Dr Paul Allen

I was startled when I read in Mark 16:8 that the disciples, before Jesus ascended to heaven, did not believe. The same unbelief is found in Mark 16:11. Then, two verses later, in verse 13, the same four words– they did not believe. Again, in verse 14, the same four words–they did not believe. But what amazes me most is the fact that in the next verse, verse 15, Jesus said to these unbelieving and fearful believers, “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.”  If I had been there, please allow me to say this, I would have approached Jesus from behind and whispered into His ear, “Master, Lord, don’t You know that the disciples You just gave the Supreme Commission to are a bunch of unbelievers? They will never be able to do it.” I think Jesus would have turned around, put His finger over His lips and said quietly to me, “Bonnke, you don’t know that I have a secret.”  What was the secret? In verse 20, we read, “They went out and preached everywhere, the Lord w...

How did Jesus walk on water? How did he feed five thousand with five loaves and two fish? How did he raise Lazarus from the dead? Unless we have been carefully taught, many Christians would be quick to say simply, Because he is God! And he truly is. But is that how the New Testament answers these questions? If we follow the emphasis of the Gospels, we might say that what Jesus’s miracles show is that he is God, but how he, as man, performs these wonders, is not quite as simple as we may assume. In particular, what are we to say about the many texts that testify to the Holy Spirit’s presence in the human life of Christ? Did Christ, in His humanity, actually need the Holy Spirit if he performed such signs simply by virtue of his divinity? When we recognize the surprisingly recurrent theme of the divine Spirit’s relationship to the divine Son in his humanity, we might understand Jesus (and the Gospels) better, and freshly marvel at what grace Christ offers us in the gift of his Spirit. Je...

The records of Jesus’ life and ministry cause controversy from the very start. The extraordinary narrative of the circumstances surrounding His conception and birth provokes howls of protest from the critics of supernaturalism.  They must begin their work of demythologizing early, wielding scissors on the first page of the New Testament. Following Matthew’s table of genealogy, the first paragraph of the first Gospel reads as follows: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 1:18). Though the New Testament is replete with miracles surrounding the person of Jesus, none seems more offensive to modern man than the virgin birth. If any law of science is established as immutable and unbreakable, it is that human reproduction is not possible without the conjoining of the male seed and the female egg.  We may have developed sophisticate...

What exactly is an Apostle?   The New Testament, and especially Paul, uses the Greek word apostolos (apostle) in at least two senses.  Broadly, it means one who is sent on a specific mission as an envoy or representative of the sender. For example, when Titus’ two companions travelled to collect the Corinthian church’s full contribution for the saints in Jerusalem, they arrived as “messengers [apostoloi] of the churches” in Macedonia (2 Cor. 8:23). Likewise, the Philippian church dispatched Epaphroditus as their “messenger [apostolos] and minister to [Paul’s] need” (Phil. 2:25).  This broad use of the term apostolos may reflect an older Jewish legal concept that the messenger resembles the sender insofar as his activity reflects the sender’s will and authority. As Jesus observed, “A servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger [apostolos] greater than the one who sent him” (John 13:16). In its more focused and familiar sense, the word apostolo...

Jesus performs mighty acts to underline, highlight, and bold the font of his monologues. The inbreaking of the kingdom of God through mighty deeds cast divine light on his sermons. They proclaimed, “Here is the heaven’s King; listen to him.” We find the Good Shepherd seating the crowds and feeding them multiplied bread and fish to prepare them for the sermon entitled “I am the bread of life.” He tells the paralytic to rise and walk to prove the other, more scandalous claim, “Here stands one who can forgive sins.”  He raises Lazarus from the dead as the exclamation point to the sentences, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). At his voice, the water blushes to wine, the storm stills, demons beg to depart and enter swine — all to provoke the question, “Who then is this?” (Mark 4:41).  Miracle-Working Preacher In the middle of the most vivid prophesy of the Savior’s atonement and subsequent re...

Around 1960, in the Republic of Congo, a two-year-old girl named Thérèse was bitten by a snake. She cried out for help, but by the time her mother, Antoinette, reached her, Thérèse was unresponsive and seemed to have stopped breathing. No medical help was available to them in their village, so Antoinette strapped little Thérèse to her back and ran to a neighboring village. According to the US National Library of Medicine , brain cells start dying less than five minutes after their oxygen supply is removed, an event called hypoxia. After six minutes, the lack of oxygen can cause severe brain damage or death. Antoinette estimates that, given the distance and the terrain, it probably took about three hours to reach the next village. By the time they arrived, her daughter was likely either dead or had sustained significant brain damage. Antoinette immediately sought out a family friend, Coco Ngoma Moyise, who was an evangelist in the neighboring village. They prayed over the lifel...

Miracles were part of Paul’s life from the very beginning of his ministry to the reported end in Rome . The list of miracles in Acts is not complete: Luke refers to miracles by Paul in Iconium and Malta but does not specify them (Acts 14:3; 15:12; 28:9). He also does not report any miracles in Corinth whereas Paul refers to them in his letters (1 Cor. 2:4; 2 Cor. 12:12). It is telling that while Luke makes every effort to mention Paul’s miracles in detail (as equal to Peter), the apostle himself offers only general references to them and hardly bothers to point them out. On the contrary, Paul mentions the sickness of Epaphroditus (Phil. 2:25–27), Timothy (1 Tim. 5:23) and Trophimus (2 Tim. 4:20) which he did not heal (Derickson 308–311). The silence of miracles in the letters has been interpreted both in favor and against a cessationist view (Derickson, esp. 304–305). For one thing, the Christians addressed in most of the letters would have known about Paul’s miracles and...

One comment that Christian pastors sometimes hear from people they are counseling is that it would be easier for them to have a strong faith if they could see God doing the same kinds of miracles today as are recorded in the Bible. The unspoken assumption is that seeing is believing—that the people who lived in Jesus' day found themselves more readily trusting Him because they could see His great works. www.hopecollege.com Such comments show the need for a closer reading of Scripture, for there are many cases where seeing great miracles didn't move observers to faith.  For example, John 11 records Jesus' raising Lazarus from the dead—a convincing sign if there ever was one. Yet the authorities took the miracle as a reason to oppose Jesus, not to believe in Him (vv. 45-53). Scripture also records occasions when even God's people experienced disbelief after seeing many miracles. Consider Joshua 7, which records what happened at Ai not long after the Israelites con...

Many contemporary Christians feel disconnected from the vibrant, Spirit-filled ministries of the prophets and apostles described in the Bible . In the Old Testament , God seemingly took the people of Israel through miraculous event after miraculous event. In the New Testament , those who watched the ministry of Jesus were seized with amazement at the miracles he performed ( Luke 5:25 ), and the apostles in the early church regularly performed signs and wonders among the people ( Acts 5:12 ).  Yet today, such miraculous events seem rare and, when we do hear reports of miracles, many Christians are skeptical. At the very least, we feel there's  something  different about the way God worked in the Old and New Testament periods and the way he works today. This raises a valid question: Why don’t we experience today the miracles we read about in the New Testament? To answer that question, we need to understand not only how God works through  providence and c...