Dr Paul Allen

English: The Great Wall of China (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Many people fear the holy war passages of the Old Testament make him out to be. "Show no mercy." "Utterly destroy them." "Do not leave alive anything that breathes." Those are some pretty drastic marching orders. At first glance, God can look like an ancient military commander who's lost his marbles in war, suddenly unleashing rapid machine-gun fire on a conquered village of unarmed civilians. Do these passages depict genocide? Are Jesus' grandparents carrying out vicious massacres at his Father's command? How do we reconcile these tough passages with the goodness of God and help our people understand them well? How do we preach on holy war? Here are a few angles I've found helpful. Military cities The cities Israel takes out are military strongholds, not civilian population centers. Say the word city today and most of us think of metropolitan centers flooded with civilia...

TEMPLE Mount : It’s the hill at the heart of much of the Middle East ’s turmoil. Now, for the first time, archaeologists say they have found evidence of King Solomon’s temple . The veracity of the Old Testament ’s accounts of King Solomon building the First Temple has long been questioned. While remnants of the Second Temple abound, only uncertain hints of an earlier structure have previously been found . The Bible states Solomon’s Temple was destroyed by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II . This has been dated to about 587BC. The Second Temple, remnants of which include the Jerusalem’s famous Wailing Wall, was razed by the Romans about AD70. But the Times of Israel is today reporting a secret archaeological excavation  on Temple Mount has unearthed the first ever artefacts conclusively dated to the First Temple — some 2600 years ago. The paper says the dig was done with the permission of the Islamic organisation that administers the 7th Century Dome of the Rock , from which t...