Dr Paul Allen

  Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning, I saw seven golden lampstands, and amid the lampstands, one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and a golden sash around his chest. (Rev. 1:12–13)  John saw Jesus “amid the lampstands.” Much of the imagery in Revelation is challenging to understand, but we don’t have to wonder what these lampstands represent. Later in this first chapter, we are told that the lampstands represent the churches (1:20). When John turned to see the voice speaking to him, the first thing that caught his attention was Jesus standing among his people. Were these early Christians wondering if the church would be snuffed out as persecution increased? When they gathered to hear this letter read to them, it must have provided deep encouragement to see that Jesus was not standing off at a distance while his followers suffered for him. He was right there with them, walking in the midst of them, keeping their fire for the gospe...

People tend to talk more about the book of Revelation than about the message of the book. Many people hear Revelation and, like a word association test, their minds immediately go to their position on the millennial reign of Christ. Most recently when a congregant heard that I was there to speak on Revelation, he felt compelled to identify himself as a premillennialist, as though that settled the matter and satisfied the book’s purpose.  On another occasion, a member of the congregation lingered to inform me that he was a staunch partial preterist. He went so far as to say that Revelation cannot be understood apart from an early date for its writing. While hermeneutical approaches and questions of date are worthwhile considerations, are they necessary to glean benefits from the book of Revelation?  I believe that our Lord’s message to us in the book is apparent apart from these considerations, and a preoccupation with them can lead us to miss the substance our Lord has for us....

The heat was on. The Smyrna police hunted for Polycarp , the revered bishop of that city. Already they had put other Christians to death in the arena; now a mob cried for the leader. Polycarp had left the city and was hiding out at the farm of some friends. As the soldiers moved in, he fled to another farm. Though the aged churchman felt no fear of death and had wanted to stay in the city, his friends had urged him to hide, perhaps fearing that his death would demoralize the church. If so, they were quite wrong. When the police reached the first farm, they tortured a slave boy to learn Polycarp’s whereabouts. Then they rushed, fully armed, to apprehend the bishop. Though Polycarp had time to escape, he refused. “God’s will be done,” he resolved. Instead, he welcomed his captors as guests, offered them food and asked for an hour alone to pray. He took two hours. Some of the captors seemed sorry to be arresting such a nice old man . On the way back to Smyrna, the police chief ...

Peter, John and the rest were arguably the most motivated people in history. They were bold, courageous and literally turning the world upside down. Then you add John  20:18  and it changes everything. Jesus says, Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you do not wish to go. Jesus tells Peter that he will die on a cross. That is the only way to explain that verse. Well, reading his five sermons in Acts (Acts 2:14-39; Acts 3:11-4:4; Acts 4:8-12; Acts 5:29-32; Acts 10:34-43) takes a whole new meaning when you include the fact that he knew he could die at any moment. This could be his last sermon. So what motivated these guys? How can we be as bold as they were? Well in order to see what motivated them we don’t need to look further than the first eleven verses of the book of Acts. Here are...

John describes the invasion of Gog and Magog as follows: “When the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, in order to gather them for battle; they are as numerous as the sands of the sea. They marched up over the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. And fire came down from heaven and consumed them. And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Rev. 20:7–10). The prophet John explains that at the end, before God’s new world becomes a reality, God will utterly and completely remove from the face of the earth the instigator of all evil and all who followed him in rebellion. In Revelation 20:8, Gog and Magog are not individual nations from the north consisting of military troops. “Gog and Ma...

In Revelation 13, John describes the incarnation of evil, a figure inspired by Satan who opposes Jesus Christ and who seeks to usurp his place among the inhabitants of the earth as an object of worship and loyalty. He parodies Jesus’ death and resurrection in order to hide the fact that he has lost the battle against God. He deceives people with false teaching and seeks to validate his claims to divine authority with signs and wonders. He persecutes Christians who refuse to acknowledge him through economic discrimination and death. He will be defeated when Jesus returns. There are reasons to regard John’s description of the Beast from the sea as prophecy of a future historical figure, patterned on “prototypes” in Jewish history and in contemporary history. And there are reasons to understand John’s description of the Beast from the sea as a symbolic portrayal of the world system—past, present, and future, from Jesus’ first coming to Jesus’ second coming—that idolizes human authority...

“And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.” ( Colossians 3:10 ) Man’s body is made of the same “earth” material ( Genesis 2:7 ) as the animals (v. 19) and as the earth itself ( Genesis 1:10 ). Furthermore, he shares the created “soul” ( Hebrew nephesh) and “spirit” (Hebrew ruach, same as “breath”) with the animals (compare 1:21; 7:15, where nepheshand ruach respectively are used of the animals). However, he shares the created “ image of God ” (1:27) only with God Himself. Ever since Adam and Eve first sinned, all people have been born in innate rebellion against Him. The image of God in man has been grievously marred, and we are “dead in trespasses and sins” ( Ephesians 2:1 ). However, as our text reminds us, the image of God in man can be “renewed” through the great miracle of the new creation ( 2 Corinthians5:17 ). And this includes more than just our soul/spirit nature, for we have His gracious promise that our own resu...

c. 1437-1446 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.” ROMANS 3:28 As we’ve seen this month, the most serious problem facing the human race is not the destruction of the environment, crime, or the threat of nuclear war; it is sin . The former threaten us with physical death , the latter with spiritual death. Thus it follows that the greatest news ever known is that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). Hell may be the destiny of man, but that is not the desire of God ’s heart. Peter notes that the Lord “is patient ... not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” ( 2 Peter 3:9). Because of His great love for sinners, God sent His Son “to be the propitiation for our sins” ( 1 John 4:10). Since God’s gracious gift of salvation is appropriated by faith, it is not surprising that justification by faith is the theme of Romans (see Rom. 1:16–17). The apostle shows that all m...

English: Natural disasters in Rio de Janeiro in April 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.” ROMANS 7:5 In our fallen, cursed world, disasters are commonplace. Fires, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters happen somewhere every day. Added to those natural disasters are the man–made ones, such as war, acts of terrorism, plane crashes, train wrecks, etc. But far greater than any of those disasters, and the one from which they all stem, was the entrance of sin into the human race. Sin renders fallen men spiritually dead, cuts them off from fellowship with God , and consigns them to eternal punishment in Hell . In today’s verse Paul introduces four words that describe man’s unregenerate state: flesh, sin, law, and death. Those four words are interconnected: the flesh produces sin, which...

Baptism of Christ. Jesus is baptized in the Jordan River by John. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) We were saved by God ’s mercifully deciding to grant the washing of regeneration. When we were saved, we were cleansed of our sin, the decay and filth that is produced by spiritual deadness. Speaking of that truth in his letter to the church at Ephesus , Paul explains that we were cleansed “by the washing of water with the word” ( Eph. 5:26). James declares that, “In the exercise of His will He [God] brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we might be, as it were, the first fruits among His creatures” (James 1:18). Peter reminds us that we “have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God”(1 Pet. 1:23). Palingenesia (regeneration) carries the idea of receiving n new life, of being born again, or born from above. Jesus told the inquiring Nicodemus, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and ...

Certainly the Holy Spirit was at work in the Old Testament , bringing people to faith and working in remarkable ways in a few individuals such as Moses or Samuel, David or Elijah. But in general there was less powerful activity of the Holy Spirit in the lives of most believers. Effective evangelism of the nations had been diminished, casting out of demons was unknown, miraculous healing was uncommon (though it did happen, especially in the ministries of Elijah and Elisha), prophecy was restricted to a few prophets or small bands of prophets, and “resurrection power” over sin in the sense of Romans 6:1–14 and Philippians 3:10 was rarely experienced. But at several points the Old Testament looks forward to a time when there would be a greater empowering of the Holy Spirit that would reach to all of God’s people. Moses said, “Would that all the LORD ’s people were prophets, that the LORD would put his spirit upon them!” (Num. 11:29). And the LORD prophesied through Joel: And it ...

English: Jesus and Mary Magdalene (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Following Jesus ’s forty days in the wilderness where he was tempted by Satan to prove himself to be the Son of God , he returned to the Galilee where he taught in that region’s synagogues (Luke 4:14–15). On one Sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue in Nazareth in which they followed an order that included a public reading from the Prophets. When it came time for that reading, Jesus stood up and was handed a scroll of the book of Isaiah from which he was expected to read (Luke 4:17). Unrolling the scroll to the verses of Isaiah 61 that announce the coming of the Messiah , Jesus read, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18; see Isa. 61:1). Then Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. It was the custom of the day for the reader to also give a sermon and for rabbis to sit when they taught, and Jesus did exactly that.13 Perhaps...

The Jordan River (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) The Gospel writers point us to any number of watershed moments in the life of Jesus —moments that dramatically changed his life on earth. But the first such moment is one that literally involved water. From the day of his baptism, Jesus was recognized as one who taught with authority, and he was baptized in the water of the Jordan River for a reason. Within the culture of first-century Judaism, ritual immersion in water was used in a variety of ways, each of which involved living water. The Jewish oral law known as the Mishnah carefully defines various sources for such living water. The purest form of living water is rainfall. Therefore, any water source that flows or directs rainfall is said to contain living water.4 Thus by definition, the water of a river, lake, or sea was considered living water. A manmade pool (Hebrew, mikveh) could also contain living water if it was constructed properly and was fed from a source that collected...