Dr Paul Allen

Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue: And they that love it shall eat its fruit.” I want to illustrate the story of King Ahab to show the importance of declaring victory over your life. This king of Israel had agreed to let the enemy come in and take some of his belongings.  But when the adversary demanded even more, King Ahab said, “Tell my lord the king, ‘Your servant will do all you demanded the first time, but this demand I cannot meet.’” Something snapped in Ahab, and he decided at that moment that he had given up all that he was going to give up. The enemy will never be satisfied.  There needs to come a time when you decide to stop letting negative thoughts and words control your life. Satan’s goal is to kill, steal, and destroy you and your family, but if you can change the narrative, you can change the outcome.  Victory has a voice. Don’t let the enemy, circumstances, the world, or other people’s opinions control the narrative of you...

The kind of man you hate reveals what kind of man you are. “But I hate him,” Ahab declared of Micaiah, God’s prophet. Jehoshaphat, the righteous king of Judah, sat with Ahab, the wicked king of Israel, to deliberate one question: Should they go to war together against Syria? Peace had lasted three years with the pagan nation, but Ahab desired the strategic city of Ramoth-Gilead for Israel. He questioned aloud to Jehoshaphat, “Do you know that Ramoth-Gilead belongs to us, and we keep quiet and do not take it out of the hand of the king of Syria?” (1 Kings 22:3). Jehoshaphat consents to fight with Ahab but desires to hear first from the God of Israel. Ahab calls his four hundred prophets, who, with one voice, give their hearty Amen! “Go up,” they say, “for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king” (1 Kings 22:6). The kind of men from whom you solicit counsel tells us what kind of man you are. These men were no messengers of Yahweh, and King Jehoshaphat knew so. Diplomatically, he ...

History has repeatedly demonstrated that as goes the leader, so go the people. The history of Israel is no exception. During any moment in its history, the health and prosperity of Israel was directly tied to how the king measured up against the Deuteronomic rubric: [The king] must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, “You shall never return that way again.” And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold. And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he ma...

Many years ago, I visited a member of my congregation who told me that she didn’t need to come to our church services because she worshiped God just fine at home. In fact, she reported that she worships with the birds and the trees outside her front door, which certainly isn’t possible in a stuffy room where we sing songs that she doesn’t even like. By staying at home, she got what she wanted. We love to have our individual preferences and desires met, and this craving does not disappear when it comes to worship. The Pharisees , like unfaithful Israel before them, taught “as doctrines the commandments of men” — their individual preferences in worship led God to condemn their practices as “vain” worship (Mark 7:6–8). And when we indulge this craving today, we join the Pharisees ( Matthew 15:1 –9), Israel (Exodus 32; Isaiah 29:13), Saul (1 Samuel 13:8–14), and others whose worship God regarded as worthless, because ultimately, they worshiped by their own desires and not God’s. ...

The Prophet Hosea, by Duccio di Buoninsegna, in the Siena Cathedral (c. 1309-1311) (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) When the LORD began to speak through Hosea, the LORD said to him, “Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD” (Hosea 1:2). God instructed Hosea to marry a woman named Gomer . There is no reason to think that Gomer was a woman of ill repute at the time of her marriage to Hosea, but God told Hosea from the start that she would be unfaithful to him.  She would prove to be an adulterous wife, and her children would be of questionable parentage. God was calling Hosea to experience a little taste of what He Himself had experienced with Israel . God had married Israel in her youth, knowing in advance that she would prove unfaithful to Him. How painful this must have been for Hosea. Yet, because of his love for her, and God’s command, he married her anyway, ...

Jeroboam sets up two golden calves, from the Bible Historiale. Den Haag, MMW, 10 B 23 165r (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “The word of the LORD that came to Hosea , son of Beeri, during the reigns of Uzziah , Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah , kings of Judah , and during the reign of Jeroboam son of Jehoash king of Israel” (Hosea 1:1). Although Hosea began prophesying about ten years after Amos, his prophecy is first in the Book of the Twelve (the Minor Prophets). There is a good theological reason for this: Hosea’s prophecy is the longest and the most complete. In a sense, he sets up all the major themes found in the other books in the collection: covenant, judgment, and restoration, and the Lord’s personal relationship with His wayward people. We are not told this explicitly, but Hosea is the only prophet who seems to have come from the northern kingdom of Israel rather than from the southern kingdom of Judah . His familiarity with the culture and ways of Israel has persuaded most ...

Andrea Celesti - Queen Jezabel Being Punished by Jehu - WGA4622 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) ATHALIAH Her name means: "The Lord Is Great" Her character: Granddaughter of Omri, one of Israel's most idolatrous and evil kings, she was the daughter of Ahab and most likely of Jezebel as well. She was the only woman to rule over Judah. While Ahab and Jezebel spread Baal worship in the northern kingdom of Israel , Athaliah was busy promoting it a few years later in the southern kingdom of Judah . Controlled by her need for power, she murdered her own family members to secure it. Her sorrow: That her attempt to destroy the royal line of Judah failed. Her joy: That her ruthlessness paid off, at least for a time, making her the ruler of Judah. Key Scriptures: 2 Kings 11 ; 2 Chronicles 22 ; 23:11-21 JEHOSHEBA Her name means: "The Lord Is Great" Her character: A princess and the wife of the high priest, she was a courageous woman whose actions preserved the line of Ju...

English: ELIYAH VISITS KING AHAB AND THE BA'AL PROPHETS 1 MELAKIM 21 KINGS (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “ Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit.” ( James 5:17-18 ) “Elias” is the New Testament name for Elijah, the great prophet who lived during the darkest days of Israel ’s apostasy, when Ahab and Jezebel ruled the land and had turned it over to the worship of the demonic god Baal . “Elijah” means “Jehovah is God,” a most appropriate name for a prophet of the true God in a nation and time given over to paganism. Elijah suddenly appeared before King Ahab with the ominous prophecy: “As the LORD God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word” ( 1 Kings 17:1 ). This was not presumptuous. In h...

Elijah taken up into heaven, by Gustave Doré (1832-1883), based on story in Hebrew Bible, 2 Kings 2:11. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) And the water has remained wholesome to this day, according to the word Elisha had spoken ( 2 Kings 2:22). Elijah ’s departure out of the land was in a sense a judgment. He led Elisha, his protégé, out of the land with him and into the wilderness. Since Elisha represented all the prophets, who in turn represented all the faithful, we can see in this a new departure from Egypt , so to speak. Ahab and his dynasty were like Pharaoh, Israel was like Egypt, and God’s people had to make an exodus. Moses died in the wilderness without seeing the conquest of the land, and Elijah also departed in the wilderness. No one knows where God buried Moses (Deuteronomy 34:6), and in the same way, the prophets searched for Elijah’s body but could not find it (2 Kings 2:16–18). Later Elisha returned to Israel. Keep in mind that Elisha was to Elijah what Joshua w...

English: ELIYAH VISITS KING AHAB AND THE BA'AL PROPHETS 1 MELAKIM 21 KINGS (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) But Naboth replied, “The LORD forbid that I should give you the inheritance of my fathers” ( 1 Kings 21:3). A number of years after God ’s defeat of Baalism at Mount Carmel , King Ahab looked out from his palace in Jezreel and saw a vineyard that he thought would be ideal for a royal vegetable garden. He approached the owner of the vineyard, a man named Naboth, and asked him to sell it, and made him an offer. Naboth refused Ahab ’s offer, and for a very significant reason. When the Lord initially gave the land of Canaan to the nation Israel , He had the land divided into family plots. These family plots were inalienable; that is, one could not sell them permanently, one could only lease them. However, in the year of Jubilee , every 50 years, all the land reverted to God as the original owner, and after that year God gave the plots of land back to the original familie...