Dr Paul Allen

These are the same Aaron and Moses to whom the LORD said, “Bring out the children of Israel from the land of Egypt according to their armies”  (Ex. 6:26). Here we have a genealogy that ends in the two great patriarchs, Moses and Aaron. It is put here to validate their lineage, to show that they were Israelites—bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh—whom they were sent to deliver, and were raised up from among their brethren. Just as Jesus Christ was to be prophet and priest, the Redeemer and Lawgiver of the people of Israel, so were Moses and Aaron, as prophet and priest respectively. There are a few peculiarities in this genealogy. One is that only Reuben and Simeon are mentioned along with Levi, the tribe of Moses and Aaron. Some scholars believe that these two were mentioned by Moses because they were left under marks of infamy by their dying father: Reuben for his incest and Simeon (along with Levi) for the murder of the Shechemites. Therefore, Moses wanted to honor t...

Raphael, St Paul Preaching in Athens (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) In terms of the imagination, the spiritual world cannot match the sensual world because gratification in the sensual is immediate; in the spiritual, it is delayed. A Christian who takes the intellectual track is often rebuked with this verse in 1 Corinthians : “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit ’s power” (2:4). Some people take that to infer that Paul made a mistake in coming to the Athenians in Acts 17 with a philosophical bent.  However, this verse to the church at Corinth implies nothing of the kind. In fact, Paul reminds us to become all things to all people (1 Cor. 9:22), meaning that you start with where the audience is. If there is an intellectual barrier, you start there. If there is a sensory barrier, you start there. If anything, Paul had to spend so much time writing an apologetic to the Corinthian church, arguing about all ...

( ) (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation .” ( Hebrews 9:28 ) There are two specific references in the New Testament to Christ “bearing” our sins as He died on the cross. In addition to our text above, the other is 1 Peter 2:24 : “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” However, the same word ( Greek anaphero) is also used with a similar thrust in Hebrews 7:27, where it is translated “offer up”: “Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice , first for his own sins, and then for the people’s: for this he did once, when he offered up himself.” When Christ died, He died as a substitutionary sacrifice, “offering up” our sins for judgment and punishment by a holy God , as He simultaneously “offered up” Himself as the One who would submit to that judgment and bear that punishment. He was able to do this...

Christ Blessing Little Children (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Author: Venettha Rendell.  "Don’t take this wrong, but we prayed before our children were born, and all of them were born healthy.” I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to take that. We had just told a new acquaintance that our infant son, Paul, had died several years earlier, after we had already grieved three difficult miscarriages . I felt judged. According to this person speaking to me, Paul’s death and my miscarriages were easily preventable. It was simple. We hadn’t prayed enough. We had neglected to do our part. In short, we were to blame. This attitude wasn’t new to me. I had felt this mixture of judgment and pressure from the day I learned of Paul’s heart problem four months into the pregnancy. Concerned friends had rallied around, assuring me of healing for my unborn son. “Pray, believing you will receive,” they urged from James 5, “and he will be healed.” So I prayed. I fasted. I recited set prayers. I rea...

( ) (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation .” ( Hebrews 9:28 ) There are two specific references in the New Testament to Christ “bearing” our sins as He died on the cross. In addition to our text above, the other is 1 Peter 2:24 : “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” However, the same word ( Greek anaphero) is also used with a similar thrust in Hebrews 7:27, where it is translated “offer up”: “Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice , first for his own sins, and then for the people’s: for this he did once, when he offered up himself.” When Christ died, He died as a substitutionary sacrifice, “offering up” our sins for judgment and punishment by a holy God , as He simultaneously “offered up” Himself as the One who would submit to that judgment and bear that punishment. He was able to do this b...

Foster Bible Pictures 0060-1 Moses Sees a Fire Burning in a Bush (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) In Exodus 24:9-11 we read:  Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu , and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel . Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky. 11 But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank. Question: Moses and others saw God with their own eyes? But later, Moses was not allowed to see God's face. Exodus 33:18-23. If Moses already saw the face of God , then who's face was he not allowed to see? Answer: In the first use God is said to speak to Moses 'face to face' that is not from some distant position as in a dream, or vision but speaking audibly to him while under some visible form. In other words, God spoke to Moses like a person does who is having a conversation. God spoke out of a burning bush, out of a pillar of cloud, e...

“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.” ( Psalm 23:1 ) The 23rd Psalm is perhaps the best-loved chapter in the Bible, with its beautiful picture of Christ as the Shepherd. This chapter finds its New Testament exposition in John 10:1-30, where Christ identifies Himself as “the good shepherd” who “giveth his life for the sheep” ( John 10:11 ). These two chapters ( Psalm 23 ; John 10 ) are probably the two greatest chapters in the Bible on the security of the believer in Christ. This theme seems woven by divine inspiration into the very structure of the passages. For example, there are six verses in the poetic structure of the psalm, each containing a different testimony concerning the providing and protecting Shepherd. In similar fashion, there are six times the word “shepherd” is used in John 10 , each referring again to the work of our Good Shepherd. There are also six references in the other books of the New Testament where Christ is referred to as a shepherd. The intensely p...

Haman Begging the Mercy of Esther, by Rembrandt (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Jesus speaks of himself saying, “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth”(Matt 12:40). But Jesus was not in the tomb three days and three nights? If you were a 1st century Jew and heard someone utter the phrase “three days and three nights” you would never expect precisely seventy-two hours. Remember that you would have no wrist-mounted method of measuring hours after sunset anyway. The correct way to interpret Scripture is to employ the historical-grammatical hermeneutic. That just means we interpret the Bible by understanding the language the Bible writers used in their own historical context. Two thousand years from now sociologists will examine flat screen relics from the 21st century and will ponder why people all over the Western world referred to Saturday and Sunday...

English: High priest offering a sacrifice of a goat, as on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur; from Henry Davenport Northrop, "Treasures of the Bible," published 1894 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) The Book of Leviticus is the heart and center of the Pentateuch. The theological heart of Leviticus—and, therefore, also of the Five Books of Moses —is the Day of Atonement (Lev 16). On this most sacred day, the high priest of Israel would bring the blood of sacrifice into the holy of holies to cleanse both the tabernacle dwelling of God and the camp of Israel . Ultimately, every other sacrifice and ritual in Israel's cult derived its meaning and significance from this annual entrance into the earthly throne room of God. Worship in ancient Israel was through the chosen and anointed mediator, the high priest. Significantly, then, in the Pentateuch "messiah" refers exclusively to Aaron the high priest—he is the one anointed with oil, whose mediation allows God...

Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh (painting by Benjamin West) (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) According to the genealogy of Ex. 6:14 ff., Aaron was one of the two sons of Amram and Jochebed (the other being Moses ) and third in line of descent from Levi (Levi-Kohath-Amram-Aaron); according to Ex. 7:7 he was 3 years older than Moses. Miriam, their sister, was older still, if she is Moses’ unnamed ‘sister’ of Ex. 2:4, 7 ff. Aaron first appears in the Exodus narrative as ‘Aaron the Levite’ who went to meet his brother Moses on the latter’s return to Egypt after the theophany at the burning bush; because of his superior eloquence he was to be Moses’ spokesman to the Israelites and to Pharaoh (Ex. 4:14 ff.). Throughout his career he was very much a lay figure alongside his dynamic brother; on the one occasion when he acted independently of Moses’ instructions he acted wrongly (Ex. 32:1–6). In addition to being Moses’ spokesman he also filled a thaumaturgic role: it was he who wielded the rod...

Jeroboam sets up two golden calves, from the Bible Historiale. Den Haag, MMW, 10 B 23 165r (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Someone mentioned that the prosperity gospel is simply ancient pagan fertility religion (namely Ba’al worship) in a modern garb…which got me thinking. In thinking about the Biblical classification of the Prosperity Gospel , I would have to suggest that it is a system of very old false religion, but not necessarily Ba’al worship. Now, it’s fairly easy to see that the “gospel” of the prosperity gospel isn’t the biblical gospel, regardless of how some try to soft pedal it. The “good news” isn’t the death/resurrection/ascension of Christ resulting in restoration with God , it’s the death/resurrection of Christ resulting in the restoration of your credit rating. It’s also fairly easy to get the whole “Balaam” and materialism connection (2 Peter 2:15-16; Jude 1:11), and it’s easy to recognize that those who push the prosperity gospel are false teachers since those w...

English: The Sin of Nadab and Abihu, illustration from a Bible card published in 1907 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) There is an incident in the biblical record that causes abiding consternation for many of God ’s people. It is the story of how two of the sons of Aaron , Nadab and Abihu , were slain suddenly by God. Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. Then Moses said to Aaron,  “This is what the LORD has said: ‘Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified.’” And Aaron held his peace. ( Lev. 10:1–3 ) Aaron, of course, was the older brother of Moses and the first high priest of Israel . God had consecrated Aaron and his sons to the holy vocation of the priesthood. It was in the context of their ...