A Response to John Bevere's 'The King is Coming'

April 10, 2026·23 min·2 clips

Gary DeMar critiques John Bevere's bestseller 'The King is Coming' for tying Jesus's return to a manifesto of personal readiness.

DeMar opens by noting that any book promising insight into when Jesus will return tends to become a bestseller, and that Bevere's The King is Coming, published by Thomas Nelson, is no exception. He says the book starts promisingly by acknowledging the failed 1988 rapture prediction based on Hal Lindsey's 'Israel plus 40 years' formula. DeMar provides context: Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth sold 22-30 million copies in a single volume starting in 1970, while the Left Behind multi-volume series sold approximately 80 million copies and forced Tyndale to build an additional warehouse. He observes that as of 2026, Lindsey's book is 56 years old, meaning most listeners have no memory of how widespread and confident those predictions were. DeMar then notes that Bevere, after acknowledging the 1988 failure, does not use that as an opportunity to question the underlying dispensational framework — he simply adopts it again with updated timing. DeMar identifies several specific claims in Bevere's text that he says are not in the Bible: the church being raptured before, during, or after a seven-year tribulation; Jesus reigning on earth for a thousand years (Revelation 20 does not say Jesus reigns on earth, DeMar contends); and the Antichrist as a future political figure (the 1 John passages use the word to describe first-century people). DeMar makes a personal disclosure: he has had five cancers and five surgeries in the past four years — kidney, prostate, high-grade sarcoma on his left calf (leaving half the calf missing), thyroid, and a lung growth. He uses this to argue that what Scripture consistently calls Christians to prepare for is their own death, not a rapture. He cites Hebrews: 'It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.' DeMar then turns to Bevere's use of Revelation, noting that Bevere quotes Revelation 1:3 including the phrase 'for the time is near,' but does not address what 'near' means in its first-century context. DeMar points out that Revelation 1:1 ('these things must soon take place'), 1:3, 22:6, and 22:10 all use time-imminence language that creates a bookend around the entire book. He also critiques Bevere's translation adding 'to the church' in Revelation 1:3, noting the book was addressed to seven specific historical churches in Asia Minor, not to the universal church. DeMar argues that if 'near' and 'soon' did not mean what they say 2,000 years ago, then 'imminent' cannot carry its plain meaning in modern prophecy books either — the interpretive inconsistency is fatal to the system. He concludes by noting that the same pattern of prophecy-date-setting and failure has repeated from the French Revolution through the First World War to Hal Lindsey, and directs listeners to American Vision for his books on the subject.

As heard by us

A steady rebuttal that turns end-times urgency back toward Scripture and ordinary mortality.

Gary DeMar takes on John Bevere's end-times claims by pushing them back against Scripture, and the focus stays on the argument rather than the book's bestseller sheen.

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Why you'd press play

If prophecy hype is wearing you out, this one brings the argument back to the page.

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