Dr Paul Allen

George Whitefield, half-length portrait with hands raised, preaching in a church; portrait framed by oval. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) George Whitefield , preached “The Eternity of Hell -Torments,” in London in 1738. When the reality of the fate of those who perish in this life without Christ is again pressed upon one’s conscience, it always seems like a burden too great to bear. But, as Whitefield would say in the sermon , “If the bare mentioning the torments of the damned is so shocking, how terrible must the enduring of them be!” Truly this is the most solemn of subjects. But we as Christians — as preachers of the Gospel of Christ — we must give our minds and hearts to the biblical teaching of the unbeliever’s fate. And Whitefield has done us an excellent service. You can read the sermon in full here . As a preacher, it was instructive to observe the way Whitefield pled with his hearers to flee from the wrath to come. He was not content to simply parrot out a few stock...

E.M. Bounds was not overly enamored with church growth methods or management techniques. He believed real power comes from a different source: the Holy Spirit anointing a person. Those who want to reject the celebrity preacher culture do need to beware that they don’t also reject the way God works by raising up men and women to do his work: We are constantly on a stretch, if not on a strain, to devise new methods, new plans, new organizations to advance the Church and secure enlargement and efficiency for the gospel . This trend of the day has a tendency to lose sight of the man or sink the man in the plan or organization. God’s plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than of anything else. Men are God’s method. The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men. “There was a man sent from God whose name was John.” The dispensation that heralded and prepared the way for Christ was bound up in that man John. “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son...

Image via Wikipedia The authority of preaching is rooted finally in the absolute authority of God . That root passes through the infallible Word of God, the Bible . This book is the only access we have today to an infallible message from God. Therefore authority is not intrinsic to the preacher . It is intrinsic only to God and his written word. Only the scriptures are “inspired” infallibly by God ( 2 Timothy 3:16).  Preachers may be inspiring, but we are not inspired in this way.   Our   divine authority is entirely derivative. It is not in us. It is in our preaching only to the degree that what we say and mean truly expresses what God said and meant in biblical texts. Therefore, (and it is a huge   therefore !), the people of God, sitting under the preached word, are weakened when the preaching hovers above the written word of God , making its points, but leaving the people unable to see for themselves how these points are the meaning of God in the ...