Dr Paul Allen

By all accounts, the battle — 2605 years ago — was a ferocious event. Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar was out for revenge. The King of Israel had betrayed him — for a second time. This time, he would not withhold his wrath. 2 Kings 25: 1-9 reads: “So the city was besieged unto the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. On the ninth day of the [fourth] month, the famine was sore in the city, so that there was no bread for the people of the land. Then a breach was made in the city, and all the men of war [fled] by night by the way of the gate between the two walls … And he [Nebuzaradan, the Babylonian captain of the guard] burnt the house of the Lord, and the King’s house; and all the houses of Jerusalem, even every great man’s house, burnt he with fire.” It was 586BC. King Nebuchadnezzar’s troops plundered the city. King Solomon’s Temple on Mount Zion was stripped of its treasures and dismantled. Thousands were taken into captivity. Now, archaeologists say they have — for the first t

Thirty-three miles east of the Mediterranean Sea on a limestone plateau in the Judaean Hills rests one of the oldest cities in the world: Jerusalem. Jerusalem is mentioned 660 times in the Old Testament and 141 in the New—more if you count all its synonyms like Zion, city of God, and Salem. No city has been written and sung about as much as Jerusalem. Or fought over. It’s been conquered more than 40 times including by the Persians, the Romans, the Ottoman Turks, and the British Empire, and more than 100 battles have been fought for control of Jerusalem. Even its name, which means “foundation of peace,” elicits an emotional response (though historically it’s been anything but a “city of peace”). Out of all the cities in ancient Israel, why did David chose to set up his kingdom here? Scholars and historians offer some interesting reasons. 1. Jerusalem had a natural defense system. Jerusalem’s most advantageous feature was its topography. Three prominent hills surrounded

And God remembered Noah , and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged.” ( Genesis 8:1 )   This verse contains the first mention of the beautiful word “remember” in the Bible , and it tells us that God remembers! During the awful cataclysm of the Flood , the most devastating event thus far in the history of the world, God still remembered the faithful obedience of Noah, and He even remembered every living thing!   We may forget many things, but God remembers: “For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name” ( Hebrews  6:10 ). Nor does He ever forget a promise. The first mention of “remember” in the New Testament is the Spirit-inspired testimony of Zacharias: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel ; for he hath visited and redeemed his people . . . to remember his holy covenant; The oath which he sware to our father Abraham ” ( L

Temple Mount and Western Wall during Shabbat (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) On Wednesday, December 6th, 2017, there was a significant spiritual shift in the universe as the US President Donald Trump reaffirmed and formally declared that the US will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. This is the first and most necessary step toward another major milestone, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. While it has been the practice of some to insist on international determination over this topic, it is Israel’s right to decide the location of her capital as was spiritually declared by King David and then legally documented in 1950 when the Israeli Knesset passed the Jerusalem Law, and declared Jerusalem to be the eternal, undivided capital of the State of Israel . Declaring Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital would not itself mark a change in American law. In 1995, Democrat President Bill Clinton signed a statute declaring, “Since 1950, the city of Jerusalem has been the capital

As Jesus came near Jerusalem, he saw the city and cried for it, saying, “I wish you knew today what would bring you peace. But now it is hidden from you.” ( Luke 19:41-42 ) The Lord had finally acknowledged to the Jewish leaders that He was their promised Messiah, riding into the city on a donkey’s colt in fulfillment of prophecy ( Zechariah 9:9 ; Matthew 21:1-7 ), but they refused to accept and prepared to crucify Him. Therefore, Jesus wept over the city, for He knew it would soon be destroyed “because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation” ( Luke 19:44 ). There are many other cases of such tragic ignorance in the Bible. For example, “Samson . . . wist not that the LORD was departed from him” ( Judges 16:20 ), and it cost him his great strength and finally his life. The ungodly sinners in the days of Noah “knew not until the flood came, and took them all away” ( Matthew 24:39 ). Of the northern kingdom of Israel, it was said: “Strangers have devoured his strength, and he know

“But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting , but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Matthew 6:17–18). I have observed over the years that Roman Catholics are much more diligent about fasting than Protestants—or at least they used to be. The reason for this is that the Catholic Church used to require a partial fast, from meat, every Friday. There were other days of fasting in the Roman calendar as well. Protestant churches, however, have had little to say about fasting. Why is this? The reason lies in the fact that at the time of the Reformation, fasting was connected with the sacrament of penance. In the Roman system, if a person committed a mortal sin, he lost his justification. In order to regain his justification and escape the sentence of hell, he had to make use of the sacrament of penance. Frequently

Behold, we go up to Jerusalem . — Luke 18:31 Jerusalem stands in the life of Our Lord as the place where He reached the climax of His Father’s will. “I seek not My own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent Me.” That was the one dominating interest all through our Lord’s life, and the things He met with on the way, joy or sorrow, success or failure, never deterred Him from His purpose. “He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem.” The great thing to remember is that we go up to Jerusalem to fulfill God ’s purpose, not our own. Naturally, our ambitions are our own; in the Christian life, we have no aim of our own.  There is so much said today about our decisions for Christ , our determination to be Christians , our decisions for this and that, but in the New Testament it is the aspect of God’s compelling that is brought out. “Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you.” We are not taken up into a conscious agreement with God’s purpose, we are taken up into God’s

“ Cursed be Canaan ; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.… Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem ; and let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth , and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant” ( Gen. 9:25–27 ).- Genesis 9:24–29 Exodus 20:12 teaches us necessarily to obey all authorities, for “it pleases God to govern us by their hand” (Heidleberg Catechism, 104). How we treat our leaders (family, church, or civil) reveals what we think of our Father, since He ordains them all ( Rom. 13:1–7 ). Having despised God by dishonoring his father, today’s passage records the curse Ham earned for his seed. These verses illustrate the maladies that can result if we do not obey our authorities faithfully. Let us first note this text has a sordid history of being used to justify ethnic slavery and racism. However, this use is manifestly unjustifiable. The malediction says nothing about race; it is based on faith, and in any case is pronounced on

T he book of Joshua presents most readers with a troubling question: how can a God of love command his followers to destroy an entire nation of people? The Canaanites had lived in their land for centuries before Joshua and his people came to claim it for themselves. While some in Canaan fought against God’s people and were destroyed as a result (cf. the battle of Ai , 8:14ff), others did not attempt armed aggression against Israel . The people of Jericho, for instance, retreated inside their city walls and mounted no attack against the Jews. Nonetheless, following divine orders, the Israeli soldiers “destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys” (6:21). The God of Joshua also required a similar kind of wrathful judgment against his own people when they sinned. Following the battle of Jericho , a soldier named Achan took in plunder “a beautiful robe from Babylonia, two hundred shekels of silver and a wedge of gold

JOEL 2:1–11 “The LORD utters his voice before his army, for his camp is exceedingly great; he who executes his word is powerful. For the day of the LORD is great and very awesome; who can endure it?” (v. 11). Despite God ’s clear proclamation that Israel ’s impenitent and flagrant violation of the covenant would result in the nation losing its homeland ( Deut. 28:15–68), by the time the Babylonian exile came upon Judah , a tradition had developed that Jerusalem was inviolable. Divorcing their election from its covenantal context, the Judahites were convinced, up until Jerusalem fell to Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC , that the Lord would keep the city safe. We see evidence of this in Jeremiah’s ministry, when he had to tell the people on the eve of Judah’s fall that they could not trust in the fact that God put His temple in Jerusalem (Jer. 7:1–4).  Even as the menace of Babylon grew, Jerusalem refused to believe God would take the kingdom from her. Consequently, Joel’s words in

Religion can be a place we try to hide from God . There’s something about rhythms and rituals, formality and functions that trick us into thinking that God is fooled by our church attendance. We think, “Maybe if I lift my hands really high Sunday morning, I’ll distract God from what happened  Thursday  night.” And even if we rarely say those thoughts out loud, we know the temptation of this pattern. Blind Fools Mock the All-Seeing God While the prophet Ezekiel was exiled in Babylon, God showed him a vision of Jerusalem’s religious leaders committing idolatry. In this vision, the Lord brought Ezekiel to the sanctuary in Jerusalem and commanded him to dig through the walls. “And there, engraved on the wall all around, was every form of creeping things and loathsome beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel ” (Ezekiel  8:10 ). The very place God intended to be set aside for his worship had become a gallery of idols. Then the Lord asked Ezekiel, “ Son of man , have you

Qumran in the West Bank, Middle East. In this cave the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. In dieser Höhle in Qumran wurden die Schriftrollen gefunden. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) In the 1948 printing of his excellent book Our Bible and Ancient Manuscripts, Sir Frederic Kenyon , the textual scholar, had this to say, “There is indeed no probability that we shall find manuscripts of the Hebrew text going back to a period before the formation of the text which we know as Massoretic. We can only arrive at an idea of it by a study of the earliest translations made from it… ” (cited by Pfeiffer, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible, p. 107).  At the same time his book was being printed, discoveries began in 1947 that would render any further statements like Kenyon’s impossible. Until this time, scholars had only the clay tablets of Babylon and the Egyptian papyri to help them understand background information on the Bible, since no ancient Old Testament manuscripts were known to have survived