Yes, Gary DeMar is a Full Preterist
I have walked through this material before, but we need to revisit it because Gary DeMar has once again publicly denied what his own teaching clearly establishes. His latest episode (released 11/17/2025) is yet another example of this pattern.
During the discussion, Eric asks him directly:
Eric: “Wait, Gary, are you saying you’re not a full preterist?”
Gary: “I’m never... of course I’m not a full preterist.”
Eric: “Wait a minute.”
Gary: “Obviously.”
Eric: “But I’ve read on the Internet that you’re a full preterist.”
Gary: “Yeah, I know. Their definition of a full preterist is somebody who believes that dead bodies are gonna be resurrected, the atoms are gonna all come together, create a new body, become a spiritual body. If you don’t believe that, then you’re a full preterist. And I saw one guy online, in fact, I got a book, it says full preterists deny the resurrection. Well, they don’t. I mean, they just believe you get a new body at the time you die. And I know that sounds horrible.”
Eric: “You’re rocking my world here.”
Gary: “Yeah.”
Eric: “You’re saying people on the Internet are wrong about some things?”
Gary: “(laughs)”
This exchange is not merely surprising. It is a masterclass in evasion.
What is Full Preterism?
Michael Sullivan, who runs fullpreterism.com, defines the position this way:
Full Preterism is the belief that the Bible teaches the Second Coming, judgment, and resurrection of the living and the dead took place at the end of the Old Covenant age in the events surrounding the fall of Jerusalem and her Temple in AD 70.
And I can tell you as someone who was a full preterist for seven years: this definition is basic, foundational, and completely accurate. It is full-preterism 101. That is the standard definition we all affirmed, and it is exactly what gave rise to the now-famous three questions that were put to Gary in the public letter:
Do you believe in a future bodily, glorious return of Christ?
Do you believe in a future physical, general resurrection of the dead?
Do you believe history will end with the Final Judgment of all men?
These questions exist for one reason: they cut to the heart of whether someone is or is not a full preterist.
And by Gary’s own teaching, he answers each of them in the way a full preterist answers them.
First Line of Evidence: Gary’s Own Doctrines Are Full Preterist
1. He denies a future bodily return of Christ.
He claims that Christ “came back” in AD 70. When asked what Scriptures he would use to prove a future bodily return of Christ, he cites none. In fact, he questions the validity of the term “Second Coming,” even though Hebrews explicitly speaks of Christ appearing “a second time” (Heb. 9:28).
In his book with Kim Burgess, which we will examine more closely in a moment, Gary states that the Nicene Creed projected the fulfillment of the “coming of the Lord” as a future event, but then insists that “exegetically, this can’t be the case.”1
2. He denies a future physical, general resurrection of the dead.
According to Gary, the “general resurrection” occurred in AD 70 when the souls of all the dead were raised out of Sheol/Hades, a subterranean holding chamber. The wicked were cast into the lake of fire; the righteous were admitted to heaven. After AD 70, the soul of every believer receives their “spiritual body” instantly at death. The earthly body decomposes into the ground and is irrelevant.2
This is full preterist “resurrection” doctrine word for word, which in reality is no resurrection at all.
3. He denies a final end of history with a universal day of judgment.
As Kim Burgess and Gary DeMar explain:
Hebrews 9:27 stated that it is appointed for men once to die and after this, with the personal event of physical/biological death, comes this eternal judgment. This judgment is not delayed until the end of time. No, this judgment comes at the moment of physical death. This means… all of us are quite literally but one final breath and one final heartbeat away from ‘the end of the age’ as far as everyone is concerned, and then comes the judgment.3
Again, these are the exact positions that define full preterism.
By his own teaching, Gary is a full preterist.
Second Line of Evidence: Gary and Kim Burgess Explicitly Call Their Position Full Preterism
After recording twenty-four podcast episodes with Kim Burgess called Covenant Hermeneutics and Biblical Eschatology, American Vision published the cleaned-up transcripts as The Hope of Israel and the Nations: New Testament Eschatology Accomplished and Applied.
The title alone signals the entire project: “New Testament Eschatology Accomplished.”
But the internal claims are even more revealing. They write:
The specific history that the Scriptures have in mind when it comes to the subject of Biblical eschatology is the redemptive history of Old Testament Israel.4
And:
This eschaton of OT Israel occurred in the years AD 30 to 70... through the death, resurrection, ascension... and, yes, the parousia of Jesus Christ.5
Then they anticipate the charge of full preterism, because they know exactly how this sounds. Here is their attempt to explain it:
We affirm a position on preterism that seeks to do full and consistent justice to the eschaton of Israel’s redemptive history in the period of AD 30 to 70... for this reason I coined the label ‘consistent preterism’... so, yes, this newer perspective also belongs in the camp generally referred to as ‘full preterism.’ But it falls short of the error of hyper preterism while not compromising on the consistency factor by sliding off into an arbitrary form of partial preterism in order to try to save face before the ecclesial powers of the afore-mentioned historic creeds, confessions of faith, and catechisms of the Church.6
Notice the key admission:
“This newer perspective also belongs in the camp generally referred to as full preterism.”
They know exactly what they are doing. And they openly reject the eschatology of the “historic creeds, confessions of faith, and catechisms of the church.” What is that eschatology?
A future bodily return of Christ.
A future bodily resurrection of all.
A final judgment ending human history.
If they did not reject these doctrines, there would be no need to complain about the creeds and confessions.
Their attempt to distinguish themselves from hyper-preterism is another faulty word game they play. Historically, it was the hyper-preterist movement that began redefining terms like “full,” “consistent,” “covenant,” and “hyper” in order to distance their system from the fringe “Israel-only” preterists; a group that denied the relevance of Scripture to anyone outside first-century Israel. In other words, the terminology shift was never about clarifying doctrine. It was a marketing move within the full-preterist world, designed to separate the more mainstream full-preterists from the even more extreme varieties who dismissed the Church, the nations, and the ongoing relevance of biblical revelation.
But the theological substance remained the same: the Second Coming is past, the general “resurrection” is past, and the general judgment is past. Those are the core denials that historically defined hyper-preterism. DeMar and Burgess hold all three. So when they say, “We are not hyper-preterists,” all they are doing is borrowing the internal vocabulary created by full-preterists to make their position seem less radical. It is an in-house rebranding strategy, not a genuine doctrinal difference. Changing the label does not change the content — and the content is unmistakably hyper-preterist.7
The Irony
In the same episode, Gary laments that young Christians today have not lived through the dispensational chaos of the 1960s and 70s and are repeating old errors because they “haven’t done their homework.”
The irony is breathtaking.
He denies every major tenet of the church’s historic eschatology.
He affirms the central doctrines of full preterism.
He publishes a book about “New Testament Eschatology Accomplished,” explicitly calling his view “full preterism.”
By every doctrinal marker and by his own published material, Gary is a full preterist. Yet he now insists he is not, even though his own book says otherwise.
This is not some Internet myth cooked up by confused critics. It is what his own teaching openly proclaims. At this point, Gary either understands exactly what he’s saying and refuses to admit it, or he is as uninformed about his own theology as those he mocks.
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), 7.
Gary DeMar, “The Resurrection of the Dead,” American Vision, November 5, 2025, accessed November 17, 2025, https://americanvision.org/posts/the-resurrection-of-the-dead/; see also Jason L. Bradfield, “Gary DeMar Denies the Resurrection of the Body,” Reformation Blog, March 22, 2023, accessed November 17, 2025, https://www.reformation.blog/p/gary-demar-denies-the-resurrection.
Kim Burgess and Gary DeMar, The Hope of Israel and the Nations: New Testament Eschatology Accomplished and Applied, vol. 1 (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2024), 267; see also Jason L. Bradfield, “Once to Die, Then the Spin,” Reformation Blog, accessed November 17, 2025, https://www.reformation.blog/p/once-to-die-then-the-spin.
Kim Burgess and Gary DeMar, The Hope of Israel and the Nations: New Testament Eschatology Accomplished and Applied, vol. 1 (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2024), xv.
Ibid., xvii.
Ibid., xvii-xviii.
Jason L. Bradfield, “Hyper-Preterism IS Full Preterism,” Reformation Blog, May 21, 2025, accessed November 17, 2025, https://www.reformation.blog/p/hyper-preterism-is-full-preterism.