Who Are the Real Last Days Scoffers?

February 6, 2026·20 min·2 clips

Gary DeMar argues that young Bible prophecy popularizers on Facebook don't know what they're talking about.

DeMar opens by criticizing Facebook commentators who spread dispensational prophecy views without serious study, calling them 'young popularizers' repeating what they hear from 'prophecy pundits.' He notes that serious critics of dispensationalism are never given a hearing by its advocates. He reveals that he personally contacted Tim LaHaye requesting a debate, and LaHaye declined because he did not want to give DeMar a platform, which DeMar interprets as an inability to defend the system. DeMar describes a past radio program called 'Gary DeMar Under Fire' where he answered listener questions for three evenings, suggesting the preterist position holds up under interrogation. He then reads 2 Peter 3:1-4, which warns of 'last days mockers' who ask 'where is the promise of his coming?' DeMar argues these scoffers were first-century people, not modern critics of prophecy teachers. He establishes this by cross-referencing 1 Peter 4:7 ('the end of all things is at hand'), 1 Peter 1:3-5 ('salvation ready to be revealed in the last time'), 1 Peter 1:20 ('appeared in these last times for your sake'), and Hebrews 1:1-2 ('in these last days has spoken to us in his Son'). He argues that 'last days' in all these passages refers to the period in which the apostles and their audiences lived. DeMar then contends that Peter's letter was written in the early 60s AD, when the Jerusalem temple still stood in refurbished grandeur. The Judaizers — whom John calls 'antichrists' — would have used the temple's continued existence to mock Jesus's prediction that not one stone would be left on another. This, DeMar argues, is exactly the scoffing Peter was addressing. He draws a parallel to 2 Chronicles 36 where Israel mocked the prophets before the Babylonian captivity, noting that God's judgment came swiftly after. Similarly, within about 40 years of the crucifixion, the Romans destroyed the temple — vindicating Jesus's prediction. DeMar argues that calling modern preterists 'scoffers' for questioning ongoing prophetic speculation gets the history backwards: the true scoffers were the first-century Jews who doubted Jesus. He then addresses the counter-argument from 2 Peter 3:8 that 'a thousand years is as a day to God,' used to make all time references in prophecy elastic. DeMar rejects this, saying the verse is not a blank check to make 'near' and 'shortly' mean their opposite. He concludes by noting that God gave that generation 40 years of warning before judgment — more than enough time to flee — and that the temple's destruction was both necessary and predicted precisely.

As heard by us

A tight case that the scoffers fit the first-century temple crisis, not a distant end-times scenario.

Gary DeMar reads the warnings about scoffers as part of the first-century run-up to the temple's destruction, keeping Matthew 24 and Peter in the same historical frame.

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Why you'd press play

You want a calm rebuttal to last-days talk built from a few stubborn passages.

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