Dr Paul Allen

The Holy Spirit is not distributed by lottery, with a few people selected to receive it. It is not a game of chance. There are no winners or losers. Those whom God calls, He equips. There is more than enough power to go around. No one is left out, and no one gets leftovers. Don’t disqualify yourself when you are already accepted. The Scriptures are clear and without Vagueness. The baptism in the Holy Spirit is not just for a few of “God’s favourites.” No, God has no “favourites.” In fact, we are all His favourites. On the Day of Pentecost, 120 men and women were in the Upper Room in Jerusalem, and we read in Acts 2:3 and 4, “Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit...” It was no coincidence and NO LOTTERY! “Each” of the 120 received and “all” was filled. Their gender was not a consideration; neither was their age nor race or status in life.  Somebody in heaven must have counted the heads si...

In Acts 20:22, Paul was at a critical phase of his public ministry toward the end of his third journey. Traveling with a group of eight companions including Luke, he was carrying the collection from Gentile believers to Christians in Jerusalem.  At Miletus Paul summoned the Ephesian elders, and there he delivered the speech found in Acts 20:18–35. In the midst of his speech we find a verse that the NIV translates: “And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem” (v. 22); the NLT translates the first clause, “And now, as a captive to the Spirit.…” Both the Louw and Nida and the Thayer lexicons suggest “compel” as a legitimate translation for δέω, thus giving a metaphorical sense to the verb. The verb δέω in its literal sense continues as an important catchword in Acts. In 21:11 the prophet Agabus came down from Jerusalem to Caesarea to meet Paul. Binding (δήσας) his own hands and feet with Paul’s belt, he declared, “The Holy Spirit says, ‘In this way the Jewish leaders in...

“Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi . . . Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” ( Philippians 1:1-2 ) The church at Philippi was birthed on one of Paul’s missionary journeys. He was summoned there in a vision by an unidentified man in Macedonia (now Greece) pleading for him to come and help them ( Acts 16:9-10 ). Recognizing the call was from the Lord, he went immediately. Paul’s European ministry began with the conversion of Lydia, who worshipped God and readily followed Paul’s teachings ( Acts 16:14 ). Paul soon traveled to Thessalonica, Berea, and Athens, where he encountered much hardship and persecution. But the work he had begun in Philippi continued, eventually spreading throughout the continent. The intensely personal letter he later wrote to the Philippian church contains some of the most important doctrinal truths concerning Christ and our victorious lif...

Christians often use a simple acrostic as a guide to prayer: A.C.T.S. Each of the letters in this acrostic stands for one of the key elements of prayer: (A) Adoration (C) Confession (T) Thanksgiving (S) Supplication But not only does this acrostic remind us of the elements of prayer, it shows us the priority we ought to give to each. The first element of prayer should be adoration or praise. The Psalms, which are inspired by samples of godly prayer, are heavily weighted on the side of adoration. I've noticed over many years that as we grow in the discipline and in the delight of prayer, it seems that we naturally spend more and more of our time on this first element. Second, prayer should include confession of our sin; as we remember who we are when we come into God's presence, we see that we have come short of His holiness and have need of His forgiveness. Third, when we pray, we should always give thanks, remembering the grace and mercy God has shown toward us. Fourth ,...

Paul and Barnabas stayed in Lystra long enough (as v. 20 indicates) for a number to believe and become disciples (and, as always, to be baptized in water and in the Holy Spirit according to Acts 2:4). Then some (unbelieving) Jews from Pisidian Antioch (about one hundred miles away) who had thrown Paul out of their city and some from Iconium (about thirty miles away) who had wanted to stone him heard of Paul’s success at Lystra. They came and persuaded the pagan crowds to help them, or at least to permit them, to carry out their plot. (Some of the pagans may have felt they were disgraced when Paul and Barnabas did not let them sacrifice to them. They did not forget this, so they listened to Paul’s enemies.) This time they did stone Paul and “dragged him outside the city, thinking he was dead” (cf. 2 Cor. 11:23, 25). Clearly he was not dead; however, he was probably unconscious and no doubt severely bruised and bloody—as well as having broken bones.55 Paul never blamed God for suc...

English: Stained glass window in St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne, depicting a scene from the Book of Acts with St. Paul, Porcius Festus, Agrippa and Berenice (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Do you attend the perfect church? No? Well, me neither. It’s definitely not news that Christians generally think  their  church isn’t exactly the model of the perfect church.  Everyone recognizes that there are a plethora of problems with their church, and for each problem there is a biblical solution that is both difficult and time consuming to implement, since churches are filled with people and every denomination has a joke about how many of their ilk it takes to “change a light bulb”. But, there’s one generic answer that always comes up and always sounds super spiritual: We need to be like the church in Acts! It seems like “getting back to Acts” is the standard generic answer for every question about church problems, church growth, church polity, etc.  It’...

English: This is a map of first century Iudaea Province that I created using Illustrator CS2. I traced this image for the general geographic features. I then manually input data from maps found in a couple of sources. Robert W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar. The Acts of Jesus. HarperSanFrancisco: 1998. p. xxiv. Michael Grant. Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels. Charles Scribner's Sons: 1977. p. 65-67. John P. Meier. A Marginal Jew. Doubleday: 1991. p. 1:434. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Cripplegate: Many Christians deny that it does. According to Bruce K. Waltke , “no clear passage [of Scripture] teaches the restoration of national Israel ” because “the Jewish nation no longer has a place as the special people of God.” In the words of Herman Ridderbos , “The church . . . as the people of the New Covenant has taken the place of Israel, and national Israel is nothing other than the empty shell from which the pearl has been removed and which has lost its function in the h...