In 2006, Vinnie Sirois hosted The Basics of Preterism: Why We Believe conference in Bristol, Connecticut. It was essentially a Reign of Christ Ministries conference (Sam Frost, Mike Grace, and myself) with Ed Stevens and Erick Blore thrown in.
I was assigned the task of addressing Acts 1:6-11. Dr. Keith Mathison released his paper Acts 1:9–11 and the Hyper-Preterism Debate in 2004, so I decided to interact with that paper in my lecture. It was the first lecture I had ever delivered, and you can tell.
I won’t bore you with the hour-long lecture. I did, however, want to share a seven-minute clip. Before explaining how I interpreted Acts 1:9-11, I made the case that Dr. Mathison’s pre-commitment to the creeds would never allow him to analyze texts like Acts 1:9-11 objectively and consistently with the rest of Scripture. I also argued that his presuppositions have made the study of eschatology impossible.
Gary DeMar wants you to believe that his critics don’t understand him. He wants you to think that we never do the difficult work of exegesis and are just mindless, creed-worshipping drones. We have never thought through these issues. Recently, on Facebook, he prefaced an article on resurrection with these words:
If more people would do some research instead of being “theological parrots,” they wouldn’t be so quick to display their arrogance and ignorance.
Well, take a listen for yourself. That is me arguing Gary’s position 17 years ago in defense of hyper-preterism. If we applied a little deep fake magic to this video, you would be convinced that it was Gary DeMar speaking at the Bristol conference in 2006.
DeMar is not saying anything new at all. His rant, in the name of preterism, against Reformed men and the creeds is nothing new. His redefinition of the resurrection of the dead as some sort of first-century, old-to-new covenant transition of a metaphorical body is nothing new either. The late hyper-preterist Max King published that view in 1987.
Since DeMar has blocked Sam Frost, myself, and others who could speak to his parroting of others, one has to wonder who is truly displaying “their arrogance and ignorance.”
Let’s suppose DeMar is ignorant of Max King and lectures delivered in Bristol 17 years ago…that’s certainly possible. It’s highly likely, given that he admits to not studying these issues in the past. I imagine he would want us to grant him a little grace and that he would make the case that it is just a coincidence that two men reached the same conclusion through research independently of one another. It’s too bad he won’t grant that for others and instead assumes we are just a bunch of “theological parrots” who worship creeds.
Who Is Parroting Whom?