Dr Paul Allen

It is true that God is a righteous Judge who will one day pour out His wrath on a rebellious world. But the overwhelming emphasis of Scripture is not on the wrath of God but rather on His mercy. As the psalmist proclaimed, “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.” (Psalm 103:8) Can you imagine if God’s character was the opposite of this? If He was slow to mercy and abounding in anger? We would have been wiped out many millennia ago. As the psalmist continued, in Psalm 103:9‑14, He will not always accuse, nor will he harbour his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers t...

English: Icon of Jesus Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) And it will be said in that day: “Behold, this is our God ; we have waited for Him, and He will save us” (Isa. 25:9a). The hope of every believer is the day in which the Lord will vindicate His people in the eyes of an unbelieving world. This was the hope of the Jews and it is our hope today, both as individuals who seek deliverance from particular circumstances and as the church, which is looking forward to the day when Jesus will come again to judge the world in righteousness and to save His people from distress. Chapter 25 is a praise to God for what He did for the Jewish people in delivering them from their enemies and for bringing down in judgment those who harassed them and mocked God’s name. This praise is directed toward God Himself and there is no exalting of the Jewish people themselves. After seeing the fulfillment of the prophecies and the way mat God manifested His righteousness among the nations , the Jewis...

Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia "Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing." ( Isaiah 40:15 )   God has a divine purpose for nations, as shown by the fact that there will even be "nations of them which are saved" ( Revelation 21:24 ) in the new earth, outside the New Jerusalem . Nations were evidently first established after the dispersion at Babel when God forced the original post-Flood families to separate and to establish their own distinctive communities by confusing their languages ( Genesis 11:9 ).   It thus has been natural and useful (in God's economy) for each nation to develop a sense of national pride and patriotic loyalty.  However, this has often been corrupted into militant expansionism or ethnic idolatry, and God has eventually had to put them down.  Nations need to remember that they are really "a very little thing" i...