I am currently undertaking the lengthy process of scanning an original 1614 edition of Luis de Alcázar’s Vestigatio arcani sensus in Apocalypsi (An Investigation into the Hidden Meaning of the Apocalypse), his approximately 1,100-page folio commentary on Revelation.

My ultimate goal is to translate this monumental work into English. However, the first and perhaps most important task is to create an exceptionally high-quality digital copy of the entire book. I am scanning the pages into high-resolution TIFF files, aiming for substantially better image quality than the versions currently available through Google Books and other digital archives.

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A Biblical Case Against Political Uniformity The world is populated by enduring peoples possessing their own cultures, histories, languages, religions, territories and collective identities. These distinctions are not temporary defects in the human condition that will disap…

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The Objection: Did the Gentiles trample the city of Jerusalem for 42 months?

Recently, a friend of mine challenged me on my preterist reading of Revelation 11:2. The objection is that although the First Jewish War lasted roughly 42 months — Spring of AD 67 to the end of September AD 70 — the Roman troops were never inside the city until sometime in the last six months. This is a significant objection because Revelation 11:2 closely parallels Luke 21:24.

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The Sign of His Coming By Hugo Grotius A Preterist Commentary on the Mount Olivet Discourse with Commentary by Dr. Kenneth L. Gentry and Jay Rogers Imagine a teenage prodigy who becomes one of Europe’s greatest legal minds…

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How have Christians understood Matthew 24 throughout history?

From the early church to modern evangelicalism, interpretations have shifted dramatically — especially around one controversial phrase:

“This generation will not pass away until all these things take place.” (Matthew 24:34)

This article traces the development of the four major interpretive frameworks and explains how this single verse became the dividing line between them.

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An often misunderstood aspect of the postmillennial worldview is God’s plan for ethnic Israel, the modern day Jews. According to some dispensationalists, the postmillennial view of the kingdom of God must be incredibly anti-Jewish, since it denies a literal one-thousan…

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The date of Christmas was not determined by Church Fathers by copying the date of a pagan Roman winter solstice festival. Instead, the date was calculated from the Jewish calendar using the date of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, September 22nd, 6 BC, when Gabriel appeared to Zecharias in the Temple according to Luke 1:5. The conception of John occurred “immediately after that” when Zecharias returned home to Elizabeth to the hill country of Judea, by calculation on September 24th, 6 BC.

The conception of Jesus was calculated to have occurred when Elizabeth was “in her sixth month” (Luke 1:26,36) on March 25th, 5 BC, which was also the first day of Passover in that year. John’s birth was June 24th, 5 BC, followed by Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem on December 25th, which was also the first day of Hanukkah, or the Festival of Lights, in that year. The Church Father, Hippolytus of Rome, in his work Chronicon, saw that each date had allegorical significance.

So why is Christmas celebrated on December 25th?

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The following is from an email exchange I had with Jay Dickens who is an anti-Trinitarian “patertheist.” That is, he and his “church” believe that God is One – the Father – and Jesus as a mere man was an…

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Does Daniel 12:2,3,12 refer to the General Resurrection and the Final Judgment?

While the allusion to Daniel 12:1 in Matthew 24:21,22 strongly points to a fulfillment by AD 70, the next two verses in Daniel 12:2,3 seem to refer to the General Resurrection, the Last Judgment and the Everlasting Kingdom. In fact, Daniel 12:2,3 is one of the most frequently used proof texts for these eschatological events. This is certainly one of the most difficult passages in Daniel to interpret from a preterist perspective.

Does Daniel 12:1 speak of events in the first century only to jump thousands of years in the future to speak of events at the end of human history in Daniel 12:2,3?

If we look at how Daniel uses parallelism throughout the chapter, it becomes apparent that the purpose is not to point to a General Resurrection, but to say that the prophecy would be fulfilled long after Daniel had died in the “end of days.”

In short, the passage shows that Daniel and the Jews of that era certainly believed in General Resurrection and a Final Judgment, and the language does refer to these two great events that are yet in our future. But the allusion to a final Resurrection and Judgment is used to delineate the “wise” from the “wicked” – between those who would “understand” the prophecy and receive their inheritance of everlasting life – and those who would not understand and suffer “everlasting contempt” at the Final Judgment. The confusing portion from a preterist viewpoint is the elaboration on what will happen “at that time,” which then speaks of the dead awakening.

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Although tradition does not rule our interpretation, it does guide it. If upon reading a particular passage you have come up with an interpretation that has escaped the notice of every other Christian for two thousand years, or has been championed by universally recognized heretics, chances are pretty good that you had better abandon your interpretation (R.C. Sproul, The Agony of Deceit, 34-35).

What is the difference?

Scripture alone, sola Scriptura, is not the same as Scripture only, solo Scriptura.¹ To put it in other terms, to say that Scripture alone is the only rule of faith and practice – or as the Westminster Catechism says, “is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him” – is quite different than to say that only Scripture is the guide to all truth.

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