Dr Paul Allen

On September 9, 1839, a little boy was born into the Hatfield clan of West Virginia. His given name was William Anderson Hatfield. But while still quite young he got a nickname from his own mother that perfectly described his sinister disposition and aggressive nature. She called him  Devil Anse . The name stuck fast. Around the same time, his little cousin, also called Anderson Hatfield, who was mild-mannered and kind, earned the sobriquet of  Preacher Anse . So Devil Anse and Preacher Anse both grew into their names. Devil Anse was the leader of the Hatfield clan throughout the bitter decades of the infamous Hatfield-Mccoy feud. And although over a dozen people lost their lives and several more were imprisoned, Devil Anse survived the feud and avoided jail time. The infamous New Year’s Night massacre of 1888 was plotted at his instigation. That was the night eight Hatfields, at Devil Anse’s behest, surrounded the Mccoy cabin and opened fire, killing two young girls. Sev...

The Frenchman Michel de Nostradamus lived from 1503 to 1566. He was by profession an apothecary—a hybrid chemist and drug dealer. In 1550 he published an almanac with zodiac predictions that were all the vogue, and for some reason are still found in magazines today, known as horoscopes. He fancied himself an astrologer but was so bad at doing the zodiac calculations that he usually insisted that his customers hire another astrologer to do the calculations of their birth year and zodiac charts first and then he would merely interpret them. He got quite good at describing the future predictions in such a way that people could in retrospect see how his words fit their situation. These predictions were so vague they could not be understood except with hindsight. He was the forefather of the “You will meet a tall dark stranger” prediction – just before his gullible client gets run over by a brown horse and everyone says, “Aha! Nostradamus predicted that.” In his lifetime Nostradamus became ...

In 1878 Floyd Hatfield had a pig. Somehow this pig got a tiny bit of its ear bitten off or otherwise severed, or so Hatfield claimed. You see, on the other side of Tug Fork river in West Virginia lived a family called the McCoys. The McCoys notched their pigs’ ears in order to identify them. When Randolph McCoy saw the notched hog in a Hatfield sty, he accused Floyd Hatfield of swine theft. The matter soon escalated into a bitter lawsuit. Randolph McCoy took Floyd Hatfield to court over the issue, but the conflict was exacerbated because the local justice of the peace happened to be the honourable Judge Anderson Hatfield. He found no evidence that Floyd Hatfield had stolen the pig and ruled in favour of his kinsman. He wisely made his ruling based on the testimony of one Bill Staton, a relative of both families, and thus was seen to be impartial. The case was closed. Or was it? Two years later, Bill Staton was killed, supposedly in self-defence, by two McCoy brothers. Around that time ...

The Great Day of His Wrath (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) "For the day of the LORD is near upon all the heathen: as thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee: thy reward shall return upon thine own head." ( Obadiah 15 ) The book of Obadiah was possibly the earliest of the prophetic books of the Old Testament and is certainly the shortest, with its single chapter. Its theme is God's coming judgment on the Edomite nation, not only because of their general wickedness, but particularly because of their abusive treatment of their Israelite relatives (Jacob's brother Esau was the father of the Edomites ). The prophecy of Obadiah contains (in our text) the first mention (chronologically) of the coming "day of the LORD." Although it appears at first to focus especially on the Edomites, it is really looking far ahead to the end times, when the judgments of that day will be "upon all the heathen." There have been many precursive and partial fulfil...