Dr Paul Allen

  By John Starke THE CRAB NEBULA is an exploding star about forty-two hundred light years away. I first learned about it in Annie Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk . Light from this exploding star first became visible to earth in 1054. It was a supernova then, so bright it could be seen during the daytime. A thousand years later, the star is still exploding. What explodes for a thousand years? What has the density and size to keep up this pace? If you look at the Crab Nebula today through binoculars, it looks like a little ring. If you stare at it, even with earnest stillness, you will see no movement. The naked eye clothed with binoculars looks at this exploding star, and it seems more like a statue. “Photographs of the Crab Nebula taken fifteen years ago seem identical to photographs of it taken yesterday,” and yet the Crab Nebula is expanding at the rate of seventy million miles a day, and it’s been doing that for millennia. 1 We are in a universe where something that has incr...

“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.” (Deut. 30:19–20). Moses’s logic here is breathtaking. May the Lord help us feel and respond appropriately to these truths. First, spiritual life does not happen on its own (see John 3:36; Eph. 2:1–3). We must choose life. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus notes, “For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matt. 7:13–14).  Impurity, dishonesty, selfishness, arrogance, laziness, rash responses, and the like— these characterise the...

  “Now I Paul myself beseech you”, v. 1, has a peculiar emphasis, indicating that Paul is not only the grammatical subject of the verse, but the subject under discussion. The chapter is full of references to the accusations made against him, and forms part of the apostle’s vindication which continues into chapter 13.  Some said he was “base”, fainthearted, when with them and “bold” when not, v. 1. They claimed he “walked according to the flesh”, vv. 2, 3, was prone to self-exaltation, v. 8, and used his letters to terrify them, v. 9. Some made fun of his undistinguished personal appearance, v. 10, and the lack of majesty in his manner.  How does Paul address himself to the task of rebutting these accusations?  Does he do it with justifiable indignation?  No, he beseeches them by “the meekness and gentleness of Christ”. These qualities were of great price in his eyes, though not in theirs. He remembers the Lord Jesus. He remembers how far He was from violence and...

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? (Ps. 8:3–4) The big question is not, does God care for me? The Bible declares he does over and over again. It tells us that God’s eyes are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayers (Ps. 34:15). It says that he is with us wherever we go (Gen. 28:15). The Bible welcomes us to bring our cares to God because he cares for us (1 Pet. 5:7). It tells us that he will never leave us or forsake us (Heb. 13:5).  The message is clear and consistent—God cares for his own. If you are God’s child, you are never outside the scope of his constant care. The Bible is also clear and consistent when it talks of the unshakability of God’s love. His love is eternal. From the verse-by-verse refrain of Psalm 136, “for his steadfast love endures forever,” to Paul’s declaration in Romans ...

The word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah the prophet concerning the nations. (Jer. 46:1) I’m persuaded that much of our fear, anxiety, discouragement, and hopelessness is the result of bad theology. At its core, what is the Bible all about? The existence, character, and plan of God. Every other aspect of Scripture flows out of the reality of who God is. A bad or weak theology of God will lead to weakness in other areas of theology, and spiritual weaknesses in daily living.  I had this experience again and again in counselling. I would be working with someone who was struggling to trust God, but, as I listened to him describe who he thought God was, I immediately understood why he had trouble trusting him. I would often think, “If I thought that this was who God is, I would have trouble trusting him too.” One common mistake in our functional theology of God is thinking he is too small.   The God in our minds lacks the awesome, glorious, and incalculable power and authority th...

 At the end of Genesis, Joseph dies. His last request is a testament to his unwavering faith and his awareness of a storyline that is larger than one lifetime: “I am about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” Then Joseph makes the sons of Israel swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here” (Gen. 50:24–25).  Like Joseph, we can consider our death and go to our graves in the certainty that God will do exactly as he has promised. The worker of God goes into the dust, and the work of God continues without faltering.1 Knowing this with perfect clarity, our Saviour laid down his life willingly. Will we do the same? When we know our days are short, will we be grateful for what we’ve been given or greedy for what we have not?  Yes, you may say, but Jesus knew he would be raised. He knew he could go into the grave and come back out again. Friend, so d...

 

Sinful acts always have their origin in some form of unbelief. Behind every sin is a lie. The root of all our behaviour and emotions is the heart—what it trusts and what it treasures. And people are given over to sinful desires because “they exchanged the truth about God for a lie” (Rom. 1:24–25):  Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. (Eph. 4:17–19)  Humanity’s problem is futile thinking, darkened understanding, and ignorant hearts. We sin because we believe the lie that we are better off without God—that his rule is oppressive, we will be free without him, and sin offers more than God. This is true of every sin.  We can often identify...