Dr Paul Allen

Religion can be a place we try to hide from God . There’s something about rhythms and rituals, formality and functions that trick us into thinking that God is fooled by our church attendance. We think, “Maybe if I lift my hands really high Sunday morning, I’ll distract God from what happened  Thursday  night.” And even if we rarely say those thoughts out loud, we know the temptation of this pattern. Blind Fools Mock the All-Seeing God While the prophet Ezekiel was exiled in Babylon, God showed him a vision of Jerusalem’s religious leaders committing idolatry. In this vision, the Lord brought Ezekiel to the sanctuary in Jerusalem and commanded him to dig through the walls. “And there, engraved on the wall all around, was every form of creeping things and loathsome beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel ” (Ezekiel  8:10 ). The very place God intended to be set aside for his worship had become a gallery of idols. Then the Lord asked Ezekiel, “ Son of ...

When Jesus answered the disciples’ question about the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and his return and the end of the age, he prophesied events and developments that the disciples understood. The events of signs 1 through 8 and sign 10 (see question 3) describe realities in the first century as well as the history of the church from the first century until today. Sign 9, the siege and destruction of Jerusalem , happened in A.D. 70. That the reference of Jesus’ prophecy in Matthew 24–25 (and Mark 13 / Luke 21 ) refers to the entire period between Jesus’ first coming in the first century and his second coming emerges from a consideration of (1) the structure of Jesus’ discourse on the end times, (2) Jesus’ warnings and exhortations, and (3) Jesus’ comments on the consequences of his prophecy for his followers. The Structure of Jesus’ Discourse on the End Times Jesus’ discourse on the end times follows his prediction of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem and a...