Dr Paul Allen

We have all heard evangelists quote from Revelation : "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me" (Rev. 3:20). Usually the evangelist applies this text as an appeal to the unconverted, saying: " Jesus is knocking at the door of your heart. If you open the door, then He will come in." In the original saying, however, Jesus directed His remarks to the church. It was not an evangelistic appeal. So what? The point is that seeking is something that unbelievers do not do on their own. The unbeliever will not seek . The unbeliever will not knock. Seeking is the business of believers . Jonathan Edwards said, "The seeking of the Kingdom of God is the chief business of the Christian life." Seeking is the result of faith, not the cause of it. When we are converted to Christ , we use language of discovery to express our conversion. We speak of finding Christ. We m...

Two Biblical Promises Concerning Healing     1.      Isaiah 35 It is widely argued that the description in Isa. 35 is of conditions that will prevail in the Messianic age to come. Premillennialists place the fulfillment of this text in the 1,000 year reign of Christ upon the earth following his second coming. Amillennialists believe it will be fulfilled in the New Heaven and New Earth of Rev. 21–22.  What is important to note, however, is that Jesus appealed to this passage as proof that He was the Messiah and that the Kingdom of God had come in his ministry.     In Matthew 11 we read about the doubt that entered the mind of John the Baptist following his arrest and imprisonment. He sent word to Jesus with one question: “Are you the expected one or should we look for someone else?” (v. 3). Jesus answered by appealing to both Isa. 35 and 61. The fact that now, through the ministry of Jesus, the blind receive sight and the lame walk ...

English: Jeroboam's idolatry, 1 Kings 12:25-33, illustration from a Bible card published 1904 by the Providence Lithograph Company (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing.” ( Exodus 20:4 )   There are several reasons why idolatry is forbidden. The most obvious it that the triune Creator is too great to attempt to visualize ( Exodus 34:5-7 ). There is no thing or experience in human existence that can represent the immortal and invisible Creator ( 1 Timothy 6:16 ).   Thus, God sees any effort to “picture” Him (idolatry) as rebellion ( Jeremiah 5:19-25 ). It does not matter how we may attempt to “see” God. “Any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” ( Exodus 20:4 ) are all totally incapable of expressing God’s person.   Romans 1:18-32 reveals the heart of an idolater. Those who hold the truth in unrighteousness (v...

The Lord's Prayer (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “But rather seek ye the kingdom of God ; and all these things shall be added unto you.” ( Luke 12:31 ) In these days of financial worries and rampant materialism, it does us good to reflect on Christ ’s teaching concerning our priorities.  In this passage, He was teaching His disciples not to be troubled over temporal things (v. 22), but to rest in the fact that He will supply our needs. “If then God so clothe the grass, which is to day in the field, and to morrow is cast into the oven; how much more will he clothe you, O ye of little faith?” (v. 28). We are not to have our mind set on material things (v. 29), neither are we to be “of doubtful mind” wavering between hope and fear of the future. We are to be different. We are children of the King and are in His care. The “nations of the world seek after” (v. 30) these things.  Our Father knows that we have need of certain things, and since He loves us and has our bes...

The role of the Holy Spirit is to use our arguments to convince the unbeliever of the truth of Christianity . When one presents reasons for his faith, one is not working apart from or against the Holy Spirit. To return to a point mentioned earlier: it is unbalanced and unscriptural to simply preach the gospel if the unbeliever has questions or objections. First, it’s unbalanced because it assumes the Holy Spirit works only through preaching. But he can work through rational argumentation, too. We should appeal to the head as well as to the heart. If an unbeliever objects that the Bible is unreliable because it is a translation of a translation of a translation, the answer is not to tell him to get right with God . The answer is to explain that we have excellent manuscripts of the Bible in the original Greek and Hebrew languages —and then tell him to get right with God! But second, it’s unscriptural to refuse to reason with an unbeliever. Look at Paul. It was Paul’s standard proced...

When the New Testament came around, it’s fairly logical to think that this kingdom mentioned in the OT was the expectation, right? Let’s look at the New Testament usages of “kingdom” and explore what is said. The Kingdom: NT Usage - 1. Human empires & reign (national) or Satan ’s empire and reign on earth. Matt. 4:8, 12:25-26, Mark 6:23, 11:10, 13:8, Luke 1:33, 4:5, 11:17-18, 21:10, Heb. 11:33; Rev. 11:15, 26:20. a. In Rev. 11:15 when the heavenly voices say “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ , and he shall reign forever and ever”, that’s saying that the earthly kingdom (i.e. all of the kingdoms of mankind summarized in the phrase “the kingdom of the world”) has become his kingdom. This is a blatant statement that he will have an empire and reign on earth as opposed to in heaven. 2. God’s universal empire and rule. Matt. 6:10, 26:29; Luke 11:2 a. Matt. 6:10 (“your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”) suggests that Christians ...

Ephesians 5:1–6 The audacity of Paul’s statement that believers are to imitate God (TNIV: “follow God’s example”) leads many to write off this verse as an impossible goal. But Paul has a specific focus in mind that he thinks is completely within the believer’s capability. In 4:32, believers are enjoined to forgive each other as God forgave them in Christ . Paul focuses on this attitude of forgiveness in his encouragement that believers become imitators of God. The verb implies continuing behavior repeated so as to become habit.  This sentiment of forgiveness matches the Lord’s Prayer , wherein Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt 6:12). In 1 Cor 4:16, Paul uses the same verb and noun (become imitators), but there he asks the Corinthians to imitate him. The context is the Corinthians’ failure to appreciate Paul’s apostolic authority, and also their disregard of his role as their father in the Lord. In both case...