Dr Paul Allen

Although the area had been inhabited considerably earlier, it is with the influx of peoples from northern Syria and Anatolia and the introduction of urban life at the beginning of the Bronze Age (ca. 3200) that Canaanite history is thought to have begun. For all intents, that history is coterminous with the Bronze Age itself, and the course of Canaanite civilization was strongly influenced by the fortunes of the Egyptian Empire to the west and the cultural and political movements within other parts of the ancient Near East and Anatolia. Indeed, the apparently peaceful existence of the early Canaanite villages and fortified towns was shattered ca. 2300 by widespread destruction resulting from raids under the Egyptian Sixth Dynasty and large-scale upheaval accompanied by massive population movements throughout much of the ancient world. During the Middle Bronze Age (specifically MB IIA; ca. 2000–1800) the Canaanites were dominated politically and economically by the Egyptian Twelft...

There is a strong anti-Christian sentiment emerging. How will you respond? Atheists are embedded in Universities, newspapers etc. So what will you do? To help you we have a list. First Darwin and Evolution. These are scientists who follow Christ:  Biologos.org   They believe that God directed evolution - they do not believe in evolution but God sovereignly directed all actions leading to Adam and Eve. Some believers struggle with this group as you have sin and death before Adam. But they state the Bible in Genesis describes theology and they describe the process.  Do I agree with everything these men say?  No.  (I don’t even agree with everything I say!)  But I think you’ll find a wealth of wisdom and practical insights about the truth of Christianity from these men and organizations.   I would start with 9.  Lee Strobel . Lee was a Chicago journalist atheist who examined the claims of Christianity and was convinced and got ...

As We Forgive (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Five Ways to Start Forgiving Right Now  1. Pray for the person who wounded you . Ask God for insight and understanding into this person’s life and for the situation you’re challenged with.  2. Look the offending person in the eye, say hello, and offer a compliment . It’s easier to hold on to grudges and hard feelings when you pretend the other person doesn’t exist. It’s not as easy when you have to be reminded they’re human just like you. Whether they respond in kind doesn’t matter. What matters is what you do.  3. Do the right thing . Whether someone is willing to meet you halfway or not, do what is right and don’t worry about what the other person is doing or not doing.   4. Be OK with what you’ve got . Sometimes problems develop because our expectations are higher than what someone else is willing to give or be. When you’ve done what you can to bring a relationship closer, but there’s no movement from...

Quadruple combination opened to the Book of Isaiah - note the cross references between Biblical and Latter-day Saint scripture in the footnotes (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) The subject at hand is the inerrancy of Scripture. We are fighting a war on two fronts. On the one hand, we are called to defend the trustworthiness of the Bible before an unbelieving world. To defend the Bible in that arena involves a certain set of challenges. The other arena is within the church itself. That should not be the case, but since the advent of higher criticism, there has been an avalanche of attacks against the trustworthiness of the Bible (both from without and from within). This session will primarily deal with defending the doctrine of the Bible to the church. There have been many methods of defense with respect to the Scriptures. The confessional method takes statements about the Scripture simply on faith. A second approach is known as presuppositionalism. This approach defends Scripture on t...

Role of the Holy Spirit : Self-Authenticating Witness May I suggest that, fundamentally, the way we know Christianity to be true is by the self-authenticating witness of God’s Holy Spirit? Now what do I mean by that?  I mean that the experience of the Holy Spirit is veridical and unmistakable (though not necessarily irresistible or indubitable) for him who has it; that such a person does not need supplementary arguments or evidence in order to know and to know with confidence that he is in fact experiencing the Spirit of God; that such experience does not function in this case as a premiss in any argument from religious experience to God, but rather is the immediate experiencing of God himself; that in certain contexts the experience of the Holy Spirit will imply the apprehension of certain truths of the Christian religion , such as “God exists,” “I am condemned by God,” “I am reconciled to God,” “Christ lives in me,” and so forth; that such an experience provides one not onl...

Secularism has been on the rise . Church attendance has been down. And whatever optimism we may have about the rebirth of spirituality among the rising generation, this is not the society of yesteryear. We live in an increasingly post-Christian milieu, and there is a growing sense in healthy evangelical congregations that we can’t just keep doing things the way we’ve always done them. Not everything needs to be rethought, but some of the methods with which we’ve been most comfortable need serious and careful evaluation in light of our quickly evolving context. One of the areas that most needs our attention is evangelism . The Believable Gospel What if we thought about evangelism not only as opening our mouths, but also opening our ears? What if we thought hard not only about what we claim, but what questions we ask? What if we not only told nonbelievers what we believe, but probed what they believe? And what if we were willing not only to have a five-minute conversation o...

The dark night of the soul . This phenomenon describes a malady that the greatest of Christians have suffered from time to time. It was the malady that provoked David to soak his pillow with tears. It was the malady that earned for Jeremiah the sobriquet, "The Weeping Prophet." It was the malady that so afflicted Martin Luther that his melancholy threatened to destroy him. This is no ordinary fit of depression, but it is a depression that is linked to a crisis of faith, a crisis that comes when one senses the absence of God or gives rise to a feeling of abandonment by Him. Spiritual depression is real and can be acute. We ask how a person of faith could experience such spiritual lows, but whatever provokes it does not take away from its reality. Our faith is not a constant action. It is mobile. It vacillates. We move from faith to faith, and in between we may have periods of doubt when we cry, "Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief." We may also think that the...