Borrowing from a Creed He Won't Confess: The Two Gary DeMars

In presuppositional apologetics, one of the most devastating moves is to show the atheist that he is living on borrowed capital. He wants logic, moral outrage, the intelligibility of science, but he denies the only worldview that can actually account for these things. He helps himself to the fruit while taking an axe to the root. As Cornelius Van Til put it, the unbeliever must sit in God’s lap in order to slap His face.¹

Gary DeMar has spent decades making this very argument in the realm of culture and eschatology. Against the dispensationalists, he insisted that Christians have every reason for cultural optimism: the Kingdom is advancing, the leaven is working, the mustard seed is growing into a great tree. The pessimistic escapism of rapture theology, he argued, was not only bad exegesis but bad for civilization. And he was right. Some will point out that many dispensationalists have in fact labored for cultural change, and that is true enough. But the response from men like Gary has always been that they do so in spite of their theology, not because of it.

Here is the bitter irony: Gary now finds himself in the same borrowed-capital predicament he once diagnosed so effectively in others. He still wants the optimistic eschatology, the bright future, the leavened lump, the Kingdom that conquers. But he has systematically dismantled the confessional, orthodox doctrinal foundations that actually provide it. A future bodily return of Christ. A physical resurrection of the dead. A final judgment. A real consummation of all things. They are the engine of Christian hope. Remove them, and what remains is not optimism but sentiment, a borrowed confidence with no account to draw on.

There’s a parlor game quality to reading Gary DeMar’s works side by side. Pick up Myths, Lies & Half Truths, and you’ll meet a confident postmillennialist who affirms a future bodily return of Christ, a future consummation of the Kingdom, and the defeat of death as the “last enemy” still on the horizon. Flip open Last Days Madness, and you’ll find a polemicist who treats 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 as describing “the general resurrection of the saints,” a future event tied to the Lord’s return.² Then crack the spine of The Hope of Israel and the Nations, his latest collaboration with Kim Burgess, and something very different emerges: a parousia that has already occurred, a Bible that “does not” say “anything literally about the end of time,”³ and a framework that explicitly distances itself from the very postmillennialism Gary spent decades championing.

So which Gary wrote these books? And can they all be right?

Contradiction #1: The Return of the King, Future or Fulfilled?

In Myths, Lies & Half Truths, Gary couldn’t be clearer. The Kingdom of God has a threefold structure: it is “definitively established in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ,” it “increases and advances progressively,” and it is “established fully at Christ’s consummating coming.”⁴ That last phrase is doing heavy theological lifting. It is an unambiguous affirmation of a future, bodily return.

He doubles down: “The end will come after He has destroyed all His remaining enemies. He will reign until He has brought all things under His feet.”⁵ And again: “Jesus will return to a world in which nearly all His enemies have been conquered. The only enemy that will remain is death, and even that will be defeated.”⁶

Now turn to The Hope of Israel. Here, Gary and Kim Burgess argue that “unlike the postmillennialists, one must have the King (i.e., the parousia) first to have the Kingdom. It is not that the Kingdom comes and permeates everything and then the King comes. No, in the NT, when the King comes, the King establishes His Kingdom, and then that Kingdom leaven goes to work in the world.”⁷

Read that again carefully. The parousia comes first, and then the Kingdom leaven works through the world. Since Gary and Kim place the establishment of the New Covenant order squarely in the “eschatological period of AD 30 to 70,” already “completely consummated,”⁸ the logical implication is unavoidable: the parousia has already happened. The King has already come. There is no future return to wait for.

The Gary of Myths, Lies & Half Truths would have called this a serious error. The Gary of Hope of Israel calls it biblical eschatology.

Contradiction #2: 1 Corinthians 15:24-26, Still Future or Already Past?

This is perhaps the most damning reversal. In Myths, Lies & Half Truths, Gary quotes 1 Corinthians 15:23-25 and comments: “This passage speaks about Jesus’ reign. The end will come after He has destroyed all His remaining enemies. He will reign until He has brought all things under His feet. In other words, the kingdom does not begin when Jesus returns. Jesus began reigning from the time of His resurrection. The kingdom culminates in His second coming.”⁹

That word “culminates” is critical. The end, the telos, of 1 Corinthians 15:24 is placed firmly in the future, tied to a still-awaited “second coming.” And by the way, the Greek term translated as “coming” in verse 23 is παρουσίᾳ (parousia).

But as Matt Doyle documented in the controversy surrounding this shift, Gary later listed 1 Corinthians 15:24 among texts where “’the end’ means nothing more than the end being described in the context, not the end of everything.”¹⁰ In other words, the “end” of 1 Corinthians 15:24 became, for the later Gary, merely the end of the old covenant age in AD 70, not the cosmic consummation he had previously taught.

You cannot have it both ways. Either “the end” in 1 Corinthians 15:24 refers to a future consummation tied to a bodily second coming (as Gary taught in Myths, Lies & Half Truths), or it refers to the events of AD 70 (as he now appears to hold). These are mutually exclusive claims.

Contradiction #3: The Consummation, New Heavens and New Earth, or “The Bible Doesn’t Say”?

In Myths, Lies & Half Truths, Gary writes about the consummation with the confidence of a man who knows what the Bible teaches: “The New Testament also teaches that we look for a future manifestation of the kingdom (1 Cor. 15:23-24; Rev. 21). In this sense, the kingdom refers to heaven and the fullness of the new heavens and new earth.”¹¹ He continues: “We look forward to the day when all believers from all lands will gather to worship the Lamb that was slain from the beginning of the world, and when we will live in perfect peace and love, free from the last remnants of sin.”¹²

Beautiful. Orthodox. Hopeful.

Now consider The Hope of Israel. When Gary asks Kim about “the end point of the Adamic age,” the consummation and “final end to history as we understand it,” Kim responds: “Now if you ask me, does the Bible ever, anywhere, say anything literally about the end of time, I would have to say, no, it does not.” He adds that world history probably has “a telos somewhere, but that is not what the Bible, first and foremost, was concerned about at all.”¹³

Gary does not push back. He does not correct. He does not invoke Revelation 21 or 1 Corinthians 15 or any of the passages he wielded so confidently in his earlier work. He simply lets the claim stand: the Bible has nothing literal to say about the end of time.

The Gary of Myths, Lies & Half Truths pointed readers to Revelation 21 and called it “the fullness of the new heavens and new earth.” The Gary of Hope of Israel now co-authors a book whose framework renders that entire section of his earlier work incoherent.

Contradiction #4: Postmillennialism, Rebranded or Abandoned?

This one is particularly striking because it touches Gary’s theological identity. For decades, Gary DeMar was among the most visible advocates of postmillennialism in American evangelicalism. In Myths, Lies & Half Truths, the postmillennial framework is presented without apology: the Kingdom was established at Christ’s first advent, it grows progressively through history like leaven in a lump, and it will be consummated at Christ’s second coming. Jesus returns after the Kingdom has substantially conquered.

But in Hope of Israel, Gary and Kim explicitly distinguish themselves from postmillennialism: “One ends up here where the postmillennialists end up. But, unlike the postmillennialists, one must have the King (i.e., the parousia) first to have the Kingdom.”¹⁴

This is not a minor refinement. It is a structural inversion of postmillennial eschatology. Classic postmillennialism says: the Kingdom grows, then Christ returns. Gary now says: Christ “returns” (in AD 70), then the Kingdom grows. The order has been flipped. The second coming has been relocated from the future to the past. And the label “postmillennial” no longer means what it used to mean in Gary’s hands.

As P. Andrew Sandlin noted, Gary himself once claimed he hadn’t changed his views in 25 years. The texts tell a very different story.

Contradiction #5: The “Already/Not Yet,” Collapsed or Preserved?

In Myths, Lies & Half Truths, Gary deploys the classic Reformed “already/not yet” framework with precision: “Since the coming of Jesus, therefore, we can say that the kingdom is both already present but not yet fully consummated.”¹⁵ The “not yet” is doing real work here. It points to a genuine future event, a real bodily return, a final transformation.

In Hope of Israel, the “not yet” has been hollowed out. The New Covenant order has been “completely consummated.”¹⁶ What remains is the working out of the Adamic age, but the Bible, we’re told, doesn’t really address that. The “not yet” has been reduced to a vague, non-biblical residue rather than a robust eschatological hope grounded in specific New Testament promises.

Contradiction #6: 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, Future Resurrection or...?

In Last Days Madness, Gary argues against the dispensational pretribulational rapture by affirming the orthodox alternative: “Most postmillennialists and amillennialists see 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 as relating to the general resurrection of the saints.”¹⁷ He approvingly quotes Anthony Hoekema: “What this passage clearly teaches is that at the time of the Lord’s return all the believing dead (the ‘dead in Christ’) will be raised, and all believers who are still alive will be transformed and glorified.”¹⁸ This is plainly future. The Lord returns. The dead are raised. These are events Gary treats as still ahead of us.

But Gary doesn’t stop at exegesis. He brings the full weight of church history down on the dispensationalist’s head: “Not only is the Bible on the side of those who view the rapture as the general resurrection, so are eighteen hundred years of church history.”¹⁹ He then quotes a dispensationalist who candidly admits that the pretribulational rapture “is scarcely to be found in a single book or sermon through the period of 1600 years!” Gary’s verdict is merciless: “He’s too generous. There is no evidence.”²⁰

He presses the point further. Citing Thomas Ice, Gary notes that the pretribulational rapture is “the product of a deduction from one’s overall system of theology” because “neither pre nor posttribs have a proof text for the time of the Rapture.” Gary calls this out with obvious relish: “What an admission! A pillar doctrine of dispensationalism does not have a single text to prove it.” He then lays out the dispensationalist method: “First, create the system; second, create the doctrines to make the system work; third, claim to have restored ‘the Biblical doctrine of the pretrib Rapture,’ which is based on a ‘deduction from one’s overall system of theology’ because there are no verses that teach it; fourth, imply that the early church, the ‘apostles of the apostles,’ knew nothing of this foundational doctrine.”²¹

The rhetorical force of this is devastating, and Gary clearly knows it. A system with no exegetical proof text and no historical precedent for 1,800 years is, in his words, “a theological house of cards.”²²

But here is where the borrowed capital problem becomes almost unbearable. If 1,800 years of silence condemns dispensationalism, what does 2,000 years of explicit creedal affirmation do to full preterism? The church has not merely been silent about a future bodily return, a physical resurrection, and a final judgment. She has confessed them, repeatedly, in every major creed and confession from Nicea to Westminster. Gary wielded church history like a sledgehammer against the dispensationalists. That same sledgehammer now swings back at him with considerably more force. The dispensationalist innovated a doctrine the church never taught. Gary, it appears, has denied doctrines the church has always taught.

If the parousia has already occurred, as Hope of Israel implies, what do we do with this passage? If the King has already come, has the general resurrection already happened too? Gary’s earlier work treated 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 as a bulwark against dispensational novelty. His later framework makes that very passage a problem for his own position, and his own church-historical argument the most damning witness against him.

So Which Gary Is It?

The contradictions are not subtle, and they are not peripheral. They touch the return of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, the consummation of all things, and the very meaning of the Kingdom. These are not matters of emphasis or nuance. They are matters of substance.

Gary was asked three straightforward questions by a group of his own friends: Do you believe in a future bodily return of Christ? A future physical resurrection? A final judgment? He declined to give straightforward answers.

The books, however, answer for him, and they answer in two very different voices. The Gary of Myths, Lies & Half Truths and the earlier editions of Last Days Madness was a man who stood within the broad stream of historic, orthodox, postmillennial Christianity. The Gary of The Hope of Israel and the Nations has stepped outside that stream into waters that the church has consistently identified as heterodox.

And this brings us back to where we started. The presuppositionalist exposes the atheist for borrowing Christian capital, enjoying the fruits of a worldview he refuses to confess. But what do we call it when a man wants the Kingdom optimism, the leaven working, the mustard seed growing, the nations discipled, while denying the bodily return, the physical resurrection, and the final judgment that Scripture everywhere grounds that optimism in? The Nicene Creed does not say, “We look for a metaphorical coming and a spiritualized resurrection.” It says, “He shall come again, with glory, to judge both the living and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end” and “we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.”²³

That is the worldview that underwrites the bright future. That is the engine of genuine Christian hope. Without it, the optimism is just atmosphere, borrowed confidence from a confession you no longer hold. The atheist borrows from God to argue against Him. And Gary DeMar, it appears, now borrows the hope of Christianity while quietly dismantling the Christianity that funds it.

1. This is a common paraphrase of Cornelius Van Til’s argument. See Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 4th ed. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2008).

2. Gary DeMar, Last Days Madness: Obsession of the Modern Church, rev. ed. (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2019), 221.

3. Gary DeMar and Kim Burgess, The Hope of Israel and the Nations (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2023), 6.

4. Gary DeMar, Myths, Lies & Half Truths (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision), 248.

5. DeMar, Myths, Lies & Half Truths, 251.

6. DeMar, Myths, Lies & Half Truths, 252.

7. DeMar and Burgess, The Hope of Israel and the Nations, 7.

8. DeMar and Burgess, The Hope of Israel and the Nations, 6.

9. DeMar, Myths, Lies & Half Truths, 251.

10. Cited in P. Andrew Sandlin, "Gary DeMar's Heretical Eschatology: What Did I Know, and When Did I Know It?," CultureChange (blog), accessed March 28, 2026, https://pandrewsandlin.substack.com/p/gary-demars-heretical-eschatology.

11. DeMar, Myths, Lies & Half Truths, 252.

12. DeMar, Myths, Lies & Half Truths, 252-253.

13. DeMar and Burgess, The Hope of Israel and the Nations, 6.

14. DeMar and Burgess, The Hope of Israel and the Nations, 7.

15. DeMar, Myths, Lies & Half Truths, 253.

16. DeMar and Burgess, The Hope of Israel and the Nations, 6.

17. DeMar, Last Days Madness, 221.

18. Anthony A. Hoekema, quoted in DeMar, Last Days Madness, 221-222.

19. DeMar, Last Days Madness, 222.

20. DeMar, Last Days Madness, 222.

21. DeMar, Last Days Madness, 223.

22. DeMar, Last Days Madness, 223.

23. The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (AD 381).