Dr Paul Allen

Christmas is just around the corner. I’m thinking of stuffed turkey, cranberry sauce, roast potatoes and Christmas pudding. Suddenly, without warning, I have a plateful of locusts and wild honey shoved under my nose. Christmas is just around the corner. Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? In the lane snow is glistening A beautiful sight, I’m happy tonight, I’m walking in a winter wonderland … … skating on an ice rink and taking my kids to see Santa with his bagful of goodies and a hearty “Ho, ho, ho.” Suddenly, without warning, the winter wonderland disappears and I hear a voice in a desert wasteland. It’s not Santa hollering, “Ho, ho, ho,” but John the Baptist shouting, “Woe, woe, woe!” Christmas is party time, but John the Baptist is the ultimate Advent party-pooper. Before he is through, our heads are pounding with images of vipers, wrath, axes, and unquenchable fire, when all we really wanted was a chance to get to the church carol service to sing, “Silent Night, Holy Night.” The...

Advent itself can be puzzling. “Advent” means “coming” or “arrival. ” The songs and scripture readings often used at this season seem to be about two quite different things: about waiting for the “first coming,” the birth of Jesus, and about waiting for his “second coming” to put all things right in the end. How did these things get muddled up? How can we make wise, prayerful sense out of it all? The early Christians developed the “church’s year” as a way of telling, learning, and reliving the story of Jesus, which stands at the heart of our faith. As they did so, they came to understand that it wasn’t simply a matter of going round and round the same sequence and never getting anywhere.  Think of a bicycle wheel; it goes round and round, but it is moving forwards, not standing still. . . . So it is with the church’s year. We go round the circuit: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week and Good Friday, Easter, Pentecost. The traditional Western churches sum all this up on Tr...

The allure of Christmas has a strange power over us, even the unbelieving and seemingly secularized. The season has a kind of a draw, a type of “spirit” or “magic” in an increasingly post-Christian society like Australia . Why does Christmas have this magnetism, even in a society that has tried to empty it of its origin in Christ ? The real magic of Christmas is not gifts and goodies, new toys and familiar traditions. What lies at the very heart of Christmas, and whispers even to souls seeking to “suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18), is the most stunning and significant fact in the history of the world: that God himself became one of us. The God, who created our world, and us humans at the apex of his creation, came into our world as human not just for show, but for our salvation. Christmas is supernatural . And our naturalistic society is starving deep down for something beyond the natural, rarely admitting it, and not really knowing why. Christmas taps into som...

BAD NEWS: Each of us is personally sinful and needs a savior. If we are honest we must admit that we can be selfish, egotistical, rude, insensitive, prideful, lustful, greedy, unkind, and ungrateful. We can be dishonest, insincere, shallow, inconsistent, double-minded , and uncommitted. We can be stingy, selfish, petty, spiteful, hateful, wrathful, vengeful, and just plain mean. We struggle with laziness, indifference, worldliness, and lack of discipline. We routinely fail to give witness to Christ and to our faith. We fail to submit our will to God , to give good example, to act justly, to show mercy, and to repent. We fail to obey God, lead a holy life, stand up for justice, speak the truth, call sinners to Christ, and pray for others. Did I mention somewhere that we need a savior? GOOD NEWS:  If you understand the bad news how much more we appreciate the magnificence of the good news of a cure. Christmas -   Today is born our Savior, Christ the Lord!  Chri...

Stained glass window in Long Beach showing John Knox admonishing Mary, Queen of Scots. From Covenant Presbyterian Church, Long Beach, California, USA (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) John Knox turns 500 this year. Actually, historians are not certain whether it was 1514 or 1515, but sometime around there, in the little market town of Haddington, Scotland , down the street from Saint Mary’s Church, Knox was born. As biographer Rosalind Marshall explains, much of Knox’s early life is unknown. He doesn’t enter the history books until his thirties, and what little we know about this life before then comes from pieces left for us by his contemporaries. For example, it’s believed that he attended Saint Andrews University and flourished in this studies, though there’s no evidence for it other than the word of Theodore Beza , his contemporary. Beza considered him a distinguished academician, and others called him “Mr. Knox” — a title reserved for those who held degrees. He likely spent som...

The Christmas season is filled with excitement and joy—and busyness. Retail stores have lengthened the season because successful sales and happy shoppers are critical for the economic success of many. In the church, the Advent season lasts four weeks.  This is a time to remember God’s coming to us and to wait in hopes of His coming again. We must be careful lest our hectic schedules filled with shopping, parties, and other special events leave no time for the purpose of Advent. Advent is not about us filling our time full but rather about taking time to remember how God fills time full: “In the fullness of time, God sent forth his Son” (Gal. 4:4). Christmas is important not for economic reasons, but because Jesus ’ birth reveals that the fullness of time has arrived. What does “the fullness of time” mean? Long before Jesus’ birth God was preparing the way. The two genealogies of Jesus recorded in the gospels make us travel back in time either to the beginning of the human...

At the first advent of Jesus Christ , the fullness of time had come and God sent forth His Son into this fallen world. As the prophets foretold, He was born of a virgin who was richly blessed of God. He was born under the law of God , not to abolish the Law but to fulfill it. As was necessary to redeem those under the Law, He fulfilled the righteous demands of the Law and took upon Himself the sins of His people, His sheep for whom He laid down His life. As His people, we confess that Christ shall come again to judge the quick and the dead. We believe He will return to this world not as a babe in a manger but as the King of all the earth, in power and glory to manifest His reign over the new heavens and the new earth . We confess His return because of what He taught us at His first advent and on account of the hope that is within us. For this reason, during the wonderful Advent season that comes each year, we should eagerly await the second advent of Christ as we celebrate the fi...

Did Christians Steal Christmas? (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) First, let us just concede that Christians do not have to celebrate or even acknowledge Christmas…or Easter , or Pentecost , or Australia Day , or MLK’s birthday, or ANZAC Day or Sabbath (Col 2:16), or Thursdays (named for the Nordic god of thunder). Rom 14:4-6 “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God , while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.” Christians are not obligated to revere any day above another including their own birthdays, though for some reason several Christmas...

Alva J. McClain’s book The Greatness of the Kingdom , provides an exhaustive look at the concept of “the kingdom” throughout the entire Bible. When Jesus arrived in Matthew 2:2, he was called “King of the Jews” and in 3:2 his initial message was “repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand”, but the people seemed to know what he was talking about. They thought that Jesus was the promised king who would establish a promised kingdom, and nobody stopped him and said “hang on a second! What in the world are you talking about? Kingdom? What kingdom?”. In the gospel of Matthew , the “gospel” that Jesus proclaimed was the “gospel of the kingdom” (Matt. 4:23, 9:35, 24:14). That was the “good news” that Jesus brought to his listeners. What was the kingdom promises in the OT? Do we treat the New Testament separately from the specific kingdom parables in the gospels? The “kingdom” in the Bible isn’t a comprehensive explanation of the concept, but rather simply the term “kingdom”. Thi...

When some people in the Old Testament were said to have the Spirit of God , it simply meant that they had a God-given ability or competence or strength to do certain things for God or for his people. God’s Spirit empowered and enabled them to do what had to be done. Bezalel and Oholiab . Now it’s very possible that you have never heard of the two gentlemen named Bezalel and Oholiab. But if you are interested in the Holy Spirit , you should have. For these are the first people in the Bible who are described as “filled with the Spirit of God.”  Being filled with the Spirit is something many Christians aspire to, though not many Christians expect the experience to do for them what it did for Bezalel and Oholiab.  What did the filling of God’s Spirit do in their lives? It enabled them to be craftsmen, working in metal and wood and precious stones, and all kinds of artistic design—and to be able to teach others the same skills. Here’s the account: Then Moses said to t...