. The first opposition to Jesus were Jews, but the first believers were also Jews. So this isn't a slam against the Jews. And even in the in the gospel. So I mean Jesus picked Jews as his disciples. And there were many many who followed Jesus in those days. The multitudes went after him. That's why when you

29:31read in chapter 23, that the religious leaders were afraid of the multitudes. The multitudes didn't put Jesus to death. It was a cadre of religious leaders at nighttime who used the power of the of the the Roman government to get rid of Jesus. They did not do this openly. They did this under under cover of darkness. And so by the time Jesus is is tried and all that and crucified, I suspect that most people didn't have had no idea what's going on. So and so when you get when you so the anti-Christ is somebody in one sense with those definitions, you see it's not a political person. And you're right, the word anti-Christ does not appear in the book of Revelation. But there are two places where it talks about the synagogue of Satan and two, nine, and three,

30:32nine. And I believe those are the anti-Christ's John talks about. Now remember, you know, you've done this already. At first John 217, there are many anti-Christ. There is no single anti-Christ individual. They heard about the anti-Christ. But John says there was many there are many anti-Christ. And because of their existence, we know it's the last hour. Well, the last hour of what? Well, you go back to Matthew 24. Jesus, you don't know the day or the hour. You do know the generation. And John was probably writing late in that generation. And he says it's the that hour is near. It's about to take place. And so and I find people who actually write books from the anti-Christ never actually quote the passages that use the word anti-Christ. Now you do, they do have beasts mentioned in Revelation chapter 13, a sea beast and a land beast. But I think those are,

31:32in fact, political entities, Rome being the sea beast. And the land beast was being Israel. And it's it's political and religious leaders. And but that's another that's another question for another time. Thanks for podcasting with Gary Demard. Please subscribe and share this with anyone you think really needs to hear it.