Dr Paul Allen

In his magisterial history of New England, Magnalia Christi Americana, Cotton Mather notes that, after finishing his time with Mrs Drake, Thomas Hooker “in a little time . . . grew famous for his ministerial abilities, but especially for his notable faculty at the wise and fit management of wounded spirits.”1 The Puritan divine who would grow in stature both in England and America started out as a young college graduate called to a seemingly hopeless situation. As would soon become evident, his love for others and his skill in handling the Scriptures aided him in ministering to a woman teetering on the verge of heaven and hell. THE TROUBLED MRS. DRAKE About fifteen miles from London, the small parish of St. George’s in Esher, Surrey, called young Thomas Hooker (1586–1647) to serve as rector. Due to the congregation’s size, the wealthy Francis Drake, a relative of the renowned English explorer Sir Francis Drake, served as Hooker’s patron and invited him to live in his home. However, Hoo

So, we are faced with a certain amount of fear and anxiety that is media-induced to one degree or another. There is also, however, fear and anxiety caused by actual frightening events. Strong cyclones or bushfires are frightening to experience. Other natural disasters such as floods and are frightening. Diseases are frightening, especially when they spread across the world—as the coronavirus has done so far. Wars and terrorist activity are also frightening. Complicating matters is the lack of trust that many have in the news media. We know that fear sells because it keeps people glued to their screens and that is profitable. We know bias exists in news reporters as it does in everyone.  Due to factors such as these, however, many people have lost all trust in the news media to accurately report events. Social media has intensified this problem because friends and family share stories without always checking the sources. This can cause problems when a truly dangerous event is unfolding

Cholera is an acute illness caused by bacteria found in contaminated water. There have been seven pandemic outbreaks of cholera in the past 200 years, most recently in 2016. The fourth outbreak started in 1846 and lasted four years. Russia was the country worst hit, with one million lives lost. But it also reached North America and Europe. People were not sure how cholera spread, only that it was highly contagious and that families tended to get it together. We now know that it is transmitted through contaminated food and water, and spread by people not washing their hands after using the bathroom. Handwashing was simply not part of routine hygiene in those days. Understandably, people were extremely afraid of the unknown. Public gatherings, including church services, ceased, not because of government orders, but as the natural response of a terrified population. The pandemic reached London in 1854, scarcely one year into the ministry of a young preacher by the name of Charles Haddon S

People die every day. Babies, teenagers, young mothers, middle-aged fathers, the elderly—death is no respecter of persons. It’s not exactly true that the only sure things in life are death and taxes. You can avoid taxes. If you’re willing to put up with jail time, you need not pay the taxman. Death, on the other hand, is certain. Apart from those who are living when the Savior returns to consummate His kingdom, no one gets out of this world alive. Why do we fear death so much ? For non-Christians, the answer is easy. No matter how they suppress the truth in unrighteousness, whether by atheism, agnosticism, or false religion, they can’t escape their God-given awareness that they’ve broken His law and deserve hell. Christians also fear death and disease . Of course, we know that we’re not supposed to, and we’d never tell anyone that we harbour such fears. Certainly, we know all the right things to say about death: God is sovereign . He has a good purpose for my pain. The L

So they sent and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines, and said, “Send away the ark of the God of Israel, and let it go back to its own place, so that it does not kill us and our people” (1 Sam. 5:7-12). Although the Philistines of Ashdod remain mired in their pagan devotion to Dagon, they gradually see at least part of the truth. They come to understand that “ ‘[Yahweh’s] hand is harsh toward us and Dagon our god.’ ”They are quite correct that God is causing their afflictions. But the solution, as they see it, is not to abandon worship of Dagon and turn to God. Rather, they want to get rid of the ark so that they can settle back into their “blessed” life under Dagon. “They were constrained to acknowledge [God’s] power and dominion, and confess themselves within His jurisdiction, and yet they would not renounce Dagon and submit to [God],” Matthew Henry writes. Of course, the ark is a Philistine national trophy, and the residents of Ashdod are not free to disp

The New England Journal of Medicine   looks through  200 years of back issues to understand how we die differently: The first thing to notice here is how much our mortality rate has dropped over the course of a century, largely due to big reductions in infectious diseases like tuberculosis and influenza. The way we talk about medical conditions has changed, too. NEJM finds that, back in 1812 – the first year it published – reports of spontaneous combustion were taken quite seriously by the medical community , as were debates over how, exactly one would be injured by a close-call with a cannonball: Doctors agreed that even a near miss by a cannonball — without contact — could shatter bones, blind people , or even kill them (1812f). Reports of spontaneous combustion, especially of “brandy-drinking men and women,” received serious, if skeptical, consideration (1812g). And physicians were obsessed with fevers — puerperal, petechial, catarrhal, and even an outbreak of “ spotted f

Image via Wikipedia Malaise is a mercy that feels yucky. Malaise is that feeling you get when you’re getting sick but you don’t quite know it yet.  It’s a vague sense of dis-ease . Your energy is draining. You just want to lie down. Emotionally, you might feel discouraged, irritable, depressed, or cynical for no identifiable reason. You ask yourself, “What’s the matter with me?” Precisely what you’re supposed to ask. Malaise is the early warning system God designed for the body. It’s telling you something destructive is attacking your bodily systems. It’s a messenger running ahead of an invading enemy alerting us to get our defenses in place. The soul also has its diseases and they are more deadly than the body’s. Soul diseases attack our belief systems. Corrupted beliefs can be very serious if left untreated. They grow and spread, wreaking destruction in us. And when contagious, as they frequently are, they harm others. Such diseases can result in soul-death . Mercifully, there is

Image via Wikipedia Malaise is a mercy that feels yucky. Malaise is that feeling you get when you’re getting sick but you don’t quite know it yet.  It’s a vague sense of dis-ease . Your energy is draining. You just want to lie down. Emotionally, you might feel discouraged, irritable, depressed, or cynical for no identifiable reason. You ask yourself, “What’s the matter with me?” Precisely what you’re supposed to ask. Malaise is the early warning system God designed for the body. It’s telling you something destructive is attacking your bodily systems. It’s a messenger running ahead of an invading enemy alerting us to get our defenses in place. The soul also has its diseases and they are more deadly than the body’s. Soul diseases attack our belief systems. Corrupted beliefs can be very serious if left untreated. They grow and spread, wreaking destruction in us. And when contagious, as they frequently are, they harm others. Such diseases can result in soul-death . Mercifully, there is

  There is a new documentary causing quite a lot of buzz today. It is called  Orgasm, Inc . and it looks at the strange but inevitable collision of the pharmaceutical industry with women’s sexuality. Liz Canner uses this film to display the sad reality that pharmaceutical companies play a crucial role in shaping the diseases they seek to treat.  To make money they need to treat diseases and they are certainly not above fabricating or exaggerating them in order to come to the rescue with some amazing new cure. Such is the case with Female Sexual Dysfunction , the particular focus of the documentary.  At least that is what Liz Canner argues in  Orgasm Inc . This is not a case of companies reacting to genuine problems and creating cures, but a case of companies generating diseases and then magnanimously stepping in with a cure. A Cure that Needs a  Disease If Canner is right, it tells us two things:  there are some diseases that need a cure and some cures that need a disease .