Gary DeMar vs. Gary DeMar on "The End of the Age"

For over thirty years, Gary DeMar has been one of the most recognizable names in Reformed eschatology. From the publication of Last Days Madness in the early 1990s through his debates with Tommy Ice and Dr. Michael Brown, DeMar built his reputation on a single, clear thesis about Matthew 24:3: the disciples’ question about “the end of the age” was a question about the end of the Old Covenant, and that end came in AD 70 with the destruction of the temple. It was a clean argument, and DeMar made it with confidence for decades.

Then he published The Hope of Israel and the Nations with Kim Burgess, and called his own position a “horrendous error.”

The reversal is not a minor refinement. It is a wholesale abandonment of the interpretive framework that defined DeMar’s career, and it contradicts not only his own published writings but the books he published and sold through American Vision for years.

In Last Days Madness, DeMar wrote plainly:

The “end of the age” refers to the end of the Old Covenant redemptive system with its attendant sacrifices and rituals. These were designed to be temporary symbols of the coming atoning work of Christ. The “end of the age” refers to the termination of the exclusive Jewish entitlement to the covenant promises and the inclusion of the Gentiles into the blessings of the covenant and the privileges of the gospel and kingdom (Matt. 21:41, 43; 22:10). “End of the age” is a covenantal phrase.¹

The language admits of no ambiguity. The “end of the age” is the end of the Old Covenant. Period. In Wars and Rumors of Wars, he reinforced the point, tying the “end of the age” to “the last days of the Old Covenant world that were passing away.”²

As recently as March 2022, in an article titled “The End of the Age (Part One)” on the American Vision website, DeMar wrote:

In my debate with Dr. Michael Brown on the fulfillment of Matthew 24, he spent considerable time dismissing the argument that the “end of the age” (v. 3) referred to the end of the old covenant system of sacrifices, cleansings, food regulations, and priestly oversight. He implied that the “end of the age” was yet in the future. What “age” or “period of time” was about to come to an end when Jesus’ disciples asked about ‘the end of the age’ in Matthew 24:3? The end of the old covenant age was on the horizon with the ministry of Jesus.

And further in the same article:

The New Testament church was in a transition phase (AD 30-70) between the passing away of the old covenant age and the new covenant age. With the end of the temple, its sacrificial system, and its earthly priests, the old covenant came to an abrupt and consummating end.

DeMar even approvingly quoted Joel McDurmon’s summary of the position, from Jesus v. Jerusalem (an American Vision publication): “This, of course, is exactly why Jesus had tied ‘the end of the age’ to His prophecy of the destruction of the Temple.” In a companion podcast titled “The End of What Age?” recorded that same year, DeMar pushed back directly against Dr. Brown’s suggestion that “the end of the age” might extend beyond AD 70, insisting that the disciples’ question about the temple, the sign, and the end of the age referred to “the end of the Old Covenant redemptive system and nothing else.”

“And nothing else.” Those are his words, published on his website, in 2022.

Now open The Hope of Israel and the Nations, Volume 2, published in 2024. On page 211, Burgess (with DeMar’s endorsement as co-author) writes:

I think the reason for the fatal mistake here - and, of course, the hyper preterists are all going to come screaming at me for saying this - is because they equate the “covenants” and the “ages” as if “this age” is absolutely nothing more and nothing less than the Old Covenant order, such that when the Old Covenant order ceases to exist - and we all agree that it ceased to exist in AD 70 - then “this age” is done and gone forever. This is a horrendous error.³

A “horrendous error.” The error of equating covenants and ages. The error of treating “this age” as “absolutely nothing more and nothing less than the Old Covenant order.” This is precisely what Gary DeMar taught for over thirty years. This is the argument of Last Days Madness. This is the argument of Wars and Rumors of Wars. This is the argument DeMar made against Tommy Ice. This is the argument DeMar made against Michael Brown. And now it is a “horrendous error.”

The new position is laid out across pages 239-275 of Volume 2. Burgess and DeMar now distinguish sharply between “covenants” and “ages,” arguing they are not synonymous. Covenants refer to the transition from Moses to Christ (Old Covenant to New Covenant), which was completed in AD 70. But “ages” refer to the transition from Adam to Christ (the fallen Adamic world order to the new creation), and this transition, they argue, is still underway today.

On page 241:

Is it right to speak of “the Old Covenant age” and “the New Covenant age” per se as though “covenants” and “ages” are simply interchangeable and synonymous terms? I’m here to say, no, I don’t think so.

On page 245:

Moses is not the source of any “age.” No “age” is said to begin with Moses. The age of sin, condemnation, and death began with Adam.

On page 250:

“This age” in the NT is not simply “the Old Covenant age” as we are being told by all the AD-70 full-stop preterists. It is rather this age/this world-order in fallen Adam.

Burgess coins the terms “micro-eschatology” (the transition from Moses to Christ, completed in AD 70) and “macro-eschatology” (the transition from Adam to Christ, still ongoing) to describe this new framework (p. 272). The “micro” piece is done. The “macro” piece stretches forward indefinitely into the future, as “the leaven of the Kingdom” gradually permeates the fallen Adamic world order until the “new heaven and new earth” is fully realized (pp. 261-262).

There are several problems with this, and they compound quickly.

The first is historical dishonesty. DeMar does not say, “I used to equate covenants and ages, and I was wrong.” He attributes the position to “the AD-70 full-stop preterists” and calls it their “fatal mistake” and “horrendous error.” But it was his own published position for three decades. The people who equated covenants and ages most publicly in the Reformed world were not fringe hyper-preterists. They were Gary DeMar, Joel McDurmon, Douglas Wilson, David Chilton, and James B. Jordan. When Douglas Wilson wrote in And It Came to Pass that “Christ and His first-century followers appeared at the end of an age - the age of Judaic Temple worship, the aeon of the shadows,” he was equating the age with the Old Covenant. When Joel McDurmon wrote in Jesus v. Jerusalem that “the end of the age” pertained “obviously to the Old and New Covenant administrations,” he was doing the same. When David Chilton wrote in Paradise Restored that the destruction of the temple would “signal the end of the age, and the coming of an entirely new era in world history,” he was doing the same. DeMar sold these books. He endorsed them. He quoted them approvingly. And now the position they articulate is a “horrendous error” that he attributes to someone else.

The second problem is that the new framework is internally incoherent. On page 251 of Volume 2, Burgess and DeMar write:

To be sure, this age of sin and death in fallen Adam met its definitive end in AD 70, and it has been on its way out ever since, as we will see, but it continues down to this day in the world.

The word “definitive” means conclusive, decisive, final. An age that has “met its definitive end” cannot also be continuing. If it is still continuing, it has not definitively ended. If it has definitively ended, it is not continuing. This is not a theological nuance. It is a logical contradiction.

The third problem is that the book never addresses the obvious implications of this framework for Matthew 24:3, the very text on which DeMar built his career. In Episode 1, Burgess introduces the two-transitions framework and builds it entirely from Pauline texts: Ephesians 2:2, Galatians 1:4, 1 Corinthians 3:18-19, and Romans 5:12-19. He declares that “‘Age,’ as Paul uses the term... is an Adamic term” and lays out two distinct transitions:

It is very important to take note that there are TWO transitions going on in the New Testament eschaton. Not just (1) a transition in OT Israel from Moses and the Old Covenant order to Christ and the New Covenant order, but also, and more foundational than this because of this Covenant transition, (2) the transition of ‘ages’ from Adam to Christ. The first (covenantal order) transition was completed in AD 70. The second (age) transition is still underway; it is still being worked out; it is still being applied to this very day in world history.⁴

But the book then treats the Olivet Discourse as fulfilled in AD 70 and never circles back to ask the question this framework forces: if “this age” is the Adamic world order and not the Old Covenant, then what did the disciples mean when they asked Jesus about “the end of the age” (sunteleia tou aionos) in Matthew 24:3?

If Burgess is right that aion is “an Adamic term,” then the disciples were asking about the consummation of the Adamic world order, which DeMar and Burgess say is still underway. If the Adamic age has not ended, then “the end of the age” has not arrived, and Matthew 24 cannot be fully past. That undermines the preterist reading DeMar spent thirty years defending.

The only alternative is to say the disciples were asking about the end of the Old Covenant, which is what DeMar taught for three decades. But then “the end of the age” in Matthew 24:3 does equate covenant and age in the very text where the equation matters most. And that is the position the book calls a “horrendous error.”

The book never resolves this. For a work that claims to have identified a “fatal error” in how other preterists read the ages, the silence on the text that made DeMar’s name is remarkable.

The fourth problem is that the micro/macro distinction, while touching on a real theological category, stretches it beyond anything Scripture teaches. Confessional Reformed theology recognizes that the Old Covenant has passed away (Hebrews 8:13) while the full consummation remains future. Believers have been definitively transferred from Adam to Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17; Colossians 1:13), yet they still live in a fallen world where sin and death remain present realities, not because they remain under Adam’s headship, but because the bodily resurrection, the return of Christ, and the final judgment have not yet occurred.

But the New Testament presents all of this as one unified redemptive plan with inauguration and consummation, not as two independent tracks on different timelines. DeMar and Burgess require something the text never provides: a way to assign the resurrection, the parousia, and the judgment to “micro-eschatology” (fulfilled in AD 70), while placing the Adam-to-Christ transition under “macro-eschatology” (still ongoing). No New Testament author organizes eschatology this way. The Westminster Confession explicitly places the resurrection and the final judgment at the last day (WCF 32.2; 33.1), not in a past covenantal crisis. And the Confession’s doctrine of the covenant of grace does not divide redemptive history into separate tracks with different fulfillments, but confesses “one and the same” covenant of grace under various administrations (WCF 7.6). All of God’s saving promises unfold within a single covenantal framework and move toward one consummation, not multiple independent eschatological timelines.

Paul himself refuses to cooperate with this system. In 1 Corinthians 15:22-26, he presents a single sequence: Christ the firstfruits, then those who belong to him at his coming, then the end, then the destruction of death. One movement. One timeline. In verse 45, Paul grounds this entire sequence in the Adam/Christ typology: “The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” The resurrection and the Adam-to-Christ transition are not separate events unfolding on different schedules. They belong to the same unified redemptive movement. You cannot claim that 1 Corinthians 15 was fulfilled in AD 70 while also claiming that the Adam-to-Christ transition it describes remains incomplete.

Romans 5:12-21 reinforces the point. Paul weaves the law into the Adam-to-Christ narrative as an episode within it, not as a separate track alongside it. “The law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20 ESV). The law entered the existing Adamic situation and intensified it. It was part of the larger story of sin overcome by grace, not an independent redemptive timeline. DeMar and Burgess require the law and its covenantal administration to be detachable from the Adamic order so they can assign them to different eschatological categories. Paul does not permit this. He binds them together within a single argument resolved by the one act of Christ.

The deeper issue is that DeMar and Burgess are not preserving the “already/not yet” structure of the Reformed confessions but replacing it. In confessional theology, believers are already in Christ, already justified, already adopted. What remains is the consummation of what has been secured: the resurrection of the body, the final destruction of death, and the visible return of Christ. DeMar and Burgess relocate these realities into the past and substitute a different future: the gradual transformation of the world order through the spread of the kingdom. While Reformed theology affirms the historical advance of Christ’s kingdom, it does not identify that gradual transformation as the content of the church’s future hope. The Confession locates the “not yet” in the bodily return of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the final judgment. The question is not whether the kingdom grows, but whether that growth replaces the consummation or leads to it. The Confession teaches the latter.

The fifth problem is that DeMar has effectively conceded the debate to his former opponents. Tommy Ice argued for years that “the end of the age” was not simply the end of the Old Covenant but pointed to a broader, worldwide consummation still in the future. DeMar debated him repeatedly. Michael Brown made the same argument in their exchange on Matthew 24. DeMar pushed back hard, insisting in 2022 that “the end of the age” referred to “the end of the Old Covenant redemptive system and nothing else.” Now, in The Hope of Israel and the Nations, DeMar agrees that “this age” extends far beyond the Old Covenant and that its consummation remains in the future. He has arrived, by a different route, at a destination remarkably close to the one his opponents were pointing to all along. DeMar spent decades arguing that “the end of the age” was a past event. He now teaches that the age itself has not ended.

None of this is to suggest that theological positions should never change. They should, when the evidence demands it. But when a position changes this dramatically, the honest course is to acknowledge the change, explain the reasons for it, and reckon with the fact that you spent thirty years teaching something you now consider a “horrendous error.” What you do not do is quietly reverse course and attribute your former position to your opponents as if you never held it yourself. That is not theological development. It is revisionism.

The readers who bought Last Days Madness and Wars and Rumors of Wars deserve to know that the author now considers their central interpretive framework a “horrendous error.” The people who watched DeMar debate Tommy Ice and Michael Brown deserve to know he has quietly moved toward their position. And anyone evaluating The Hope of Israel and the Nations deserves to know that the distinction between “covenants” and “ages” on which the entire second volume pivots did not exist in DeMar’s published work until this book, and that it contradicts everything he wrote before it.

And while we are here, let us dispense with the recurring complaint that the open letter signers need not be answered because they disagree with one another in some areas. Two dozen theologians not agreeing on every jot and tittle is to be expected. No one finds that remarkable. What is remarkable is a single author contradicting himself, across his own published body of work, on the very framework he insists his critics must read and address.

1. Gary DeMar, Last Days Madness: Obsession of the Modern Church, 4th rev. ed. (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2019), 69-70.

2. Gary DeMar, Wars and Rumors of Wars: What Jesus Really Said About the End of the Age, Earthquakes, A Great Tribulation, Signs in the Heavens, and His Coming, 2nd updated ed. (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2023), 39.

3. Kim Burgess and Gary DeMar, The Hope of Israel and the Nations: New Testament Eschatology Accomplished and Applied, vol. 2 (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2024), 211.

4. Burgess and DeMar, Hope of Israel, vol. 1, 5-6.