Dr Paul Allen

Should we pray to the Lord to deal with us according to our own righteousness? Should we ask, “Father, please help me because I’m innocent in this”? Can we humbly say, “O God, please give me what I deserve”? Our immediate, good, humble Christian impulse is to say, “No, of course not. I should pray that God will deal with me according to the righteousness of Christ, which is far greater than I deserve.” Amen to that. As David prays in Psalm 143:2, “Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you.” But then we read some of the other psalms of David: Psalm 7:8 “The LORD judges the peoples; judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness and according to the integrity that is in me.” Psalm 18:20 “The LORD dealt with me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands he rewarded me.” Psalm 26:1 “Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the LORD without wavering.” So, which is it? Should we ...

  In the opening chapters of Acts, Luke offers what is likely the most comprehensive description of a healthy church in the New Testament.  Here we learn that as “awe came upon every soul” (Acts 2:43), the Jerusalem Church listened to the apostles’ teachings, broke bread in each other’s homes, and shared their resources generously while the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved (Acts 2:42–47; 4:32–37). By any measure, the Church of Jerusalem was healthy and thriving. And yet, while it’s easy to think that the Jerusalem Church was nearly perfect, Luke disabuses us of any such notion when he describes a shocking episode of moral failure and instant judgment—God strikes two people dead three hours apart! Their names were Ananias and Sapphira. After selling some property, they laid the proceeds from the sale at the apostles’ feet. But what looked like a generous donation was a work of calculated deception. What they claimed was a total donation of the proceed...

"Isn't it a load of rubbish? This speaking in tongues?"  Some say that speaking in tongues is just gibberish resulting from over-emotionalism. Isn’t there danger in getting mixed up in something like that? No, not unless you deliberately seek out a place where such goings-on are encouraged. Certain individuals and churches indeed show more emotion in their worship than others. Some shout and some cry. But these displays we find disturbing mainly because of their contrast to the quiet way we worship.  This doesn’t mean that noise is wrong and silence is right; it merely means their ways are different from ours. We may think their worship noisy and unseemly while they consider our worship dead and lifeless. Church history shows that all great revivals have been marked by the presence of physical phenomena such as trembling, weeping, shouting, fainting, and even dancing.  They are not necessarily the work of the Holy Spirit as much as they are human reactions to the working ...

The most obvious answer to this question is that the Scriptures encourage it. Jesus said it was one of the signs that was to follow the ministry of Christians: “And these signs will accompany those who believe…they will speak in new tongues” (Mark 16:17).  And Paul, while recognising the need for propriety in the public manifestation of tongues, nevertheless urged Christians to receive and make use of this significant gift. “Earnestly desire the spiritual gifts….Now I want you all to speak in tongues….I thank God that I speak in tongues more than you all” (1 Corinthians 14:1, 5, 18). As the late Reverend Samuel Shoemaker observed, “The Christian needs every gift God offers.” The willingness to yield our tongues to God may also indicate a more profound surrender than almost any other act. The tongue is the primary instrument of expression of the human personality, and until God has dominion over the tongue, His control over us is relatively slight. So the tongue is a little member ...

Question:   “Do all speak with tongues?” (1 Corinthians 12:30) and “If any speak in tongues, let there be only two or at most three” (1 Corinthians 14:27) indicate that not all Christians are meant to speak in tongues? THERE IS A DIFFERENCE - ARE YOU LISTENING? Certainly, this has been used as an extensive argument by those who oppose speaking in tongues. In fact, many use Paul’s statement, “let there be only two or at most three,” not to limit tongues but to prohibit them entirely.  Both these Scriptures must be considered in any discussion of tongues, but only in connection with Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 14:5: “Now I want you all to speak in tongues.” How do we reconcile “let there be only two or at most three” and “I want you all to speak”? Is Paul contradicting himself? No. The confusion is cleared away when we consider the two sets of circumstances in which speaking in tongues appears in the New Testament.  They appear both as a sign and as a gift.  They...

And all this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means "God is with us." Matthew 1:22-23 (NAB) In the biblical passage above, Saint Matthew is quoting from the Old Testament Book of the prophet Isaiah. It is a quote from the "sign" Isaiah gave to King Ahaz in Isaiah 7:14 . The Greek Septuagint translation used during Jesus' lifetime translates the Hebrew word ha almah as "the virgin," using the Greek word parthenos.   Since the Christian era, Jewish scholars have maintained that the Hebrew word almah does not mean "virgin" but instead refers to a young woman recently married. The Septuagint translation of this Hebrew word as "virgin," however, is an important witness to an early Jewish interpretation of this word as "virgin", a translation accepted by Saint Matthew and applied to the ...

Stanley E. Porter argues in his specialised essays and book chapters on the subject (such as "Paul's Bible, His Education and His Access to the Scriptures of Israel") that Paul’s primary Bible was the Septuagint (LXX), and interpreters should default to assuming he relied upon it.  Key Insights on Paul and His Bible • The Septuagint Baseline: Porter contends that Paul's thought and scriptural quotations are most accurately read against the Greek Septuagint tradition rather than dynamically shifting back and forth to the Hebrew Masoretic Text without clear textual indicators. • Education and Access: Co-authored work by Porter and Andrew Pitts explores how Paul's Hellenistic and Jewish background shaped his access to texts, balancing traditional Jewish training with Greco-Roman rhetorical and grammatical milieu.  • Consistency in Citations: Porter advocates for rigorous, methodical consistency when identifying and cataloguing how New Testament writers quote or echo ...

Instinctively, we think of confession as a gloomy, dour, introspective activity that, by focusing on all the things we have done wrong, makes us (quite literally) miserable sinners. And there is a grain of truth in this: Our sin is terrible, and we should never trivialise it or excuse it. But David takes a much more positive view of confession in Psalm 32. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. (Ps. 32:1–2) When I stayed silent and did not confess my sin, David elaborates, life was truly miserable. My bones wasted away, I groaned all day, and my strength was like dry ground in a summer drought (Ps. 32:3–4). But then I acknowledged my sin. I confessed it all to God. And he forgave it all (Ps. 32:5), fully releasing me from my debt and causing me to “be glad in the Lord and rejoice” (Ps. 32:11) rather than experiencing “the sorro...

When we have wrong thoughts about God, the consequences can be disastrous for every relationship – especially within the church. Many problems arise when believers’ actions are guided by inaccurate or unbiblical thinking about God. The church at Corinth is a case study in what goes wrong when people’s minds are led astray from the truth of God’s Word. The very first issue crippling the Corinthian church was disunity, which stemmed from these believers thinking with a fleshly mind, rather than with the mind of Christ. Rather than submitting to God’s wisdom and applying the mind of Christ to their daily walk, the Corinthians were enamoured with man’s thoughts, philosophies, and opinions, leading to church conflict and division. Paul, therefore, exhorted them in 1 Corinthians 1:10 to agree. When we come to 1 Corinthians 2:6-11, we discover that Paul wanted the Corinthians to adopt the very mind of Christ. As Christians, we have access to the way Christ thinks, and we know God’s wisdom. B...

Speaking or praying in tongues is a form of prayer in which the Christian yields himself to the Holy Spirit and receives from the Spirit a supernatural language with which to praise God.  It is a miraculous manifestation of God’s power, but one which combines both human and divine elements that expresses both human and divine initiative. It is truly a cooperative effort between the Christian and the Holy Spirit. Many people misunderstand what takes place when they hear someone praying or speaking in tongues. They are apprehensive over what might happen to them if they “let themselves go like that” or “let some other power take over.”  They assume the person is completely passive and that the Holy Spirit is doing it all. This is an erroneous impression of what is taking place. The person himself is actively participating in the experience. As someone once put it, “Without the Holy Spirit, you can’t, but without you. the Holy Spirit won’t.” Simply stated, man does the speaking;...

With God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26), therefore, the answer to this question is yes. However, it is a highly qualified yes! I personally know of two people who received the baptism in the Holy Spirit and spoke in English rather than in unknown tongues. Both were exceptionally sensitive, prophetic men, true spiritual giants of our time. One is Dr Frank Laubach, through whom the Holy Spirit manifested Himself supernaturally in English.  The other was Rufus Moseley, who, some months after his baptism in the Holy Spirit, began to speak in tongues and continued to witness faithfully to their value until his death. In a booklet entitled “How to Enter, Abide, and Increase in Union with Jesus Christ,” he makes this excellent statement: My feeling is that we must not be dogmatic and say that no one can have the baptism of the Holy Spirit unless he speaks in tongues. God, of course, can speak in English and in every tongue of men and angels. But He now seems a little more real ...

The only clear scriptural evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit is speaking in tongues. The first Christians to be baptised in the Holy Spirit were the 120 gathered in the upper room at Pentecost. The unique evidence that the 120 received the Holy Spirit was that “they began to speak in other tongues” (Acts 2:4).  All the other spiritual gifts, such as healing and prophecy, appear in the Old Testament and in the gospels. But with the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, which signified God’s presence in the disciples’ lives in a new dimension, God gave a new gift: the gift of tongues. The book of Acts records five separate occasions when the Holy Spirit was received. On three of these occasions, speaking in tongues is specifically mentioned as the visible sign accompanying the experience: at Pentecost (see Acts 2:4), at the house of Cornelius (see Acts 10:44–46), and at Ephesus (see Acts 19:6).  Paul received the Holy Spirit when Ananias laid hands on him and prayed (...

Who authored Titus, 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy? Dick Harfield goes to great lengths to say it was not the Apostle Paul, based on Marcion's gathered letters.  Paul authored all three letters—1 Timothy and Titus after his release from his first Roman imprisonment (around A.D. 62–64), and 2 Timothy during his second Roman imprisonment (around A.D. 66–67), shortly before his death.1 These letters were directed to his apostolic representatives Timothy and Titus, who were overseeing churches in Ephesus and Crete respectively, and Paul provided them with guidance on managing those congregations.1 The authorship question has generated significant scholarly debate. While external evidence supports Pauline authorship, some modern commentators have questioned whether Paul wrote these letters.2 Critical scholars have challenged Pauline authorship, proposing instead that a second-century follower of Paul composed all three epistles.1  However, early Church Fathers—including Ignatius, Polycarp...

His daughter was dying, and Jesus had been diverted. Jesus looked directly at him and said to Jairus, "Only believe"   This means shifting our focus from the size of your problem to the size of your faith in God. It is a practical choice to trust Jesus when you feel overwhelmed. 1. Identify and Name the Fear: Acknowledge the anxiety . Do not ignore your panic, stress, or doubt. Surrender it: Visually or mentally hand that specific problem over to God, admitting that you cannot fix it on your own.  2. Guard Your Atmosphere. Filter the noise: In the Bible story, Jesus removed the mocking, weeping crowd from the room before performing the miracle. Limit negative inputs: Step away from voices, media, or advice that breed panic and hopelessness. Seek encouragement: Surround yourself with people who speak life, hope, and faith into your situation.  3. Replace "What-Ifs" with God's Word. Stop the spiral: When your mind starts inventing worst-case scenarios, intentio...