Here is a careful and thorough article has been written by Jason L. Bradfield responding to Gary DeMar’s claims about Acts 1:11 verse – The article is entitled, “Gary DeMar and Acts 1:11: The Art of Not Dealing With the Text”- original source here: https://www.reformation.blog/p/gary-demar-and-acts-111-the-art-of
For years now, Gary DeMar has been pressing the same question to his theological opponents: “Give me your slam dunk verse for the traditional Second Coming.” When Toby Sumter answered with Acts 1:11 during a Cross Politic appearance in 2025, DeMar was ready. He had notes. He had a theory about the Greek phrase hon tropon. What he did not have, however, was an exegesis of Acts 1:9-11.
In a recent podcast, DeMar laid out his case against Acts 1:11 as a proof text for the future, visible, bodily return of Christ. The episode is worth listening to carefully, not for what DeMar says about the passage, but for what he doesn’t say. Because when you strip away the rhetorical scaffolding, you discover that DeMar spends the overwhelming majority of his time talking about texts that are not Acts 1:9-11, and then, almost as an afterthought, offers a brief argument about the Greek phrase hon tropon that does not survive scrutiny. The rest is assumption dressed up as exegesis.
What DeMar Actually Argues
Let me summarize DeMar’s podcast as fairly as I can. His argument unfolds in roughly three stages.
Stage one is a survey of passages that many preterists (orthodox and heretical) already assign to AD 70: Matthew 10:23, Matthew 16:27-28, Matthew 24:30, Matthew 26:64, and others. DeMar walks through each text, noting that “many commentators” believe these refer to the destruction of Jerusalem. He mentions R.T. France, Peter Leithart, Ken Gentry, and others. This section consumes the bulk of the podcast.
Stage two is the pivot. Having established (to his satisfaction) that all these “coming” passages refer to AD 70, DeMar turns to Acts 1:11 and essentially argues: since every other “coming” text we’ve examined refers to AD 70, why should Acts 1:11 be any different? The angels mention clouds and locality, just like Matthew 24. Therefore Acts 1:11 describes the same event.
Stage three is his only real engagement with the text itself: an argument about the Greek phrase hon tropon (”in the same way” or “in like manner”). DeMar notes that this phrase appears elsewhere in the New Testament (Matthew 23:37, Acts 7:28, 2 Timothy 3:8) and is translated simply as “as” in those passages, not “in just the same way.” From this, he concludes that the translations of Acts 1:11 are prejudicially rendered, that hon tropon doesn’t actually require a precise correspondence between the ascension and the return, and therefore Acts 1:11 is “not the slam dunk” people think it is.
That’s the argument. And that’s the problem.
Keith Mathison, in his thorough paper Acts 1:9-11 and the Hyper-Preterism Debate, levels a devastating critique against exactly this kind of argumentation. Writing about the hyper-preterist author William H. Bell, Jr., Mathison observes:
Unfortunately, Bell does not offer any exegesis of Acts 1:9-11. The argument presented in the essay boils down to this: Other biblical references to the Parousia of Christ indicate that it would definitely occur within the first century. Acts 1:11 refers to the same event to which these other passages refer. Therefore, the coming of Christ predicted in Acts 1:11 must have been fulfilled in the first century as well. Most of the paper is devoted to a discussion of texts other than Acts 1:9-11.1
Read that again, and then re-listen to DeMar’s podcast. The structural parallel is almost eerie. DeMar devotes the vast majority of his time to Matthew 10:23, 16:27-28, 24:30, and 26:64, then pivots to Acts 1:11 with the assumption that since those passages point to AD 70, this one must as well. His actual engagement with the grammar, syntax, and context of Acts 1:9-11 is remarkably thin. Mathison identifies the fatal flaw in this method: “The problem with this argument is that only those who are already convinced of the truth of his two premises (i.e. other hyper-preterists) will accept the conclusion of his argument.”2 The same applies to DeMar. If Acts 1:11 is the very text under dispute, you cannot settle its meaning by appealing to your conclusions about other texts. That is circular reasoning. You must deal with what this text says.
I can speak to this with some personal authority, because I once employed this exact strategy, and I did so knowingly. There was a time when I stood in front of an audience at a hyper-preterist conference in Connecticut and delivered a 45-minute lecture on Acts 1:11. I spent roughly 98% of my time talking about other texts, passages that my audience already affirmed as fulfilled in AD 70. I walked them through the Olivet Discourse, the time texts, the “coming of the Son of Man” language scattered across the Gospels. I built momentum. I stacked passage upon passage. And then, at the end, I turned to Acts 1:11 and said, in essence, “Given everything we’ve just seen, why would this text be any different?”
It worked. The audience was persuaded. But I knew, even as I was doing it, that I had not actually exegeted Acts 1:11. I had not dealt with the verbs of sight. I had not reckoned with the spatial language. I had not confronted the force of the angelic declaration in its own context. I had surrounded the text with other texts and hoped that the cumulative weight would do what my exegesis could not. I know why I did it: because I did not have a satisfactory answer for what Acts 1:11 actually says when you let it speak on its own terms. And I see the same dynamic at work in DeMar’s podcast. The structure is identical. The ratio of “other passages” to “actual exegesis of the text in question” is the same. Build the case everywhere else, and then import the conclusion into the one passage that resists it. This is not exegesis. It is deflection.
What the Text Actually Says
If DeMar won’t exegete Acts 1:9-11, let’s do it for him, drawing on the careful work of Keith Mathison.
And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:9-11, ESV)
Notice what Luke is doing. He is piling up verbs of literal, physical sight and spatial movement in a way that cannot be incidental.
Luke connects the ascension account to the preceding conversation with two participles: the aorist eipōn (“after he said”) and the present blepontōn (“while they were looking”). As Mathison notes, citing C.K. Barrett, “The contrast between aorist and present participles is intentional and significant. Jesus has now said all that he has to say to his disciples. The disciples however are still looking at him, and are thus able to vouch for his ascent into heaven.”3 The word blepontōn is a form of the verb blepō, meaning “to see” or “to look at.” Some (Randall Otto, most prominently) have argued that blepō is used here “abstractly” with no direct object, so we cannot say the disciples were actually looking at Jesus. Mathison demolishes this argument by noting that the immediate context supplies the object: the entire ascension event, including Jesus being lifted up, is what the disciples observed. The genitive absolute construction (blepontōn autōn) “is clearly specifying who saw what happened.”4
The verb epērthē (”he was lifted up”) is the aorist passive of epairō, denoting an upward, spatial, bodily movement. Some hyper-preterists have tried to argue that the passive form of this word refers only to an exaltation in “honor and dignity” rather than a physical lifting. Mathison points out that this claim rests on a single parallel (1 Clement 45:8) while ignoring the immediate context, which describes a visible, spatial event witnessed by the apostles.5 The cloud “took him out of their sight.” The verb hypelaben (from hypolambanō) means “to take up,” not “to hide” or “to veil.”6 As Mathison insists, the text does not say the cloud hid Jesus from the moment it appeared; it says the cloud took him from their sight at some point during the ascension. The apostles watched Jesus ascend until the cloud removed him from their visual field.
In verse 10, the verb atenizontes (from atenizō) means “to look intently at” or “to stare at.” As Mathison notes, “in each NT use (all but two of which occur in the Lucan writings) atenizō seems to emphasize the intensity of the look.”7 The apostles are not passively glancing skyward. They are staring with fixed intensity because they are watching something happen. The word poreuomenou (from poreuomai, “to go, proceed, travel”) describes Jesus’ departure as it was happening. It is, as Mathison observes, “normally used in the literal sense of to go, proceed, or travel. It is not used to refer to exaltation in honor, stature, or dignity.”8
Then in verse 11, the angels ask “why do you stand looking (blepontes, from blepō) into heaven?” before delivering their declaration. Mathison highlights several critical features. The words houtos ho Iēsous (“This Jesus”) stress continuity and identity: it is this Jesus, the one who has been physically present with them, who will come.9 The word analēmphtheis (“who was taken up”) is a form of analambanō, meaning “to take up,” and is not a word used in the New Testament to refer to exaltation in honor or dignity; it describes spatial movement.10 The word eleusetai (“will come”) is the future indicative of erchomai, used here opposite a form of poreuomai (“to go”). When erchomai is paired with poreuomai, as Mathison observes, “the likelihood that it is a virtual synonym is even less likely (e.g., Matt. 8:9; John 14:3; 16:7-8).”11
Most critically, the verb etheasasthe (“you saw”) is the aorist indicative of theaomai. This verb, as Mathison notes, “is normally used of literal sight” in the New Testament.12 The two angels explicitly tell the apostles: you saw him go into heaven. Not “you perceived his exaltation.” Not “you understood his glorification.” You saw him go.
Luke uses blepō twice across the passage (vv. 9, 11), adds atenizō for intensified gazing (v. 10), and reserves theaomai for the angels’ climactic declaration (v. 11), all alongside multiple verbs of physical spatial movement (epairō, poreuomai, analambanō, hypolambanō). The entire pericope is an avalanche of visibility and physicality. And the angelic declaration, with its hon tropon, stands at the end of this avalanche as the interpretive conclusion: the return will correspond to the departure.
DeMar engages with none of this. Not the verbs of sight. Not the spatial language. Not the force of theaomai. Only the two words hon tropon, stripped from everything around them.
The Hon Tropon Argument
DeMar’s entire textual argument rests on the claim that hon tropon should be translated loosely as “as” rather than “in the same way” or “in like manner.” Even granting, for the sake of argument, that the phrase by itself carries a range of possible meanings, this does not help DeMar’s case. As Mathison points out, the question is not what hon tropon can mean in isolation. The question is what it means in this context.
Translation is not a mechanical process of assigning one English word to every occurrence of a Greek phrase. Context determines how a word or phrase is rendered. In every other New Testament occurrence of hon tropon, context determines the precise sense. In Matthew 23:37, it means “in the way that” a hen gathers her chicks. In Acts 7:28, it means “in the way that” Moses killed the Egyptian. In 2 Timothy 3:8, it means “in the way that” Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses. The phrase is flexible, but in each case, the surrounding context provides the referent. In Acts 1:11, the referent is a visible, bodily, spatial departure. That is what the sight verbs and spatial movement verbs spread across all three verses describe, culminating in the angels’ own use of blepō and theaomai as they frame their declaration.
DeMar also never addresses the presence of houtōs (“thus,” “in this way”) in this verse. He treats hon tropon in isolation, as though it alone carries the full weight of the comparison. But in Acts 1:11, houtōs and hon tropon work together: “will come thus (houtōs)…in the manner in which (hon tropon) you saw him go.” As Mathison explains, “The construction hon tropon is a compound adverbial phrase corresponding to houtōs. It means ‘in the manner in which’ or ‘just as.’ The use of houtōs together with hon tropon serves to emphasize the point that Jesus will come in the same way that he departed.”13 This houtōs…hon tropon combination creates a double emphasis on correspondence between the manner of departure and the manner of return. This combination does not appear in Matthew 23:37, Acts 7:28, or 2 Timothy 3:8. DeMar’s cross-references, therefore, are not as parallel as he assumes.
Furthermore, the sentence does not end with hon tropon. The angels say, “will come in just the same way (hon tropon) as you have watched (etheasasthe) Him going (poreuomenon) into heaven.” The verb theaomai, as noted, emphasizes physical, eyewitness observation.14 The angels could have said “as He went” or “as He departed.” Instead, they said “as you have watched Him go,” deliberately anchoring the comparison in the visual, physical experience of the eyewitnesses.
Mathison himself concedes that the phrase need not be pressed to mean exact identity: “Based on the way these words are used elsewhere in the New Testament, it is unnecessary to press the words hon tropon to mean ‘exactly the same in every detail.’ No one affirms, for example, that the coming of Christ must also involve his bodily ascension.” Fair enough. But Mathison immediately adds the critical qualifier: “In response to Noe and others, however, it must be insisted that whatever else ‘in like manner’ means, it does not mean in a completely different manner.”15 Even if hon tropon doesn’t demand photographic replication, it still binds the manner of Christ’s return to the manner of his departure. And the manner of his departure is described, over and over again, in terms of visibility and bodily presence. Mathison summarizes this forcefully:
The primary emphasis throughout these verses is on the visible manner of the ascension event. The ascension of Jesus occurred ‘as they were looking on’ (v. 9). As Jesus departed, they were ‘gazing’ intently (v. 10). The two men in white ask the apostles why they are standing there ‘looking into heaven’ (v. 11). And it is explicitly asserted that the apostles ‘saw him go into heaven’ (v. 11). There is little else Luke could have said to describe an event that was objectively visible.16
DeMar’s argument about hon tropon doesn’t help him, because even on his own terms, the text still describes a visible, bodily departure, and the angels still say the return will correspond to that departure.
There is an additional irony in DeMar’s analysis. He points out that Jesus doesn’t gather his people “in the same way” a hen gathers her chicks (Matthew 23:37), and that the man in Acts 7:28 didn’t need to know whether Moses would use “a staff or a dagger.” Fair enough. But in both of those passages, the comparison still means something substantive. In Matthew 23:37, the comparison genuinely communicates Jesus’ protective, gathering impulse. In Acts 7:28, the comparison genuinely communicates the fear that Moses would kill again. If we apply DeMar’s logic consistently, and say that hon tropon in Acts 1:11 merely communicates “sort of like this, but not really,” then what is the comparison actually communicating? If the manner of Christ’s return bears no meaningful resemblance to the manner of his departure, why did the angels mention the departure at all? Why did they draw the comparison? DeMar’s argument, if pressed, empties the angels’ words of any substantive content.
Beyond the hon tropon question, there are enormous features of the text that DeMar’s podcast never addresses. He never discusses the verb atenizō and its emphasis on intense visual observation, the verb theaomai and its consistent use for literal sight, the verb analambanō and the fact that it refers to spatial movement rather than dignitary exaltation, the interplay between erchomai and poreuomai which reinforces that erchomai means “to come” rather than “to proceed,” the reinforcing combination of houtōs with hon tropon, the significance of the genitive absolute blepontōn autōn in verse 9, or the fact that Luke uses entirely different vocabulary when he wants to describe Jesus vanishing (aphantos egeneto, Luke 24:31), suggesting that Acts 1:9-11 is describing something fundamentally different from a disappearance.17 Gary DeMar is not a careless thinker. He is a well-read student of Scripture with decades of experience in eschatological debate. Which makes his handling of Acts 1:11 all the more revealing. The reason he doesn’t spend time in the text is not that he’s unaware of its details. It’s that the details don’t help his case.
The Hope of Israel and the Nations
In 2023 and 2024, DeMar and Kim Burgess published The Hope of Israel and the Nations: New Testament Eschatology Accomplished and Applied in two volumes spanning 24 episodes.18 This is their comprehensive treatment of New Testament eschatology, rooted in what they call a “Covenantal Hermeneutic” governing the transition from Old Covenant to New. The project covers Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 15, 2 Corinthians 3-5, Galatians 3-4, Philippians 3, Hebrews (extensively), 1 and 2 Peter, 1 John, Revelation, and large portions of Acts. It discusses parousia, epiphaneia, and apokalupsis at length. It treats Hebrews 9:28, 2 Thessalonians 2:8, all seven letters to the churches in Revelation 2-3, and Paul’s courtroom declarations in Acts 23, 24, 26, and 28.
Acts 1:9-11 does not appear anywhere in the work.
Given what the authors argue, you can see why. The central thesis of the two volumes is that the transition from Old Covenant to New Covenant is a transition from “flesh” to “Spirit,” from the visible and material to the invisible and internal. The Covenantal Hermeneutic, as they present it, requires that every element of New Covenant eschatological reality, including the parousia of Christ, be understood as a spiritual reality mediated by the Holy Spirit rather than a visible, physical event. In Episode 23, “A Spiritual Kingdom and Presence,” Burgess makes the point explicitly:
With all due respect, I believe that the institutional Church has made a serious mistake by teaching that the parousia of Christ is going to take place in His same physical/material, visible, and bodily form…. The nature of the New Covenant order is in, of, by, and through the Spirit. Therefore, the form or manner of the parousia (presence) of Christ will change with the transition of the covenantal orders. Christ will come, just as He was careful to teach His disciples in John 14 and 16, in the person of the Holy Spirit, not again in the flesh.19
This is the claim that the entire two-volume project is building toward: the “form or manner” of Christ’s presence changes from flesh to Spirit. But Acts 1:11, with its angelic declaration that Jesus will return “in just the same way” (hon tropon) as the disciples watched (etheasasthe) Him go, anchors the form or manner of the return to the form or manner of the departure. The departure was visible, bodily, and spatial. The return, according to the text, will be the same. A hermeneutic that requires the spiritualization of the parousia will inevitably have difficulty with a text that ties the parousia to a visible, physical event by angelic decree. The omission from The Hope of Israel and the Nations is not mysterious. It is predictable.
To be fair, the “Covenantal Hermeneutic” that DeMar and Burgess develop is not without legitimate foundations. Their emphasis on the transition from Old Covenant types and shadows to New Covenant realities reflects genuine biblical theology. No Reformed theologian would deny that the New Covenant order transcends the typological forms of the Old. The New Jerusalem is not the old Jerusalem. The New Covenant temple is not Herod’s temple. The Davidic throne is now in the heavenly places. All true. But DeMar and Burgess take these legitimate contrasts, drawn primarily from 1 Corinthians 15 and 2 Corinthians 3 (natural versus spiritual, earthy versus heavenly, corruptible versus incorruptible, visible versus invisible, temporary versus eternal), and universalize them into an all-consuming principle: everything that belongs to the New Covenant order must, by definition, be invisible, immaterial, and purely spiritual in its form. There can be no visible, bodily, spatial component to any New Covenant eschatological reality, because visibility and materiality belong to the “earthy” Old Covenant order.
This is where the hermeneutic becomes unfalsifiable. If “flesh to Spirit” means that every eschatological category must be spiritualized without remainder, then there is no text that could, even in principle, establish a visible, bodily return. Any such text would simply be reclassified as belonging to the “Old Covenant hermeneutic” and reprocessed through the system. But Acts 1:11 is a New Testament text, spoken after the resurrection, at the moment of the ascension, by angelic beings, to apostolic eyewitnesses. It does not belong to the Old Covenant stoicheia. It cannot be dismissed as Mosaic typology. It stands at the very threshold of the New Covenant era, and it says, in plain, angelically authorized language, that the manner of Christ’s visible departure defines the manner of His return. A hermeneutic that cannot account for this text has a problem. An argument that declines to engage with it on its own terms, whether by deflecting to other passages or by omitting it altogether, does not inspire confidence that the problem has been solved.
Conclusion
Again, DeMar is not a careless thinker. He knows where the exegetical pressure points are. That is precisely what makes the pattern so damning. When he engages Acts 1:11, he isolates hon tropon from its context, ignores the verbs of sight and the spatial language that define the manner of the departure, and imports a conclusion from other passages rather than deriving one from the text at hand. When he and Burgess produce their most comprehensive work on New Testament eschatology, 24 episodes spanning two volumes, they omit the text entirely. Not a passing mention. Not a footnote. Nothing. This is not an oversight. You do not write nearly 800 pages on New Testament eschatology, devote entire episodes to epiphaneia and apokalupsis and parousia, argue explicitly that the Church has erred in confessing a visible return, and then accidentally forget the one passage where two angels, standing on a mountain, tell the eyewitnesses of the ascension exactly how Christ will come back.
You skip that text because you do not have an answer for it.
The Church has confessed for two millennia that “this same Jesus” will return visibly, bodily, in glory. She has confessed this not because she failed to understand the transition from Old Covenant to New, not because she was trapped in some “fleshly” hermeneutic that DeMar and Burgess have finally outgrown, but because the text of Scripture, including Acts 1:11 with its verbs of sight, its spatial language, and its angelic declaration of manner correspondence, gave her no other option.
That confession still stands. I know this avoidance strategy well. I once practiced it from a podium. It is the tell of a man who knows the text is not on his side.
Keith A. Mathison, Acts 1:9-11 and the Hyper-Preterism Debate (Orlando: Ligonier Ministries, 2004), 17. Available at: https://hyperpreterism.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Acts-1_9-11-and-the-Hyper-Preterism-Debate-by-Keith-A.-Mathison.pdf
Mathison, Acts 1:9-11, 50.
Mathison, Acts 1:9-11, 23. Mathison is citing C.K. Barrett, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Vol. 1, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), 81.
Mathison, Acts 1:9-11, 23-24.
Mathison, Acts 1:9-11, 24-26.
Mathison, Acts 1:9-11, 28, 36.
Mathison, Acts 1:9-11, 30. Mathison is citing W.L. Liefeld, “atenizō,” New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, ed. Colin Brown (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), III:520.
Mathison, Acts 1:9-11, 31.
Mathison, Acts 1:9-11, 33.
Mathison, Acts 1:9-11, 33.
Mathison, Acts 1:9-11, 34.
Mathison, Acts 1:9-11, 36.
Mathison, Acts 1:9-11, 35.
Mathison, Acts 1:9-11, 36.
Mathison, Acts 1:9-11, 36.
Mathison, Acts 1:9-11, 37.
Mathison, Acts 1:9-11, 27. On Luke’s use of aphantos egeneto as distinct vocabulary for vanishing.
Kim Burgess with Gary DeMar, The Hope of Israel and the Nations: New Testament Eschatology Accomplished and Applied (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2023).
Burgess with DeMar, Hope of Israel, 2:414.