Dr Paul Allen

The Academy of Athens. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “As I . . . beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD . Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” ( Acts  17:23 )   The people of Athens were known to be quite religious, worshipping a host of nature gods. They even had set up an altar “to the unknown god.” Paul pounced on this point of contact to declare unto them the God they didn’t know. He starts by laying the foundation: This God, he claims, is the Creator .   He not only “made the world and all things therein” (v. 24), but also is “Lord of heaven and earth.” To cause to exist and then to rule over all of creation, one must be omnipotent. He is much too great to dwell in “temples made with hands.” How ludicrous to think He might need anything, including the worship of men, “seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things” (v. 25).   This God “hath made of one blood all nations of men” and “hath

The Christian concept of apocatastasis includes a restoration of the world to its original state, as in the Garden of Eden (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Ecclesiastes 2:1–11 “I said in my heart, ‘Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.’ But behold, this also was vanity” (v. 1). Hedonism is a non- Christian worldview  and can be traced back all the way to the garden of Eden . Genesis 3:6 says that Eve chose to eat the forbidden fruit partly because it was a “delight” to her eye. There was a certain amount of pleasure that the fruitgave her when she beheld it, and, no doubt, a degree of pleasure that she thought she would receive should she disobey God and take from the tree. In retrospect, however, Eve found only pain when she and Adam sinned (Gen.  :7, 16–19). As a worldview, hedonism is concerned with the maximizing of pleasure and the minimizing of pain. At various points in history it has expressed itself crassly. We can think, for example, of the orgies an

Image via Wikipedia Greece and the other debt -burdened European countries are merely the first little carriages in the derailment of the Sovereign Debt Express. A train service to nowhere. The big carriage has " USA " painted on it in red. To understand the US financial position, just remove eight zeros and pretend it's a household budget : Annual family income: $21,700 Money the family spent: $38,200 New debt on the credit card : $16,500 Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710 The US is trying to bring their budget under control. This year they implemented total budget cuts of $385. Assuming they don't spend more than they raise in taxes, it will take them 370 years to pay back this debt. The bi-partisan US Super Committee is currently discussing proposals to cut spending by $12,000 over 10 years. At $1,200 in saving per year and assuming they balance the budget, it will then take them a mere 119 years to pay back the debt. That should