Dr Paul Allen

Those who reject Christ's claims will reject the Bible as a whole, so we are not surprised when we find non-Christians questioning the stories and teachings of Scripture. We are living in a funny age, however, when even many professing Christians want to cast the Bible in a negative light.  It is not uncommon for people who claim to be followers of Christ to question God's character or reject the truthfulness of entire portions of Scripture because they believe specific biblical stories and events contradict God’s mercy.  The invasion of Canaan is one of those stories that prompts many people, including many professing Christians, to question the Scriptures. Charges that “God commanded genocide” are frequently uttered.  Even after responding to the charge of genocide, however, we still need to consider how the story fits into the broader biblical revelation of the character of God.  THE PROBLEM IS US When we encounter something that troubles us in Scripture, we are t...

The Jesuits have a history of subverting Scripture to promote propaganda. To discredit the clarity of Scripture in counter-Reformation polemics, Jesuit luminaries like St. Robert Bellarmine and Fr. Diogo de Payva de Andrada resorted to the subterfuge of disparaging the Bible as obscure, even on matters of salvation. When Pope Sixtus V published his edition of the Latin Vulgate, into which he had introduced at least two thousand errors, Bellarmine, who bombastically designated the pontiff as “vice-God,” hushed up the scandal and falsely blamed the errors on the typesetters. Bellarmine sneered at the Hebrew manuscripts when they contradicted mistranslated Vulgate texts. He upheld, for example, the copyist’s error from the proto-evangelium of Genesis 3:15, which read: ” she [Mary] shall crush your head” instead of “he [Jesus] shall crush your head”—an error finally corrected by the Vatican in the Nova Vulgata of 1979. The iconic Jesuit even defended fornicating priests over against clergy...

The survey revealed that these prayers for judgment, which are also called “imprecations,” are not isolated to the Psalter but found throughout the Bible, even on the lips of Jesus himself. It seems, then, given the somewhat frequent appearance of imprecation throughout Scripture with positive portrayals, and the commands to sing the psalms in Paul’s letters to New Covenant churches, that there is at least some expectation that Christians would be praying for God’s justice today. My guess, however, is that most of us haven’t heard imprecatory prayers uttered in the church. Usually, the reasoning goes something like, “That’s not how Jesus taught us to pray,” or “Aren’t we supposed to pray for our enemies, not against them?” Or, perhaps you’ve heard, “That was just an Old Testament thing, but we pray differently now.” These are understandable objections, to be sure. To answer these and other objections, and assert that imprecation is indeed appropriate for Christians today, I’ve grouped ...

June is for Judgment by Robb Brunansky I love the month of June. It features the longest day of the year. It is hot but not the deathly hot of July and August, which means you can still enjoy some mornings and evenings outside and swimming is still refreshing. Baseball season is in full swing. Father’s Day lands on the third Sunday of the month. And my beautiful bride was born in the month of June. Yet for all the highlights of the sixth month of the year, in the United States it brings a more sinister side. Our nation celebrates June as “Pride month.” Desecrated rainbows fill store displays and social media feeds. Sexual deviancy and perversion is celebrated as a virtue. Baseball teams host “Pride nights” at their stadiums. Government buildings are lit up with the colors of the rainbow. The US Navy joins in, changing their entire Twitter avatar and bio to boast in wickedness. As Christians we might easily look at June as a month where the darkness has overtaken the light, where godles...

Inside the walls of Jericho lived a woman who has forever been nicknamed by those who know of her as Rahab “the prostitute.” History has a strange way of remembering people, but in Christ, Rahab “the prostitute” would eventually become Rahab “a daughter of Zion,” and we can be confident that in heaven she is known by that better name. But the transitions from life in sin to salvation often happen on dramatic stages, and Rahab is no exception. Hebrews 11:30 actually records the destruction of Jericho before the salvation of Rahab. Jericho was something of the Las Vegas of the known world in Rahab’s era. The inhabitants of Jericho were violent, murderous, and idolatrous in the extreme. The evil of the city’s inhabitants was such that God had placed the entire city under His punitive ban; the whole city was to be destroyed.  Joshua 6:17 says, “The city and all that is within it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction.” This particular type of judgment was the most severe. The Heb...

How does Jesus describe judgment in John 3:19: “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.”  So verse 19 says there is a kind of judgment. How so? How is it that when light, this light, comes into the world, judgment happens? How is that? And the rest of the text explains. “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world [and here’s what happens, here’s the split], and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed” (John 3:19–20). Now that’s the negative response. Verse 21 is going to be positive. Let’s stay with the negative for a minute. Let’s know ourselves and who we are, fallen under the wrath of God, under condemnation. If you’re an unbeliever, that’s where you still are. If you’re a believer, you’re still contaminate...

Let’s talk about framing. Not framing as in home construction, but framing as in the way we perceive reality. Framing refers to how we see things. In particular, it refers to the fact that, as human beings, we don’t merely see things; we see things as. If you see a bear, you don’t just see a bear. You see the bear as dangerous. When you see a sunset, you don’t just see the sunset; you see the sunset as beautiful. That’s what I mean by framing. We see things as. And not just sight, but our other senses as well. We hear the buzzing of a fly as annoying. We hear the laughter of a child as delightful. We smell the aroma of cookies as pleasant. We taste and see that honey is good. Framing, then, has to do with the immediate and snap judgments we make about reality and its relation to us. Changing Lenses Our framing is not static. The child’s laughter that is delightful at one moment is a nuisance when you’re trying to get work done. The laughter is the same; the framing — your snap judgment...

Romans 14:13-14 – Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother.  I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself, but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean.   Throughout Romans chapter 14, Paul is talking about what he calls “opinions” (14:1) or things that are secondary matters, which people often make into primary issues.  In this passage, he tells us that things are ultimately neutral, but people are not. Oftentimes, people will use things in a bad way, then religious people will make religious rules and legalisms to get rid of the thing not realizing that the thing was neutral, but the person was evil or sinful.   If you’re healthy and love the Lord, you’ll use things to love, honor, and serve the Lord. But, if you’re broken and unhealthy, you’ll use things and people to cause harm.   For example, consider a stick. Is i...

One of the most memorable events from the book of Daniel—a book with no shortage of memorable events—is Belshazzar’s feast in chapter 5. The potency of the entire empire, its nobility, sexuality, and wealth, is on display in garish fashion—until everyone’s merriment is brought to a sudden end by a vision of a heavenly hand. Talk about awkward. The hand appears immediately and disrupts the hapless, reckless celebration initiated by the drunken regent Belshazzar. Contrary to some interpretations, the vision seems to be literal and apparent to everyone. The image of the appendage is so disturbing that it has a physical effect on the king, causing the color to drain from his face and making his knees buckle (v. 6). We should also notice that no one in the room can understand the message. It may be in a script that appeared illegible. Perhaps the letters are visible, but the significance of them is not. Whatever the case, no one—not the king, the lords, or even the wisest men in his kingdo...

Is God present in Hell? Hell yes. It is one thing to talk about God's choosing not to be present somewhere. If He ever chose not to be present in any particular place, then He wouldn't be inherently, infinitely, and eternally omnipresent. The problem with hell is not that God isn't there . People often think that hell is the absence of God . Everybody who is in hell would do everything that they could to get rid of Him. They would pay any price if it was possible. The problem is that He is there, and He's there in His judgment.

Historically speaking, both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism have understood that there are degrees of sin . The Roman Catholic church makes a distinction between mortal and venial sin. The point of that distinction is that there are some sins so gross, heinous, and serious that the actual commission of those sins is mortal in the sense that it kills the grace of justification that resides in the soul of the believer.  In their theology, not every sin is devastating to that degree. There are some real sins that are venial sins. These are less serious sins in terms of their consequences, but they don't have the justification-killing capacity that mortal sins have. Many evangelical Protestants have rejected the idea of degrees of sin because they know that the Protestant Reformation rejected the Roman Catholic distinction between mortal and venial sins . As a result, they've jumped to the conclusion that there are no distinctions between sins in Protestantism. We should...

What happens to those who die while denying the truth of God in their lives? What will their rejection of the truth mean for them? Most people today do not want to think about the final judgment. For those who are young, death and eternity seem so far away.  Yet if we would think seriously about eternity—heaven and hell—it would change the way we live today, and for many, it will change where they will spend eternity. Many are betting their eternal destiny doesn't include a final judgment. This is a tragically fatal bet. The holiness and righteousness of God demand that He execute perfect justice on the final day. At the end of human history, God will judge the world, and His eternal purpose for redemptive history will, at last, be fulfilled. Looming on the horizon of eternity, there is coming a terrifying final day of judgment. This world is spinning through space on a collision course with this final day of reckoning. Known as the great white throne judgment, this climactic h...

We do not know how humans would have left this world had there been no Fall; some  doubt whether they ever would have done so. But as it is, the fruit of sin and God 's  judgment on it brings about the separation of body and soul through bodily death (Gen.  2:17; 3:19, 22; Rom. 5:12; 8:10; 1 Cor. 15:21 ), making it a certainty for everyone. This  separation of soul and body is a consequence of the spiritual separation from God that  first brought about physical death (Gen. 2:17; 5:5) and that will be deepened after death  for those who leave this world without Christ . In itself , death is an enemy (1 Cor. 15:26) and  a terror (Heb. 2:15). For Christians , the final terror of physical death is abolished. Jesus, the risen Savior,  Himself passed through a terrible death, enduring the anger of God. He takes from us  God's anger, and He lives to help us as we leave this world for the place He has prepared  in the next (John...