Dr Paul Allen

Your darkness can one day bring someone light. A person who’s been through a divorce has the compassion and words needed to help somebody going through a divorce. A person who’s been through abuse, rape, or an addiction can genuinely understand how to help someone else in a similar situation.  And because you made it, God will cause your wounds to glow in the dark of somebody else’s life. And when you begin to share your story with them, hope will get in their soul, and they will start to believe that they can make it.   Don’t waste what you’ve gone through or allow it to make you bitter. If God lets you walk through it, it’s because He’s still God and has a plan. On five different occasions, the Apostle Paul was beaten with 39 stripes. That’s 195 scars on his body. Paul said, “Three times I was beaten with rods.  One time, I was stoned and left for dead. Three times, I suffered shipwrecks. I knew what it was to be afloat in the ocean a full day and night. I thought ...

Those who reject Christ's claims will reject the Bible as a whole, so we are not surprised when we find non-Christians questioning the stories and teachings of Scripture. We are living in a funny age, however, when even many professing Christians want to cast the Bible in a negative light.  It is not uncommon for people who claim to be followers of Christ to question God's character or reject the truthfulness of entire portions of Scripture because they believe specific biblical stories and events contradict God’s mercy.  The invasion of Canaan is one of those stories that prompts many people, including many professing Christians, to question the Scriptures. Charges that “God commanded genocide” are frequently uttered.  Even after responding to the charge of genocide, however, we still need to consider how the story fits into the broader biblical revelation of the character of God.  THE PROBLEM IS US When we encounter something that troubles us in Scripture, we are t...

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. (Eph. 2:6) We can all recall a time when we had a seating assignment.  In schooling, at work, or around the dinner table, a particular chair may be your seat. We tend to size up the quality of our assigned seats by factors such as visibility, the ambience, and, above all, the surrounding company. If we’re off to a concert or sporting event, our first question may be, “Do we have good seats?” We intuitively recognize that where we sit and (more importantly) whom it is that we sit next to play no small role in our experience. Thus, as Christians, we do well to pause and ask the question, “Do we have good seats?” Christians possess the most awesome of all assigned seats. How so? In this Ephesian passage, Paul has j...

Nick Batzig Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is one of the most ancient and revered military manuals in all of human history. In it, Sun Tzu set out what he believed to be the “essentials of military victory.” He wrote: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”1 Many of the seventeenth-century Puritans also emphasized the importance of knowing the enemy and his tactics when they approached the subject of spiritual warfare. For instance, in his Precious Remedies against Satan’s Devices, Thomas Brooks highlighted “the essentials” of spiritual warfare: “Christ, the Scripture, your own hearts, and Satan’s devices, are the four prime things that should be first and most studied and searched. If any cast off the study of these, they cannot be safe here, nor happy hereafter.”2 I...

Dr Paul Twiss Christ is the Savior, and He is the Teacher. Jesus instructs me. He teaches me how to think, how to speak, and how to walk every day. When I reflect on His Word, my affection for Him grows. In part, this love is the reflex of my soul, as I see that Jesus’ Word is good. He is the Shepherd, who leads me in paths of righteousness. Christ’s instructions awaken my affections because through them I see His supremacy. I see how He reigns over all creation, and how all things hold together in Him (Col. 1:17).  As an image bearer, I was made to behold this glory. My soul longs to look upon Christ and the unity of the cosmos according to His kingship. His teaching is a roadmap towards such beauty. Thus, as God’s Word instructs me, I love Jesus the Teacher. UNDERSTANDING THE SKILL OF LEARNING Some of my favourite memories include my greatest teachers. I am indebted to these people. Interestingly, I do not always find the same affection when I think about other figures in my chil...

Confused about this topic? In general, I do think we should do the best for the church about the second coming when we don’t focus on distortions and misconceptions but instead on the truth and the beauty of what it really is in the Bible. And yet, it’s right, now and then, to make our people understand there are misconceptions and errors. Five Misconceptions Frankly, I’m really happy that my book is viewed as mainly proactive and positive rather than critical. But of course, even that positive view can be overstated. Suppose we never focus on what’s wrong and show how harmful it is. In that case, we won’t really be biblical because the biblical witness itself describes errors and their harmfulness — like Jesus did with the scribes and Pharisees or like Paul in exposing errors of false teaching in Colossians and other places. So yes, I will point out some misconceptions about the second coming. Let’s just take them one at a time, and I’ll try to explain why I think they’re a problem. 1...

Do you know God? Do you have the assurance that you have eternal life? Knowing that we know God is paramount because salvation ultimately can be boiled down to this one thing: knowing God. In John 17, Jesus, before going to the cross, was praying to the Father for His disciples – both those present at that time and those who would believe in future generations through the preaching of the apostolic word of the gospel. In verse 3, Jesus defines eternal life for us, praying,  “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” “Eternal life” is a phrase used forty-one times in the New Testament. And in John 17, we see what it means: to know God the Father and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Eternal life is not merely to live forever and never die. It includes that, of course, by definition. But eternal life is not simply an eternal existence of isolation or independence. It is eternal life in a relationship with God. It is a life th...

The danger of drifting, spiritual or otherwise, is in just how subtle and comfortable drifting can feel. Often we don’t even notice it’s happening at all. I grew up outside Cincinnati, Ohio, a far drive from any ocean. I can’t even remember a lake near our house. The largest body of water might have been the man-made pond next to the local golf course. So when I finally met the ocean, I would never forget it. I had never seen anything so large and alive and frightening — and yet my little brother and I could splash and wrestle in its wake. I distinctly remember, on one of those early beach days, mustering up the courage to swim out a little farther, and then a little farther, floating over wave after wave, learning how they obediently march in rows and yet dance in their own way. And then, as happens to so many first-timers, I realized (with great fear) just how far I was from safety. Suddenly the waves were coming higher and faster, pulling me farther than I wanted to go. My feet sear...

"But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble" (Matthew 6: 33-34).  These Bible verses from the New Testament are comforting — but how do we apply them to our modern lives, which can be full of stress and anxiety? Jesus Christ’s words in this Bible verse are "the very key" to addressing an issue that "troubles men’s hearts" most today: anxiety. Before Jesus stated this, he enumerated [in prior passages] the things of life that trouble us, from scarcely having enough to eat to possessing such an overabundance of things that it burdens us. Regardless of the situation, anxiety and fear are debilitating and terrible masters worldwide. Over the past several years, fear "has robbed people" of "reasonable thinking, hope, peace, love and vision. Think about it for a mo...

Paul stresses in Galatians that his transforming encounter with the risen Christ was not dependent on any human being but came by direct revelation. In fact, his entire argument for his apostleship in the first two chapters of Galatians hangs on that very fact. Paul’s Unique Conversion Here’s what he says in Galatians 1:11–12: I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. And then, to underline the point of being dependent on no one except the risen Christ, he says in Galatians 1:15–17, When he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me. Still, I went away to Arabia and returned again to Damascus. So the poi...

Goalkeepers are by far the most interesting players on the soccer field. They really do exist in two different planes.  First, they are just like every other player. All the laws of soccer apply to them. The equipment rules are the same for every player. They take up a spot on the roster. They can go anywhere on the field and do everything that any other soccer player can do. All the rules apply to them. They are, in short, just another player. But then there is the second plane : inside the penalty area, they suddenly acquire a new nature. When they are 18, they can use their hands. They are protected from challenges. Other players cannot interfere with their ability to release the ball. There is a whole set of rules governing what they are allowed to do with the ball when it is in their hands, and these rules don’t apply to the other players. Basically, the goalkeeper is a walking contradiction . Now, for most keepers and in most games, the dual nature of the position is irrelev...

In Ephesians 6:10–20, the Apostle Paul teaches us that a vital aspect of having the image of God renewed in us is that we wear the same armour that Christ wore in the days of His flesh. The armour is, first and foremost, God’s armour, worn by the eternal Son during His incarnate, earthly ministry. Therefore, we may rightly refer to the armour as “the armour of Christ.” As the children of God—in union with the Son—we must wear the armour He wore when He made war against and conquered the evil one. It is vital for us to wear the armour of Christ if we are to endure the spiritual battle in which we are engaged. Scripture commands us to put on Christ Himself. In his incomparable exposition of Ephesians 6:10–20—The Christian in Complete Armour—William Gurnall explained the connection between the armour of God and the Lord Jesus Christ: What is this armour? First, By armour is meant Christ; we read of putting on the Lord Jesus, Rom. xiii. 14, where Christ is set forth under the notion of arm...