Dr Paul Allen

Michelangelo Bounarotti - The Fall and Expulsion of Adam and Eve - detail (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) " God sent him forth from the garden of Eden , to till the ground from whence he was taken." ( Genesis 3:23 ) What did God do at the Fall ? The answer may surprise you. First, God rested. After God completed His work of creating the universe, He ceased from creating ( Genesis 2:2-3 ). This rest continued throughout all of history, right up to this very day ( Hebrews 4:3 ).  Thus, when mankind fell into sin, God didn't start His creation work over, as if there was a flaw in His original purposes and designs. Rather, He knew the Fall would happen and responded by continuing His cessation from creating, fully knowledgeable of what was transpiring and fully in control. Second, God exercised perfect justice. The punishments at the Fall perfectly fit the crimes committed.  For example, the serpent sinned by exalting himself above his created place, and God p...

Image via Wikipedia "And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen." ( Romans 16:20 )   This is an intriguing promise, suggesting that believers can somehow inflict bruises on the devil, who is perpetually seeking to "devour" them ( 1 Peter 5:8 ).  This promise is a clear allusion to the primeval assurance of Genesis 3:15, when God promised that the unique "seed" of "the woman" would eventually "bruise" (actually "crush") the head of the old serpent , the devil.  This prophecy will finally be fulfilled in Christ 's ultimate victory, when Satan first will be bound for a thousand years in the bottomless pit and then confined forever in the lake of fire ( Revelation 20:2 ,  10 ).   In the meantime believers, who also in a sense are the woman's spiritual "seed" ( Revelation 12:17 ), can repeatedly achieve local and temporary victori...

Image via Wikipedia "Wherefore should I fear in the days of evil, when the iniquity of my heels shall compass me about?" ( Psalm 49:5 )   This enigmatic question should be a real concern to elderly unbelievers--or of unbelievers of any age, for that matter. The "days of evil" seem specifically to refer to old age, as in  Ecclesiastes 12:1 , which exhorted young people to "remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them."   Those who have not "remembered their Creator" while young may one day come to realize that the iniquities which had been accumulating against their record day by day through a long lifetime had actually involved the venom of that old Serpent , which God long ago had warned would bruise the heels of the children of Mother Eve (see  Genesis 3:15 ). Their sins, which will eventually become so numerous as to "compass t...