Dr Paul Allen

Sometime around A.D. 95, Jesus, through the apostle John, came metaphorically knocking on the door of the church in Laodicea with an unsurpassed invitation: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” (Revelation  3:20 ) Pulled out of its context, this verse can sound like Jesus was calling softly and tenderly. Paintings inspired by this verse tend to portray a gentle Jesus mildly knocking. In reality, he was anything but soft and tender, gentle and mild. This invitation came on the heels of a bracing rebuke and serious warning. Jesus was pounding on the Laodicean’s door with the urgency of emergency: “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretch...

English: Statue of William Tyndale in the Victoria Embankment Gardens, London (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) William Tyndale 's final words before the chain around his neck strangled him to death were, "Lord, open the king of England 's eyes." That dying prayer was answered two years after Tyndale's death, when King Henry VIII ordered that the Bible of Miles Coverdale was to be used in every parish in the land. The Coverdale Bible was largely based on Tyndale's work. Then, in 1539, Tyndale's own edition of the Bible became officially approved for printing. Tyndale's translation inspired the great translations that followed, including the Great Bible (1539, also compiled by Coverdale), the Geneva Bible (1560), the Bishops' Bible (1568), the Douay-Rheims Bible (1582-1609), and the Authorized or King James Version (1611). A complete analysis of the King James shows that Tyndale's words account for eighty-four percent of the New Testament and...

Stained glass window in Long Beach showing John Knox admonishing Mary, Queen of Scots. From Covenant Presbyterian Church, Long Beach, California, USA (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) John Knox turns 500 this year. Actually, historians are not certain whether it was 1514 or 1515, but sometime around there, in the little market town of Haddington, Scotland , down the street from Saint Mary’s Church, Knox was born. As biographer Rosalind Marshall explains, much of Knox’s early life is unknown. He doesn’t enter the history books until his thirties, and what little we know about this life before then comes from pieces left for us by his contemporaries. For example, it’s believed that he attended Saint Andrews University and flourished in this studies, though there’s no evidence for it other than the word of Theodore Beza , his contemporary. Beza considered him a distinguished academician, and others called him “Mr. Knox” — a title reserved for those who held degrees. He likely spent som...

Martin Luther, author of the text of Christ lag in Todes Banden, and who, with Johann Walter, also wrote the melody (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) This question is not critical only today, but it was in the eye of the storm we call the Protestant Reformation that swept through and divided the Christian church in the sixteenth century. Martin Luther declared his position: Justification is by faith alone , our works add nothing to our justification whatsoever, and we have no merit to offer God that in any way enhances our justification. This created the worst schism in the history of Christendom. In refusing to accept Luther's view, the Roman Catholic Church excommunicated him, then responded to the outbreak of the Protestant movement with a major church council, the Council of Trent , which was part of the so-called Counter-Reformation and took place in the middle of the sixteenth century. The sixth session of Trent, at which the canons and decrees on justification and fait...

Image via Wikipedia Robert Bruce (1551-1631) is not a household name, even among knowledgeable Reformed Christians . He was at one time, however, one of the most important leaders in the Church of Scotland .  He was the successor of John Knox and James Lawson and preached at the Great Kirk of St. Giles in Edinburgh. St. Giles holds a prominent place in Reformation history, being the site where Knox preached his first sermon on the Reformation .  The Mystery of the Lord's Supper  (Christian Heritage) contains five sermons preached by Bruce at St. Giles in February and March of the year 1589. The Christian Heritage edition of these sermons is a reprint of the 1958 English translation of the work by Thomas F. Torrance (1913-2007). Torrance provides an introduction to the work, describing briefly Bruce's life and work.  Although helpful in terms of its biographical information, the introduction should be read with discernment since in it Torrance espouses th...