Dr Paul Allen

By Randy Alcorn I first posted about “the problem of goodness” on my blog 14 years ago, but it is still relevant to conversations I’m having today with others (nothing has changed other than that I am 14 years older!). People always talk about the problem of evil, and how it threatens the Christian worldview, but they almost never talk about the problem of goodness and how it threatens non-Christian worldviews, including the evolutionary framework, survival of the fittest, materialism, and naturalism. That people would sacrificially do great good for the benefit of others—who naturalism sees as weak links in the chain that deserve to cease to exist—is absolutely extraordinary and cries out for an explanation. —Randy While atheists routinely speak of the problem of evil, they usually don’t raise the problem of goodness. But if evil provides evidence against God, then shouldn’t goodness count as evidence for Him? And wouldn’t that be evidence against atheism?  From a non-theistic vie...

  Saint Augustine answered that question at its root when he wrote, “You have made us for Yourself and [therefore] our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” If God has made us and designed us to be happy with him, then nothing else can take his place. God is the food our spirits need to eat. Other things will make our body happy (Eccl 2:24; 3:13; 5:18–20), but not our spirit, our soul, our true self. Other things will make us happy for a while, but not for long. Other things will make us happy on a superficial level, but not deep down. In the Bible, we read that all happiness, all joy, all beauty come from God (James 1:17). The joy of friendship, the beauty of nature, the happiness of human love were all created by God and designed to reflect his joy and beauty, to carry a little of his joy to us as the air carries the light of the sun.  Every joy you ever feel is a reflection of God. God is not one of the many sources of joy, for “religious people” only (whoever they a...

Twenty years after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, a Navy chaplain who ministered to hundreds of grieving families at ground zero has shared the incredible ways God showed up amid tragedy and provided comfort to those suffering.  Jim Jenkins, who was a Navy chaplain serving with the Coast Guard as part of the Chaplains’ Emergency Response Team, traveled to ground zero mere days after al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists hijacked four commercial jetliners and flew them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people.  What Jenkins saw when he arrived at the wreckage of the towers will forever be engrained in his memory.  “The only way I could describe it is, I saw footage of Berlin after the bombing. It looked like that as far as your eye could see. The TV couldn't give you a sense of the scope of the massive debris field,” he told The Christian Post. “It was so intense, so sobering.” “The Lord had...

What does the Bible mean when it says the presence of God?  Sometimes in Scripture, the phrase “the presence of God” is used to comfort believers. Nearing death, Isaac implored Esau, “Bring me some game and prepare a savoury dish for me, that I may eat, and bless you in the presence of the Lord before my death” (Gen. 27:7).  In his grand psalm of victory, David rejoiced, “O God, when Thou didst go forth before Thy people when Thou didst march through the wilderness, the earth quaked; the heavens also dropped rain at the presence of God; Sinai itself quaked at the presence of God, the God of Israel” (Ps. 68:7–8).  Reassuring Zacharias about the birth of John the Baptist, the angel said, “I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God; and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news” (Luke 1:19).  To a crowd of Jews outside the Temple shortly after Pentecost, Peter implored, “Repent therefore and return, that your sins may be wiped away, in order ...

Fear cripples people. It is a plague that can ravage the people of God and hinder us from walking confidently with our God and doing His will. When we are overwhelmed by the “giants in the land,” the only thing that can displace our fear is the powerful presence of God. The book of Joshua begins on a dismaying note. Moses is dead. The great prophet and leader of Israel whom God used as the human agent to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt was no longer with them. Moses died outside the land of promise as a result of his sins. It would be hard to overstate how categorically perplexing that must have been to Israel: the man who had led them out would not himself enter.  In addition, an entire generation of Israelites had died in the wilderness due to their unbelief. From that generation, only Joshua and Caleb were alive. That generation’s children who grew up to replace their parents would be going into the land. Fear was not simply a plague that threatened the...

Is God present in Hell? Hell yes. It is one thing to talk about God's choosing not to be present somewhere. If He ever chose not to be present in any particular place, then He wouldn't be inherently, infinitely, and eternally omnipresent. The problem with hell is not that God isn't there . People often think that hell is the absence of God . Everybody who is in hell would do everything that they could to get rid of Him. They would pay any price if it was possible. The problem is that He is there, and He's there in His judgment.

1. God is immanent because he is transcendent. The Lord is “God in the heavens above (transcendent) and on the earth beneath (immanent)” (Josh 2:11). But to understand God in full we must recognize that his drawing near to creation stems from his being distinct from creation. In other words, there is no deficiency in God that creation satisfies. The Lord doesn’t relate to this world because he lacks something within himself. No, God draws near out of the abundance of who he is. God’s transcendence distinguishes him from the created order and puts things in their right perspective. God does not come to us needy and wanting, but rather he comes to “revive the spirit of the lowly and the heart of the contrite” (Isa 57:15). It is the holy and righteous One above who restores the broken and needy below. 2. The Bible emphasizes God’s manifest presence, not only his omnipresence. There is a difference between saying “God is everywhere,” and saying “God is here.” The former is the ...

“In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him.” ( Ephesians 3:12 ) There is a wonderful exhortation and promise in Hebrews 4:15-16 : “For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted [that is, ‘tested’] like as we are, yet without sin. Let us, therefore, come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” We aren’t to come presumptuously or arrogantly to God in prayer, but we can come boldly! This is not by virtue of our own merits but because Christ Himself has opened the way for us. “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; And having an high priest over the house of God; Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith” ( Hebrews 10:19-22 ). Because He has bee...

“You do not have, because  you do not ask ” (James 4:2). How much enjoyment of God’s presence and experience of his power for mission are we missing out on because we do not ask God for them? Jesus also says we do not have because  we ask with such little faith  (Matthew  17:19 –20). How much enjoyment of God’s presence and experience of his power for mission are we missing out on because our expectation is so small that prayer will result in anything? Jesus also says we do not have, because  we do not ask long enough  (Luke 11:5–13). All over the Bible we see, not in great detail but in sufficient detail, that we are involved in a great cosmic battle and that the prayers of the saints are crucial to the advancement of the kingdom of God (see Daniel 10 and Ephesians 6 ). We don’t need to know how it all works, we just need to know it does. The testimony of Scripture and church history is that great Spirit-empowered, Great Commission fulfill...