Dr Paul Allen

Voddie Baucham, Stephen Nichols ,   R.C.   Sproul,   R.C.   Sproul Jr., and Derek Thomas were asked the following questions: Athanasius confronted the issue of the deity of Christ . What is the strongest enemy the church faces today? (00:10) If God wants us to spend all eternity with Him, why didn’t He just put us with Him from the beginning? (08:43) How do we deal with knowing some of our loved ones may be headed to perdition? (11:29) Since we are chosen before the foundation of the world, how does God view us before we are born again? (15:30) Dr. Baucham, you said that you had overcome numerous struggles as a married adult man due to not having your father around when younger. I can relate. Can you talk about this a bit? (16:42) I am trying to reconcile the death of my son. How do I deal with my anger against God experienced as I am in this dark time? (20:08) Since God is slow to anger and patient, why, when man fir...

Icon of Jesus Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) This week is Holy Week . Therefore Christians and Christian families all over the world are paying particular attention to the work of Jesus Christ in His life, death, and resurrection. ...there is more to be learned at the foot of the cross than anywhere else in the world. — J.C. Ryle These are worthy topics for our consideration. Jesus' accomplishment on the cross was not—as some suggest—simply God 's "Plan B" after the Fall. From all eternity, God determined that He would redeem for Himself a people, and that which He determined to do was, in fact, accomplished in the work of Jesus Christ, His atonement on the cross. Ligonier has put together a list of resources to help you understand the depth of this week in history Articles The Bearer of Iniquity   by  Joseph Pipa, Jr. Biblical Scholasticism   by  R.C. Sproul The Blood of the Lamb   by  Gordon Wenham Cur Deus Homo   by  R.C. Sproul Fo...

Image via Wikipedia The following is an extract from  Unseen Realities: Heaven and Hell, Angels and Demons by R.C. Sproul  copyright  Christian focus  used with permission. The Place of God’s Disfavor I suppose there is no topic in Christian theology more difficult to deal with, particularly on an emotional level, than the doctrine of hell. In fact, the doctrine has become so controversial in the modern era that it is almost never addressed. Old-fashioned revival preaching was characterized by the idea of “hellfire and brimstone.” This idea is especially connected with the Great Awakening in the eighteenth century and the ministry of Jonathan Edwards . No theologian or preacher is more associated with the concept of hell than Edwards. I once read a college textbook in which Edwards was used as an illustration of someone who was sadistic because he seemed to preach so often on the subject of hell. That bothered me, because while Edwards certainly believed in the r...

Cover of When Worlds Collide: Where is God? R.C.  Sproul’s little book  When Worlds Collide . This book was written in early 2002, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Sproul wrote it as a response to those events, as a means of grappling with the difficult questions related to God ’s sovereignty and human suffering. As I read the book I was struck by how relevant it remains today, especially since 9/11 is still so real and since so many people still have not really dealt with it in their hearts and minds (and perhaps never will). It is interesting to trace Sproul’s teaching on the subject. Here I’ll provide just a few quotes that ought to give you a sense of his logic. The events of 9/11 were a mortal blow to relativism, because the response of Americans and the response of people the world over, after looking at this heinous attack on human life, was the very “unrelativistic” declaration that “This is evil.” … One cannot have such a shocking encounter with pure e...

Image via Wikipedia Dr Sproul has written Reason to Believe , “a response to common objections to Christianity .”  One of the common objections to the faith is that Christians are hypocrites, people who call out other people for being sinners, but who still sin themselves. Here is how Sproul answers this: What happens is that people observe church members sinning. They reason within themselves, “That person professes to be a Christian.  Christians aren’t supposed to sin . That person is sinning; therefore, he is a hypocrite .”  The unspoken assumption is that a Christian is one who claims he does not sin. It reality just the opposite is the case. For a Christian to be a Christian, he must first be a sinner. Being a sinner is a prerequisite for being a church member.  The Christian church is one of the few organizations in the world that requires a public acknowledgement of sin as a condition for membership. In one sense the church has fewer hypocrites than any...

Image via Wikipedia Dr Sproul has written Reason to Believe , “a response to common objections to Christianity .”  One of the common objections to the faith is that Christians are hypocrites, people who call out other people for being sinners, but who still sin themselves. Here is how Sproul answers this: What happens is that people observe church members sinning. They reason within themselves, “That person professes to be a Christian.  Christians aren’t supposed to sin . That person is sinning; therefore, he is a hypocrite .”  The unspoken assumption is that a Christian is one who claims he does not sin. It reality just the opposite is the case. For a Christian to be a Christian, he must first be a sinner. Being a sinner is a prerequisite for being a church member.  The Christian church is one of the few organizations in the world that requires a public acknowledgement of sin as a condition for membership. In one sense the church has fewer hypocrites than any...