Clear Water, Shallow Dive: A Response to DeMar
A few days ago, Gary DeMar published a response to my article “The Gospel Preached to the Oikoumene Before the End“ on the American Vision website. The piece is titled “Hopscotching Through the Bible to Muddy the Clear Water.” In it, DeMar assures us he was not going to bother responding at all but had “a lull” in his day. He then tells us no one has commented on my article and that I probably need his name for “traction.”
Having set that gracious tone, he proceeds to not engage with my actual argument. I want to walk through his response carefully, because what he avoids saying is more revealing than what he says.
The Social Media Scoreboard
Before we get to substance, we need to address the elephant in the room: DeMar’s fixation on social media metrics. He opens by noting how many comments my article has (or hasn’t) received, implying that engagement numbers determine whether an argument has merit. This is shallow and childish. The number of likes or comments on a Substack article has exactly zero bearing on whether oikoumene means “the Roman Empire” in Matthew 24:14. Truth is not determined by a popularity contest on social media.
But this is a pattern. DeMar does the same thing with the letter signers. Roughly three years ago, a group of men, including Andrew Sandlin, Ken Gentry, Jeff Durbin, James White, and others, sent DeMar a private letter containing three simple and carefully worded questions about his eschatological views. Instead of answering those questions directly, DeMar and his cohosts took to mocking the signers, counting their social media followers, comparing engagement numbers, and treating the whole thing like a high school popularity contest. He has repeatedly drawn attention to who liked what, who commented where, and how many followers this or that signer has, as if any of that addresses the theological substance of what was asked.
Here is the irony DeMar never seems to grasp: his condescending attitude toward the very people who were asking him legitimate, good-faith questions is a significant part of the reason the letter was sent in the first place. When men who care about you and the ministry you lead come to you privately with straightforward theological questions and your response is to mock them publicly and tally up engagement metrics, you confirm the very concerns that prompted them to write. If DeMar had simply answered the three questions plainly, the letter would have been a footnote. Instead, he turned it into a spectacle, and now he brings the same energy to this exchange: ignore the argument, count the comments, and declare victory.
With that out of the way, let us look at what DeMar actually wrote.
The LXX Numbering: Ignorance Masquerading as a Critique
DeMar opens his substantive response with this:
“The confusion began when he referred to ‘Brento LXX Psalm 95:13’ 14 times. There are only 11 verses in Psalm 95. I was thinking to myself, ‘What is he talking about?’”
He then says he went to BibleHub.com, clicked on “LXX 95,” found only 11 verses, and was baffled.
Let me explain what happened here, because it is embarrassing.
The Septuagint numbers the Psalms differently than the Hebrew Masoretic Text (and therefore differently than most English Bibles). Because the LXX combines Hebrew Psalms 9 and 10 into a single psalm, the numbering is offset by one for most of the Psalter, from Psalm 10 through Psalm 146 in the Hebrew. This is well-documented in every introduction to the Septuagint, every critical apparatus, and every scholarly edition of the Greek Old Testament. It is day-one material for anyone who works with the Greek Bible.
So when I wrote “LXX Psalm 95,” I was using the Septuagint’s own numbering, because I was making an argument about the Septuagint. LXX Psalm 95 is Hebrew/English Psalm 96. Even BibleHub’s own Septuagint page for Psalm 96 marks the verse numbers as “(95:1), (95:2),” and so on, displaying the LXX numbering in parentheses. Blue Letter Bible does the same, explicitly noting “(lxx 95:1).” DeMar went to BibleHub, looked up Psalm 95 in an English-numbered interface, found the English Psalm 95 (”O come, let us sing to the Lord,” which indeed has 11 verses), and concluded that I was confused.
I was not confused. Gary DeMar does not know how the Septuagint numbers its psalms. He apparently encountered this fact for the first time while reading my article, failed to grasp it, and turned his own ignorance into an accusation. And it casts a long shadow over the rest of his response, because if we are going to have a serious conversation about how a Greek-speaking evangelist used a Greek word that pervades the Greek Old Testament, knowing how the Greek Old Testament is numbered would be a reasonable starting point.
But it gets even worse: DeMar has silently edited his article. DeMar rewrote the paragraph to make it look like he knew about the LXX numbering all along and was merely pointing out that “most people” wouldn’t know. He added the link to the Brenton translation, added the note that it’s “Psalm 96 in our English Bibles,” and tried to reframe his confusion as a helpful observation for readers.
But the edit was sloppy. It doesn’t even make sense:
“There are enough Septuagints where Pslam [sic] 95.” - This sentence just... stops. It’s incomplete. Missing a verb and a predicate. “Where Psalm 95” what? Is numbered differently? Has 13 verses? We’ll never know.
“but it would have made any difference” - Missing the word “not.” Should be “but it wouldn’t have made any difference.”
So he silently edited the article to cover his tracks on the LXX numbering embarrassment, but he did it so hastily that he left two garbled sentences behind.
The Psalm 96 Argument: Dismissed, Not Refuted
The core of my original article was not merely about what oikoumene can mean in isolation. It was about where Matthew’s oikoumene comes from, its scriptural DNA. I showed that LXX Psalm 95 (English 96) bundles all five key concepts from Matthew 24:14 into a single literary unit: euangelizomai (proclaim good news), ethnesin (to the nations), basileusen (the Lord reigns / the kingdom), oikoumene (the inhabited world), and erchetai krinai (He comes to judge). The psalm’s narrative arc, proclaim the good news to the nations, the Lord reigns over the oikoumene, then He comes to judge the oikoumene, maps directly onto the structure of Jesus’ statement.
I also showed that Acts 17:31 is a near-verbatim quotation of LXX Psalm 95:13 (krinein ten oikoumenen en dikaiosyne), proving that this psalm was a source text in apostolic preaching.
DeMar’s response to all of this is a single sentence: “The Psalm has its own contextual meaning that the people who first read it understood it.”
That is not an argument. That is the exegetical equivalent of “I don’t want to talk about it.” He does not explain why the five-fold vocabulary overlap should be ignored. He does not address Acts 17:31 as a confirmed quotation. He does not engage with the claim that Matthew’s oikoumene arrives carrying psalmic rather than Caesarean freight. He waves his hand, changes the subject, and apparently hopes no one notices that the central thesis of my article went entirely unanswered.
I notice.
DeMar’s Own Source Contradicts Him
In a footnote, DeMar quotes the abridged Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) at length. Presumably he thought this citation helped his case. Here is what the passage actually says about Matthew 24:14:
“In Mt. 24:14 the use is general; the gospel is for all nations.”
That is my point. Word for word. The TDNT does not classify Matthew 24:14 under the “Roman Empire” sense. It classifies it as “general.” The full TDNT entry by Otto Michel is even more direct: the usage in Matthew 24:14 is “more solemn and liturgical” and “certainly not to be linked here with political imperial style.”
DeMar appears to have cited this passage for the closing line: “The NT never contests the Roman claim that equates the oikoumene with the empire.” But that line is descriptive, not prescriptive. It means the NT writers did not go out of their way to argue against the Roman political conflation of oikoumene with the empire. It does not mean oikoumene means “the Roman Empire” in Matthew 24:14. DeMar’s own chosen reference makes this distinction clearly. He either missed it or hoped no one would check.
I checked.
The DeMar Dilemma: Still Unanswered
In my original article, I identified a contradiction in DeMar’s published work that I called “The DeMar Dilemma.” In his 2007 article “Using the Wrong Text to Make a Point,” the body text argues:
“If Jesus had wanted to convey the idea of ‘the whole wide world,’ He would have to use the Greek word kosmos.”
But footnote 5 of that same article concedes:
“Paul uses kosmos instead of oikoumene. So even if Jesus had used kosmos in Matthew 24:14, a first-century fulfillment was still in view.”
Read those together. The argument says: oikoumene can’t mean the whole world; Jesus would need kosmos for that. The footnote says: but even if He did use kosmos, it wouldn’t matter. The word-choice argument is doing no actual work. It is rhetorical scaffolding that the author himself dismantles in his own footnote, in the same article, on the same page.
DeMar’s response does not address this. Not a word. Not a syllable. He quotes his book Ten Popular Prophecy Myths to show that he has offered nuance elsewhere, but the specific contradiction between the body text and footnote 5 of the 2007 article remains untouched. It remains untouched because it is untouchable. There is no way to reconcile “Jesus would have to use kosmos” with “even if Jesus had used kosmos, it wouldn’t matter” without admitting that the entire oikoumene-versus-kosmos argument was theater.
The Straw Man: “You Must Believe What I Say You Believe”
DeMar writes:
“Given this explanation, Bradfield must believe that 24:14 was fulfilled based on verse 34: ‘This generation will not pass away until all these things take place.’ That’s because verse 14 is before verse 36.”
This is not my position. DeMar is constructing a version of “orthodox preterism,” assigning it to me, and then attacking me for being inconsistent with his framework.
I would argue that Jesus weaves together two horizons throughout the Olivet Discourse: the events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem and the final end of history. These are not sealed off from each other in separate halves of the discourse. They are interwoven from the beginning.
Consider Matthew 24:6: “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.” Jesus explicitly distinguishes the wars and upheavals from “the end.” The Jewish-Roman War is, by definition, a war. If wars are explicitly not the end, then the Jewish-Roman War cannot be the end, unless Jesus carved out an exception He never mentioned. The false prophets, wars, rumors of wars, famines, and earthquakes are explicitly not signs of the end. Jesus says so Himself: “the end is not yet” (v.6) and “all these are but the beginning of birth pangs” (v.8). They are the labor, not the delivery.
The telos of verse 6 and the telos of verse 14 are the same end. When Jesus says in verse 6 that wars and rumors of wars do not signal the end, and then says in verse 14 that the gospel will be preached throughout the whole world “and then the end will come,” He is using the same word (telos) to refer to the same event: the end of history, not the fall of Jerusalem. The gospel going to all nations is a precondition for that terminal end, which is exactly what makes intuitive sense. The end is the final harvest, and the gospel must reach the field before the reaper comes.
This also explains why Jesus keeps warning about false prophets who say “Look, here is the Christ!” or “There he is!” or who claim the Messiah is in the wilderness or in the inner rooms (vv. 23-26). Why the repeated warning? Because when Christ does return, there will be no guessing. “For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man” (v. 27). The parousia will be as unmistakable as lightning across the sky. If someone has to tell you it happened, it hasn’t. That language makes far more sense as a description of the visible, bodily return of Christ at the end of history than as a description of the Roman siege of Jerusalem, in my humble opinion.
General Tribulation vs. the Great Distress
There is also an important distinction running through the discourse between general tribulation, which the church will always face, and the particular “great tribulation” (v. 21) that was the destruction of Jerusalem. The response to each is different. For general tribulation - the wars, famines, earthquakes, persecution, and hatred of verses 4-13 - the call is to endure. “The one who endures to the end will be saved” (v. 13). This is the ordinary posture of the church in a fallen world. "In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). It applies in every generation.
But for the particular distress surrounding Jerusalem’s destruction (vv. 15-22), the call is not to endure but to flee. “Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains” (v. 16). Pray that it doesn’t happen in winter or on the Sabbath. Get out. This is specific, local, and time-bound. It applied to Christians in Judea in AD 66-70. It is not a general principle for all time.
The preterist reading that collapses everything before verse 34 into AD 70 blurs this distinction. But Jesus draws it carefully. The general tribulations are “the beginning of birth pangs,” they are not the end. The specific distress of Jerusalem’s fall is a discrete, datable event within that larger frame.
Against a Mechanical Reading
DeMar’s argument, and the broader preterist treatment of verse 14, reduces to this: since verse 14 appears before verse 34, it must be included in “all these things,” regardless of what verse 14 actually says. That is a mechanical reading that treats the discourse like a linear checklist rather than a prophetic address with interwoven horizons.
Jesus touches on the final horizon well before verse 36. He does it in verse 6 (”the end is not yet”), in verse 14 (”then the end will come”), and in the parousia language of verses 27-31. Verse 36 makes the transition explicit with peri de (”but concerning that day and hour”), but the transition does not spring out of nowhere. Jesus has been pointing toward it all along. I do not believe that the discourse is a flat timeline with a clean break at verse 34. It is a prophetic address in which the near judgment on Jerusalem and the far judgment at the end of history illuminate each other; the former serving as a type and foretaste of the latter.
On this reading, the “why” of Matthew 24:14 needs no special pleading. The gospel must be preached throughout the whole world, and then the end - the real, terminal, no-more-chances end - will come.1
The “Omitted Verses” Charge
DeMar lists several verses I did not include in my article: Acts 2:5, Romans 1:8, Romans 10:18, Colossians 1:23, 1 Timothy 3:16, and Romans 16:25. He asks, “Why doesn’t Bradfield mention these verses?”
The answer is obvious: because my article was about the meaning of oikoumene in Matthew 24:14 and its intertextual background in Psalm 96, not about whether the gospel was widely preached in the first century. I do not dispute that it was. These verses demonstrate first-century gospel proclamation in sweeping, universal-sounding language. Good. That was not the question I was asking.
The question I was asking was: what does oikoumene mean in Matthew 24:14, and what is “the end” that comes after this proclamation?
DeMar treats these as interchangeable questions. They are not. You can affirm that the gospel spread across the Roman world and beyond in the apostolic era while also affirming that Matthew 24:14’s oikoumene carries cosmic-creational rather than imperial-political freight, and that “the end” in view is the end of history. The first is a historical observation. The second and third are exegetical conclusions. Listing verses that prove the first does nothing to settle the second or third. This is like being asked “What color is the car?” and responding by proving the car exists. Nobody denied the car exists.
Conclusion
DeMar’s response is rhetorically aggressive and exegetically empty. He does not engage with the Psalm 96 argument. He does not address the DeMar Dilemma. He cites a TDNT passage that explicitly contradicts his position on the very verse in question. He imposes a framework on my eschatology that I do not hold, then calls me inconsistent with it. He accuses me of omitting verses that are irrelevant to the question I was asking. He opens the whole piece by counting my comments and likes as if truth were determined by social media engagement. And then he reveals that he does not know the LXX numbers its psalms differently from the Hebrew Bible.
DeMar titled his piece “Hopscotching Through the Bible to Muddy the Clear Water.” I will let readers judge for themselves who is hopping, and whose water is muddy.
I realize there are very able men and careful exegetes whom I deeply respect who would take issue with this reading; some in my own denomination. I do not dismiss the standard “partial preterist” view lightly, and I recognize it has serious exegetical support. But I think more work needs to be done within that framework to guard against the gravitational pull toward hyper-preterism. If every use of telos before verse 34 is absorbed into AD 70, the interpretive machinery that produces that conclusion is difficult to stop at the places where orthodox preterists want it to stop. The two-horizons reading, I believe, provides a more stable foundation precisely because it does not require drawing a line that the text itself does not clearly draw.