Dr Paul Allen

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...

Is everything we do at church called Ministry? 1.  Let’s see where “ministry’ appears in the Old Testament .  We’ll start by looking up the occurrences of the word in the major English translations on  www.Biblegateway.com : ESV  – 3x – Numbers   4:47 ; 2 Chron . 7:6, 2 Chron.  8:14 NIV  – 2x – 1 Chron. 25:1, 6 NASB  – 2x – 1 Chron. 24:3, 19 NKJV  – 5x – Ex. 31:10, 35:19, 39:1, 39:41; 2 Chron. 7:6 KJV  – 4x – Num.  4:12 ,  4:47 ; 2 Chron. 7:6, Hosea  12:10 . I know there’s other translations, but this will more than suffice our needs since “ministry” doesn’t appear hundreds of times in the OT. 2.  Let’s check our references at  www.blueletterbible.org  and discover the Hebrew term in each verse: Ex. 31:10 –  Kahan Ex. 35:19 –  Kahan Ex. 39:1 –  Serad  &  Sharath Ex. 39:41 - Kahan Num.  4:12  -a derivitive of  Sharath Num.  4:4...