Dr Paul Allen

How accurate is the inspired revelation of the 66 books of the Bible ? How do we know? Since Scripture is God ’s revelation given through inspiration, it is inerrant. Simply put, the inerrancy of the Bible means that the 66 books of Scripture are the truth, containing no error. In the original manuscripts, every word is entire without error. Whatever Scripture affirms is true and not contrary to fact. Whether speaking of the six-day creation, a global flood, the grace and mercy of God, the resurrection and the future bodily return of Jesus Christ , the Bible is true, factual, and without error. In other words, the Bible is absolutely inerrant. The question of inerrancy—how true is the Bible—depends upon the source and nature of the Bible. To understand the extent of the Bible’s truthfulness begins with asking, “What is the Bible?” and, “How did we get it?” First, the Bible is special revelation. That is to say, the very words are disclosure from God otherwise unavailable ...

All Scripture is God -breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. [2 Tim 3:16] Authority in the Bible comes from God. The human writers of the books accepted as Scripture claim nothing less than divine inspiration for their own works and for certain of the writings of others. What an audacious assertion for them to make. What did they mean, and what do we mean today, by saying these words are “God-breathed”? God-breathed does not mean that God somehow took over their bodies or pushed them out of the chair and took up their pens. That is the sort of inspiration Muslims claim for the Qur’an . Rather, inspiration means that God breathed his own words through their personalities and pens. He gave them the insight and understanding so that the finished literary product had two authors, one human and one divine. God’s words seem more meaningful and relate to us on our human level so well, because they have been translated through the liv...

A. W. Tozer ’s discerned the decline of theology in the typical evangelical pulpit many years ago. T ozer (d. 1963) points back to the dumbing down of youth ministry as the moment that the cancer of non-doctrinal preaching entered evangelicalism. When youth pastors began to fancy themselves as professional entertainers, they prepared the students to disassociate theology from church:   We have the breezy, self confident Christians with little affinity for Christ and his cross. We have the joy-bell boys that can bounce out there and look as much like a game show host as possible. Yet they are doing it for Jesus ’ sake?! The hypocrites! They’re not doing it for Jesus’ sake at all; they are doing it in their own carnal flesh and are using the church as a theater because they haven’t yet reached the place where the theater would take them. (T ozer on Worship and Entertainment ). He then watches that cancer work its through the body as those youth pastors became pastors, ...

Among the religious leaders who have attained a large following throughout history, Jesus Christ is unique in the fact that He alone claimed to be God in human flesh. A common misconception is that some or many of the leaders of the world’s religions made similar claims, but this is simply not the case.   Buddha did not claim to be God; Moses never said that he was Yahweh; Mohammed did not identify himself as Allah; and nowhere will you find Zoroaster claiming to be Ahura Mazda.  Yet Jesus, the carpenter from Nazareth, said that he who has seen Him (Jesus) has seen the Father (John 14:9).  The claims of Christ are many and varied. He said that He existed before Abraham (John 8:58), and that He was equal with the Father (John 5:17, 18). Jesus claimed the ability to forgive sins (Mark 2:5–7), which the Bible teaches was something that God alone could do (Isaiah 43:25).  The New Testament equated Jesus as the creator of the universe (John 1:3), and that ...

English: The Prophet Isaiah (Is. 1:1-7,16-31) Русский: Пророк Исайя (Ис. 1:1-7,16-31) (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) This is a highly complex question, and an answer less than book length barely scratches the surface. There has been more discussion of the unity of Isaiah by both defenders and critics than any other prophetic book of the Old Testament .  It is the unanimous opinion of the critical school of thought that the Book of Isaiah is not a unity. Chapters 40–66 are supposedly written by an unknown author or authors living at the end of the Babylonian captivity (after 540 B.C.) and are designated as Deutero-Isaiah or Second Isaiah.  Many overlapping and equally unfounded lines of argument are used to support this contention. The critics contend that chapters 40–66 presuppose the exile. The city of Jerusalem is portrayed as ruined and deserted (44:26; 58:12), and the people are portrayed as suffering at the hands of the Chaldeans (42:22, 25; 47:6).  Those who...

“Therefore, my brethren dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved.” ( Philippians 4:1 )   Several adjectives precede the command contained in this text. Not only does Paul twice use “dearly beloved” to describe his relationship with the Philippians, but he also insists that he longs for them and anticipates joy at the recognition of the “crown” he will receive in heaven.   These are intense words.  Agapetos  is the descriptive Greek term translated “dearly beloved.” The Heavenly Father uses  agapetos  to express His love for His “beloved Son” ( Matthew  3:17 ). Most of the New Testament letters freely use  agapetos  to describe various personal relationships with their brothers and sisters in Christ . That unique and deeply spiritual love is what demonstrates our difference to the unsaved ( John 13:34-35 ).   Since Paul is separated from the Philippian church (probably w...

One of the great Christian classics is a devotional booklet written by Saint Thomas à Kempis called The Imitation of Christ . In that book, he talks about the struggle that so many Christians have with habits that are sinful . He says that the struggle for sanctification is often so difficult and the victories that we achieve seem to be so few and far between, that even in the lives of the greatest saints, there were few who were able to overcome habitual patterns. We’re talking about people who overeat and have these kinds of temptations, not those who are enslaved to gross and heinous sin. Now Thomas à Kempis’s words are not sacred Scripture, but he gives us wisdom from the life of a great saint. The author of Hebrews says that we are called to resist the sin that so easily besets us and that we are admonished and exhorted simply to try harder to overcome these sins. You say, How do we escape these pockets of sin that we have such great struggles with, that we have an honest a...

1. Welcome those who disagree with you ( Rom. 14:1–2). Concerning any area of disagreement on third-level matters [i.e., disputable issues that shouldn’t cause disunity in the church family], a church will have two groups: (1) those who are “weak in faith ” (14:1) on that issue and (2) those “who are strong” (15:1). The weak in faith have a weak conscience on that matter, and the strong in faith, a strong conscience. Don’t forget that “faith” here refers not to saving faith in Christ (14:22a makes that clear) but to the confidence a person has in their heart or conscience to do a particular activity, such as eat meat (14:2). The weak person’s conscience lacks sufficient confidence (i.e., faith) to do a particular act without self-judgment, even if that act is actually not a sin . To him it would be a sin. What this means is that you are responsible to obey both Paul’s exhortations to the weak and his exhortations to the strong, since (1) there are usually people on either side o...

Baptism of Christ. Jesus is baptized in the Jordan River by John. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren?” ( 1 Corinthians 6:5 ) The word for “shame” in this verse is the Greek entrope, meaning “turning inward” or “inversion.” It is used only one other time, in 1 Corinthians 15:34 : “Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame.” Evidently this special variety of shame is associated with taking controversies between Christian brethren to ungodly judges and also with failing to witness to the non-Christian community. Instead of bringing the true wisdom of God to the ungodly, such “ entropic Christians” were turning to worldly wisdom to resolve their own spiritual problems. This inverted behavior was nothing less than spiritual confusion! The modern scientific term “entropy” is essentially this same G...

The Reformed Church of France, Paris, France (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “I have raised up one from the north, and he shall come; from the rising of the sun he shall call on My name; and he shall come against princes as though mortar, as the potter treads clay” (Isa. 41:25). Isaiah here returns to his former argument that only God is all-powerful and only He can determine the future. When God says that He “raised up one from the north,” some see this as relating to Cyrus and others as relating to Jesus Christ . But John Calvin maintains that Isaiah denotes two different things, for when he says “from the north” he means die Babylonians , and when he says “from the rising of the sun,” he means the Medes and Persians. It is as if the Lord had said, “Two changes shall happen that are worthy of remembrance; for I will raise up the Babylonians, whose empire I will exalt on high, and next shall come the Persians, who shall become their masters.” God was displaying His power befor...