Dr Paul Allen

Where evangelists can’t go, God’s Spirit can, but God is also reaching Muslims by dreams. Read about some of these accounts. Joel’s Prophecy One of the most well-known prophecies in the Bible is found in Joel 2, where Joel the Prophet wrote that “it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions” (Joel 2:28).  Of course, God has not yet poured out His “Spirit on all flesh” yet, but He is apparently drawing some to the Lord Jesus Christ by means of dreams. Many who are Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, and even Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses report that they’ve had dreams where they’ve encountered Jesus Christ.  There’s a place on one of our websites where people can click on “Contact Us,” and in the last couple of years, dozens and dozens of men and women have reached out to us to ask what their dreams might mean. Recently, many of these

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

LOCUST INVASION JOEL 1 “Alas for the day! For the day of the LORD is near, and as destruction from the Almighty it comes. Is not the food cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God ?” (vv. 15–16). A locust invasion precipitated the vision in the Old Testament book of Joel . Joel describes a plague of locusts under the old covenant as a type of the day of the Lord (Joel 1:4, 15–16). Following the invasion of locusts at one point in the history of God’s people, the Lord sent Joel to warn them that a worse day of judgment was yet ahead for the impenitent. Of all the writing prophets, Joel is perhaps the hardest to date. The first issue is that we know nothing about Joel except that he was a prophet and the son of Pethuel (1:1). Although Joel is not an uncommon name in the Old Testament, appearing frequently in the genealogies of 1 Chronicles (for example, 4:35; 5:8; 6:33) and in Ezra 10:43, Nehemiah 11:9, and elsewhere, we cannot with certainty identify th

Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on My holy hill. Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the LORD is coming. It is close at hand   (Joel 2:1). In Genesis 1:5, God called the light “day.” Thus, day in the Bible means “time of light,” or “light-time.” Because God’s glory shines around Him, whenever He appears there is light. The expression “day of the Lord,” therefore, refers to a time when God appears. There is a second aspect to the “day of the Lord,” however. In Genesis 1, we are told repeatedly that God saw what He had made and that it was good. God was passing judgments. Judging requires sight, and seeing requires light. Thus, when God appears and shines His light, it is a time of judgment. The day of the Lord, then, is a time when God comes to His people. He shines His light upon them, exposing their deeds to His view, and passes judgment on them. At various times in the history of the church and in the history of nations, God chooses to pay a visit

Jesus, the angels, and Paul mention clouds in connection with Jesus’ return (Luke 21:27; Mark 14:62; Acts 1:11; 1 Thess. 4:17). As Jesus’ ascension to the Father was marked by clouds that hid him from the sight of the disciples, so his return could be accompanied by literal clouds as well. However, if the clouds are literal, Jesus’ return would be an event in a particular region: if Jesus’ return took place in the city of Jerusalem in Israel, accompanied by clouds, his return could be witnessed only in that city, nowhere else. The explanation that satellite technology makes a worldwide viewing of Jesus’ return is technically correct, but it is inadequate as an explanation for what Jesus, the angels, and Paul could have meant and what his readers could have understood. When Paul writes to the Thessalonian believers that “we who are still alive and are left” will meet Jesus “in the clouds” (1 Thess. 4:17 NIV), he does not seem to understand the “clouds” as a meeting point above a part

“And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the LORD hath said, and in the remnant whom the LORD shall call.” ( Joel  2:32 )   “God is no respecter of persons” ( Acts  10:34 ). Yet in the above “whosoever” passage of the Old Testament , it is clear that those who “call on the name of the LORD” were the same as “the remnant whom the LORD shall call.” Those who call  on  the Lord have first been called  by the Lord. He accepts all those who call on Him from every nation, but no doubt their geographical location to a large extent determines whether they will even hear of Him, and “how then shall they call on him . . . of whom they have not heard?” ( Romans  10:14 ).   Theologians of great intellect have wrestled with these questions for centuries without resolving them, at least to the satisfaction of those of different mental persuasion. On the practical level, ho

Icon of the Pentecost (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Now that God had acknowledged the Church as the new temple, the next thing was to pour out the Holy Spirit on the members of the Body. What Jesus promised as a baptism is pictured here as a filling, that is, a full, satisfying experience. Some try to make a distinction between being baptized in the Holy Spirit and being filled. Actually, the Bible uses a variety of terms. It was also a pouring out of the Spirit as Joel prophesied (Acts 2:17–18, 33); a receiving (and active taking) of a gift (Acts 2:38); a falling upon ( Acts 8:16 ; 10:44; 11:15); a pouring out of the gift (Acts 10:45); and a coming upon. With this variety of terms it is impossible to suppose that the baptism is any different from the filling. Remember, too, that since the Holy Spirit is a Person, we are talking about an experience that brings a relationship. Each term brings out some aspect of the Pentecostal experience, and no one term can bring out all th