Dr Paul Allen

By faith, he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood so that the Destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them. (Heb. 11:28) “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.” These words from Exodus 12:13 are some of the most comforting in the Old Testament, if not the entire Bible. But comfort (biblically speaking) often comes amid crisis.  When God spoke these words to Israel through Moses, Israel was in anything but a comfortable position. For several hundred years, they had been harshly enslaved by the Egyptians. Their God—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—had been deafeningly silent throughout those centuries.  Egypt was a land full of pagan deities, and Pharaoh was a self-proclaimed deity among them—and he knew neither Joseph nor the God of Joseph. Time has a way of chilling warm memories, and all that God had done for Israel and the Egyptians had faded from memory. The people of God now pined away as slaves, labouring under the blighting sun of Pharaoh’s vainglory—a ...

Dreams dominate the story of Joseph, but their importance in the narrative derives from the significance of dreams in the culture and theology of the ancient Near East. While many of us dismiss dreams as a mental reworking of the day’s events or as the result of indigestion, ancients considered dreams to have potential revelatory significance. Dreams were one way the gods communicated from the divine realm to the human realm—a belief that is clearly evident in the Joseph narrative. Six dreams, conveyed in three pairs, propel the story of Joseph [and his] rise from being the favoured—and thus despised—son of Jacob to being the “discerning and wise” man appointed to manage Egypt during its 14 years of feast and famine (Gen 41:33). Joseph has two dreams (Gen 37), two of his fellow prisoners in Egypt each have a dream (Gen 40), and Pharaoh has a pair of dreams (Gen 41). The first pair sets the narrative in motion and points ahead to its destination, while the second and third pairs ar...

God has always been selective. The blessing came through Isaac. Then the blessing came through Jacob. "Jacob I loved, Esau I hated." (Rom. 9:13) You say, "Wow, you mean God is that discriminating?" Verse 14 then says (and this is what the responder would say) "What shall we say then? Is this unjust? There is no injustice with God is there?" Mē genoito—the strongest negative in the Greek language—no, no, no, no. This isn't out of character for God to be selective. God never intended every Jew to be in the kingdom. For He says to Moses, God says, "I'll have mercy on whom I'll have mercy. I'll have compassion on whom I'll have compassion." And it doesn't depend on "the man who wills or the man who runs but on God who has mercy" (Rom. 9:15-16). And then He goes to Pharaoh, "'For this very purpose I raised you up to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole ear...

Thus says the Lord: “By this you shall know that I am the LORD: Behold, I will strike the waters which are in the river with the rod that is in my hand, and they shall be turned to blood” (Ex. 7:17). The Egyptians worshiped the Nile River . They derived so much benefit from it that they looked upon it as divine. To show His sovereignty and superiority over the Egyptians and their gods, the Lord sent this first plague to taint the waters of Egypt, turning the Nile into blood. It must be emphatically stated at this point that this was not a discoloration from the red clays of the Ethiopian highlands that sometimes washed into the Nile, turning it a reddish color. The term used in the text for blood is never used for a color, but for the actual substance of blood. This was a supernatural act of God, a miracle. God had said that He would enable Moses to perform great miracles that would only harden Pharaoh’s heart. If it had been merely discoloration from a natural occurrence, it ...

For every man threw down his rod, and they became serpents. But Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods (Ex. 7:12). The first time that Moses appealed to Pharaoh, he did so in word only. But this time Moses is directed to prove that he is God’s messenger: “Show a miracle for yourselves.” no doubt, Pharaoh said this hoping that none would be wrought. But even if Moses did do something supernatural, Pharaoh was prepared to discredit him. He had called his wise men to counter anything Moses might do. So when the staff of Aaron turned into a serpent, the wise men cast down their staffs, transforming them into snakes. Pharaoh must have been quite proud of himself. But there was more to come. Moses’ serpent swallowed the others, thus testifying to the power and supremacy of Yahweh. Still, Pharaoh hardened his heart to the plain truth. This is a classic example of a man who refuses to believe. He demands evidence, he demands proof in the form of a miracle, and when a miracle is delivered, he...