Dr Paul Allen

Below is Dick Harfield (Quora) answering the following submitted question:  Is Prophet  Amos  the 'first historically verifiable prophet' in the Bible? There may have been other prophets, all the way back to Abraham, but their existence has not been verified and is increasingly considered unlikely. Based on  Amos  1:1,  Amos  began to prophesy in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah, in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel and two years before the earthquake of 760 BCE, making him just a little earlier than the prophet Isaiah. On the face of it, that means that  Amos  may be the first historically verifiable prophet in the Bible. Amos  6:2, which warns the reader to see what the Assyrians had done to the cities of Calneh, Hamath and Gath, provides reason for doubt. Assyria defeated the kingdoms of Calneh and Hamath in 738 BCE, and Gath in 734, much later than the earthquake during the reigns of Uzziah and Joash. Since it wo...

In  Jack Deere 's intriguing book,  Surprised by the Power of the Spirit , he suggests the following hypothetical situation and result: "If you were to lock a brand-new Christian in a room with a  Bible  and tell him to study what the Scriptures have to say about healing and miracles, he would never come out of the room a cessationist." 1   Elsewhere, he writes, Everyone who picked up the Bible, started reading, and concluded that God was still doing signs and wonders and that the gifts of the Holy Spirit had not passed away. The doctrine of cessationism did not originate from a careful study of the Scriptures. The doctrine of cessationism originated in experience.  2 Deere may have a point, but a person reading the Bible and studying miracles and healing may also have several questions about these things. Why do the epistles have little discussion about them? Why does Paul leave people sick ( Phil 2:26-27 ;  1 Tim 5:23 ;  2 Tim 4:20 ...