Dr Paul Allen

 

 

  It’s easy to skip past Jude on your way to Revelation. Who was Jude anyway? Jude’s letter opens with the greeting, “Jude (called Judas in his day), a servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James” (Jude 1). This sounds specific, but it isn’t. The very description that is intended to identify him, “the brother of James,” requires that we know which James he’s talking about. The description “brother of James” is also problematic. The Greek word for ‘brother’ (ἀδελφός, adelphos), like the English slang word ‘bro,’ is ambiguous. Using The ESV English-Greek Reverse Interlinear New Testament, we can make the switch to Greek and look up the word adelphos in A Greek-English Lexicon of The New Testament (BDAG). BDAG tells us that adelphos can be a term of friendship (Phil 3:13), specify membership in an ethnic group (Rom 9:3), and metaphorically reference a “fellow believer” (1 Cor 11:1). Nonetheless, since Jude only mentions one “brother” in his opening, unlike Paul in his letters, James...

  Most Bible study resources describe fallen angels as demons who joined Lucifer in his rebellion against God. But what if the only place in the New Testament that describes angels sinning does not call them demons, has no connection to Lucifer, and has them in jail?  Welcome to the world of 2 Peter and Jude.  For … God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment (2 PET 2:4 ESV).   And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day (JUDE 6 ESV). Second Peter 2:4 and Jude 6 are nearly identical in their description of angels doing time, but some differences help us figure out “what in the spiritual world is going on.” Jude 6 defines what 2 Peter 2:4 means by the angelic sin. These sinning angels “left their proper dwelling.” Second Pe...

  “But Michael the archangel, when contending with the Devil, debating concerning the body of Moses, did not dare to pronounce an irreverent judgment, but he said, “May the Lord reprove you” (JUDE 9,  But doesn’t the Old Testament say that only the Lord was with Moses when he died on Mount Nebo, just outside the promised land of Canaan? “And [the Lord] buried [Moses] in the valley, in the land of Moab … but no one knows the place of his burial to this day” (DEUT 34:6 ESV).  There is no mention of Satan, Michael, or an epic battle. Who (or what) is Jude’s source? New Testament source material usually came from the Old Testament, but not always. Sometimes New Testament writers drew upon non-biblical documents.1 For example, Paul cites the Greek poets Aratus and Cleanthes to support his claim that the God of Israel is responsible for the entire created order (Acts 17:28). Accessing the sources of the first century AD can be challenging. G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson’s Comment...

WHEN THE ODDS ARE AGAINST YOU BUT GOD ISN'T There is a new king in Israel, who does not fear Yahweh. He has married into a family of idolaters. Even now, they are erecting more statues for Baal and pillars for Asherah (1 Kgs 16:31) while the altars of Yahweh lie in ruins. His name is Ahab, and he is worse than all the kings who have come before him—put together. His administration is thoroughly pagan and ruthlessly oppressive. He and his wife Jezebel have begun rounding up and murdering the prophets of Yahweh, who are now hiding out in caves like criminals (1 Kgs 18:4). This is the situation when Elijah the Tishbite steps forward and defies the king, cursing the land with drought (1 Kgs 17:1–7), then disappearing for several years. Meanwhile, there is no rain. Even the king is forced to send his servants to wander the land in search of spring water for his horses and mules (1 Kgs 18:5). Then Yahweh sends Elijah back. The king wants this rabble-rouser (“troubler of Israel”) dead, de...

 

THIS ARTICLE CLEARLY DEMONSTRATES HOW PRESBYTERIANS ARGUE AGAINST ANY FORM OF THE SUPERNATURAL ACTS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT TODAY USING THE HUMAN CATEGORY ARGUMENT TO JUSTIFY THIER POSITION ARTICLE AUTHOR:  R ev . Nicholas T. Batzig  Western society has turned the idea of the miraculous into a mere literary tool—an idiom to capture any extraordinary (i.e., a rare, unexpected, or unlikely) happening. “It was a miracle that we made it on time,” a couple exclaims at a dinner party after getting caught in heavy traffic. “He was a miracle worker,” a woman tells her friend as she explains how her counsellor helped turn her marriage around. “It was a miracle that she made it through,” a man says about his mother’s risky surgery. These are a few common ways that our culture has appropriated the word miracle over the past century. At the very least, this tendency reveals that most people label rare, extraordinary, and unlikely providences as miracles. At the same time, many professing belie...

The hours and days following the  horrifying murder and arson  at a Latter-day Saints church service in Michigan were not the time to parse theological identities. However, many used the tragedy as an opportunity to offer their answer to a question that has grown in importance and controversy in recent years: “Are Mormons truly Christian?”   Pew Research  lists Latter-day Saints among “All Christians,” along with Protestants, Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Mormons not only call themselves Christian, it’s in their name, “ The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints .”  However, to borrow from Shakespeare, naming a flower a rose doesn’t make it smell just as sweet. Though Mormonism uses similar concepts and terms as Christianity, what is meant is often very different from what Christianity teaches. As  Lukus Counterman  put it at The Gospel Coalition, “While both Mormons and historic Christians believe in ‘Jesus Christ,...

Before the fifth century dawned, Christians had discussed the freedom of the human will in the context of their long-standing dispute with paganism and gnosticism. Embedded within paganism was the widespread belief in astrology, and astrology taught a doctrine of fate—that individual destiny is controlled by the planets and stars.  Christian thinkers fought against this “astral determinism” by stressing God-given human dignity and freedom. Humans are responsible before God for their own choices and destinies; these are not forced on us by the despotism of fate or the power of the stars. There was a similar issue with gnosticism. A strong vein of gnostic teaching held that only a special class of humans, the “pneumatics” (spiritual ones), had it within them to be saved. The rest of humanity, and even the pneumatics before their gnostic illumination, were compelled to sin by their fleshly natures, despite their rational wills. Gnostics considered matter the wellspring of all evil; fu...

The question of free will has plagued the minds of philosophers, theologians, and ordinary people for millennia. The debate over what free will is and whether we as humans possess such a trait has not abated. If anything, it has increased in recent years. But what does the Bible say?  Can we find any help in God’s Word to answer the question of what it means to freely choose our actions and to be responsible for them? Since the time of the Reformation, the two basic answers that Christians have provided to this question have primarily centred on the theological legacies of Calvinism and Arminianism. The view of free agency associated with Calvinism is called compatibilism. The view advanced by Arminians and others, known as free-will theists, is called libertarian free will. Proponents of libertarian free will offer two planks to their definition of free will. First, for any choice to be truly free, it must be sufficiently unmoored from the constraints of outside causal forces. Tha...

God’s love for us in Christ upends our whole lives in the best way. The Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:14–15 that: The love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. The gospel of Jesus is so powerful that it disrupts our former pursuits in life, which include glorifying and enjoying ourselves, as well as building our own personal kingdoms. As Charles Wesley’s great hymn expresses: Did he die for me, who caused his pain? For me, who pursued him to death? Amazing love! How can it be That thou, my God, shouldst die for me? This amazing love causes us to love God in return (1 John 4:19). It compels us to live no longer for ourselves but for Christ, who died for our sake and was raised. God’s love for us is so precious that we hold it as “better than life” (Ps. 63:3; see Acts 20:24). In the w...

Church history teaches us that conflict in church life is a reality. The disciples of Jesus disagreed with each other; the early church was fraught with division, and disunity has continued to be a recurring issue ever since. From petty controversies to serious errors, conflict is a regular feature of church life. While moral failings and heresy require church discipline (Matt. 18:15–17), how are we to tolerate differences over minor matters that do not warrant church discipline? We can learn a great deal from Paul in his letter to the Philippians on this issue. Rather than exposing the specifics of the controversy between Euodia and Syntyche, Paul winsomely reminds them of who they are before helping them resolve their disagreement. Remember That You Are Beloved of God Paul’s language in Philippians 4:1 is striking. He addresses the church at Philippi as “my brothers,” “whom I love” and “long for” and are “my joy and crown” who are “my beloved.” With candour, he reveals his heartfelt ...