Dr Paul Allen

As Genesis 31 opens, Jacob has been living in a foreign and hostile land for twenty years, outside the land that he was promised by God. He was driven out of this land in Genesis 28 after he had stolen the blessing meant for Esau, his elder brother. He fled to Paddan-Aram, where his uncle Laban lived. There he stayed and worked for Laban and married his daughters, Leah and Rachel. Yet throughout these years, Laban took advantage of Jacob and dealt with him dishonourably. Here in Genesis 31 Jacob finally decides to leave Laban after the Lord instructs him to return home to the promised land (Gen. 31:3). So Jacob and his family leave, in obedience to the Lord, taking with them all the livestock and property that he received as payment for all the years he worked for Laban, as Genesis 30 explains. But in Genesis 31:19 there is a seemingly throwaway line that reads, “And Rachel stole her father’s household gods.” Looking closer, this line is indeed a shocking revelation. Rachel, the God-fe...

By Thomas West I live in London as someone inspired by two missionaries to Western culture. One is Lesslie Newbigin, a cross-cultural missionary sent to India who later returned to England. The other is Tim Keller, a church planter who established a thriving evangelical congregation in the middle of Manhattan. Today, Keller’s life and ministry are being celebrated following his recent death. Keller showed us how to connect with, confront, and call to Christ a culture with the gospel, doing this, of all places, in New York. His love for the city and his theological vision inspired my family to move to London to plant a church. I first encountered the works of Newbigin and his missionary perspective while a seminary student. I also learned of the Stone Lectures delivered by Newbigin at Princeton in 1989, where he famously called the church to “a genuinely missionary encounter between the gospel and modern Western culture.” In 2017, Keller gave the Kuyper Lecture at Princeton titled “Answ...

Easter is a bad translation of a word that does not appear in the original language.… Easter is a carryover from the Greco-Roman world; which was engulfed in sun-worship…. The holiday and the word should be changed back to Passover. This was one of the best comments from the say-no-to-Easter perspective: it was clear, avoided ad hominem, and was written in lower case. Is Easter a pagan holiday? We as believers don’t want our holy days to be sullied by association with idolatry. And I want to state at the outset that no one should call Easter Easter against his or her conscience. But I don’t think we ought to be upset about the word Easter. Here’s why. 1. We’re not sure that “Easter” was a pagan word. The soberest and reliable source out there, the Oxford English Dictionary, dutifully cites the Venerable Bede’s contention from 1,300 years ago that Easter is derived from a pagan holiday. But that holiday was not Greco-Roman; it was Anglo-Saxon—Easter (Bede says) was the goddess of spring...

December 25 could not have been Jesus’ birth date. Early Christians did not even celebrate Jesus’ birth. And certainly did not celebrate Christmas on December 25 until long after the pagans had created a December 25 festival. Christmas is the cultural appropriation of the pagan “Birth of the Unconquered Sun.” And the Persian cult of Mithras, also celebrated December 25. The Gospels make no mention of any commemorations of Jesus’ birth . Nothing in the Book of Acts or the rest of the New Testament. And the first generations of Christianity did not celebrate Christ’s birth. In fact, such a thing was frowned upon. The Hebrew tradition from which Christianity came celebrated the passing of Jewish heroes. Not birthdays. Encyclopedia Judaica puts it bluntly. “The celebration of birthdays is unknown in traditional Jewish ritual. … The only reference to a birthday in the bible is that celebrated by Pharaoh.” (Gen 40:20) In fact, early church leader Origen of Alexandria openly mo...

Syncretism - The term comes from the Greek sunkretizein, “to unite,” and in the ancient world it seems to have referred to the alliance of cities for political purposes. Since the Reformation, however, Christian writers have come to use syncretism to refer to the dilution or corruption of Christianity through the blending of orthodox doctrines and practices with alien philosophical and/or religious elements. The sin of which Israel was guilty, and which is always a danger for contemporary Christians, was and is not simply an impersonal, technically incorrect mixture of contradictory religious doctrines or rituals. Rather, it is what the Bible calls religious adultery, which is, as Jesus put it, the failure to love, worship, and serve the true God with all of one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30). You see, there is a kind of syncretistic blending that is relatively innocent and even productive. Our culture loves to mix things up, but that might not be an altogether ba...

With  reports  that accusations of witchcraft are on the rise in some African countries , we asked Timothy Stabell, a professor at Briercrest College and Seminary with experience in the mission field, to share what certain Christian leaders are facing overseas. One aspect of my ministry with church leaders in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been leading discussions on the topic of witchcraft. My goal has been to work toward mutually agreed-upon principles of biblical and pastoral theology for dealing with these matters. During one lively debate, a deacon told about a woman and her daughter who had that very day publicly confessed to being witches. They were caught by a man who had wakened during the night to the sound of pigs rooting around his tent (he was living in a refugee camp for people who had fled horrific fighting among different militia groups seeking to control the export of gold in the area).  He had gone out to drive the pigs away and h...